Brand consistency is key
Happy 2023 from Burtch Designs!
I hope the first few weeks of the year have been treating you well. I’m hoping to keep those good vibes going with a few thoughts on a topic well-suited to the “fresh start” that comes with this season: maintaining consistent branding online, especially in social.
Keeping your brand consistent on everything from Instagram to LinkedIn is a bit like captaining a ship. The water might be smooth sometimes and choppy at others, yes – but if you’re doing it right, someone watching from a distance sees a steady hand (and one that doesn’t try to show off with funky tricks, either).
OK, before that boat analogy gets us thinking too much about summer… consistent branding means your brand appears in almost the same way everywhere. Your customers (and prospective customers) want to be able to find you easily, instantly know it’s you, and come to trust you when they see those signature elements. This is even more important on social media, where timelines and grid pages can really make inconsistencies stick out.
Here, are a few tips you might not be thinking about:
Be mindful about how your logo fits into a square versus a circle. The standard for most profile photos, like Facebook and Instagram, are a circle — and we hate to see a very rectangular logo cropped into a circle.. yikes!
Within Instagram (quite possibly your most important channel), always do a quick check of cover photos for Reels and consistency in Story highlights. The thumbnail cover photo for your Reel is what viewers will see first and what will appear in your timeline forever, and it doesn’t have to be the first second of your video. Look for one that matches your brand best. To make a positive, professional impression, the cover images for your Story highlights should also look consistent and clear. I find solid colors and short, consistent language works best, but images can work as long as they play nicely with each other!
On your website, adjust your template to match your brand colors and fonts across the board. This attention to detail makes it feel like the true home for your business; not just a space you temporarily and hurriedly moved into.
When looking at stock photography to use on social media and elsewhere, make choices with one eye on your color palette and brand style guide. Going in with a photography plan is a pro-level move and really just involves grabbing some of your favorite existing photos and a few complimentary options, and keeping them close.
Extend the life of brand photography (which inherently matches up with your brand, yessss) in social media by re-sharing photos with new captions every so often. This is more than OK!
In captions and other written posts, consistency can definitely mean putting the exact same message everywhere. But it can also mean thinking of each channel’s audience and tweaking messages to suit them. Don’t spend too much time or completely change up your brand voice; just think about things like keywords and hashtags that have more play on some platforms than others. (And definitely think about this as the icing on the cake! It’s January… you’ve got enough new goals to start tackling for now. 😉)
