Assess your digital and social media presence

BootCamp RESOURCE - Session 2 ASSESS YOUR DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE How can your digital channels help you stand out online and resonate with your target audiences? In this second session, we learn tips from Doug Summers from Bold and Amee Ritchie and Jake Elliot-Hook from S’wheat on how to assess your brand presence across channels and how to better express your brand personality to online visitors.

Branding basics

Assess your bran

Why exactly is branding important? In essence, it’s human instinct to make snap judgments about new things we encounter. Branding helps shape a customer’s first intuitive judgement of your organisation. In the words of Jeff Bezos: “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

Do you have a good idea of your brand’s strengths and weaknesses? A great place to start to assess your branding efforts is to brainstorm with your team and put down on paper the elements that make up your branding at the moment. How do you generally express yourself to external target audiences?

• Your brand exists in the hearts and minds of your audience but everything that you show of yourself to express what your organisation is all about comes down to branding, even if you’re not always conscious of it at the time.

• Are you branding yourself and communicating with others in a way that feels authentic to your vision, mission, and business model? What’s currently working and which elements (tone of voice, visuals, attitudes) could be refined?

• Your branding is made up of lots of elements, such as your name, logo, and visual identity, your packaging if you sell a product, the tone and imagery of your communications and advertising, your people, company culture, behaviour, and history, your tone of voice, etc.

• Do you have an opportunity to test your assumptions about your brand directly with your customers? A survey or some informal conversations can help you find out what your brand makes them think, say, feel and do. It can also help you find out more information about the touchpoints (channels, types of content) where they interact with you the most and purchase from you, so that you can better focus your efforts on these channels and be consistent.

• How your brand is perceived is also influenced by things that are not in your control, for instance hearsay and reviews. The way people think about you and what they say to each other, whether they endorse you, or not.

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BootCamp RESOURCE - Session 2

Assess your channels

A year of upheaval like 2020 has shown us just how important a strong digital presence is to be able to communicate with your customers anytime, anywhere. Take the time to look at your website with a critical eye and assess what’s working and what you could improve when it comes to your online branding, communications and content efforts.

• Is your brand expressed cohesively through your website? Does your brand personality come through in the text and images? Do you have guidelines around your logo, font, colours, imagery to help your content stay consistent?

• Is the key information you want to share easy to find? The attention span of online visitors browsing a homepage is just 5 seconds, so you need to make sure you can catch their attention with the most important information you want to share and actions you want them to take.

• Consider the social media channels that you use. Are there links to them on your website pages? Do you link to your website from your social channels and is your company information clear and cohesive everywhere?

• Do you share content across your social pages to drive traffic to your website regularly? Do you engage with your online followers to promote your current initiatives, products and services?

• Don’t forget your email signature! Is your logo included in it? Is there any key information, a brand tagline or links that could be included?

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Think like a custome

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After a first assessment of your branding, website and social channels from your own perspective, try to do the same exercise but this time, put yourself in the shoes of your target audiences and customers to identify elements to refine from their external viewpoint.

• Can customers looking at your online properties find out quickly what your organisation is all about? Would they easily understand what your value proposition is, what you have to offer and why they should engage?

• Would customers checking your online properties find out all the key information about your products and services? Would they find the details shared relevant and convincing? Are you framing information in a way that speaks to them directly and highlights how you can help them solve a problem and make a difference?

• How is your branding, content and tone of voice coming through across different channels?

Does it feel like the same organisation is speaking to your target audiences? How do similar organisations speak to their community?

• On average, someone will interact 7 times with a brand before making a decision to purchase. Being consistent is key to succeed as every time a customer engages with you, they get a better feel for your brand and this helps shape their decisions.

Contact the speakers: doug@bold-studio.co.uk support@swheat.co.uk

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