Have you ever wondered if there’s more to your brand than just the logo? A strong, unique brand should apply to everything involved with your company—the logo is not the only thing or the most important thing to consider when it comes to developing your branding strategy.
Something that we’ve noticed that seems to get left behind when coming up with a good brand is content. This is not a good thing at all because it’s actually content nowadays people are looking for—not only the services or products you have to offer.
Now more than ever content marketing is vital to building and promoting a successful brand. It’s not all hype, either. Branding your content can be done, but it requires effort on your part. Here are five ways in which to improve your brand via content.
Tip 1: Have a Prominent Voice—Just One
Having a brand voice will help you determine what kind of content you want to keep creating as time goes on. The problem is at some point your brand may be misunderstood because there are multiple voices involved, which can make the content end up being lost in translation with your brand’s real message.
Find your brand voice before trying to create content. For example, if you’re involved in the medical community, you need to make your brand voice be professional, courteous, and kind. If you’re involved in the arts, it’s best to make your brand voice passionate, authentic, and even humorous (depending on who you’re targeting). And so on.
Tip 2: Communicate with Your Team
In order to get a good feel on your branding and content, ask your team—or more specifically, ask your team members involved with content—and discuss with them your intentions on how you want the brand to be presented content-wise. You may find that you all have different ideas on how the brand looks and feels when you read the content—or that it doesn’t reflect your brand at all. If the latter is the case, it’s time to rethink your content.
Tip 3: Be Consistent
Let’s say as an example you sell organic food online. You want the content, therefore, to reflect your brand—blog posts about healthy, nutritional recipes would be an excellent idea for content that reflects your brand. An example of content that would not reflect your brand, in this case, would be to refer to ingredients that are processed or unhealthy foods. Don’t do this.
Keep your content consistent with your brand. If your focus is on quick and easy-to-make food, make your blog and content focus on quick and easy-to-make food. If your brand focus is on gourmet food for experienced chefs, then focus on creating content based on that.
Tip 4: Don’t Use Jargon
It’s understandable if you’re a doctor or medical expert that there is terminology and language in your field that you may understand and speak fluently. This is not, however, the same language your audience will speak, i.e. your patients. If you are, for example, a pediatrician, you’re not going to want to speak to the child patient or their parents as you would your co-worker, so why talk that way in your content?
The last thing we think you want your brand to be is confusing. The more jargon there is, the more confusing you will appear to your audience and the less likely they will reach out to you. Keep your content language simple and easy to understand, and by doing so you will be strengthening your brand as someone who understands their target audience’s pain.
Tip 5: Don’t Overdo It
If a blog post is not being shared, commented on, or encouraging others to engage, chances are you’ve over-branded your content. Examples of signs that you have indeed over-branded include:
- Constantly referring to your company name in the content
- You use stats but don’t include sources at all
- Your content wasn’t made for the sake of engaging, educating, storytelling, or building relationships with your customers
While there may be lots of reasons your content is not generating a lot of traffic, over-branding may be a part of it too. Your content should actually come first before your brand, not vice versa.
Along with these tips, the best way to successfully promote your brand is by creating and publishing great content that suits your brand’s message and voice.
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