The Secrets Behind Creating Cohesive + On-Brand Content
As a business owner having a memorable brand is vital.
Having a cohesive brand helps people to identify your product or services. It builds the like, know, and trust factor that helps your business to succeed.
What the heck is the like, know, trust factor?
Is the ability to build trust through authenticity, logic, and empathy. People want to know they are getting the real you, that's authenticity. Next people are looking to see if they trust your logic on a certain topic. Will what you say give them true results, that’s logic. Lastly people want to believe that you care about their success in a specific area of there life, that’s empathy. All of this is what makes up the like, know, trust factor.
Believe it or not but social media plays a big part in the success and growth for small businesses. Most potential customers and clients are found on social media. They are likely to build that like, know, and trust factor on social media. The thing about creating a cohesive social media presence is that it helps boost your credibility and gets people excited about following and interacting with your brand. This will inevitably cause them to want to view other parts of your business such as your new freebie, your website, your blog posts, your emails.
Having cohesive and on-brand content allows potential clients and customers to recognize your brand above others. Having a similar vibe across all of your platforms builds trust to buy from you.
So here are 5 ways to stay cohesive when creating content for your business.
Develop your Content Categories
Create content categories that you can constantly talk about to keep things cohesive. Your audience will see the similarities in what you talk about and come to expect it from you in a way that builds trust. Come up with up to 5 content categories that guide the reader back to what you offer. It should include the following types of categories:
Educational tips on a specific topic (Logic)
Types of benefits that is offered from your business (empathy)
Personal bits about yourself. (Authenticity)
Think about what type of topics you can talk about for days and days on in without getting bored talking about it.
Refer to your Brand style guide
A style guide is your rule book to staying in line with your brand. A lot of social media platforms have various features. You’ll want to have social media graphics in various sizes for each of those features from the in feed posts to the stories feature, and the headers. Make sure that you keep the same feeling across each platform and feature. You can have some variations for instance adding different types of stock photos or elements. However, you’ll want to keep things like your logo, fonts and colors as consistent as possible to be that visual reminder of who’s social media graphic it is.
Use Templates
Creating graphics from scratch every time will leave room for error and inconsistency. Templates are great time savers and help to keep your content on brand.. Get templates that you can use over and over again and simply change the text, color, and stock photo or video each time.
Use related images and brand photos
Stock photos and brand photos of yourself help to create familiarity. It’s always recommended to stick to one stock photo style. Find stock photos that fit your brand style. Click here to learn how to use stock photos correctly in your brand.
Brand it every where
Have your branding in sync everywhere from your social media, your website, your emails, and digital products. If someone was to navigate to your website from a social media graphic and then it looked completely different they might think they found the wrong website and leave. The aim is always to represent the same cohesive branding and business across all the possible ways someone can see or find you.
Final Recap
When it comes to building a cohesive brand presence that caters to the like, know, and trust factor, graphic design is one of the easiest ways for people to get to know and distinguish your brand from the rest. Once you’ve settled on how your brand will identity as from your brand style guide and content categories then you are able to create, organize, and publish content that connects with your audience and adds value to their lives.