HOW TO DEVELOP A BRAND IDENTITY

Developing your identity as a brand is crucial to your success as an organization. Your brand identity differentiates you from your competitors. It gives your customers a unique personality to connect to on, and create an opportunity for relationship building.

According to the 2018 report by Hootsuite and We Are Social, there are over 3 billion social media users online and still counting. This account for about 92% of active internet users online. With millions of new users expected to have a social account by the end of each month, it’s no-brainer every organization and marketer worth its salt are vying for a spot on the social media space to reach a larger audience and increase their brand awareness.

DEVELOPING YOUR BRAND IDENTITY

Developing your brand identity ain’t rock science and shouldn’t be approached as one. If done right, you can avoid being trapped into the sea of frustration and anguish a lot of businesses found themselves in, when coming up with an identity to communicate their values and express themselves.

Know Who You Are

The first step in building your identity as a brand is to examine your brand carefully and specify what your brand is all about. You need to ask yourself;

• What is/are my reason(s) for starting this business?
• What my core value(s) as a brand is/are?
• What my mission(s) is/are? What makes my brand unique?

Know Your Customers /Audiences

As a brand, knowing who your customers or audience are; their needs and wants, income level, culture, and values etc., can be a powerful tool to position your organization in a better way to your customers. This is important as it influence the way you communicate with your customers and address their needs.

Tools like KISSmetrics, FB Insights, and CRM: Batchbook etc., can help you analyze your audience and get more in-depth information on them.

Identify and Understand Your Competitors

Knowing the companies who are in your industry, and are competing with you is vital to the success of your brand. How? By identifying your competitor and keeping an eye on them, you stay abreast of what’s going on in your industry – new technologies, strategies, tips and pitfalls

By possessing both basic and deep knowledge of your competitor’ activities, you get to see what they are doing right and what they are wrong which does not only help to inform your marketing strategy in the future but also provide you with actionable plan with immediate result.

Ahrefs, Spyfu, OpenLink profiler and Monitor Backlinks are some of the available tools online for collecting and analyzing information on your competitors.

Find Your Voice and Style

Comalytics told our reporter that with hundreds of thousands of companies on social media, getting heard and making sure you get your message across to your audience without getting drown by others can be difficult.

As a brand, your voice should be distinctive and recognizable. A good way to find your voice is to ask yourself this; if your brand is an individual, who is it going to be and what personalities would the individual possess?

Post and Share Your Relevant Information

When it comes to the sharing of information, be mindful of the content you post online. Never post a content that is irrelevant and offers no value to your customers/audience as it might change the perception, they have about your brand negatively.

The timeliness of the information you plan on sharing should also be considered before posting it online.

Be Consistent Across All Social Platform

Brand consistency is very important. It helps to maximize your brand’s reach while creating a positive image that can be cultivated to activate your company’s potential. Once you pick the color, graphics, language and style you’d be using for your brand, be consistent with them. The same applies to the language you use online. Consistency promote familiarity which is critical to making sales.

Consistency creates a good impression of your brand as it implies professionalism. Through careful planning and consistency, you can shape how people perceive your organization.

Communicate Like a Red-Blooded Human

Enough of the corporate speak, stop acting like an alien full of green blood and void of emotions. Consumers want a brand they can converse with; a brand with a unique personality they can relate with. When communicating with your audience, you can drop the formality once in a while.

You have no excuse for having no sense of humor or a don’t have to be formal at every feel free to use common language (and slang where applicable). Trust me, the world is full of sense of humor a brand that understand them what they are going relate easily with and form a bond with as time goes on.