Putnam County Chamber of Commerce Women's Conference Recap: Building Your Brand
Earlier this month, I had the honor of opening up the Putnam County Chamber of Commerce Women’s Conference with a discussion about building your brand. My take on this topic was geared toward both business and personal brand building. The concepts are the same, whether you’re building a company brand or promoting yourself.
Although it may seem silly to think of having a personal brand, we are all walking, talking brand ambassadors for ourselves. Everything we share on social media, how we interact with others and present ourselves are just a few of the ways we are telling the world who we are today. As individuals, we likely do not consider these actions to be part of our personal brand. However, the varied experiences others have with us combine into their perception of us.
Similarly, a perception is built every time an individual interacts with a company brand, whether it’s walking into a brick and mortar location, browsing a website, scrolling an Instagram feed, looking at a brochure or interacting with an employee. Over time, all these experiences culminate into a person’s belief about a brand. Many times, business leaders consider their logo to be their brand, but that’s just a visual representation. A brand is so much more - it’s truly a feeling!
In my presentation, I discussed some key points of building your brand:
Being authentic
Public perception
Creating your brand truth
Maintaining cohesiveness and consistency
Using social media
Brand planning
Rebranding
I’ll give you the highlights of my presentation on each of these points. We’ve already talked about perception, so let’s get started on the remaining topics.
AUTHENTICITY
Authenticity is simple: it’s the art of being real. Genuine. Who you truly are, strong in your beliefs and values. Being authentic is praised more today than in recent years, as people have turned away from the picture perfect highlight reel on social media and started yearning to see people in the midst of everyday life. People want to see a messy house and screaming toddler mixed in with photos of a spotless abode and well dressed, smiling children. People are looking for authentic connection, and finding it in both brands they love and people with whom they choose to spend time.
Why is authenticity important for brands? It influences buying decisions. According to a recent study, 90 percent of millenials say authenticity is important when deciding which brands to support. That percentage goes down a bit with the increase of age group, but even 80 percent of baby boomers consider authenticity an important value.
Authenticity also influences company culture. Businesses who cultivate a genuine culture see higher retention and job satisfaction rates, and it starts with hiring well. Selecting employees who embody your core values is the basis of maintaining authenticity at work, followed by good training. Ensure your employees know your core values and are expected to live up to them. Empower them to hire others who carry those values and train them well. Creating a positive culture cycle starts with leadership and setting a good example!
Keeping authenticity top of mind as your key to success, let’s work through an exercise I took the audience through during my presentation.
BUILD YOUR BRAND TRUTH
You can call this your mission statement, mantra, words to live by, etc. - I choose to call it a brand truth. This is what you’ll refer back to when making decisions about your brand.
CHOOSE YOUR CORE VALUES
You’ll choose your core values first, and I recommend choosing five to start. You can certainly have more, but I find that giving yourself too many choices can be overwhelming in the beginning. Think about how you want people to feel when they interact with your brand and how you want them to perceive it. For example, do you want them to feel confident, luxurious, happy, entertained, satisfied, knowledgeable, fancy, beautiful, etc. when they’ve finished an interaction with you or your brand? Choose five values that speak to you, how you want to be perceived and make customers feel.
The five core values I chose for Pretty Creative are colorful, helpful, innovative, humorous and respected. Here’s why:
COLORFUL is a word I once used to describe myself in an interview, and it helped me land a job I ended up loving for nearly ten years. It speaks to my love of bright colors, not only in my wardrobe and landscape, but my personality. I have a big sense of humor, see the irony in pretty much everything, love to laugh and tell stories about the weird things that regularly happen to me. Someone once told me I was “too colorful,” an insult they clearly wanted to land, but I was overjoyed that they noticed the true essence of my personality!
HELPFUL is how I want to be to my clients. I don’t ever want them to walk away from a meeting with me and think it was a waste of their time. I want to provide solutions and help them to think big. I also want to help them think through their business needs from a marketing and PR perspective, a way they may not have considered before. And, I love having a good conversation when someone needs to share or vent.
INNOVATIVE is the type of solutions I want to provide to my clients. I often work with clients who have never worked with a marketing or public relations director before, so they’ve been marketing their business only in traditional formats. I can be a pretty old school person, and think a lot of traditional marketing and PR is still very effective. I also like to think outside of the box and try new concepts and technology. I love trying a new idea together with a client for the first time - anyone who is willing to try something new with me is a great client fit!
HUMOROUS, I suppose, is not a traditional word for business brand, unless you’re a comedian or comedy club. It’s probably not a great fit for anyone who wants to work with me on crisis communications. However, that’s precisely why I chose humor as a core value for Pretty Creative. I spent almost ten years leading crisis communications on a Fortune 500 brand and experienced a lot of serious and tense moments. Humor saved me, my clients and colleagues at the end of those tough days. We were always able to find irony in something about our day, which kept our spirits up during tough times and helped build our bond as team. Owning and managing a business is serious work that can lead to a lot of anxiety and stress. I like to keep things in perspective and look for humor in those tense moments. A little levity can go a long way toward your mental and business health.
RESPECTED is how I want my clients to feel, and in turn, I want to feel respected as well. I believe respecting one’s opinions, time, budget and feelings, and expect the same in return. Choosing to work with clients who fit my core values is just as important as clients choosing me because I fit theirs. Client/consultant relationships are a two way street, and working with those who don’t respect you never results in a good working relationship on either side.
BRAND TRUTH EXERCISE
After you’ve chosen your core values, I want you to think through the elements of your brand truth. This is a common exercise for building a mission statement.
Consider what you do and why you do it.
For whom do you do it? Who are your customers?
How do you serve your customers? Online? In person? Individually? In groups?
How do you want your customers to feel?
Any other important thoughts that impact the culture of your brand?
Think through these carefully, then form them into your brand truth. For example, here’s Pretty Creative’s brand truth:
This exercise can be simple if your values and mission are straightforward! Don’t let this be another piece of paper slapped to the wall of a cubicle or pinned haphazardly to the office copy room. Really use these core values and brand truth as mirrors for the decisions you’re making for your brand. If you’re using them for a business, think about them when you’re hiring, training, managing, selecting clients or vendors, designing a new product, etc.
If you’re using them for your personal brand, consider how your actions reflect on your brand truth. Drive your decisions back to your brand truth to ensure you’re always working with your core values in mind.
COHESIVENESS AND CONSISTENCY
Maintaining cohesiveness and consistency is so important when protecting your brand. You want someone to look at a logo, ad or graphic and know immediately it belongs to you! In order to do so, be consistent with your logo, colors, fonts, graphics, and the tone of voice used. Do your social media captions have a similar lilt when read aloud? Do your radio spots showcase different offers, but have an easily recognizable tone and jingle? Are your print ads using the same type of humor as your digital ads? If not, consider which marketing pieces are currently resonating the most with your customers and use those as a template moving forward. Stick with a consistent tone and graphics palette to built an easily recognizable brand. Check your signage, print materials, social media, digital ads and website to make sure everything has the same look and feel.
Don’t underestimate the importance of your website in this social media heavy world! Make sure this is your number one source for updated brand information. Use your social media accounts to drive traffic to your site. Check each page for correct info, proper grammar, spelling, branding and broken links. This is where people will first find you through a Google search, so don’t neglect your web presence.
If you’re applying this principle to your personal brand, check your business cards, professional social media accounts, personal website, resume and stationery. You can brand yourself just as easily as you can brand a business! Look into getting personal logo from a local graphic designer, which you can use to update all your professional materials. Having a consistent presence could be the thing that takes you over the edge in your next job interview!
Just as it’s important to maintain consistency with your graphics, it’s also important to do so with your employees. Hire well, train well, and lead by example. Look for employees who match your brand’s core values, and train them on the importance of your brand truth. Keep the lines of communication open with employees to ensure they feel comfortable talking about upcoming decisions that might not line up with the brand’s core values.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Maintaining your brand truth, cohesiveness and consistency on social media might seem overwhelming. Especially if you’re already panicked by the idea of regularly creating and responding to posts! This doesn’t have to be fear-inducing!
I create a very simple content calendar template to build calendars for my clients. I use the easiest program, Microsoft Word, but you could use Excel, Google Docs or good old fashioned pen and paper. Make yourself a table with six rows across and eight rows down. Label your top far left column, “Day,” and your top row, “Category 1,” “Category 2,” and so on until you reach category 5. In the far left vertical column, label Sunday through Monday. You now have 35 spots for content!
Now, develop five categories about your brand that you want to create content for each week. Fill in the blanks to come up with seven post ideas under each category. Ta-da! You now have 35 content ideas! Do your check to make sure they point back to your brand truth and values. At this point, you can decide to schedule days of the week to focus on individual topics, or mix up your content and post according to what strikes your fancy that day. The important thing is that you’re no longer panicking over what to post when 9 p.m. hits and you realize you never posted at all. You have ideas! (Side note: you don’t have to post every day. You are not be beholden to social media! It should enhance, not run, your business or life. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.)
Now that we’ve come up with great content ideas, let’s discuss planning and scheduling. Did you know there are tons of apps to make your social media life easier? You can gather photos, write captions, choose hashtags and upload it all to a scheduling app. Some of the most popular are:
Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest
If you’re having trouble coming up with graphics for your posts, here are some useful apps for photo and graphic design:
•Unsplash Photos (free stock photos)
•Kate Max Stock (stock photos)
Most of these apps and photo sites have trial periods you can use to test their services. Many remain free, and some have paid versions with enhanced features. Test different ones to see what works best for your brand!
REBRANDING
Before I wrap up, I want to give a shout out to rebranding. This is an underappreciated and useful art, for both businesses and personal brands. How many times have we caught ourselves not giving a brand or person a chance when they’ve made a big change, even though we knew that change could be for the good? Don’t count out rebranding if your brand needs a refresh! Sometimes you need to change names, logos, color schemes, taglines, etc. due to changes in the nature of your business or location. Other times, things are just outdated and need to be modernized. Rebranding allows evolution due to personal, customer or market demands. A good rebranding campaign can help overcome old, tired beliefs and refresh with something new.
CONCLUSION
We’ve reached the end of our recap, folks. Here are your key takeaways:
Authenticity is key
Your brand is how customers feel about you
Know your brand truth and direct all messaging back to it
Maintain cohesiveness and consistency everywhere
Stay authentic on social media
Plan ahead for the best content
Rebranding can be good!
Special thanks to those in attendance at the Putnam County Chamber of Commerce Women’s Conference who asked for this information to reference when needed. I truly enjoyed my day meeting and learning from great business leaders in my home county, and am so appreciative of the Putnam County Chamber of Commerce for asking me to speak. I hope this information is helpful! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments. If you’d like further help with this for your brand, send me an email to schedule a consultation. Thanks y’all!