Branding is a key word you hear at conferences, see in business articles, and generally come across on a daily basis. While it’s an important component of your brand (whether you’re a blogger or a business), it’s often overlooked given the many parts of running a successful business. Your brand is more than just the name or logo of your business; your brand is how you want to be perceived by your customers. Your name, logo, tone, and tagline are all components of your brand identity and help you reflect the value of your business to appeal to your target customer.
Knowing your brand and staying true to it ensures that you’ll have an engaging relationship with your customers and will help you pitch yourself for partnerships and collaborations (more on this in a couple of weeks!). The focus here is on you and your business and not what others are doing!
To help you identify or even fine tune your brand, I have 4 questions below that you should ask yourself. The best way to do this is physically write out the answers and keep them on your desk, mood board, or where you generally work. If you’re ever stuck on developing a post, new products, or campaigns, just refer to your answers as they’ll serve as a guiding light for you.
1. What makes your blog or business unique? Is it the products you’re selling, the way they are crafted, or are you delivering fresh content in new ways? Are you satirical writer or do you offer a whimsical view at life?
2. What are you delivering to your reader or your customer? This is so important! What is your product? Is it content, guidance, a service? What do they like, what are they asking for, are they responding to new content or product you’re providing?
3. Who is your ideal reader or customer? You should have an idea of your existing customer (use Google analytics to determine their demographic). Does it match up with your ideal reader or customer? You may appeal to women between 35-55, but is your target demographic a mix of men and women in their 20s? This is a good way to make sure you ideal customer is your existing customer.
4. SWOT: Where are you succeeding? Where are you failing? What are opportunities? Any threats out there? I’m sure you’re heard of a SWOT and it’s a good analysis to run a couple of times a year to ensure you’re on top of things. This helps you create a strategy and setting goals for your business.
Now that you’ve answered these questions, make a list of brands or bloggers you’d like to work with. You’ll need this list for when you pitch to brands. Keep your answers and your list handy and check back in 2 weeks when I’ll discuss Pitching 101!
Just incase you missed the news from our big Instagram $1,000 giveaway here – congrats to #162, Lauren O’Sullivan!
xx Annette
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