Are you in the throes of starting a business online? If so, then you need to make sure that you are creating an online identity. Building an identity is important as it will ensure that customers have a reason and a way of choosing your company over the competition. This isn’t always easy to achieve, but there are certain steps that you must take to guarantee that you are on the right track with this concept. Here are a few of the possibilities that you shouldn’t overlook when building your brand identity and the right way to approach them.
By Team Savant
Image: Morning Brew
Your Website
Your business website is crucial for your business. Don’t forget, for many customers, this is going to be the first impression they receive of your business. You need to make sure that it’s a good one. This is how you are going to get customers to engage with your brand and ensure that they stick around. You can even secure the repeat purchase if you take the right steps with the creation of your website.
Ideally, you should ensure that your website does match the themes and motif of your company. You can do this in a variety of ways. For instance, you could choose to match the colour scheme with the colors and shades in the logo for your business. In doing so, you implant the concept of shared ideals, such as quality and excellent customer service.
Your website should also reflect the industry and the business that it represents. For instance, you will often find that wellness websites are clean and clear to suggest serenity to users. The UX is also designed to be incredibly user-friendly to the point that anyone can easily access the site and find the information that they need.
In contrast, a site for children or parents is usually more vibrant in terms of the colours used and may have fun features such as a large cartoon mouse to find different things across the pages. Remember, you should take time when completing the steps to starting a business website to ensure that you make it different, unique, and compelling. You could even create a dynamic home page with videos playing in the background. Again, these videos need to reflect the message of your business, whatever this might be.
Get Social Media Right
Your social media accounts are always going to be a massive part of your brand identity. If you use social media the right way, then you will be able to guarantee that you show some skin and demonstrate to customers that you care about more than just crunching numbers which is great. A lot of customers and clients these days want to form a deeper connection with the companies they buy from. Social media is a clear way for you to feel this request.
When you are managing your social media, it’s important that you do follow the 80:20 rule. In other words, 80% of the content that you publish on social media should be useful, engaging, or entertaining. The other 20% of the content that you publish can be purely promotional. We’ll explore the content further down.
In terms of social media, you should also pick the social media networks that you focus on carefully. The right social media networks will match your target audience perfectly. For instance, if you are providing products that have a desired aesthetic, then Instagram is obviously going to be the right choice. This is where you will be able to post images of your products and highlight how incredible they look. It could be useful for something like a makeup company.
Alternatively, if your business is part of the media industry, then it makes sense to focus on something like Twitter instead. Twitter is based around providing updates so it makes sense for an industry where the audience is constantly interested in the latest content that is going to be released. That’s why you will often find that campaigns for movies and TV shows are typically focused around the use of Twitter.
Niche companies can effectively use Facebook. The big benefit of Facebook is that you can easily create private discussion groups where users and customers can join. You can use these discussion groups to tell them more about the products or services that you are selling and answering any questions that they may have. It’s also a great way to form a community around your business and your brand.
Be aware that if you are using a social media manager for your accounts then it will be important to provide them with a style guide. This will guarantee that everything that you publish across social media matches your tone of voice and the type of voice that you want specifically for your brand. It’s another way that you can create a brand that feels completely distinct from other offerings online.
You will also need the same type of style guide for any outside resource that you use for publishing content as well. Again, we’ll discuss this a little further down. The final point to remember about your social media profiles is that you need to be posting regularly. If you don’t have the time for this, then you should hire a social media manager who will be able to update your profiles regularly throughout the day.
What About Content?
Content is always going to be a major part of your online brand identity. Without regularly published content, you’re going to struggle to gain the attention that you need from a target audience. Everything that you publish connected to your business is going to become part of your brand identity. We do mean everything as well, regardless of whether you add it straight to your website or directly onto social media.
So, you need to focus on providing high quality content while also choosing what you say carefully. For instance, you should make sure that there aren’t any issues with spelling or grammar. This can make it seem as though your content has been written by an amateur and that’s the last thing you want. Instead, you want your content and by relation your business, to feel professional.
You also need to ensure that your content is targeted. Essentially any content that you produce should feel as though it is specifically for people who are associated with your business and your website. You can do this by building a solid foundation and understanding of who your main customer is. You need to think about their likes and more importantly, their pain points.
Just like things that you publish on social media every piece of content that you create needs to feel like it is part of your brand. This is achievable by ensuring that you write it to a series of set standards and style points. Again, you should provide a style guide to any content creator that you use. If you are hiring guest posters for something like your blog, then you need to make sure that they are connected to the ideals and goals of your blog too, as your audience understands them.
Interactions And Engagement
The last piece of the puzzle here is about how you interact and engage with your target audience. One example would be how you respond to reviews. You need to make sure that you are always responding to reviews, both negative and positive, in the same way. You have to show that you are aware and understanding of your customer needs and that you want to help them get the support that they deserve here.
This isn’t the only online interaction that you are going to have with customers of course. You might send them emails or you could decide to connect with them through social media. The important thing is that each interaction feels like it’s from your company. This can be difficult because you will likely be using a range of different services to ensure that engagement is both widespread and constant. However, it’s just about ensuring that there is a clear guide for how people should address your customers and speak with them either directly or indirectly. The tone doesn’t matter too much. You just need to make sure that it is consistent across various areas and levels of your brand and platform.
We hope this helps you understand everything that you need to consider and keep in mind when you are building your brand identity. If you take the right steps here, then you can guarantee that you are able to find a strong audience for the products or services that you are selling. You can also ensure that your company has longevity and a solid future with fantastic prospects.
Remember, there are countless companies online. So, you need to make sure that you are taking steps to guarantee that yours does stand out. This is often just a matter of finding a unique selling point or a hook that your audience can and will latch onto.