So let’s talk about branding. Branding helps you communicate in a meaningful and memorable way by giving your business personality. One of the things I always say is that you are your business.

For many of us, we are our business because we are the person who actually delivers whatever the service or product it is.

• Firstly, you should look at yourself and go, well, who am I? How am I as a person? What is my unique selling point? What do people know and love about me? Knowing who you are will help you determine how you want to be perceived online. So, are you fun? Are you serious? Or are you inspirational? If we can come to terms with that, that can give us some sort of heads up.
• Number two, is looking at company colour. So, this was quite interesting because obviously people in the same industry kind of choose the same colours. You’ll notice that when I chose Facebook, I aligned myself with Facebook and Facebook’s colour because I thought, well, they’ve obviously done something right there. So blue must be a good colour. So I’ll use the Facebook blue and I’ll piggyback off their business. However, it’s incredibly important that you still differentiate yourself from them because if I just walked around and did the same thing as Facebook, but didn’t put my personality in it, then I’m not separating myself outside of it. So for me, it was really important that I bring the fun part into it because I wanted people to have fun online. I don’t want them to be overwhelmed and stressed with Facebook and the other social media platforms. So I want it to be fun and I needed to be fun because I’m fun. For me, it was about adding the emojis, adding the yellow, adding the fun to it, adding a bit of a cartoon font, I have the thumbs up.  I’ve also got my personality in there to make it more fun than Facebook.
• Thirdly,  look at your audience.  How is your audience and what are their desires and what are their aspirations and how do you want them to feel happy. Do you want them to feel rich? Do you want them to feel informed, supported? It’s important to have a look at that audience because communication’s a two way street.
• Lastly, your key messages. This comes down to your taglines, your values, your mission. Your non-negotiables your points of difference, ways that you can connect with people and your differentiation. I’ll give you an example. I sat down next to this guy that I’ve never met before at a networking event on Friday. And he asked me what I did and I said  I help people make sense of their online stuff and he said, oh, that’s a cool tagline. I said, yeah, I want you to replace the BS in your marketing with a business strategy. And he said , oh, you got another tagline. I gave him a couple more and he was like you should actually just do taglines. And I went, no, I want to be memorable. Like McDonald’s okay. The big game memorable, so it’s important that those key messages are part of your branding and you repeat them constantly.

Did you know that 92% of people agree that the visual perception of a brand will persuade their decision, 92%!

This is why it’s really important that we do make sure that we stand out online with presence and branding. Brands are all about eliciting emotions and feelings and it’s whether or not someone’s going to have something invoked inside of them or it’s going to engage them. So it’s going to evoke some sort of a response from them, whether or not it’s just holding their attention or getting them just to stay there and scroll a bit longer.

That’s the whole purpose of branding. And this is why it’s important that it’s not cookie-cutter or fluffy, and that you do put some thought into it.

Colour Phycology

Colour psychology is really a thing. And I looked online and there’s a whole bunch of different things, but just to give you an idea of colour psychology, red is all about increasing the heart rate, which increases your appetite. So think of Coca-Cola and it’s all about impulse buying.

• Red it is associated with danger, excitement, and energy, it’s also known for being the colour of love and passion.

• Pink is more feminine, sentimental, romantic – different shades, like hot pink, can be useful in bold.

• Orange like its name is fresh and full of vitality. It’s also creative, adventurous and associated with being cost-effective.

• Yellow is optimistic. It’s a colour associated with being playful and happy. And that is why I included yellow in my marketing.

• Green is natural often used to demonstrate sustainability, but it can also align with prestige and wealth. So green is money.

• Blue is trustworthy and reliable. It’s common. Often associated with depression.

• Purple can symbolize royalty and can be spiritual and be mysterious.

• Brown is down to earth and honest often used for organic wholesome products.

• White is pure. It conveys simplicity and innocence often with a minimalistic feel. And that is why Apple went with white. Because Apple notice that everyone in the marketplace, in that industry was always grey, black, and white. So they went well, we’re going to be white because we are pure, minimalistic and simple.

• Black is both sophisticated and elegant. It can be formed formal and luxurious, but also sorrowful.  

• Multicolour is open to anything. It’s great for capturing the spirit of diversity.

Inside your branding folder that you create, these are the things that you need to have. So a brand overview – your history, your mission statement, your personality of your brand and then of course your tone of voice. So when we manage someone’s social media, they get a document that has all of these that asks these questions and the business owners have to, on-site, give us all that information so that when we do their social media, we can use their voice and use their branding and their social media.

Tone of Voice

This is the way that you speak to the customers, and yes, the written word does have a tone of voice.  The use of the exclamation mark etc designates the tone. Another thing that sets the tone is emojis. I’m not a big fan of the overuse of emojis, and I’m also not a fan of random emojis being used. You will notice. I always use the thumbs up. I always use the two fingers up. You can choose at least five emojis that connect with your brand and stick predominantly to those ones, I mean, obviously, for Christmas and whatever you can branch out and use others.

So have a look at your emojis and choose emojis to be part of your brand. You want them to be unique, memorable. You want them to include your personality of you and your client, and you want them to your vocal response.

Logo treatments

This could be the size or it could be if you reverse colours.  It could also be different fonts that bring us to that topic. When it comes to fonts or topography it’s important for us to consider you, your brand personality, your audience’s personality, and then where you’re going to use.  Another thing to consider is the age of the people who will be reading it. So for example, if they’re young then your font needs to be suitable. If the older, the font might need to be bigger. If they are younger, like children, they might need a more basic school font so that they can read it easily. Like a beginner’s font. So legibility is probably one of the most important things, especially because most of us are actually looking at a device. So we have to consider how does it look on a small device. 

Generally, we go for more decorative headings. However, we keep a more simple font for reading. A long-form font will require a simplified font to avoid distraction. The words need to be readable.  

Brand Personality traits

This includes font personality traits.  You can go and circle a couple of them things like accessible, approachable, bold, calm, casual, cheerful, classic, conservative, contemporary, convenient, cool, creative, custom, cutting edge, delightful,

efficient, elegant, emerging, exclusive, familiar, flexible, formal, fresh, friendly, fun, functional, informal, innovative, inviting, mature, modern, no-nonsense, personable, plain playful, polished, professional, quirky, unique, reliable, secure, serious, sincere, sleek, sophisticated, trustworthy, unconventional, versatile, and warm.

Using words like these will give your brand a feeling.

It’s really good to consider is what fonts you’re going to have and then create that branding folder. You can also use variations of thickness, which makes more sense to me, when you do social media posts, you can use those variations so that they still suit the context in which you’re using them which is super cool.