Designing 101 - Episode 1: Branding
Designing 101. How can branding, with the help of design, help you grow as a person and on Steemit? That’s the question that is gonna be answered today.
What is a brand? Well a brand is what people feel about a company, or in this particular case, about you. It’s your readers psychological impression. Your brand is defined by your readers because they have their own vision about you and how your brand can grow in their eyes.
Brands can be broken down in four layers that each have their own distinct feeling.
The Brand Materials
The Brand Materials are ‘The What’. They are the things you say, you make and the things you end up doing. The materials are the content you present to your readers and are your brand. For example, you can have your own logo that might be distinctive, an own website where you promote yourself or perhaps a photo of you with the Steemit logo. These materials are the objects your readers interact with and how they enjoy reading your blog.
The Brand Traits
The Brand Traits are ‘The How’. These are the unique characteristics your brand has. They are the emotional side of your brand and is felt with your readers based on the representation of what you present to them. Unique traits might be things you do in your daily life or give examples. Make it real.
The Brand Values
The Brand Values are ‘The Why’. These are the most important of your brand. The brand values isn’t only what you stand for, but also the people you care about and how to interact with your readers. The materials are what you do, the traits is how you do it and your brand values is why you do it. It all comes together in this one. If your readers understand your brand values and they have the same they will become loyal followers.
The Brand Promise
The Brand promise is written down and is how your readers associate you with other brands, or people. The promise is also mostly for yourself, its the red line on how you want to be and how you want to represent yourself to the outside world.
So how to use your brand?
So in order to maximise your brand, you have to take 5 aspects into consideration. If those are clear your readers will follow you and even promote you! People tent to think that branding might be unimportant since they already have followers, but if you have a good branding, you can use it strategically and attract loyal followers and gain good profits in the process.
Positioning
A good brand highlights the difference between himself and the competition. This makes it easier for the readers to find their right choice. If you position yourself correctly you will become a whale in your section.
Recognition
Recognition is actually pretty hard to do. It takes a reader five to seven times on average to recognise you. You’re valuable content will go unnoticed when it’s not backed with a good design to represent yourself. So have something valuable that stands out like an image, logo or quote. Have something that is consistent so that they will recognise your posts immediately.
Personality
You can only do it your way. Why not copying others? Well because then you aren’t unique anymore, thus you won’t get loyal followers since they can get it elsewhere. Get your personality into the game and it will affect every your positioning, recognition and delight.
Delight
When customers are happy, they are paying more. You will see that everyone. For example in a restaurant, if you are happy with the food and service you will leave a bigger tip. If your unhappy you don’t wanna leave a tip as well. The same works on Steemit. When your readers think your content is valuable they will up vote your content quicker.
Building
Keep your promises and built the trust among your readers. When the readers can trust you they are more likely to up vote you and resteem your posts since you already did very well in the past.
To round up. What does good branding give you?
Good branding provides and rewards you with the following.
- You will get more loyal readers.
- Your readers will appreciate your content even more.
- More social sharing from your readers.
- You built a great network.
- Your up votes will come naturally.
In the next episode I will talk about the branding of big company’s and how you can even recognise them without the visual design. That’s how you recognise great brands!
HAAAA! Good to see a fellow designer here on steemit! Upvote and following you bro!
great content btw =D
Thanks for such an insightful and helpful article. Branding is not just about company, each person is their own brand. We are our personal brand. Most people are here to find their own niche and build up good followers. That's why 101 are so popular as it opens up different point of views and giving out good tips. Thanks for sharing this.
A good tips on branding, very helpful.
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branding is very important, it will define who you are...by simply reading your post. am i right?
Yes, branding is very important and it does define who you are, but also defines who your audience is. To brand yourself correctly is pretty ahrd and you have to take many factors into consideration that all work together. If you accomplish that, you have successfully branded yourself on Steemit!
I completely agree. I have been a freelancer for years and I never really bothered to brand myself because I was, for lack of a better word, a ghost writer. I would adopt the persona of my client and brand the heck out of them. The reason wasn't just so you could see who the person was, it was also to ensure that the client was more easily recognized. Branding is about trust, it's about reputation and it's about marketing yourself. I can tell already that you are right @rkrjgsman that you need to do some branding in order to get the votes and to be seen. Thankfully, this platform is very much about YOU and you doing you. So, if you are authentic, you put in the effort to make quality posts, you take the time and talk to new groups for minnows such as minnowsupport as a means of networking and you comment, you'll get a following. I think that branding is actually needed less on this page than other social media because there are quite a bit of people are looking out for good content. That being said, standing out from the crowd isn't a bad thing. I think for many new people though, new to this site and the indusrty, they are probably better off focusing on getting decent length, cutting the fluff and reducing the whole follow for follow thing to zero before we try to up the moral ante. LOL
Soon I will start branding for my music artist on this website, please keep it up with these 101 posts, it's really helpful.
What kind of episode will u make in the future?
I'm glad you liked it!
In the near future I'm thinking of making the following:
Those are some very important points yes, maybe a 101 about advertisement or marketing? Should be really helpful too.
Good point. I can write about that as well ;) I'll put it on the list!
Oh yeah nice, I'm already looking forward to the next episodes! :D
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Great article. Thanks for sharing
Branding is important in so many aspects of this electronic world that it is somewhat overlooked. At least it is to my old brain. Thank you for this info and take care.
Definitely branding is really important, and what's more important is that all aspects of branding should be mindful. My belief is that a brand should be truly genuine and should come from the heart. And mindfulness in self-branding is something that helps to shape a personality as such.
I would like to hear your thoughts on small business type branding and marketing for freelancers. I could use some more perspective on the topic ;)