Branding - Cross Platform Consistency
Over the last decade and a half, working for 8 different companies and organizations and currently owning 2 different companies, I can say with certainty that keeping your brand consistent across platforms is a job in itself. It’s not a glamorous job, but one that is a crucial step in maintaining and deepening the relationships that a brand has with their audience.
With the advent of C19 which has accelerated all things digital, it has brought with it a need for continual digital branded content to be streaming out of your brand. This need for continual content has created an issue for some brands who are not used to creating content at this scale. The issue is that quality content takes time to ideate, create, and produce. (Not to mention the time it takes to interact with a brand’s audience once the content has been published, but that is a topic for another day). If your brand does not have a structure for what this content looks, sounds, and feels like...your brand can quickly become quite messy and soon begin to feel like it’s in opposition to the brand at large or at best a spin off from the original brand.
With these challenges, what can you do to keep your brand consistent across platforms? Here are 6 steps you can take to create brand consistency across all platforms:
1 - Create a Brand & Style Guide
The first step is to create a brand and style guide and to live by it. Meaning, whenever any piece of content is released whether a blog, tweet, instagram post, or just an update to your website, make sure it’s in alignment with your Brand & Style Guide. This is where brand consistency is found, in content being created at scale while still maintaining the essence of who the brand is. Not sure what a brand or style guide is? Reach out to us, we’d love to help you build one.
2 - Seasonal Banner Images Across Platforms
This is an easy one. Have your designer create you a seasonal banner image that you can use across all your social platforms and on your website. Keeps things fresh seasonally and keeps your brand looking like it's the same brand across all platforms.
3 - Brand Training As Onboarding
Include brand training into your internal training, i.e. share with new hires why your brand exists, how your brand interacts with its audience, and what role they play as an employee in the brand as a whole.
Seems simple but the truth is, I’ve only worked in one company where this was even mentioned. Take time to go over this, your employees will thank you because they will know who and what they are selling, your audience will thank you by spending more moolah, and your brand will thank you by being consistent no matter how many employees you have.
4 - Hire A Brand Manager.
This role can mean many different things to different organizations but the key here is to have someone who’s looking out for the brand as a whole, making sure it's in alignment with the bigger mission of the company, keeping things consistent across all platforms, and keeping your brand competitive.
We do this for a few of our clients and we take so much pride in this privilege. It's more than colors and fonts...it's about adhering to your mission and keeping the brand as a whole aligned.
5 - Use the same logo across platforms
This one seems silly, but you’d be surprised how many brands have one logo on their Instagram and one logo on their Facebook page and a different logo in their email signature. Really low hanging fruit here. Just go through all your platforms and make sure everything is aligned with your brand guide.
6 - Make a Brand Consistency Checklist
Whenever you or your brand manager updates anything visual on any platform, it's a great time to do a quick run through across all your platforms to be sure everything looks tight! Here’s a simplified version of what that checklist might look like:
Is the headline up to date?
Is the logo up to date?
Are the brand colors up to date?
Is the business contact information correct?
The real point here is to make sure that your brand looks consistent, up to date, and is easily accessible to your audience.
If you need a brand guide, brand manager or looking to define who your brand is once and for all, we’d love to be part of that journey. You can reach us at thelevco@gmail.com or you can find us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @thelevco or you can connect with us through the button below!
Be well!
Author: Luke Waite