Your brand, whether it’s personal or for your business, is how others view you.

If you use the right tactics, you can control your message and optimize how your brand is seen. This is the basics of branding. If you want to be known in your market, it’s important to be consistent with your brand and your message across all social media platforms and everything you do. 

FIRST STEP IS TO KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

Everything you do starts with your target audience so it cannot be repeated enough. Remember just because you studied your audience last year doesn’t mean you’re done. You must keep studying your target audience to know them continually.

Consider that the brand Dove has been around for a long time, but if you look at their marketing, it’s changed quite a bit because while their customer’s demographics have not necessarily changed, the way they talk to their customer has. Why? Because their customers have changed over time (as will yours). Women today speak and present themselves differently than they did 50, 30 or even 10 years ago. Imagine if Dove tried talking to women today like they did in the 1960s. Dove is successful today because they are continually listening and have adapted over the years.

HOW TO FIND YOUR BRAND’S VOICE

One way to determine your brand’s voice is to think about what you stand for and how you want to talk to your audience. Do you want to be soft and sincere, polite and polished, or do you want to be bold, and maybe even obnoxious? (It works for Gary V.)

One way to do this is to look at how you are personally. If your company involves you as the solopreneur that makes it easy. You are going to be most comfortable if your brand mirrors your personality. Another way is to look at your competition and determine how you can use your brand’s voice to be unique and differentiate you from others.

HOW TO  REPURPOSE YOUR CONTENT

You don’t have to make unique content for each social media platform you want to post to. You can post the exact same content across all social platforms. You will want to change the status wording and change up the image size, but you want the message the same regardless of the platform you’re sharing it on. You can create and resize your social media images on programs like canva.com where it automatically will resize the same image for each social media platform.

HOW TO STAY RELEVANT

To maintain a business or personal brand takes a lot of work. You need to stay relevant with what’s new in your niche so you can continually improve your level of knowledge and be the go-to person in your industry. But, don’t do it by changing your brand voice, our logo, images, and so forth because you need people to recognize you on any social platform.

HOW TO MAINTAIN CONSISTENCY

You’re more trustworthy when you’re consistent. It’s also easier for customers to find and recognize you in the market when you style, message, and brand remain consistent. When you’re consistent you’ll see a steady stream of prospects, develop successful partnerships, and your perceived value in the market will increase. Your audience will want to work with you because the more they see you in the market, the more they will trust you. It’s a lot easier when you realize that you must be the same person/business on each network. All you really need to tweak is how you deliver the message, not the message or the content that you’re sharing.

Keep the same business name, personal name, logo, and colors across all networks, and you’ll become recognized, trusted, and your business will grow.