I’ve seen a lot of brands hearing buzzwords and vaguely stumbling across a trend and feeling the need to immediately integrate it into their brand and strategy. Unfortunately many times that happens without a true alignment with the company’s core.

We all have seen hundreds of articles and pages over using words like “innovation”, “cutting edge”, “growth hacking”, the older “rockstar designer” (which I totally am, btw ;)) and dare I say it… “millennials”.

It’s all good if you truly are involved knee deep into those subjects. However, if your website has been updated last five years ago and you try to sell future web technologies, or if your Instagram feed is a mess of blurry and poorly lit pictures of dumpsters (but why?) and your dog but you try to sell social media marketing services to your clients, maybe you should align with your scope first.

It’s absolutely OK if you do not follow all the latest trends or if you want to stick to your tried and tested practices. Not all brands need to move at the same speed. BUT if you try to sell something you are not, people are immediately going to smell something fishy and walk away.

Trying to be everything for everybody, or conform only because everybody else is doing it will only lead to failure. Or “one hit wonder” syndrome. Being confident in your brand means not being afraid to rock the boat, and putting a spot light on what makes you unique!

Let’s be honest: what feels better than knowing you are 100% yourself and loved for it?

Don’t know where to start? Please help me find my authentic brand voice!

Brand awareness can be achieved in many ways, some more subtle (like for example placing a logo or detail on a product in an obscure area) and some very obvious (for example: leave behinds – like pens or notepads -, advertisements, press releases, social media campaigns or simply covering the city in flyers).

You can have absolutely amazing products or offer top notch services, but if you cannot reach lots of potential buyers and ultimately turn them into fans and customers, you might feel like what you are doing or making is no good. Your confidence suffers.

A lot of people give up on following their dreams because of a skewed perception that they are no good and there’s no point in keep trying, when in reality they only need to adjust a few points in their approach, instead of throwing away the whole concept.

I’ve been there, done that! For a lot of years I’ve been plagued with the feeling that “well, maybe I am just not that talented”, “maybe I am not cut out to be in this role”, “I could never compete with all these other giants”, “I can’t do this, I’m just one person”. But you know what? That’s BAD attitude. And I don’t mean “bad” as in Michael Jackson’s “I’m bad, I’m bad, I’m really really bad”… I mean, you need to slap yourself, stop being a coward and get back in the saddle “bad”.

Need some help creating and strategy and designing assets for your next campaign? I can help you with that! Let’s get some new eyeballs on your brand.

A common misconception is that user experience is only tied to your website, when the reality is that good user experience bleeds into all areas, like customer service, packaging, shipping or gifts.

Of course, the main user experience is related to how well your website functions, how clearly is your message conveyed to your visitors, how you use images and graphic assets to tell a story, how outdated or current your visual design is, and how easy it is for people to find what they are looking for in a painless way.

Market research goes into this pile as well, because the world keeps evolving and with it new needs and desires emerge. So if you do not make an effort to learn what is going on and tailor your products or services to what people, fans and AI’s (hey, give them a chance!) are asking for, it’s very easy to become forgotten and obsolete.

Make sure you never leave any detail to chance and ask your visitors for feedback and suggestions on a regular basis, whether through personalized emails, polls or social media groups.

Have anything to add? I would love to hear your thoughts!

As you guys might know, a few weeks ago I was interviewed by Elaine Rau, the mastermind and CEO behind Lady Boss Blogger – a platform dedicated to interviews and resources for and by powerful Women Entrepreneurs. And today I have the pleasure to kick off a new series of articles on the blog, and that is: Branding Back 2 Back.

If you are unsure about branding, what it is, how it affects your business and why on Earth do you even need it, please read my article explaining it here.

I also wanted it to be something that I would like to look at every day, that was bright enough to pop but also easy on the eyes, and I know it may be kind of cliché, but I really like pink so that is what I decided to go with.

I actually just upgraded the theme and layout of the blog to make it easier to navigate. I wanted the menu to be accessible at all times so people could easily navigate between the pages or switch over to view another topic on the blog. I also wanted to make sure my social media channels and ability to subscribe were displayed at all times on the side bar so that people could stay connected to us in more ways than one!”

I remember reading an article that said the most liked images on Instagram were ones that were monotone. I assumed this was because there is so much visual stimulation everywhere on social media, so it is easier to concentrate when the colors are muted. So I decided to make it easy on myself and just have everything be in black and white. I also wanted people to actually want to look at what I produced and engage with my content and realized that every single account that I followed and cared to read were the inspirational quotes, so that is what I did!”

So I used the same motivational quote idea but made sure that my graphics were the correct size according to how people scroll on Twitter. This was to ensure that people wouldn’t have to do anything to be able to see my content. People are lazy so you want to be sure that you make it easy for them to check you out, otherwise you will loose them. I also read that tweets with pictures get twice the amount of likes and triple the amount of retweets, so I wanted to definitely do that!”

It is a great networking tool and have found that the most social people tend to be on there! This has led me to change how I post and instead of creating content that isn’t interactive, I have started to ask questions and create advice channels so that people can interact with one another. Now, there is a difference with how I post to my Facebook PAGE vs my Facebook GROUP. On my page, it is more about updates from the blog and other motivational materials for entrepreneurs, but in my group, it is all about advice, conversation, getting to know one another and networking!”

I have just started tapping into the world of Pinterest (like last week)! I know as a blogger I should have already had this down, but it wasn’t until I became a full-time blogger that I started realizing why people call it the #1 method to drive traffic to your website. This is because unlike other social media channels where you post things, and they disappear in 24 hours or less, with Pinterest, things get repined like crazy and allow your blog post to be seen over and over again driving more traffic to your site than you thought possible. I made sure to include my website on every single graphic I created so that people would always know where the picture originated from and hopefully go check it out!”

I utilize this platform because my blog is all about business and entrepreneurs and what better place to network than on LinkedIn? I post the same material I post on my Facebook Page here and have found that it is quite effective. Even though I get a lot of views to my articles, I don’t get a lot of interaction on LinkedIn and am trying to figure out how to do that!”

According to several studies I read online, this is a platform mostly used by men for some reason. It also doesn’t get a lot of attention from social media guru’s but I have found that it has helped with ranking in Google, since it is a Google product, having your stuff on there can be helpful – so I post on there every single day even though I have a tiny following.”

Thank you so much for reading and please subscribe to the newsletter if you would like to stay up to date with news from my studio and get exclusive branding tips before anyone else.