3 Ways To Keep Your Brand Consistent
When it comes to branding, the biggest factor in being effective is being consistent. If you have a really amazing brand identity that is gorgeous to look at and is completely clear to your clients, but then choose to use a personal Instagram account with pictures of your dinner and cat for your biz, then you're confusing your audience.
The biggest factor in being effective is being consistent.
The last thing people want these days is to have to work to understand who you are and what you do. We live in a world that celebrates being busy (not that I encourage this at all - in fact I think we all really need to slow down as a society, but that's a topic for another day).
If someone needs to search through digital piles of gunk to get to the root of what your brand is all about, then you're making them work too hard and they probably won't stick around for very long. They have work to do and mouths to feed!
Brand consistency is what will allow you to stand out in a crowd.
This is what will get you noticed and recognized by your audience time and time again. We all know that age-old saying that you need to reach someone 7 times before they'll follow up or take action, right? It's kind of important actually regardless of how many times it takes. When people are noticing you over and over, then you become hard to ignore!
So how can you make sure your brand is consistent across all of the platforms we use day to day?
1. Check in with your visual identity
Do you have a solid logo or wordmark, specific colour scheme, consistent fonts and imagery to represent your brand? When you have a visual system set in place for your brand and you stick to it, people who interact with you or your brand will start to have a visual reference for your business. A lot of people in this world learn visually, so this is a bonus for starting to build a memory around your brand.
Having a visual identity for your brand also gives you a super easy reference for the platforms you'll be using as a tool for your business. If you work with a designer, you can pass off the brand stylesheet (see an example of one I designed here) and they can easily match your brand in whatever they're designing for you. If you design your own assets, you have a quick and easy reference for when you're designing things like social media imagery, quotes, PDFs, email marketing headers...etc.
Once you have a visual system in place, don't sway from it. Not even a little bit. If you use pastel purple, keep using pastel purple. It's confusing if you start throwing in red tones or weird fonts! Of course there is no rule written in stone, so if it's a special holiday that calls for red colours, then just make sure other aspects are consistent like your fonts and logo.
2. Check in with your brand tone
Have you thought about the tone your brand has? Have you asked your clients how they feel about your brand or after interacting with your brand? You should have a clear and concise brand tone to work with in your platforms. If you regularly write your blog posts with curse words and vulgarity (hey, that's cool - no judgement here), then keep the same tone in your web content, Instagram posts and any other interaction your brand may have. If someone stumbles across your pretty Instagram photos, with lovely, inspiring quotes and soft colours and then goes on to your website to find bright colours and swear words, they might be totally thrown off. I would be. I was expecting something totally different than what you portrayed on your Instagram account.
3. Check in with your social media
When we have a brand or business of our own, our personal lives get somewhat tied in. Whether or not you choose to have separate business accounts from your personal accounts is your choice. But whatever you decide, it's incredibly important that all of your accounts show the same consistent visual identities (logos, colours, fonts), consistent biographies, consistent profile pictures, consistent handles or usernames and consistent tones. People shouldn't have to wonder if they've made a mistake in searching your biz name when they come across your Facebook page that has your old logo and a cover photo that looks nothing like your imagery on your Instagram account.
When you start to pay closer attention to how consistent you are with your brand, you're increasing all likelihoods that you'll be noticed. Using the same visual system, tones and social media details, you'll have better chances of someone noticing you and then recognizing you or making an association to your brand.
We all want to stand out in a crowd. They first step to achieving that is brand consistency!
