Everyone loves a good story. And your company has a story to tell. You might not think it’s that interesting, but you’d be surprised. People love stories that share a journey and end in a place where they can relate.
Branding and messaging tell your story: who you are – what you do – why you do it – where you do it – who you do it for.
Most people think branding is solely the graphical part – your logo and colors — but branding is really telling your story and using words and images to communicate it to your customers and potential customers.
Branding and messaging are woven into every page of your website, email newsletters, and social media posts. It’s telling your story. The foundation for branding and messaging is figuring out who you are and what’s unique about what you create.
Here are aspects of branding and messaging:
Company Story
Your Company Story is foundational to your messaging and branding. When you’ve nailed down your story, you will communicate this through your domain name, logo, social media posts – everything. You want everything to continue your story.
Your Company Story will be used on your website’s About Us page. Write it long as you’d like and include older photos if you have some that would help tell your history.
Company Description
The social media platforms have different names for Company Description and you can use your Company Story in a shortened version. Here are the different lengths on social media platforms:
Instagram: bio – 150 characters
Facebook: page description – 255 characters, additional info – 50K characters
LinkedIn: company update – 700 characters
You can pull the essence of your Company Story to write your Company Description.
Mission
Usually, customers aren’t super inspired by your Mission but it can inspire you and your team to do the work you were called to in a manner you want to do it. You can post it on your website and print it out on a post for your office or workshop to inspire your team.
Core Values
Core values can inspire customers with how you do business. Values are your promise to them.
Ramblin’ Jackson, a Colorado Internet marketing agency, does an excellent job with its core values. I especially like the one, “Be Human & Pick Up the Damn Phone.”
I think five or six Core Values are a good number. You can expand upon them on your About Us page so visitors can understand more about you.
Elevator Speech
How would you briefly describe your business if you had 20 seconds with a person? A good Elevator Speech cuts away extraneous words and gets to the essence of your company with a conversational tone. You don’t want to sound too canned.
Tagline
When done well, a Tagline instantly communicates who you are and what you do. It’s communicated as a short phrase without punctuation. Some people like to include it with their logo.
Naming
Have you ever thought about changing the name of your company? Sometimes names can be too generic, become outdated, or be difficult to communicate. If you are too invested in the name or your brand is well known, changing your name might not be a great idea. But changing the name of your company might be a good idea if your current one isn’t a good fit for what you do or hinders the effectiveness of your business.
Domain Name
Domain Names can be tricky. People have been buying domain names for years and trying to resell them for big profits. It isn’t easy getting a short domain name with popular terms. But there are ways to get a good Domain Name by making it a phrase or using one of the many new extensions that have been added in recent years.
Here are some of my principles for domain names:
- Make it as short as you can
- Make it memorable
- Avoid dashes
- Make it easy to say over the phone
- Use .com if you can
- Don’t be afraid to use a phrase instead of your company’s actual name
