Have you given any thought to how your website matches your social media profile? Do you think this is important to your branding? Many experts think so. Branding is a complicated process. When you are working on promoting your brand to the world, you need to look at every aspect of your online presence including your website, blog, YouTube channel, and social media platforms.
Why Your Site Should Match Your Social Media
Coschedule.com contributor, Julie Neidlinger states on a recent post that she realized her brand was not consistent across the board online. Her social media presence was dissimilar to her website branding and other aspects that she had put up online.
When you do one thing on your site and something else on your social media and other locations, it can be confusing to your customers of your brand presence.
The Need for Consistency
A human psyche is an interesting place. One thing that is inherent in the way people think is their need for consistency. There is even a psychological reason for this fact. Cognitive consistency theory in psychology focuses on the fact that the human mind wants to have some degree of consistency in everything they do in life.
Some people interpret this as a degree of “sameness” or familiarity. However you look at it, it is important to note that there can be some variation in the consistency. But you should strive to keep the essential elements similar if you were going to establish this feeling for your brand.
What Inconsistency Does
The theory of cognitive consistency highlights some of the results of inconsistency. Three of the tenets of inconsistency include:
- People expect consistency.
- Inconsistency creates cognitive dissonance.
- Dissonance restores us to consistency.
What all of this means is that, when a customer sees your branding elements such as your logo and website on your main page and then clicks on your social media or YouTube channel, they expect to see some similarity between the aspects. To see visual examples of how this is done, check out these custom social profile images.
If they do not find this consistency, it will create a state of cognitive dissonance or confusion about what they know of your brand in the other location. The brain begins to sort through the information to make sense of the information that doesn’t jive with the other information.
The feeling of dissonance between the two conflicting bits of information creates a motivation to return to a state of consistency. So the mind will try to fill in the gaps to compensate for the conflicting different data.
Then a conclusion will be drawn based on the best guess on what the truth is.
You don’t want to create this sort of conundrum with your customers and risk maybe even losing some of them in the process. That’s why it’s important to be consistent with your branding across all of your platforms and web properties.
How to Create Brand Consistency
There are some ways that you can create brand consistency for your brand. Here are a few things you can try to create consistency for your company online.
- Use uniform colors.– When you use similar colors between your website, blog, and social media, it will be more obvious that it is your brand. Using the same or similar colors will enforce the idea that it is your brand across various platforms.
- Create uniform images.– By creating similar or uniform images among your different online assets, you will help people understand that it is your brand and create better branding. Don’t feel you have to make the images exactly alike. However, you can create variations or different sizes, depending on the platform. You can also place them in varied locations to make it more creative. But feature the same image in different ways so that people start to identify your brand more readily, no matter what platform they find you on.
- Use your logo wisely.– Clever use of your logo across your social media platforms and website will help create the brand consistency you need to promote your brand. Your logo is an important part of your branding so make sure you have it prominently displayed on your site.
- Don’t send mixed messages.– When you put one thing on one site and another on your social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, you will confuse your customers. They may also have trouble knowing what your brand stands for. Keep it simple and focus on the most important aspects of your brand to create brand consistency.
Keep your icon the same
Another tip that you can use to create your brand consistency across your different social platforms is to keep the same icon. This is the small usually round-shaped picture that you upload of yourself or your logo. When it is the same, people come to recognize it across many different locations and start to associate your brand with various graphics in a logical form.
You should also make sure that you have the same images and icons within all of your social media platforms, not just Facebook and Twitter. Your Instagram account, Pinterest, Snapchat, and any of the other social media channels should all show off your customized images or logo that people have come to know about your brand.
Know your 3-5 words
Recently in an online with Daymond John that he holds for entrepreneurs, he mentioned the importance of your 3-5 words. By this, he was referring to the summary of what your business is about. This is a good test to see if you can summarize your brand in just a few words.
Daymond John states that you are not ready to promote your brand if you are unable to summarize it in 3-5 words. This is a challenge for some people whose branding may include a variety of products or services. It’s okay to have a variety of products or services, but you should still be able to pin down your brand in a few words.
So when thinking about your online branding, consider using these 3-5 words as a slogan or incorporating them some way within your branding efforts. It will start to catch on with customers and should prove to be something beneficial in the long run.
Start with your website
Despite how you approach your branding efforts, always start with your website. No matter how many social media platforms you place your branding with, you need first to make sure your website is in good order.
Web Design Team focuses on creating custom-designed websites that you can build a brand from that will help you establish your name with your target audience.
We start with finding out about your business and learning what your brand stands for. Then we create a unique website that reflects the values of your company that you can expound on.
Once you get your website up and running, you can take the finer aspects of your site and emulate that effect on your social media platforms. You need to keep a level of brand consistency across all platforms so that your customers will have no doubt they are in the right place.
See us at webdesignteam.com to get started and make 2017 your best branding year ever!
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