It’s no secret that visual media lies at the core of any successful branding endeavor.
After all, you want your audience to recognize your brand at a glance, so it needs to be eye-catching, evocative, and above all, unique.
Of course, creating a brand identity that really hits the mark means you need to tailor that identity to the specific audiences you seek to convert. This not only involves knowing the interests and preferences of that audience, but also the medium via which they will be consuming your content.
As a blogger, your personal brand should evoke the style and content of your blog, and your brand’s visual identity is a big part of this. To help you nail down the right style for you, here are the key ingredients required to boost your brand, extend its reach, and increase its impact on social media.
Recommended reading: Top Web Design Mistakes that Make Users Cringe
1. Individuality
First and foremost, remember that it’s all about you. Whether you are building a personal brand, a business brand, or polishing up a brand that already exists, the best way to stand out is simply to be yourself.
Everyone has their own quirks and habits, and so will your brand. Often, these can even serve as inspiration for your visual brand identity. As with any other form of marketing, you need to find your niche, create something that directly appeals to your chosen audience.
- Create a unique logo that can be used throughout your website, and social channels.
- Settle on a color scheme that reflects the personality of your brand.
- Design a layout for your content that can be used throughout your blog, creating a sense of coherence and consistency.
There’s no single winning formula, so focus on creating an aesthetic that will appeal to your intended audience, and that fits in with your understanding of your brand, and your aspirations for its future.
2. Consistency
The value of great branding is that it is recognizable. This helps to build familiarity and trust with your audience, which in turn makes them far more likely to visit your website, seek out your content, and invest in your products or services.
In addition to being unique and evocative, your brand’s visual identity needs to be every bit as consistent as its persona. This coherence helps to foster a more streamlined experience for your audience, and ties your content together across multiple channels.
For example, if a reader chooses to share one of your blog entries on social media, or even if you decide to post something yourself, you need to ensure that your brand’s identity is immediately noticeable and recognizable.
Furthermore, the larger the team you work with, the more essential this consistency becomes. Fortunately, by establishing a firm identity for your brand, you make it far easier for member of your team to sustain and develop that identity when communicating with customers.
3. Diversity
This might seem like a contradiction when we’ve just discussed the value of consistency. However, the best brands are able to maintain a strong identity across a range of platforms, and numerous types of content.
With this aim in mind, you can give your brand an extra edge by branching out into many different forms of content, either to share via your blog, or even to extend your reach to other channels.
Never underestimate the power of video. Engaging with your audience via video content, and even audio content is a great way to add an extra dimension to the personality you are building for your brand. This gives your audience an additional insight into the sort of people behind the brand, which can help them to decide whether or not yours is the business for them.
Images are also a vital part of developing your brand. Everything from their style and content to the image quality itself can have an impact. For example, if you pack out your website with blurry, poorly-composed photography, visitors may feel that your business is unprofessional, unconscientious, or even untrustworthy.
In contrast, sharp, well-lit images with interesting and relevant subject matter can enhance your website, and will reflect far more positively on your brand as a whole.
While selecting the right images is essential, it can be a laborious process. That’s why it’s important that you either employ the services of a designer or photographer you can trust to meet your brief, or use an image library with a wide variety of options.
4. Simplicity
It can be tempting to overload your blog with visual content, snazzy logos, and any other feature that might catch your audience’s eye. However, unless you’re going for a very specific look, in general less is more.
Remember that even the white space on your blog forms part of its visual identity, and helps you to enhance the features that most effectively evoke the look and feel you’re going for. Pare it down to the elements that are essential to your chosen identity, and only add more if doing so enhances the existing aesthetic.
5. Authenticity
Ultimately, however you choose to build your brand identity, your audience will come to recognize you and your business for their strengths and weaknesses, the decisions you make, and the path your business follows.
As such, it is essential that your visual brand identity is an honest reflection of that which it represents. That’s not to say you can’t give it some extra coats of polish, but it’s important not to mislead your audience with branding that does not reflect your business or its ideals.
After all, not only will you disappoint those individuals that your branding engages, but you may also be missing out on web traffic that could have been attracted by branding that more accurately reflected what you should offer.
Think carefully about the ideals and aspirations of your business, and how that fits in with your branding strategy. By building upon these principles, you can create a brand identity that resonates with a more appropriate audience, and that will facilitate consistency throughout your various marketing channels.
With these principles in mind, you’re ready to create a first-class visual brand identity. Just remember, the real key to helping your brand succeed is to play to its strengths, reach out to your audience, and highlight the things that make your brand unique.
You already know the value of your brand, so don’t be afraid to stand out. The more memorable and recognizable your brand is, the more traffic your website will see, and the more potential your future campaigns will have to succeed.
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