One of the most important things you need to do in order to be recognised and heard by an audience is to create a consistent brand. A brand is an identity that represents you and your work. It should be a consistent set of visual and verbal cues that people recognise. If you want your audience to consume from you consistently, then there are certain things you have to do and ‘have’ within your brand.
Usually the one missing piece of an effective branding strategy is this consistency. Brand consistency of image, voice and feel, that will be the same all around the world.
A lot of Creators out there don’t even have a clear sense of what their brand is, much less how they want it to evolve and grow over time. This just breeds inconsistency. One day they are one thing, and a few months later they are another.
I need to be able to land on your page, and know what you’re about within a couple seconds. If I’m seeing videos and posts about gaming, and then others on entrepreneurship, and a bunch on some other trending topic, I can’t reliably hit follow.
I don’t know what you’re going share next, and generally speaking I’ve come for one of three things; to be educated, entertained or empowered (Sometimes all at the same time!). If I don’t feel I’m going to get these things consistently, I’m not likely to hit follow and neither is anyone else.
This inevitably means we come to the niche topic as always, but it goes without saying: If I want baby photos, I’m best to go to a baby photographer, if I want retro games, I’m going to a retro gaming channel. Hoping that a random creator creates what I want is a losing game.
At least have somewhere you’re aiming your arrows, so we can all see the target and rally behind.
You want to establish a brand that drives customer loyalty and attention. The paid-for product or service becomes one with the consumer, and emotional investment shifts to a single source trusted with your brand’s success. Creating a consistent brand enables you to brand yourself as authentic, valued, and professional.
Do what you say you’re going to do. If that means posting a video Monday at 5pm, make sure it’s there. If you post daily, batch your content, schedule it up and make sure it goes out daily.
One of the greatest things McDonalds ever did was ensure consistency across their restuarants within their burgers. You can go anywhere in the world, and get that Big Mac taste. If you’re a Starbucks drinker, the coffee is very regular, it’s the same burnt taste wherever you go, haha! Undeniably consistent brands
I’m quite into my crypto at the moment, and one of my favourite sources of information is Benjamin Cowen. He’s a no frills, straight to the point crypto analysis. There’s a consistent into; ‘Thanks for jumping back into the cryptoverse’, every video has a goal and purpose, I can reliably go there and come away smarter than when I started.
The more consistent you are the more reliable your audience finds you. The easier it is for them to buy into you, share your stories, share you, will help you build bigger numbers.
A fantastic book called Primal Branding, can really help us get consistent very fast. The book details 7 factors of a Primal Brand, designed to capture and audience by going straight for their cave person brain, the amygdala and making it just feel ‘right’.
Creation Story is fairly straight forward. What’s your story? Why are you on this journey, what do you bring to the table?
Ali Abdaal includes this story in his intros quite often, he’ll mention he’s a doctor and a YouTube, scammed out of life savings and after a lottery question set him on the path to financial independence he is now sharing the journey and providing advice, tips etc.
That’s one way to build some consistency, always have the same intro that harks to why someone should listen to you. But, there are other better ways too:
Creed, what is that why or belief in one short sentence or phrase. Apple have ‘Think Different’, Nike is ‘Just Do It’. Both companies consistently pump out this message and let it guide every product and development they make.
Icons will be logos, but can also be the toy character on the table with you, the colours you use, can even be smells. You how Starbucks always smells like Starbucks? That’s Smell Marketing doing it’s job but it’s also a thing an audience/customer can hark back to and be reminded of and thus ‘captured’ again! The Brofist!
Rituals is a great one, can somewhat be linked again to the intros of a video, or a colour scheme. Anything consistent, that we start to associate with you. It can be sayings, sign-offs, anything habitual for you, can become habitual for a viewer/follower. You ever sing along to theme tunes? Doesn’t that get you excited for the show ahead? Ritual!
Sacred Words, spins in the Creed sometimes. Can also just be the words you share with your audience, ‘Productivity Greasemonkey’, the word ‘Brofist’, it’s all in the language you use and share with your audience. What words can you highlight, pull out and use more of?
Pagans, Anti-believers, what is the opposite of you? If you’re and Apple fanboy, the Pagan is a windows user, an Android user. Conservatives vs Liberals, Meat-eaters and vegans. Freelancers vs 9-5 rat racers.
Not that you want to build hatred towards anyone, but these can be the enemies of the gang, and you can politely put them down in order to rally your troops better!
Leader, consistently you will appear in your content. You’re the leader of the gang, and just by turning up consistently, you further ground yourself in the hearts of your fans!
With all this in mind then, it makes sense to start to develop a system that will… somewhat automate the process. Let’s get some templates made that that your instagram posts look consistent. Can you pre-record the podcast intro so it plays out instead of you doing it every time off the cuff? Same for the outro. Experiment and see what works, but a consistent something is a great start!
Create a folder with all the regular stuff in it; logos, colours, shapes, social media templates for each type of post and platform. Get yourself a paragraph of social links and disclaimers that you can copy paste when you need them. Are there some hashtags you always use? Get those written out and in a document again for copy paste later!
If you’re a Canva Pro user, your membership includes a Brand Kit that you can steadily build up as you go and pull from that. Adobe uses Libraries to sync assets across their programs.
Where are you going? Where do you see your brand in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years? Write these goals out and stick it somewhere visible. Make sure you’re marching towards that goal every day at every opportunity!
Combine all or some of these elements and see the consistency come from inside your brand, watch as your audience sticks to your words and becomes part of a family.
Marketers with established brands tend to focus on the long-term benefits of brand loyalty, such as increasing customer focus and reducing churn. However, differentiating your brand from others in your industry is much more important than this. This is called Positioning, Brand Positioning at large.
An easy route is to be the opposite of what everyone else is doing. I’m using the gaming sector a lot in this post so for consistency (wink wink), I’ll stick to it!
There was a time girl gamers weren’t all that prevalent, you could stand out by just being pink and not the neon green on black.
Now there’s lots of gamer girls, how would one stand out from all of them? You could do something very different, no pink and cat ears, anime references and cosplay. Instead we’re going full on 80s Wall Street Dudette, slick back hair and a nice suit. This games a business transaction, buy low sell high!
Or we’re Amelia Earhart in this joint, my set’s an airplane, I’m wearing goggles and we’re in a boiler suit. Let’s nuke this game through a distorted headset mic and airplane drone sounds!
You get the picture…
And do it consistently!
Talk to you next time,
