5 ways to grow your business with consistent branding
When it comes to consistent branding, communication and a clean appearance matters. Have you ever emailed a company to partner with and gotten a good response, but when it comes time to connect via social media get nothing back? This is usually because there is a lack of communication on their side. Meaning, one person does their email communication and another person does their social media. It’s not necessarily they don’t communicate with you well, but with their own team members. It’s important that you don’t run your business this way. There are other ways businesses struggle to keep consistent branding. Read below and learn how to grow your business brand.
Connecting with other small businesses
When it comes to partnering with other brands/companies, make sure that you ask them to connect with you via social media. Often times the person who communicates through email is not the same person who controls the social media.
We’ve partnered with companies where we either donated funds, collect funds through service or co-promote and had to ask them to follow us on social media. Some follow and some don’t. This is where you see the difference of professionalism. It also helps you know who’s on the ball and who you can trust with future projects.
If a company isn’t on the ball when it comes to social media it doesn’t mean they’re not a good partner or company. Some of the most successful companies have terrible social media. Then some have great social media, but not many sales.
The key is not what they are all doing, but what you are doing. Make sure you keep your branding consistent. This will help you generate more income through future partnerships.
BRANDING YOUR BUSINESS LOOK
Some people think of branding as your logo. Sure, this is part of it, but it’s not your brand. There are many pieces to the puzzle. Colors on your website or flyers, pictures, social media, messaging, reputation to name a few.
When you post articles on your blog or post on social media try to keep your colors consistent. Maybe your colors are blue and green or black and white. This means you don’t want to have a lot of pictures with red or worse a mix of every color possible. Sure, you can have other colors, but keep your main 2-3 colors in most pictures.
KEEP YOUR BRANDING POSITIVE
Let’s say you have a fitness or strength training business. You’d want to post things that make your clients feel and look good. Don’t make them feel bad. Give them hope and encouragement, not discouragement.
Imagine a real estate business posting about how bad the market is… Instead post how they can earn more money by making low cost investments. Again, make your fans / clients feel and look good.
Keep your frustrations to yourself. Nobody wants to hear what gets you down. Instead they want to hear what brings them up. Testimonials are good ways to encourage others while bringing light to your business journey.
CONSISTENT BRANDING THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA
Posting on social media can become draining and discouraging. The pro growth hacker’s will tell you to post 2-4 times per day – year round. Sure, this can help with engagement, but it can also eat up your time with family or other important business needs.
You don’t have to post every day multiple times. What we do recommend is that you at least post a few times per month. In 2020 with covid many businesses fell off the social media map! Some businesses didn’t post for 2-4 months. This makes you wonder, did they go out of business? It’s important that you let people know you’re still around. Don’t let people forget about you. Let them know you’re here to stay.
Larger businesses or small business risk takers can hire VA’s (Virtual Assistants) to help grow faster. An average cost for a VA is about $500 per month for them to manage and post consistently. This saves you the owner time and can be very good, but make sure they know what you want. We see big business owners who hire out, but when you look at their social media pages they are not consistent with the owners brand. Example: There is a business owner who has a not for profit whose media is controlled by someone else. This is totally normal amd makes sense. The problem is when you look at who the business owner follows and what they believe in, it’s totally different from their business. Most business owners never look at these things and they should because it really matter. It sends confusion and can ruin relationships and future business deals.
KNOWING YOUR BRAND
Your brand is not what you think it is, instead it’s what other people think of when they hear your name or companies name. Often times people think of themselves or their company as what it’s not. There are usually two directions here. One is they think their brand is better than it really is, while the other is they think too negative, lacking confidence.