Branding in the Social Age

Consistency online is vital as you are not only open to a wide audience, but a lot of the ‘noise’ out there can be beyond your control. Once you’ve posted an online ad, web article, social campaign it is then out there for consumers and the like to discuss, review, share and sometimes scrutinise. 

Online branding in particular is a complex network with content generated not just by marketers but third parties and consumers. The consumer voice in particular is more powerful than ever, just this week cosmetics giant L’Oreal have muted that they are looking to turn to online customer reviews to boost brand confidence and sales across their product range ­ http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/04/05/how­l­oreal­turning­consumer­reviews­boost­online­sales​ This again demonstrates the power of online content and is why a clear, consistent brand becomes crucial for ensuring a positive customer experience – whether online, in print or in person.

Cutting through the Noise

To position your brand positively for your customer audience you need to cut through all the noise and ensure your brand is consistent across all of your touchpoints. This can be achieved but needs dedication and brand management. 

When it comes to stellar branding, look no further than Coca­Cola for a prime example of brand consistency at its very best. Coca­Cola always communicates using the same consistent style of messaging, look and feel across each and every touchpoint. Its instantly recognisable, familiar and this approach has meant that their brand alone is worth 50% of the total company value ­ that's a brand value of £52 billion! 

Get the whole Company involved! 

It is important that employees understand your brand and that it isn’t merely created, maintained and marketed, by a design or marketing team. If the whole of the company understands and can identify with your brand, greater brand consistency is likely to be delivered. For example, if the website developers understand the style and message of a company’s brand, they are more likely to be able to deliver brand consistency when designing the website. As would the copywriters involved with writing the copy for the website and other business documents.

How can we get the whole company involved with Branding? 

There is a number of ways businesses can inform colleagues and suppliers of branding. Arranging one-to-one meetings with employees, informal group discussions and more formal presentations that are delivered to the whole company, are all great ways to communicate information about your branding and the message it is designed to deliver.

If you haven’t the time or resources to verbally communicate the essence behind the branding, creating branding guideline documents and distributing them amongst colleagues either via email or on social media channels, can be a quick and effective way to dispense information about your brand and to help augment brand consistency amongst the whole of the business.

Finding your Voice

Tone of voice can have a huge impact in the way you come across and how that resonates with your online audience. The way you tell your story, the way you speak to your customers and how you engage needs to reflect and fit your business. For example you wouldn’t expect a law firm and a sandwich company to use the same tone, you need to flex and find your groove. So think about this ­ should it be formal or informal? Serious or humorous? Adventurous or practical? ​To really explore the right tone for you, think about your audience and how they want to be communicated with, this will come in handy as you start to translate your tone into a writing style. Here are five top tips to consider when crafting your writing style.

Top five writing tips:

1. Think about your audience
2. Know your message
3. Keep it simple – never use five words when one will do
4. Use shorter sentences for more impact
5. Be cautious if using jargon and buzzwords

Email marketing company, MailChimp has a very natural, almost conversational style of writing and language. This casual approach is representative of their business ethos ­ almost like having a chat with a friend. A great example of this style in action can be seen in their blog post talking about the creation of MailChimp Snap. (http://blog.mailchimp.com/the­making­of­mailchimp­snap) Pay attention to phrases such as “grabbing a coffee”, “big a­ha moments”, all very casual and colloquial in style but consistent.

Managing your brand assets

So once you’ve established your online brand presence, look after it and keep all your assets and content organised. The new buzz word on the block is DAM ­ Digital Asset Management. All this means is storing all your assets safely in one place so you can easily retrieve, share and find all your files. You can spend money on purchasing dedicated DAM solution for your business but some free/cheaper alternatives could be a Google drive or dropbox account. ​Remember, your brand is your greatest asset so use it and protect it wisely. 

Next time we are going to ask ­ do you even need a website to have an online presence? 

About the author: 

Simon McCaskill is a digital marketing specialist and the bear behind ‘Bear and Fly’. Simon also works for Google as part of their dedicated digital outreach team. 

Digital marketing can be confusing and frustrating and it shouldn’t be. Bear and Fly’s approach is all about working with you, the client, taking you step by step through the processes so you feel more comfortable in how you are marketing your business online.

​​