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You know one of the most outstanding features of TV shows of today as compared to say those of the 90s or the early 2000s? It’s not hard to guess. It’s the attention to detail! It’s fascinating isn’t it? You don’t notice it when it’s there but you certainly do when it’s gone. This kind of consistency is quite a challenge to maintain. But a necessary one if quality is your key concern.
The same thing holds true for social media branding. Consistency is key. And hard to maintain. The thing is that ideas move from concepts to completed content so quickly that it becomes increasingly difficult to check it for brand consistency. Does that hurt your brand? Of course it does.
Your brand shouldn’t be left open to interpretation. It should stick to that one core idea it is supposed to sell. That is what inspires loyalty at the end of the day. Something you can achieve with the help of social media branding consistency. Here’s why it’s so crucial to maintain-
1. It takes marketing to the next level
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Have you ever watched a KFC ad? Without even looking at it or a voiceover announcing that it is indeed a KFC product advertisement, you can still make out that the brand in question is KFC. How? Well, it’s red and white color scheme is quite iconic and easy to identify even without you looking directly at it.
Now when you look at that, you will likely think of being at KFC. You might even start thinking about what exactly you’re going to order! All of that without even looking at the ad consciously!
This is what we mean by taking marketing to the next level! You can only achieve this with the help of branding consistency. If you maintain that same consistency on social media, think of the kind of brand visibility and recognition you could achieve!
With the help of social media branding consistency, you don’t even have to spend time convincing your target audience to purchase your product. Your brand identity is so consistent, so identifiable and so synonymous with the products you offer that when they see your brand’s logo or colors, they think of buying from you without you asking them to do as much.
2. It helps inspire trust in your brand
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Let’s face it. People trust a brand they can easily recognize. However, brand recognition is not confined to being a known name. It’s all about getting your customers to really know your brand and what it stands for. At the end of the day, purchasing is not always a practical decision. It’s more of an emotional one.
You can increase the emotional engagement of your audience by inspiring a sense of familiarity in them as far as your brand is concerned. You see brand consistency lies at the heart of building brand trust.
Think about it. Don’t you always buy the same brand of bread or the same pack of cornflakes every time you hit the supermarket? You do it because you know what you’re getting into and you know you can depend on it. If you give your consumers the kind of experience they can depend on across all social media platforms, your reputation as a dependable product will be established.
3. It makes you come across as dependable
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Let’s say you meet someone and are in the process of knowing them. Sooner or later, you’ll start forming an opinion of them. But if you see them act angry on one day, calm on the next, crazy on the other and cold after that, you’ll start wondering who the person really is. You’ll get confused.
Now think of a situation where you have establish a business relationship with a person like this. Would you consider this person as someone you can bank on? Wouldn’t their inconsistency bother you? Their unpredictability will make you do a double take before you even communicate with them.
This is what happens to your consumer base when your social media branding is inconsistent. If your presence on social media comes across as whimsical and unpredictable while your product seems plain and dull, your audience will not be able to rely on your brand with an open heart.
Sending mixed signals is going to hurt your brand image and portray your brand as one that cannot be trusted. Maintaining social media branding consistency, on the other hand, will have the opposite effect.
How You Can Improve Your Social Media Branding Consistency
It’s good to know why social media branding consistency is vital for your brand, but it’s not enough. You need to go a step further. You need to know how to maintain social media consistency for your brand. That’s what you are going to discover in this section. Let’s go-
1. Create guidelines for your brand
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Its good practice to create brand guidelines and most large, medium and even small businesses make it a point to have them. This helps them ensure that all their branding and messaging is consistent and on-point. Having guidelines such as these will help you to align your social media branding with your company’s vision and values. Big companies such as Mozilla and Adobe do it!
You might think you don’t need to have brand guidelines since your company is not as big as Mozilla or Adobe, but you do. You don’t have to have exhaustive guidelines like these big guns but some basic guidelines can help your brand maintain consistency without proving to be a taxing process.
2. Direct your attention to internal branding
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Social media branding consistency cannot be achieved till your internal branding is in order. This kind of consistency is not to be simply maintained for your target audience you know. It goes deeper than that. Once you’re done creating your suitable brand voice, you should try to get your employees to match up to that voice.
This does not mean you slap posters and logos around their workstations. You’ll have to get your marketing head and other senior members of your firm involved to create a corporate culture that resonates with your brand voice and identity. Conduct culture-building workshops in your office to ensure it happens. This will help you maintain consistency throughout every kind of content your brand churns out.
3. Keep your logo and other design elements consistent
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To maintain social media branding consistency, you absolutely have to ensure consistency of your logo and other corresponding design elements. Trust us, it’s a terrible sight to see pixelated logos or those painted up in entirely new colors. Such faux pas can make your brand appear as fake and unworthy of trust. However, you can easily fix these blunders. All you have to do is –
- Develop and create a concrete logo coupled with other design elements that are to remain the same throughout, whether used externally or internally
- Create a folder including your brand’s visual content and state detailed guidelines on their use; share this internally with your company’s employees so they know what to do
- Create cover photos for social media, especially for those employees who take part in employee advocacy programs
- Create and provide social media templates as well as document templates so that your brand has a consistent online presence
- When printing promo material for your brand, make sure you get it handled by a single department only; that’s another way to ensure consistency of your logo in the promo materials
You will need tools to carry out the tasks mentioned above. Software such as Google Drive can be used to share files and you could easily hire a graphic designer to create your logo.
4. Maintain consistency in the tonality and personality of your brand
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Apart from having a consistent logo and design elements all through your brand’s profile on different social media platforms, you should also focus on maintaining consistency in the tonality and personality of your brand. It helps in effective communication and adds uniformity to your brand’s voice.
How can you maintain consistency in the tonality and personality of your brand? Let’s take for example that your brand deals in quirky merchandise such as cushions and coasters with funny captions. Now your brand voice is naturally going to be one filled with humor and wit. Portray this fun and friendly persona when posting on your social media pages as well, be it Twitter, Facebook or even LinkedIn!
Of course you can tone it down a tad and make it sound more professional when you post on LinkedIn but that fun element should not be absent. That’ll ensure that the post doesn’t sound like its coming from an entirely different brand altogether.
If you want a better analogy, think of it this way – your brand’s online presence should be like your personality. It’s fun with friends on platforms such as Facebook or Instagram, and ‘at work’ serious on those like LinkedIn. While the mannerisms might change slightly, your personality is still pretty much the same.
5. Choose the right topics for your content calendar
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Social media branding consistency is not maintained by merely having the same logo and tonality on different platforms. It extends beyond that. The content you put out is very much a part of it. However, in a bid to get followers, you shouldn’t produce just about any kind of content. If you truly want to maintain real consistency, you’ll have to be consistent with the kind of content you offer to your readers as well.
Create a content calendar and fill it with the right topics – those that are relevant and match your brand’s tone, goals and vision. Actively look for chances to create content that fits your brand’s image. For example, if your brand belongs to a niche such as photography for example, make sure your content is aimed directly around the key trends, problems and tips and tricks of this vertical.
Your target audience will be more interested in knowing about the vertical you specialize in as that’s why they got on your site in the first place! So use your expertise to your advantage and don’t waste the space of your content on matter that’s irrelevant.
Final Word – Maintain the brand theme in all your social media posts
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So far, you’ve discovered ways in which you can develop social media branding consistency for your brand. It doesn’t seem that difficult and that’s because it really isn’t. Once you get the basics in place, there isn’t much you have to do. Expect for one thing. Maintain the brand theme you’ve developed in all your social media posts.
The maintenance of this theme is the end goal, after all, of this exercise. Your brand should have an identity that is distinct, identifiable, relatable and most of all, consistent all throughout – whether it’s on your own site, in print or on what this guide focuses on, social media.
To maintain your brand theme in all your social media posts, you will have to ensure that the design elements of each post are consistent. Say your brand uses the color blue extensively – in its logo, print material, website and elsewhere. Then that same color (blue) in this case should be used in your social media posts as well, and consistently so.
If you want inspiration or need to look at an example, head over to Spotify’s Facebook page. The music app’s central color is green and you can see the use of various shades of this color used in almost all of their Facebook posts. That’s called maintaining consistency! Do that and your target audience will trust your brand faithfully till the very end.
As oft repeated throughout the length and breadth of this giude, you have to maintain consistency. Do that and your social media branding game will be like no other! Don’t worry about the missteps you make here and there. These will act as learning experiences and will help you improve and beat your competitors!
Want Custom & Consistent Social Media Branding For Your Business? Get In Touch With Digital Polo Right Now!
Your social media branding speaks a thousand words! If you want those words to be positive ones, you need to special attention to the content you put up on different social media platforms. Specifically the design of the content. If that’s not consistent, you know what could happen. You could lose audience trust and that’s never a good thing!
Increase your consumer base’s faith in your brand by availing Digital Polo’s graphic designing services! We will take care of all the grunt work and ensure that your social media is consistently designed while upholding your brand’s unique identity. From logos to posters, ads and more, we will design every single element for you to ensure your social media branding is on-point. Sign up with us now and we promise you won’t be disappointed!