Company Branding Services
How to create an online profile for businesses
You have an exceptional product or service that you want to broadcast. This means you will need to publish content on and off-line in a bid to connect with your target audience. The target audience connects with you through the know, like and trust factor. This means that at every touch point it is important that your brand message is consistent.
As a business, where do you broadcast content?
- Social media
- Email marketing
- Articles, case studies and blogs on your website
- Offline marketing in the form of leaflets, brochures, etc.
Four distinct areas where you publish content. It might be that you have a website and have never added to it since it was written. In terms of rankings and online visibility, there is a wealth of data that shows without consistently adding content to your website it will cease to rank.
The point is this, you have multiple channels where you are broadcasting content and without setting a foundation in the shape of a brand content profile, there is a danger that your brand voice sounds different in each of those areas.
What goes into a brand content profile?
If you have a brand content profile, then it exists as a document that individuals can refer to inform any content, they are creating through any of the channels we have discussed.
It doesn’t need to be anything lengthy – a page or two is sufficient – it just needs to capture the essence of your business. Here are some questions and challenges we pose to our clients at the start of this process:
- Who do you help?
- How do you help?
- What results do you achieve for your clients?
- What are you passionate about?
- What are your business’s missions and goals?
- What are your values/ethics?
- Who do you want to talk to?
- What do you want to say to them?
It’s basically drawing out what is in your head and putting it into a formal document. It’s best to come from a place of instant gut reaction because your target audience is you. Let’s clarify that, if you have started a business then it has come from a place of passion, a real need to change something to make it better.
You can therefore look at your brand content profile as something that speaks to you. Do not overthink it. When we try to tailor or tweak a message and think about perhaps a segment of the market where we think there will be the most yield but doesn’t in fact resonate with us, it won’t work.
It causes business owners to work from a place where they’re potentially lacking in knowledge. So instead of thinking about a sector of the market, a demographic, or a specific industry, start thinking about you and who you are at your core.
That’s how the brand content profile should sound, like something that really you connect with when you read it. Lots of businesses go through branding exercises where they have a uniform font, colours, graphic design etc that is set in stone and is the blueprint of their brand style guide or bible. The exact same thing should go for your brand voice. If you carry out this exercise, it means that every area of your business knows exactly what you want to say.
It can also help to have a set of questions within that document that you believe your market is asking. Those questions should be about their fears, their pain points, and the emotions they are feeling because if you understand that, it enables you to broadcast content that gives solutions and shows your brand is the answer or how they get out of struggle.
