Social media has opened the door to connecting with more audiences in new and different ways. Today, clients have to act quickly to stay relevant. But once your message is out there, it’s out there for good, and there are no take-backs. So your client’s social media creative content must be consistent with your brand’s mission as well as the customers’ or viewers’ expectations.
Branding is more than just having the same logo or mark appear on all your communications. It’s about the consistency of tone both verbally and visually. Brand inconsistency can be confusing and lead to customers missing the messaging or even missing general brand awareness.
So how do you solve this problem, given that the typical viewer on most social media has a very limited attention span? Most people glance at or scroll through content rather than really absorbing and reading it. Here are a couple of things to keep in mind.
Keep your brand’s voice consistent across platforms.
Each social media venue is unique, so it’s OK to switch up the tone a bit if one is a little more conversational than another, but the core message should be consistent and not stray from the overall brand message. With social media, many employees have become advocates for their companies and their brands. This is a great way to expand your messaging capabilities with minimal cost, but you might need to rein in employees, all with different personalities and voices, posting about your brand without any sort of consistency.
Give the designs some brand consistency.
It takes a while to build up recognition with a brand. Do not throw customers or viewers off by switching up the look and feel of the design every couple of weeks. Most people are just scrolling through channels and not really reading. If the viewer can spot your communication at a glance and recognize it immediately, then you are two steps ahead of the competition. Establish specific brand standards for social like every other pieces of your branded campaign. If your branding uses a lot of custom icons or duotone images, pick that style up in your social media.
Think about the user experience and if these communications are driving a specific action.
If the content has a specific action and the viewer or user is sent somewhere (landing page, registration page, or an app), consider if there will be a disconnect when the user/viewer lands there. Is there brand consistency where they are going, or will it throw them for a loop because it looks and sounds so different? Users will think that they clicked wrong or that the link is wrong if the visual and written experience does not match up at first glance.
To summarize, maintaining brand consistency, especially in an era characterized by intense connectivity, is a good way to stand out in an already oversaturated market.
Design at JVA Campaigns
JVA Campaigns is a full-service public affairs and political consulting firm offering a wide array of services to help our clients win. We help organizations influence stakeholders and decision-makers across the country using proven principles, custom strategies, and of course, great design.
