Stride Post Latest News
Related Articles
A strong brand is a key business driver. Strong brands enable you to create stronger relationships with your customers and increase their overall value. Customers who feel emotionally connected to your company can have a life worth more than 300% greater than customers who don’t.
Your brand’s core component is content. The foundation of your brand is content and how to create a brand style guideline that connects all aspects of your brand, from ads to content.
Why Are Brand Guidelines Important?
Your brand guidelines help you to connect all aspects of your message. You’ve likely spent a lot of time defining your brand and finding ways to connect with customers if you want to build a strong brand.
Your brand guidelines are a way to communicate your vision, mission, and brand identity to potential customers at every touchpoint. These guidelines help you establish your brand personality and ensure that everyone working for you knows how to represent your company.
You can also use brand guidelines to establish your brand voice and tone structure, and rules.
- Logo
- Fonts
- Color palettes
- Even business card design
Digital marketing experts establish consistent branding by creating brand guidelines. These guidelines will help you create a consistent message visible in all your content. Your audience will recognize your brand’s visual design and tone through your content, including blog posts, marketing communications, social media posts, and visual content.
How To Set Brand Guidelines
These are the steps to help you create your brand guidelines. Here are some examples of brand guidelines that you can use as a guide.
1: Get Started With Your Mission
Your mission is the basis of your existence. It’s an excellent starting point for developing brand guidelines. Your brand voice, as well as your core values, will be shaped by your mission, vision, or core values. It will help you connect with your customers, so it is a good idea to use this foundation as the basis of your brand guidelines.
Boy Scouts of America’s slogan is “Prepared.” For life. The organization’s mission is the foundation of all branding. This is the foundation of the BSA brand guidelines. This page of brand guidelines describes Scouts’ mission and tells a compelling tale about how Scouts are prepared for life.
Your brand guidelines should include your mission and values. This will help your brand connect with everyone who reads them. This will serve as a guideline for everyone working on your brand. The brand story is a guideline for every stage of marketing and branding, including the logo, content writing, and ad copy. Branding professionals can create stronger connections between brand elements by telling a solid story.
2: Decide Who Will Be Using Your Guidelines
A copy of your branding guidelines is needed for many reasons. Sponsorship of an event may require you to give instructions on how your logo should be used on banners or other event merchandise. Professional content writers may be hired to assist you in achieving your SEO goals. Your logo could be included in the author bio of an article you co-write in a trade publication.
These are all everyday marketing activities, but they can also be used to alter your brand’s identity. If your brand guidelines are not followed, someone could change the colors and proportions of your logo on a sponsorship banner, weakening the brand connection with customers.
Your brand guidelines will be essential for all new employees. They will need to be able to create reports and presentations that are consistent with your brand.
3: Set Your Logo Guidelines
Your logo, along with your mission, is an essential component of your brand. An average customer sees between 4000 and 10000 ads each day. Many of these advertisements include logos. Your logo is an essential part of your branding. It’s the first image people see when they think about your brand. Your logo can help customers remember you better than your competitors if they are exposed to it repeatedly.
Be consistent
Consistency is key to making your logo memorable. Your brand guidelines should outline the rules and limitations of your logo. Customers might not be confused if your company is well-known and has a strong brand.
If companies wish to add social media sharing buttons to their websites, they may change the logos of each social media company to reflect their brand colors. Many people know the Facebook “F,” or Twitter’s bird logo. Changing the logo colors won’t confuse those who already know them.
Your logo could be used for many reasons. Your partners may use your logo to promote your affiliate marketing program. The brand guidelines should contain clear instructions on how others can use your logo. You might forbid people from using your logo in content that isn’t consistent with your mission.
Incorporate rules for:
- Sizing
- Scaling
- Colors
- Fonts
- Use of images
4: Select Your Brand Color Combinations
Although it may seem simple, color is an essential component of your brand. Your logo’s most identifiable feature is color. Different colors can create different psychological connections. Your company’s visual identity is established by choosing the right colors for your business. The following should be included in your brand’s color scheme:
- Primary Color
- Secondary colors
- Background colors
Your brand’s personality can also be communicated through color. You’ll avoid using muted colors and an excellent color as your dominant color if your brand personality is bright, cheerful, and energetic. A graphic designer can help you choose the right colors for your business if you are unfamiliar with color theory. Remember that your brand’s visual elements significantly impact your brand’s recognition, so it is essential to choose a suitable color scheme.
For Color Use, You Should Set Separate Guidelines
After choosing the official colors of your brand, make rules and a style guide for how to use them. Ikea, a Swedish furniture retailer, is one of the most well-known brands in the world. Strong brand guidelines explain the origins of the blue and yellow logo and the rules for how to use them.
The brand guidelines for Ikea state that blue and yellow are a nod to the Swedish flag and that the combination of contrasts makes the logo stand out. According to the brand guidelines, you must use specific shades of yellow or blue when using Ikea’s logo.
5: Establish guidelines for brand imagery
Your brand comprises the images you use on your website, advertising, and blog posts. Images that work well for one brand may not be suitable for another. These guidelines can be helpful to anyone who works with you on social media and blog posts, as well as video marketing and other content.
If you run a B2B business with professional service clients, stock photos of people drinking or doing other illegal activities would be avoided. These images may be acceptable for companies specializing in event promotion or hospitality.
All images used by your company in ads, brochures, and social media posts should be consistent with your brand voice. Do you want to be humorous and lighthearted or severe and professional? You can create guidelines for imagery to ensure that all touchpoints with customers communicate the same brand identity.
6: Choose Your Tone And Voice
After you have established the style for your visual assets (including your logo, colors, and brand imagery), you can now focus on your written assets. Your brand voice and tone communicate your personality to potential and current customers. A digital marketing company can also be hired for this purpose.
These elements should be used in conjunction with your visual style. Everything, from blog posts to videos to ads and social media content, will be influenced by your tone and voice. Consistency is key to any written communication between customers and you. Your customers could be confused if your social media posts are funny and lighthearted, but your blog posts remain severe and factual.
Customers may be unable to tell which tone is authentic to your brand. You can get inspiration from your vision and mission statements if you don’t already have a tone and voice for your brand.
