One of the most important parts of branding that often gets overlooked by businesses is creating a brand personality. Having a brand is great, but what does that brand mean? What do you stand for? If your company was a person, what type of person would it be? These shouldn’t be difficult questions, and there are no right or wrong answers. It is crucial that you define a personality first, because one will appear eventually on its own. If you don’t take a proactive approach, the personality that comes through might not be exactly what you had in mind. Here are some things to keep in mind when you are trying to figure out your brand personality.
Do Some Research
Before you start trying to put a finger on the personality of your brand, you should take a little time to do some research and see what other companies are doing. Look at how certain big brands have defined their personality over the years. You have to know your company, your customer base, and your product/service in order to be able to define a personality for your organization’s branding needs.
Look at your brand as a story: if you are going to share the story with someone new, how would you describe it? You can often pull a lot of great personality traits from this assessment. The way that a brand is personified starts with identifying personality traits. In the business branding world, the top five traits include:
-Sincerity
-Excitement
-Competence
-Sophistication
-Ruggedness
Just about every brand on the market today, as well as those to come, can fit into one of these five categories. This isn’t the only trait you need to define, of course, but it is a good starting point to help you get on the right path to developing a full brand personality.
5 Great Ways to Show Off
Once you’ve defined your unique brand personality, you have a lot of options for getting noticed by customers, competitors, and industry insiders. In the current marketing climate, social media is the essential place to showcase your brand personality. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other sites are full of companies that are blowing up the marketing world with their branding expertise.
Take a look at the Wendy’s Twitter account, for just one example. Unlike a traditional, professional demeanor, the person responsible for this account took a fun-loving approach to picking on other brands. It worked. Everyone on social media is talking about and sharing this account, and Wendy’s now has a clear brand personality that everyone knows. How can you get on their level?
-Post memes and gifs that are relevant and/or entertaining. Don’t overdo it, but everyone loves a laugh. Plus, memes often go viral and if you do it right, you could get a lot more recognition than you expected. People who might never have sought out your brand otherwise could become followers, share with their friends, and help get your brand noticed because of a funny meme that you shared.
-Be funny, if that’s your thing. If not, let your own personality shine. Forget about that whole “business” demeanor. In today’s social media world, people want personality first. Define a voice for your brand and make sure that every post follows through as if your brand itself were doing the posting. Jokes and funny posts are always good because people remember them.
-Get rid of stock photos. Everyone has seen them and no one cares. It’s a harsh truth that a lot of businesses often don’t realize at first. If you are trying to be relatable through photos, post actual photos of your business and your team members. People want to get to know you, not what a company like yours might look like in a generic setting. Stock photos are NOT for branding your business.
-Get personal on social media posts. This doesn’t mean you need to give a detailed account of your life story. Rather, it means you should respond, at least occasionally, to user comments, twitter mentions, and other posts from users directed at you or mentioning your brand. Impersonal relationships are the biggest weakness of businesses in the social media climate. Get on there and talk to people.
-Forget about your product. Of course you have something to sell. Every business does. The days of hard sell marketing, however, are long gone. People aren’t interested in your product or service as much as they are interested in your brand personality. If you focus on explaining your brand, including how it started and who it serves, people will understand you much better than if you simply start trying to sell on social media.
Don’t Forget Other Venues
Social media is paramount to brand personality and growing brand visibility, but it isn’t the only tool that you can use. Make sure that you look into unique marketing ideas outside of social media. Your website should be designed to reflect your brand personality and optimized with content written in the brand’s voice. Keep it streamlined and make sure that you keep it current, because nothing says bad branding like an outdated website.
You can also utilize Google+, Yelp, and other online review and business service sites to put your brand’s voice out there. Develop a solid introduction and bio for your organization and make sure that the information on all of these platforms is relevant and reflective of your brand personality. By making sure that your branding is uniform across all online platforms, you can guarantee that no one gets the wrong impression about your brand personality. To learn more, visit https://sketchcorp.com/ .
