Brand identity is the first step to having a coherent and successful business. While creating your own brand identity, take all the time you need and give attention to the smallest details. Doing so will help you will develop a style that successfully meets your business’s goals and therefore sends the right message about your brand to the right people. From your logo, to fonts, tone of voice and colors, your brand identity will support:
- Your brand’s personality and consistency across all channels and selling points,
- Your brand’s unique selling proposition,
- And to say the least, customers’ loyalty to your brand!
Nowadays, in order to prove their credibility and meet their customers’ deepest needs, brands maintain many social media accounts to communicate with the public. And they do so consistently across all channels. Let’s look into the three main pillars of an efficient social media branding that will keep your brand on fleek:
Be Consistent, Visually
I will give an example of a well-established, visually consistent brand for over a century now: Coca-Cola, a brand that is all about fun, joy, entertainment and youth.
Coca-Cola’s visual message has been consistent throughout the years, starting with the most important aspect of a visual identity, its iconic logo. The typography and font of the logo cannot be left unseen. We can clearly see that the wave and flow are in sync with the brand’s message of happiness and fun. And this is why you should make sure to choose a font that tells your story. However, the logo is not the only characteristic Coca-Cola worked on. They found a color that also helped with getting their core beliefs out there: Red. So, if I were to show you the picture below, you would directly know them.
Any marketing campaign Coca-Cola takes on respects their signature color and brand guideline which is part of their success story. So, as most businesses do, always stick to a set of color patterns and typography to protect your brand’s image.
Now, let’s look at Coca-Cola’s Instagram account:
Looks familiar, right?
My point is: visual branding is a must! And maintaining a good, visually coherent, social media account has become an unspoken necessity. It will help with:
- Grabbing your audience’s attention,
- Establishing a unique persona,
Which will equivalently lead your audience to recognize your identity among a sea full of brands. Don’t forget to implement visual consistency throughout all your different social media accounts.
Watch Your Tone
Watch your tone! Many of us have heard that phrase when we were little, but did you ever ask yourself why you should watch your tone? I’ll tell you! Tone is everything. It narrates who you are and how you feel. If you are happy, people can hear it in your tone of voice. Needless to say, a brand’s tone of voice reflects its personality and its emotions. Who is your brand? Is it a luxurious french woman, a successful Saudi Millennial, a trendy American Café owner? Once you have given it your thoughts and time, communicate it to the world and witness your target audience relate and engage with you.
On a more technical note, a brand’s tone of voice, when used correctly and seamlessly alongside visual content, will generate results. However, all marketers should follow clear guidelines in order to maintain consistency, especially if they are using different social media platforms. For example, your brand’s content on Instagram will and should be very different from the one on LinkedIn. But writing differently about different topics shouldn’t necessarily mean losing your identity in the process: You are the same brand with the same persona and values! SEMrush wrote internal guidelines to help you maintain a smooth communication across all channels:
- Portrait your audience and their voice,
- Have a clear image about your brand’s attitude towards your audience,
- Maintain your core values,
- Think about your mission statement,
- Work on your message,
- Create a voice chart,
- Specify a vocabulary, grammar rules and how to use punctuation.
To put in simply, tone adds specific flavors to your voice and should be based on factors like audience as well as social channel. In a fast-paced environment of digital-savvy individuals, stand out from the crowd and speak to your audience directly and clearly.
Story Time
Behind every great brand, an even greater story.
A brand’s identity surely relies in its colors and tone of voice but will it ever know success if it doesn’t have a certain story to tell and share? Take it from another perspective. Who are the people you look up to? They usually are the ones who share your ideology, your values and somehow your story, people who look like you or who you would want to resemble. This applies to the relationship between your brand and the people: they need to hear your story and relate to it, which will lead to building an emotional connection, which will therefore encourage loyalty. Think of it as a a sales cycle where emotions lead to purchase!
Social media is probably one of the best places to put your brand’s narrative out into the world for people to hear. Your brand should be able to tell the same story across all social media platforms. And once your story speaks to lookalike people, they will undoubtedly trust in your brand and follow it. However, storytelling on social media is very different than doing so on offline platforms. You need to think about how to apply your brand’s beliefs and values in all your pictures as well as in all your captions.
Most of the times, the smallest details, like your logo placement, can make a difference. Every graphical element, applied on images and videos, can and will contribute in narrating your brand’s story on social platforms. Allow your Instagram feed or Facebook status to speak for themselves. Brands that are able to do so are easily noticed and hardly forgotten about by their audience.
Three ways of telling your story:
- Single Storytelling Posts: Airbnb’s Instagram account is one of the best examples. The company uses a high-quality beautiful image with a captivating story as a caption. These types of posts show that Airbnb is more than just a business.
- Long-form Narrative Content: Humans of New York’s Facebook page receives incredible engagement. Though the posts are sometimes long, people seem to relate to beautiful inspirational stories. The page has more than 18 million likes and it allowed the brand to elaborate stories beyond limited social captions.
- User-Generated Content: Shangri-La Hotels launched “My Shangri-La” campaign which is about involving customers into taking the reigns and write their own narratives. The testimonials are incorporated in Shangri-La’s marketing tactics and elevate the brand’s reputation.
In short, brand storytelling on social media influences customers by increasing brand awareness, reaching and attracting new followers. Your story is how your brand will be remembered.
To Sum It Up
Building a virtual connection between your brand and your audience is key to having a high brand recognition. Keep in mind that with a consistent and clear online identity, your followers will never forget who you are, what your core business is and how you made them feel. Contact Brain Space and ask our state-of-the-art branding specialists to work on your identity!
