More Than a Logo

You are starting a business and you have a mission statement, a business plan, and working capitol. What else is there? Establishing your brand’s personality and voice. And why is that necessary? Because your brand represents you in the digital realm and whether you like it or not, we are ALL in the digital realm. Prior to starting your business, hopefully it was a passion, a hobby or something that sparked your interest. That passion for the business is the personality of your brand.

How does a passion morph into a personality? Think of it this way, depending on your business model, excluding shock media (media of any sort designed to polarize via a specific user experience), you are servicing your community in some way. Service of any level should be intrinsic to your user experience. The lower the level, the more potential for a new client to bypass your offerings. Here is where protecting your reputation and not having your business personality exploited should be factored into your online policy and procedure.

We Like You, We Really Like You

Depending on your age demographic, some of my readers are going to get the reference, most may not. Hence, your brand’s personality. Part of the personality is directly related to your community or client base. The demographic of who you service can and will influence your brand’s reputation, public personality perception and new business opportunities. Getting those likes and follows are great, but beware of those wanting to damage or skim from your community. Those that only spew hate or specific insensitivities that are meant to polarize will

seek out growing businesses just to tear them down or inflict damage to the reputation. Setting up Social Media Marketing policies and procedures will alleviate chasing after internet trolls when engaging with your community online. Now that your passion has turned into a business mission, you need to engage your community.

Engaging ANYONE’S attention in the digital realm needs to contain two factors. The first is a visual. Something that makes the user engage with their eyes. All that is holy in technology, please help us when Smell-O-Vision is included with our next version of VR!

So now that we have a user’s attention, a brand must engage the user, right. You would not believe the amount of businesses that publish a website and expect the world to beat a path to their virtual doorstep. Recognition of a name or logo is beneficial, but then what? Every engagement can’t be about the business because that is promotion and promotion can be repetitive. That is not engaging, that is advertising. A brand’s voice is it’s belief system and internal passion projects that are shared with its communities. Associating your brand with those internal passion projects is one form of Symbiotic Cooperative Marketing. This is how you engage existing and new client opportunities via Social Media Marketing Platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, and LinkedIn, just to name a few.

Now that you have gotten their attention, what now? Hit them with a flashy incentive of Buy Now because we are number one. That hasn’t worked since the nineties when everyone was looking to find “it”. Now “it” is everywhere, and everyone has “it”, so why would anyone want your “IT”? When your brand has a voice, it can engage your community. Setting a company belief system is required as these are the types of community members you want to engage as they are more likely to prefer your “IT” over another.

Utilizing your Social Media Platforms for community engagement is paramount to a new business. It provides one of the better benefits of reaching many on a grassroot budget. So how do you convert a company belief system into a respected branded voice? That is the topic for another day.