Brand Strategy can feel like a pretty abstract concept for a lot of people. Crafting your Brand Persona, refining your Brand Voice, and managing your reputation, it’s all a bit difficult to put your finger on. And most business owners wouldn’t point to these areas as their main challenges and pain points. But coming up with consistent, quality content for social media, that’s something all our clients seem to struggle with.

Everyone agrees that a consistent presence on social media is an essential component of a comprehensive marketing strategy. And this is exactly where the rubber of branding hits the proverbial road. A coherent brand strategy delivers all the tools you need to show up on social media with consistency and reliability that your audience will resonate with.

Brand Strategy for crucial consistency

It’s one of our steadfast mantras: branding is all about managing expectations. And the only way to manage expectations is through consistency. Show up the same way every time, in all your interactions, and it won’t take long for your audience to know what you’re all about. And whether they’re into it or not, they should know right away.

It all starts with understanding your target market. You have a product or service, and ideally, you’d like to sell it to everyone. But, the fact is, you probably won’t. Not in your first year anyway.

Maybe there’s a huge range of people who could potentially benefit from your product. But there’s probably a thin slice of the population for whom your product offers the perfect solution. So do them a favor, and do yourself a favor, by focusing on that narrow niche for whom you have something immensely beneficial.

You can’t please all the people all the time, and you won’t last long if you approach your business that way. But if you know who to concentrate on, you can make a small group of people extremely happy. And you can earn their trust. So start there, and then grow outward.

Instead of being all things to all people, a far more efficient, satisfying and profitable strategy is to be just the right thing for just the right audience. Get to know your audience, stalk them on social media, learn their ins and outs, and figure out how to be the best you can be for them.

When you target one small group with the way you look, act and talk, that audience will know you’re talking to them. And they’ll listen. When you try and address everyone at once, like one of those horrible radio ads, everyone will tune out.

Sometimes we like to use hunting and fishing analogies. Avoid casting too wide a net, focus on your target, zero in on your prey. But this sounds so, well, predatory. Remember, if you have the best solution for a specific group, then they’ll want to hear from you. Cut through the generic noise, make the connection, and they’ll appreciate it.

Visual consistency on social media

Once you’ve done the research on your audience and determined how to distinguish yourself from the competition, you can create a brand that has personality, style and panache. Half of that brand identity is your appearance.

A lot of people think your brand is your logo. In fact, that’s one part of your visual identity. But when branding is done well and done consistently, people should recognize your social media posts without even using your logo.

Exactly. Read that again.

Branding is not about stamping your logo on everything that catches your eye and claiming it as yours. Branding is about having a certain look that people can recognize on a billboard without even taking their eyes off the road.

Colors

Of course, you want a logo. But you need infrastructure to support that logo, to carry your image across all platforms, both digital and tangible. Colors are critical. Knowing your audience, and knowing what they want from you, select a palette of colors that conveys that mood or character.

Include a couple of strong colors, but also some muted tones. And you need a contrasting color as well, one that compliments the others, but also stands out. You’ll probably want about 5 colors in all, but don’t expect to use them all at once. Use them strategically, and save your contrasting color for highlights and special occasions.

Mood boards

Once you have your colors, create a mood board, and have a graphic designer make one for you. Your brand colors aren’t just something you add to an image. Find images that use those colors already. That’s what it means to stay on brand.

If you work with kids and have bright primary colors in your palette, don’t use images with muted earth tones. And vice versa, if you have an elegant upscale brand with black and gold and shades of gray, steer clear of the rainbows. But your mood board is about much more than colors, it’s about the mood. How do the images make you feel? What emotions are the people expressing in the photo?

Fonts and typefaces

The digital age has made it so easy to play with fonts. But please, don’t get distracted! Find two or three complementary fonts and stick to them. Save the creative experimentation for your kids’ birthday invitations.

Believe it not, fonts have feelings too. They can be serious, whimsical, elegant, aggressive, or nonchalant. Remember the mood of your brand. Fonts are one more tool you have to refine your expression of that mood. And one more opportunity to present yourself consistently, and memorably, without ever having to blast your logo.

Don’t worry, we aren’t telling you to hide your logo. Just tone it down. Make your audience the hero of your story, not yourself. They can find your logo in the corner if they want to. But again, they should recognize your brand image before they see the logo. At least subconsciously. Hey, is that… oh, of course it is!

Make use of Canva

Canva is one of the best resources for your branding toolbox. Among other fabulous features, the Canva Pro paid version allows you to set up Brand Identities that keep track of your fonts and colors. It’s never been easy to upload an image, adjust the image colors, add branded text and branded color elements.

Verbal consistency on social media

The other half of your brand identity will be your voice. Most businesses and marketers have a harder time with this. Plugging in fonts and colors is one thing, but understanding tone of voice can take a little more finesse.

When we create brands, we spend a long time defining and developing the personality of the brand. It’s like creating a character in a novel. You need to understand their hope and fears, their desires and motivations. And then you know what they’ll do, what they’ll say, and how they’ll say it.

Knowing the emotional palette is part of the process. We also like to write out a brand interview, in which the brand persona responds to a series of personal questions. We also provide a brand vocabulary, a list of keywords and phrases that signal certain emotions and attitudes.

Finally, it always comes back to the audience. Whether you’re writing a postcard or ad copy, you always have to think about your audience. Otherwise you end up writing something generic and uninteresting. Remember who you’re talking to, and speak accordingly. When people know you’re addressing them, they’ll listen, and they’ll appreciate it.

Conclusions

The bottom line, when it comes to social media, and most everything in branding, is to put your audience first. Find images they can relate to and situations they can relate to. Connect with their pain points when your address their problems and challenges, and connect with their deepest desires when your present your solutions.

To be effective, your social media messaging needs to speak to one specific audience. You only have a split second before they scroll by and leave you behind. Give them a reason to say, “Oh yeah, that looks familiar,” or “Oh my god, that’s exactly what I need!”

And, one last time, be consistent. Keep it on brand. Stick to your colors, your fonts, and your mood. And when they come into your office, they should recognize the colors and the vibe, and the tone of voice they hear from your team. It’s like they already know you.

Consistency leads to familiarity, and familiarity builds trust. And that’s the foundation of success.

Build up and follow through

Ready to get started? Or curious to learn more? The Brand Strategy Workbook will give you a good starting point to answer some questions regarding your brand. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out for a Discovery call or join our online community. It looks a bit confusing and overwhelming, but if you take it one step at a time, it all makes sense in the end. You got this! 

• Schedule a Discovery Call with Pacha
• Join our brand strategy Facebook Community: Balanced Brands
• Get professionally designed and curated content for your social media channels: Sign up for Social Stream

Dive deeper and take a look at these related articles.

• An Introduction to Brand Archetypes
• Adopting Brand Personas
• Speaking with Brand Voice
• Building Company Culture
• Issues with Ethical Marketing