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How to Define Your Brand’s Personality …
Brands have become a part of every single person’s day-to-day life, especially as an entrepreneur. Every single thing we touch and see is a brand. That is why it is so very important that your brand stands out. Your brand needs to become memorable in every way possible and a part of people’s lives.
Most designers, like myself, have a love/hate relationship with branding. The colour choices … the endless fonts … the pretty moodboards … the website themes and plugin options …! But even more so the hard questions like, who is my brand for? What do I offer to the world? How do I want to be seen and remembered? It is all an amazingly beautiful process that tends to start long before you even pull out the colour swatches.
So, you’re probably wondering … Where do I start?
Well, you will want to grab a notebook and pen for this one …!
If you don’t spend any time on your brand messaging, you will have a very disjointed brand personality and you customers won’t be drawn in. On the other hand, if you spend too much time on your messaging, it will come across as inauthentic, too calculated and like you’re trying too hard to be cool.
It’s all about compelling, relatable and memorable messaging through brand personality voice and tone. And by doing so you will form long-lasting bonds with people. (Remember, it’s about the people – not just what your brand has to offer.) I always push my clients to look at the data. Are your social follower and clients …
… Carefree?
… Angry?
… Vulnerable?
… Humorous?
… Feeling Lost?
We connect our shared experiences – and our stories – by revealing uniqueness, values, and vulnerability. The best stories are always the ones you can visualize in the retelling – you feel as if you’re there; firsthand. And brands are no different in the power they have creating a conduit for their mission, vision, values, purpose, and beliefs. People buy from people they like, know and can trust.
Truthfully, you can either fly under the radar or be another bot on the assembly line. You choose. Pick your poison.
So, let’s dive back into those three points I mentioned earlier; personality, voice and tone.
Your Brand’s Voice:
- It builds a connection. 65% of customers say that they are emotionally connected to a brand that make them feel as though they’re truly cared for. Not just another dollar bill.
- It builds trust. 65% of customers say that they shared the same values and that was the primary reason for building a relationship with the brand.
- It creates a memorable image. Key colours improve brand recognition by 80%. (This is extremely important to keep in mind as you’re creating content – especially if you’re a start-up or rebranding.)
Your Brand’s Tone:
- Get to know your audience. Research who they are and discover their gender, age, interests, education, what they are reading or watching – all the information you have right at your fingertips. (Literally!)
- Identify your values and mission. 95% of customers are more likely to be loyal to a brand that offers complete transparency. And once you know your values, compose them into a concise mission statement for your audience. Show them who you really are, the people (and other brands you care about) and how your brand can help them.
Your Brand’s Personality:
- Analyze your content and communications. Ask yourself (and your team if you have one), what do you currently sound like? And, what do you want to sound like?
- Refine your voice with characteristics. Here is a great resource of 37 words describing tone of voice that can be used to plan and/or evaluate.
- Implement guidelines and rules. Create a brand guideline that includes your target audience, your brand’s attitude, values, mission statement, vocabulary, and grammar “rules” along with a few examples. (Don’t be afraid to do the research and get inspiration from other companies.)
So, as you can see, it all boils down to brand.
What your brand communicates and how it does it is what separates you from your competitors. In the absence of branding, you and your competition will be talking in the same language; and that is the last thing you want. So, if you want to capture the mindset and space of your target audience, you must decide how you should communicate with them. That is what will make you stand apart from everyone else in the virtual container of the internet (and physical space if you’re in there too!)
So, now back to that first question, where do you start …!
I would suggest taking four or five pieces of your brand’s marketing materials right in front of you and ask yourself (and your team) … What do I/you see?
If it’s a hodgepodge of confusing and inconsistencies, it’s time to make a change.
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Crystal Kordalchuk
Crystal is an artist, a writer, an organizer, a dreamer, a doer, and down-right proud of it NERD!.
Struck with a love for #AllThings creative at a very young age, Crystal dreamed of a life fueled by her passion for creating and bringing the stories and images in her mind into reality.
As she worked toward her dreams, she earned a diploma as a Computer Applications Specialist then another in Graphic Design and from there began to develop her extensive background in multimedia and the arts. She began her worked in the magazine industry as a layout designer and had a succession of design jobs thereafter. It was her role as a graphic/web designer that gave her the first real glimpse of her future. Soon she began a side job as a freelance designer while keeping one foot in the corporate world. A spark was lit! She turned her freelance gig into a full-time business combining design work with her other passion: creating organization from virtual chaos.
Crystal is one of the most organized individuals on the planet. She is by all means a Zen master of her crafts. She excels at helping others become “untangled” and provides her clients with tools to run their businesses smoothly while she takes care of the details behind the scenes. Thus Virtually Untangled was born. A successful business where her work as a top notch creative in graphic and web — with a twist of virtual assistant — married into one amazing place where clients can come with their virtual messes and become magically untangled. Crystal can always make sense of even the most unorganized chaos and offers a virtual detox of order and peace, so her clients can get busy doing the work that they love the most.