5 Tips for Improving Your Company’s Language and Image as a Brand
By Anita Eglīte @BlueCatEdit
Companies spend millions of dollars every year on advertising campaigns, logos, and branding for creation of a recognizable image or identity. However, in the digital age with so much information available at everyone’s fingertips, companies need to be constantly aware of their public image as a brand and check if they’re on top of things.
This is particularly important for smaller businesses that cannot compete quite so easily on price or product range. After all, potential customers will be researching your company before they choose to spend their money with you. It’s not just about the logo and the advertising – how you communicate, the words and tone you use as a brand can make all the difference in attracting your best customers and for keeping them, too.
In this blog post I will share five tips for improving your company’s language and image as a brand.
Know exactly what image you want to build – brand personality
Be authentic
Dare to experiment
Be useful and worth their time
Be consistent in all touch points
1. Know exactly what image you want to build
Being mindful of the language your company uses online and in the direct, present-moment communication is more than just a good idea – the pace at which the circle of your loyal customers and consequently – your company – grows depends on it. You should always be mindful of the following:
✔ tone,
✔ voice,
✔ implied attitude, and
✔ impression your team is making on your customers.
The first step is to know WHO YOU ARE.
The best route here is to give your company a personality. Namely, turn a legal entity into a relatable person that your audience, and even more importantly – your team, can relate to. The best reasoning behind it that I have come across until now is the story about a dinner party:
This “all-way-round” option might seem tempting for those wanting to make friends with everyone. Yet endless amount of research show that going down this path will not take you where I think you want to go with your business.
Similarly to the human life, the company without a clear and focused personality is like a person who doesn’t know who he or she is. It is someone without a clear focus or goals in life, and who goes wherever the wind blows. Thankfully, people are different, and we need all sorts around us, yet for a business this would be like walking on thin ice.
If your followers are certain of who you really are, they know what to expect from you and, most importantly, they know if you are the right match for them. And once you have that connection, you have an amazing foundation for close, loyal long-term relationship with your audience. This way, instead of talking to everyone, you are talking to your people. They feel it and love you even more for it. This makes your communication more focused. In fact, the list of benefits of turning your company into a personality goes so much further than building a loyal audience – although, that alone is such a great deal.
The top four benefits of knowing who your company is:
2. Be Authentic
What makes your company special and different to others? What can you do that other companies cannot? I assume you know the answers to those when it comes to your professional field of operation. Yet, authenticity sticks out also in your communication and is the most obvious to your current and potential customers.
You should always be authentic to your brand, and I would strongly advice against trying to resemble or copy other successful companies out there. Getting inspired by them? Sure. But that’s it! Because your uniqueness will be the one flooding money in, not the resemblance of someone else.
Trying to be something you aren’t, consumes more of your resources – including time. Authenticity requires you having a very, VERY clear image of what you (your company) actually are. You should have that clear after processing the Item One above. The next step is staying true to that personality of yours.
Firstly, you do that by defining every aspect of that personality:
What does this person look like?
What does he sound like?
What is his temper like?
What are the main characteristic features?
What is his style?
What is his sense of humour?
What are his interests?
And so on, and so on…
Secondly, you should stick to it in every interaction: be it eye-to-eye conversation among co-workers, with a client, an e-mail, a greeting card or a Facebook post.
It’s so much easier for each of those to seem authentic if the person delivering the message has impersonated your company. It is like a secret key to the hearts of the audience, in fact available to every company, yet at this time so few use it to their advantage.
The key ingredient here is getting every single person in your company (as well as external agents, sub-contractors and freelancers) on board. Make sure they truly know and feel the personality of the company; they know what to do with it; and they do it all the time, always and every single time.
3. Don’t be afraid to experiment
Once you have the first two items covered, and when you [your team talking and writing on your company’s behalf] feel confident and natural in all that, you can start playing around with it.
It doesn’t necessarily mean joking around and sharing funny cat videos. Depending on your industry it might include those also, but I’m thinking more along the lines of playing with words and tone. Certainly, experimenting with logo or your brand colours is hardy ever a good idea. But when it comes to communication and brand language, those might seem like a breeze of fresh air for your audience.
At times, giving your audience something new is a good idea. It is another way of showing respect for them and proving that you’re not taking their time for granted – all that by giving them a fresh and well thought-through content or message. One way of doing it is changing some of your keywords. I’ve seen things really turning around for many of my clients after this slight shift. For those using Writesonic for their external content this is as easy as one-two-three, if they work with keywords in this or similar AI assistant, which comes up with new topics, titles and even articles.
Another method is using behind-the-scenes videos or images. This might mean opening up more to your audience and showing more of your human side, and who doesn’t like that! You can also try mixing your current external content with delivering your message through infographics, instead of a text. If you’re not doing that already.
I encourage you to test the waters and play around in your communication and the channels you use. That might come naturally as the next step if you have been working on your communication for a long time and you have reached a point where every way of expression seems boring to you. It is natural – the need for constant growth and change is human, it is encoded in our DNA. This slight change and experiments with your business communication might open some unexpected doors for you.
There are two nuances to this, though.
1. The natural moment for change and experiment can be easily missed in an organization with a high rate of employees’ rotation. For a newcomer everything is new, and it will seem new for some time.
2. Experimenting is good, overstepping the limit – dangerous. It is important to know the red lines for your brand language, checking the immediate response and adjusting.
Human instinct is to avoid change, yet for the sake of your business maybe it is worth allowing yourself to loosen up, be reasonably brave and experiment with your brand’s communication.
4. Be useful and worth their time
Your company’s communication is like a magic wand for all sorts of magic and using it for obvious salesy messaging is boring if not irritating. A better way for getting under the skin of your potential customer is making them smarter and their lives better even before they have bought anything from you.
When dealing with brand language for companies, I say this a lot – it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. It is always true; yet at this point I want to make sure we’re on the same page on the content – what you say plays a really big role here, too.
Let your Sales team do the selling, rather than your social media profiles. People will buy from you anyway, if they’re convinced that you are the real expert in this field. Therefore, consider changing the mission of your external corporate communication from raising sales numbers or views to making the world a better place, or making people happier, smarter, safer, more peaceful, or whatever noble appeal which falls under your field of work.
You don’t have to take all your pans off the stove if you have been cooking at full speed until now. Changing the narrative in one of your channels is a good place to start. Try it and see where it takes you.
5. Be consistent in all touch points
Just like with being a consistent person, consistency is crucial throughout your brand’s language and communication strategy. You want to be consistent in your marketing, and you want to be consistent in all your touch points.
This means your website, your social media, your email, the way you present yourself and the way your team converses with clients should always have the same feel, sound, and look.
For example, let’s say you’re a real estate agency and you want to use storytelling as an effective marketing tool. You should make sure your entire website is written in story format, and you should also use stories in your email marketing. You should use stories in your social media posts and even on your voicemail message. This helps to make your brand recognizable, and it also helps to build trust with customers. They know what to expect when they’re dealing with your company. They know what to expect when they click on your website, or when they click on a link from your email marketing.
Consistency also helps raising the top-of-mind awareness (TOMA) among your audience, because if used intentionally and strategically, not only logo and colours, but also words, style, tone, and the way of expression my become associated with your brand. The more separate items your audience have to associate with you, the more you are present in their mind and sub-consciousness.
In conclusion I couldn’t stress enough how beneficial a strategic brand language can be for your business. Although to a great extent these tips are related to external communication and directed outwards, as we know – everything starts at home. So, keep your home “clean”, and internal communication is the best place to start for a superb overall result.
I hope this helps! ❤
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Are you managing a company; are you the owner, strategic manager, HR manager, or a communication specialist?
Then you are my audience. I need your hand for raising the level of quality of communication in companies. Together we can accomplish so much more.
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