5 Ways To Brand Your Social Media

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person…”

Well, that (Jeff Bezos) quote definitely puts a lot of weight on the subject.

“Branding” and “brand” get confused all the time with “brand identity”.

“Brand identity” is your look, your visuals, your logo.

However “branding/brand” isn’t about that at all – it’s about who you are, what you do or sell, and the perception your audience has.

The tips I’m sharing today will cover a bit of everything: branding, brand, and brand identity. I’ll talk about some visual things, but also touch on how you’re viewed or perceived, and how it relates to your brand on social media.

Even if social media is not your primary focus, or even if it is, being strategic about the type of content you post is paramount. Your visuals, and the copy behind it, as well as your overall social media strategy should have thought, intention, and be “branded” before you tap that post button.

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#1. Pick A Thing & Stick To It

The problem with social media isn’t learning what to do or how to do it. There are tips, tricks, and hacks galore. Look left and right, you’ll find tutorials and tactics that people share – for free, even! And most of which are proven to work.

The problem with social media is that there are so many platforms where you can show up and so many different ways you can do it, that it’s overwhelming.

So if you can pause and take a step back, then you’ll see that the solution isn’t jumping on all of the bandwagons, but rather figuring out what thing works best for you, and doing it in your own way.

That’s not to say you throw caution to the wind, but it’s that you hone it on what you do best, and what speaks to your audience – and maybe a thing or two that makes you uncomfortable (ahem, video is that for me!)

If you want to post a couple times a week, commit and do it.

If you want to make funny reels, or go live weekly, or share your daily to-do’s via stories… whatever you want to do that’s relevant to your business, helpful to your audience, and on-brand for you… do it!

And then keep doing it. Get so good at it that you become known for it.

Make something YOUR thing and own it.

Your audience will start to see what you’re doing, and (whether knowingly or unknowingly) recognize that “oh, that’s their thing, THAT’S what they do, they always do that,”.

Your “thing” that you stick to will become part of your brand.

#2. Follow Your Brand’s Style Guide

If you’ve purchased a brand from a designer (or you plan to in the future), they likely gave you what’s called a “style guide”. Your style guide includes some very key information about your brand, not just your logo. It gives you details about what fonts are used (usually the font names and styles), color swatches of your brand palette (color codes should accompany these), and any supporting graphics (such as patterns or standalone graphics that go with your brand suite).

Your style guide is like your brand’s instruction manual.

It’s all about how to use your brand in a strategic and effective way. It helps you keep your brand looking consistent, no matter how often you post (we’ll talk more about templates next).

For example, let’s say gray and blue are part of your brand colors. You use gray and blue on everything: your website, social posts, and pinterest pins. It would be pretty obvious that gray and blue are your brand colors, because you use them on everything.

That is brand consistency for the win!

But then one day, you decide to use yellow on a social media post. Yellow looks cute, and the color seems to go well with your brand colors, so it’s not a big deal, right?

Well, that’s what we would tend to think. It’s not that it’s a terrible choice, but it’s that it’s not on-brand. If you’re wanting to build a brand that lasts, you have to stick to your brand style guide.

The trademark of a great, consistent, top-of-mind brand is creating a cohesive look across all platforms, products, services, digital, print – everything – that you produce. It’s not enough that you use your logo.

Your brand includes how to make people feel, what they think and how they perceive you, as well as all of your visuals – logo, colors, fonts, graphics, and content.

Stick to your style guide to keep your social media consistent with your brand!

#3. Use Your Brand Templates

Want to know what will make using your style guide a heckofalot easier? Branded templates!

(Sorry, not sorry, I do talk about this often…)

Creating and using branded templates in an app like Canva or Adobe Express, I’m telling you, will save you time, evergy, and headaches.

The reason your style guide should be your #1 is because of things like templates. Your style guide teaches you what brand elements to use, while your templates keep you on track with how to use your brand elements.

In the case of social media, you can buy or create a library of templates for different types of posts. Once you edit them, the templates will have your brand’s colors, fonts and graphic style built into them, so all you have to do is copy, update and publish.

You won’t have to waste brain space hunting down your color codes or finding your logo every single time you need to make something – it will be there waiting for you if you get templates set up.

Make and use templates (or buy some!) and realize the power of workflow efficiency.

Even more importantly, realize that brand consistency = recognizability = top of mind = future client or customer leads.

#4. Weave In Your Unique Brandisms

Your “brandisms” are essentially your brand’s unique way of talking. It’s the words you say and the way you phrase them.

Your brandisms aren’t necessarily trademarked, but you should think of them as if they are (and possibly actually get them trademarked, depending).

Brandisms includes anything from slogans, mottos or taglines, to your unique hashtags (Target uses #TargetStyle), to words and phrases you consistently use, such as “all the things”.

It’s just another way of differentiating yourself from others, and helping your audience remember you. I mean, who doesn’t know “We have the meats!” (which is trademarked, btw)? Or doesn’t walk down movie memory lane when they hear, “That’s all” (Devil Wears Prada reference).

Look back over any copy or posts you’ve already written, and see if there are any commonly-used words or phrases. Try to weave that into your bio or “about you” post, and then remember to use it every so often (don’t overuse it!) in future posts.

Your “brandisms” are just another way to brand yourself/your business, without visuals.

#5. Share Your Experience & Tell Your Stories

Only you contain your “brand” of previous experience and knowledge. Only you can tell your stories.

Give value. And tell stories.

People love to gain knowledge. People remember stories.

They don’t remember blah captions. They don’t remember words on a graphic that don’t offer a great takeaway.

Give value based on your knowledge and experience, and use stories to pull people in and make them remember you.

Great stories don’t have to be long, “fantastic”, or put people on the edge of their seat. And your experience doesn’t have to include a degree and an executive position.

For instance, I share some of my own short life stories (and all the branding things) in my weekly email. They’re not super profound (to me) but they’re my stories. Sign up here if you want to get the next one straight to your inbox.

It takes practice to refine this skill, so don’t worry if you’re “bad” at it right now. A great way to start off is through keeping a content ideas doc, and utilizing a framework or template to help. This is one I really like to use for my social media posts:

  1. Hook/one-liner/question/scroll-stopping statement/story
  2. Body/Point 1
  3. Body/Point 2
  4. Body/Point 3
  5. Call-To-Action (doesn’t have to be selling, could be a question or ask to comment)

The point here is to share what only you can, which is just one more way to brand your social media content.

Your Uniqueness = Your Sweet Spot

Your offer + unique spin on things is a hard thing, actually, to narrow down, build, and promote. (believe me, I’ve tried to do it several times now…)

The best advice – that I’ve FINALLY started to follow – around social media is this:

You need to forget the algorithm, and all of the “hacks”, “tips”, and “going viral”, and really just stop to figure out what works for you.

I’ve heard it said that you can’t gauge whether or not you’re “doing enough” based on someone else’s approach.

But, you can base what you’re doing off of the time YOU have. Are you maximizing the time you DO have? If the answer is yes, then that’s “enough”.

And I’ll just cut to the chase: social media is a part of my overall marketing strategy, but (you might be able to tell) it is not my primary focus at the moment.

Instead, I’m choosing to spend the time I DO have by focusing on creating content and posting that content to something I “own” (my website).

I’m more consistently pinning to Pinterest, trying to grow my email list, and offering freebies and paid offers in my online shop that will help the people I want to help.

I’m in the building phase. And that takes a lot of work!

In the past I’ve been pretty sporadic, chasing all of the “shiny things”, and trying a lot of fun/exciting/sometimes good/a lot of times stupid things – but yet not being consistent, not sticking with any one thing long enough to find out if it worked. I did that for so many years and finally decided that I GOTTA STOP.

So although social media can and should be a part of the building phase to a certain extent, it’s not what’s taking the highest priority – because I know that for me and my business, first, I need to do what is sustainable for me, and second, I need to show up where my most loyal audience will find my content valuable.

I just have to focus on a few things this year, and SEE what happens.

I think you can do the same.

Want more brand strategy tips for social media? Here are 7 things you can’t overlook!

Need color tips? I talk all about my color category strategy right here.

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