We have finally reached our last post in our Branding Series, ‘How to Make Your Brand Known’. We have discussed four other branding topics:
How Do I Use This?
After all of this, you may be asking yourself, how do I put this into practice? Or even, ‘how can I use these in practical ways to help my business?’ I will try to tie up any loose ends and help from a practical standpoint with making your brand known. Theories and discussions can be great, but it comes back to how you implement what you have learned.
After The Basics
After we know the basics and have picked logos, colors, tag lines, fonts, and more, it does us no good if we cannot get our brand seen. For some, this could mean that you need help from a Brand Development Specialist or Strategist.
The Biggest Lie In Online Marketing & Branding
If you are confident, however, or want to try it yourself, let’s walk through some of the steps to make your brand known. It does not mean it will be an instant hit, nor that you will be viral overnight. I think this is one of the biggest lies about online marketing and branding.
Genuine & Organic Followers
If you want to have true, genuine, and organic followers added to your social media accounts and blogs it will take time. Most people are not patient enough or consistent enough to continue to walk through this process. You have to be willing to be both consistent & patient, while slowly building followers. It can take 6 to 18 months or more to build a true following of significance sometimes. Can it be done faster? Of course, if you are going to spend most of your day doing it, or if you purchase followers (which I do not believe to be ethical), rather than what you need to be doing -working on your business. Even then there are no guarantees that your followers are loyal or will become clients/customers, especially if you are not consistent with the content they are looking for at that time. So be sure to know your target audience as well as their needs.
Practical Steps to Help Make Your Brand known:
- Start a Blog – dealing with your industry, something you know. This helps to establish you as an expert, eventually (remember patience) that others will look to for answers. Again, this is not overnight but can take as long as a year to eighteen months sometimes.
- Open 4 Business Social Media Accounts – It is fine that you have a personal Facebook page, but have you considered making a business FB page? Be sure you open these social media accounts as soon as you have all of your other brand items in place (logo, colors, etc…). Put your logo on it with your business name. If you do not know how to do this or do not know how to do a banner for it, hire someone to do this, so it turns out right; it will be money well spent, believe me.
- Join some key groups, after you have opened your social media accounts. Groups that are not thousands of members, but perhaps hundreds in your target audiences. It is OK to join several, as long as you can keep up with them. If you can answer questions quickly and reply to any who may begin a conversation, then you can manage it; however, if you cannot do this and run your business, then by all means, please hire a social media manager. [As you know www.tammysoffices.com can help you with all of these things by the way]
- Be CONSISTENT in what you do. The final step, in getting known, is to simply be consistent. Post Blogs regularly, whether it is monthly, weekly or daily, be sure to do it when your readers are expecting or they will lose interest. Also post to your social media accounts DAILY – two to three times a day! You can even use a scheduler if you are simply sharing curated content. There are schedulers such as Buffer or Hootsuite will help you to be consistent. [I am going to do a blog on the differences in types of content, as well as, professions involved in social media coming up soon].
“The true key in branding, although it has many facets, and many ways to do it, is that you do it consistently and stay in front of your targeted audience!” – T.S.D.
Remember, also, that all you do is a representation of your brand. Be sure that whatever you post, comment, etc… is worthy of your brand and is what you want it to represent. Before any action, ask yourself, ‘Do I want my brand associated with this?’.
If you are inconsistent in sharing content, whether created or curated, your audience will not know what to expect and will begin to ‘unfollow’ you. When your audience sees you regularly and KNOWS what you are about, a few things happen:
- They understand your message (all discussed in part 1 through 4 of the series)
- They begin to associate your logo and colors without the wording
- They become loyal to you & your brand
- They will share your content with their audience
- Your Audience will grow
Now you are on your way to not only becoming a Brand, but also making your brand known!
I hope you have learned through the series. I have enjoyed bringing it to you and hope you will continue to look for additional information that will help you with your business. Remember, if you are in doubt about your brand message, logo, marketing techniques, or more, please just reach out to me and I will be glad to help. We love to help start-ups and small businesses with this and so much more, so you can focus on your business and let us take care of the other tasks taking up your time.
We also would love to hear from you, so please leave us a comment on how this may have helped you. If we can assist you in anything, including, branding, bookkeeping, online marketing, social media posting, virtual assistant services, website creations and more, please call us at 804-723-5491 and do not forget to check out our budget-friendly packages.
