It was fun, but it is now over.

It has been on the horizon for a while now, but it’s time to make it official. Konstant and New is officially closing its doors. But leaving them ajar, just for you.

I haven’t been looking for any new clients for awhile now and though I’m still doing some branding work for old clients, that is it. However… if a project that really interests me comes along, I won’t turn it away.

What this means for you:

• If you are a paid subscriber: this is the point at which you can download any paid articles that interest you and then cancel your subscription! Nothing new is coming in for paid subscribers, so save your money!

• The Brand Framework course is still up and will remain up and active for as long as the hosting platform allows it. You can still sign up and I will be responding to any questions regarding the course, but there will be no more updates.

  • On that note - the course is now a one-time fee! No more subscriptions or continued payments. If, however, the price isn’t in your budget, contact me beforehand and we’ll work something out.

• This blog will also remain up. I won’t be adding any new blog articles to it, but what is here will remain here for as long as Substack allows it. BUT… if you have any specific questions, comment on the article and I will reply!

  • Which means that any future emails coming from here will be related only to new books coming out. I will still be publishing a few branding workbooks (like this one) after updating their content, but this is a low priority for me.

• As I mentioned, for the right project, I am willing to come back! So, take a look at my favourite projects I’ve worked on in the past and if you feel we’ll be a right fit, feel free to reach out.

What this means for me:

• I will have time to focus on the one thing that I have always returned to: Books. I’ll be working primarily with indie authors in the fantasy and sci-fi genres.

• I will be able to focus on building together and then managing a new business with my sister (something we’ve been talking about for a while).

• And I will be able to return more seriously to one of my real passions: writing. I’m proud to say I already have a few works out, but I want to get more!

Thank you again for joining me on this journey and I wish you all the best in growing your business.

PS. I had someone reach out to me last year with interest of purchasing the course - as in the ownership for it completely. And, to tell you the truth, so much work went into creating it and I never marketed it properly, so I am more than willing to give it away - for the right price. The initial deal fell through, but if you’re interested in taking a look at what’s inside and are serious in discussing acquiring all of its content - reach out to me.

In this article, I want to talk about why you should listen to an outsider's opinion, what to take from it, and what to look for when looking for help on your brand. Because we all want help, even if it's only someone to tell you that your brand is awesome or that graphic is cool.

And the reason I am bringing all of this up is due to personal bias and assumptions. We all make assumptions, even if we don't want to, and sometimes it can be so much easier to guess than it is to actually reach out and ask for help or someone's opinion. Here is why this can hobble you...

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Why opinions are important

We all have a personal bias that has been built up based on our upbringing and history. A lot of it is influenced by outside sources, but we also have a lot of internal factors that have a say in it. I'm not going to go into the psychology or ethical studies regarding bias, that's not my field of expertise, but if you're interested in learning more about how your personal bias can affect you, take a look at this very interesting article with some tips to test yourself.

In the same way you have a personal bias, so do I, so does your ideal client, so do the people that you interact with, and so does everybody else. Here is a quick exercise I want you to do. I want you to grab a piece of paper and pen and I want you to write down the first word that comes to mind when you think of the colour red.

Was it an emotion?

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In this article, I want to share a few tips to help you stay organized for your brand as related to previous blog posts I've written.

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Brand guidelines

Your brand guidelines are one huge brand asset that contains everything you’ve done so far for you to use. Your content style guide focuses on your language, voice, tone, and basic rules (ex. Canadian vs American spelling). Your design style guide focuses on your colours, fonts, logos, and other visual elements (ex. patterns or photo styles). And your brand style guide is a combination of the other two, plus a few extras like your brand's vision, mission, personality, and so on.

This brand style guide is what is also known as brand guidelines.

Inside this one huge asset, you’re going to find everything you or anybody else is ever going to want to know about your brand. That’s the point of it… to collect everything in one place, organize it, and make it easy to use. 

Read all the details in the dedicated blog article.

Cornerstone documents

A cornerstone document doesn't have to be only a document, it can be a system or even a collection of folders.

I want you to think of it as your base content and everything else you created around it. For example, your brand guidelines are the cornerstone document for your brand. Everything you create about your brand is based on those guidelines.

Another example, I use ClickUp as my content management system now. That means I write almost all of my content on there. For me, ClickUp is my cornerstone document because everything I want to say is either already on there, or gets added on there.

Read about the top three benefits of using a cornerstone document here.

Style guides

When it comes to your brand, there are three different style guides I want you to think about… Design, Content, and Brand. Technically, your brand style guide can be seen as both an individual and a combination of all three. However, it does not contain only design and content.

The main point of style guides is to ensure consistency. Now, this can be useful both if you are an individual and if you’re working with a team. For example, as an individual that creates three new pieces of content a week for a different platform each, you want to make sure that the design, content, and workflow are the same every week for each platform.

This will help you build up healthy habits and speed up the process.

In addition to making the process faster, it can also be really useful if you ever feel stuck creating content. For example, if you have a content template created for your live videos on Facebook, it can help keep you on track and even provide content ideas.

Style guides can be considered cornerstone documents and technically one of them is your brand guidelines, but you can check out this article for more details on the three different types of style guides you can create for your brand and what you can include in them.

An organizational system

You can use any system you are comfortable or familiar with to keep yourself organized. In fact, the main key is using something that you already know. This will save you time from learning a new system, getting distracted, or trying to do it somebody else's way.

Having said that, I still want to share some examples of organizational systems with you that each have their own benefits.

Content management system

A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content (content management). This can be collaborative, individual, and it does not have to be digital or used only for content.

The point of this system though is to have a birds-eye view of all of your content and still have the ability to go in and look at the details. In order to make this system work better, you may want to use different categories and settings to help you organize everything. For example, you can have a calendar view of your content to know what is going out when, then categorize it based on where it is going out, then further categorize it based on the goal, target, content pillar, and so on.

In a digital system, and depending what system you use, you may be able to filter your view so you can keep track of everything better. For example, I use ClickUp as my CMS (and for a few other things) and have multiple views and filters active at all times when looking at my content. One is my calendar, which is there to make sure I have content going out every day, another is my brain dump, which helps me organize my content for future repurposing, and then I use colour filters to ensure I am posting on the proper platforms at specific intervals, using all four of my content pillars, and aiming for all four of my major goals.

In fact, as I was writing this article (in ClickUp before posting it on here), I went back to my calendar and checked if I have enough posts on Instagram that advertise this month (where my four targets are provide value, inspire, entertain, and advertise).

I will be writing a separate article all about ClickUp at a later date and how I use it to keep organized for my content creation, client projects, and services, so stay tuned if you want to learn more about that.

Inventory document

All businesses will have an inventory of stock they sell to customers and some even have an internal inventory to keep track of items within the office or products being sold. An inventory of your documents can be very useful too. This is really useful when you have multiple collaterals for both in-house and customer use. It can also be very helpful for keeping track of both the documents and the status of each project.

You can use an inventory document to keep track of revision number and date, where a document is located on your computer, what is the progress, who is responsible for the next stage (if you're working with a team), due dates, and more.

The trick here is to keep this file regularly updated and all links working! Think of it as a table of contents or an index of all of your work. And, the best part about this document for all you graphic designers is that it can make naming files for your clients so much easier. For example, here is the longest inventory code I have ever inputted before and this is also the file name I used...

Name-Name_Project.a_Rev.#

The first letters stand for my client, the next letters stand for me, the numbers represent the project we are working on, and then the revision number we are on.

Here it is in use...

Melissa-Kristina_Launch.IG_Rev.4

There was also another file that ended in Launch.FB_Final once those graphics were done.

Do you use any of these or have your own system to keep organized? Whatever you have, it is most important that it is useful and it makes your life easier, not harder!

Firstly, templates can be used for pretty much every single part of your brand and business that repeats. This can include your social media posts, your contracts, your pitches, your blog posts, your newsletters, your proposals, and so much more. Basically, I want you to think about every single part of your brand touchpoints (you can read more about touchpoints here) that is seen by more than one person.

In this case, I want to talk about content templates and pitches in particular!

Now, a template is NOT a copy/paste item. If you're having a sale and want to send private messages to people to let them know, using the exact same message and copy/pasting it to everyone, does not make it a template. It makes it a copy/paste message that your readers will most likely catch right away is not meant only for them. And yes, that is the case even if you change the name at the top of the message.

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Here is an example of what I meant (details removed because I don't want to bash anyone)...

Hey girl!

I'm not sure if you saw, but we are hosting our Meet & Greet next week!

During this time, we'll be covering [list of items related to the met and greet].

I wanted to personally invite you because you have been such a supportive part of our community and would love to support you back!

Here's a link for you to join [insert link here] and hope to see you there!

[sender's name]

Now, I actually received this message from a person that I have talked to before that actually knew of my struggles in my business and had helped me with them in the past. If this was sent via email, completely different story because we all know that newsletters are sent to multiple people. But a private message? It looks copy/paste and it feels so impersonal that I automatically dismissed it. And then I realized who sent it and went back to respond because I still want to support her even if this event was not at all useful for me (and none of the points outlined related to my issues).

(PS. Even with the service details, link, and name removed, you should be able to tell who this message is from. The fact that I have received various iterations of the above message over the past year tells me that everyone found one template online, modified it for their service, and then copy/pasted it to their audience.)

Now, what if you tried to modify this and turned it into a template you can personalize? Yes, it will take much longer to do it, but it will send a completely different feeling across (even with the same message).

Here is an example (ps. keep in mind I am not a pitch expert, I don't like to do it, so I do look for online templates of how others do them and then modify them to fit my service, product, and who I am talking to, but here is the base template I used for a private sale I launched last year).

Hey [change the name],

How have you been? It's been a while since we last talked! What ended up happening with your [topic from your last conversation]?

OR

I know we chatted recently, but I wanted to send you something on a more professional basis.

I am reaching out today because I am doing a sale this Friday that may help you out if you're still struggling with [topic]. I am going to be putting up my [service/product] on sale and I think this would be perfect for you since we/you can [list some of the benefits of this service/product related to their struggle].

Let me know if you're interested and I'll send you a private link for booking/purchasing!

You can see right away that this is personalized and the person reading it will know it was meant for them because how likely is it that you talked to someone else about this topic that long ago? On top of that, you are referring to an issue that this person already has and then you're linking your service or product to that specific issue.

Keep in mind, this is pitching somebody that you already have discourse with! I will never recommend pitching out of the blue and the main reason for that is because I have no idea how to fill out this template without having talked to the person beforehand. The more personal the message is, the more likely you are to make a deep connection with that someone!

Now, one other thing I want to note with this specific template. There is no link, no price, no discount, no numbers, and only one date (deadline for the sale). This prompts a conversation because if the person is interested, they will ask for this information!

From the above template, I sent it to nine people (it was a private sale) and all of them responded! In fact, five of them asked me for the details and four of them purchased! the previous example? It was a FREE service, and I still didn't want to join nor did I even care about when it was.

And I get it, if you want to send your sale to 50 people or 500 people, it's going to be a lot harder to customize and personalize every single message. But in that case, there are other ways to contact them! Everybody knows that newsletters don't go out to a single person, so those make more sense to be more generalized. But if you're having a one-on-one conversation with a person, consider how they will read it!

If anything, here is an example of another pitch I got, and this is one that I know was copy/paste but actually worked much better than the previous example...

Hey Kristina, I know we haven't talked in a while and this may seem out of the blue but I wanted to let you know I am doing a sale on my coaching package this week. Let me know if you want more details!

Simple, quick, not a lot of details and asking for my permission to pitch me. I loved it! And this was from a person who I talked to previously about their coaching packages and ended up not purchasing because I didn't have the budget for it. In fact, if this pitch had come two months earlier (when I was struggling with a launch schedule), I would have jumped on it so fast!

So, at the end of the day, I want to say one thing here! Think about how the person that is receiving your message will feel when they read it. Templates are a good starting point to figure out what to send, but personalizing them is where the power is at!

I have a first little exercise I like to give people who are just starting out with their brand, where the focus is to find three people and focus on them.

The idea here is that those three people you chose? Well… you chose them, not me, or anybody else.

Imagine if you hired a brand strategist and let them run on their own. They'll come back eventually with an amazing strategy in place and tell you how to implement it, but if they never talked to you during the process… how do you know that exact same strategy wasn't given to someone else?

Get involved, not only in creating your brand but talking about it!

The one thing I want you to keep in mind here is, it takes time to create a brand. It's not something you start today for tomorrow.

As your business grows and evolves over time, so does your brand. As such, your brand is never finished.

However, creating that base that can help you draw in more clients will help your business grow, which will lead to your brand evolving even more!

It’s a cycle.

Building a strong foundation for your brand always takes time. And the longer you wait? The longer until your brand can start helping you bring in clients.

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Let's imagine for a second…

You read my latest blog article or signed up for my newsletter and got a tip about branding today. But instead of taking action now, you decided to either save it for later or just ignore it. Then the following week you remember that there was something about branding somewhere in your mailbox or on a site somewhere, but you don't want to go searching for it.

So, the next month comes around and you start it the exact same way you did the last one. Maybe something you see online will remind you about working on your brand, so you go online and search for what branding is. But then you get distracted because there is so much information out there that it confuses you, or you've found the latest social media trend and want to try that out instead, or a client is hounding you to finish something for them.

And you delay it, yet again. And then something reminds you about branding again but you don't have time for this shit. And the cycle repeats again, and again, and again, and again.

And next thing you know, it's been months since you first heard from me and you're still in the exact same place.

So you think, naah… I don't need a brand, I can figure this out on my own. Or the even worse thought that comes from social media where I got so many people reading my posts. But are they really? Are any of those followers going to become clients? Or are most of them bot accounts, sugar daddies, and people too busy pitching you?

So, you delete a few followers, write another awesome idea, and continue creating content for the ether. And your ideal client? They are out there, buying from your competitors because they don't even know you exist.

So… why wait?

What's stopping you from starting your brand creation process right now? If it's because you don't know where to start, I call bullshit! Here's your first step…

If you haven't already, now's the time to introduce yourself! Reach out to somebody, anybody, and tell them who you are and what you do! You have to take that first step in order to run and you don't need any type of offer or sale to do so!

Now's the time to take that first step! 😀

Reach out and talk to people about you and your passion.

The question I want you to ask yourself now is... what's keeping you from building your brand?

Is it too much work with no visible return on investment? Is it no time to focus on your own business when you're working for your clients? Is it too expensive to get something specific for you? Or are you downloading all the freebies and trying to figure out how they all work together?

Or maybe… you're looking for that final push to get you to sit down and focus?

You want to get your brand on track and working for you. You want to get it out of your head and in front of your ideal clients. You want to be able to hire someone that can save you time not waste it while you're teaching them how to do it or double-check all of their work.

And this is why the biggest secret to building a brand is you. You have to get started, get involved, and get your hands dirty. Take control of your brand.

That is a very important thing to keep in mind. The people you want to work with.

Don't focus on who wants your services, what is trending, or how to change it. Focus on finding the right people and connecting your services and products with them. It will take time to figure this out and it will involve a lot of trial and error. I'd love to give you a perfect framework for how everything works, but the truth is... everybody is different, every business is different, every person behind it is different, and everybody has a different idea of who their ideal clients are.

So, here are the 7 steps to help you DIY your brand as a service provider. Before you get into those though, I do have two very important notes for you to keep in mind.

Firstly, your brand comes after you've established your business.

Secondly, this is based on the idea of building an audience-based brand, not a personal or corporate one. If you want to know more details about this, check out my previous article on the different types of brands.

Now, let's get to it!

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The steps

1. Get your business up and running and clients coming in.

2. Learn everything you can about the people you want to work with.

3. Figure out where your brand is heading and how it will get there.

4. Make your brand approachable and easy to connect with.

5. Attract the right people by creating your brand's visuals.

6. Use, grow, and change your brand over time as you use it.

7. Be prepared to fail and turn your mistakes into stepping stones.

Get your business up and running and clients coming in

As I mentioned earlier as an important step, your brand comes after you've established your business. You want to know what services you will be offering, how to price them, how to package them, and how to do them. Get some experience in doing what you love to do and start putting together testimonials, success stories, portfolios, and other forms of sharing what you do. Referrals are extremely important in getting clients, more so than social media, advertising, or marketing.

More importantly, doing this will get you in the right mind-frame that your brand is a part of your business and supports it, not the whole shebang. Doing this will also help you start building a base for your brand based on your own personal preferences and figuring out what you want your business to achieve and do for you in the future.

Learn everything you can about the people you want to work with

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Before you get to those, though, I do want to clarify one thing: these are points that can help you stand out, but doing these does not mean that they will work and, more importantly, doing these does not mean attracting attention. There is a difference between bringing eyes to your brand and making your brand stand out. That will be covered in a final point at the bottom here in more detail.

So, for now, let’s get started with 4 ways to make your brand stand out.

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Use language unique to you

You already know about the importance of having a unique message or voice and how that can make an impact, however how you deliver your message is also important. I’ve previously talked about the importance of style guides, but take a look at that article again and focus on the content style guide section because this will talk more about how to ensure your content creation is consistent.

Now remember, your message is as important as the way you deliver it. Consider for a moment posting content without a content style guide, this means that whatever graphic elements you are using will be the main way how people will recognize your brand. In order to ensure your audience can recognize you through your content, regardless of graphic elements, you want to come up with a language style guide that is unique to you and easily recognizable.

Think about the basics for this, such as always greeting your audience the same way, which is different than how your competitors do it. For example, I know so many female entrepreneurs whose clients are other female entrepreneurs and they start off their messages with “hey babe” or “hey power lady” or “hey lady boss” or some other variation of this. To me, I’ve seen so many different versions of this that none of them stand out and I can’t tell you which one is for which brand. I can, however, tell you exactly what brand greets me with “hey minion” and the brand that completely skips the greeting and gets right into the message.

Be consistent and repetitive

I’ve already mentioned briefly in the previous point about consistency, but I will repeat it because repetition and consistency are pretty much on the same point here. Again, with so much content being available online, not everybody is going to see everything you post, so don’t be afraid of repeating yourself. In fact, do repeat yourself.

You want to make sure that the message you want to send is the same and can be seen by multiple people, even if it’s not the exact same copy and paste message. Focus on the meaning behind what you want your audience to know and keep on saying it with the same consistency as everything else that you’re doing.

Note. I’ve previously talked about my belief that consistency is not as important as creativity in my newsletter, but I do want to clarify one thing here: social media platforms like consistency. If you’re straying away from those, then don’t worry about how often you post as much as what type of content you post. You don’t want to be sharing info about why your services are the best one day and then the next day you’re saying, but you don’t really need these services. Dramatization, but you get the message.

Be known for a specific platform, tool, or client

Make sure that your audience knows who you are for at least one reason out of your control. That one sounded way better in my head before I wrote it, so let me explain. You want to have one thing about your brand that is dependent on an outside source and be known for it.

This can be a specific platform where you’re rocking it, even if your services don’t include that platform at all or you don’t use it for anything other than marketing yourself. It can be a tool that you use on a regular basis and know the ins and outs of so well that people can ask you questions about it without putting you on the spot, and again, it doesn’t have to be something that you actually offer and do for your clients.

Or, my personal favourite, it can be a very specific type of client that you are helping. This is the whole niching down thing that everybody is always talking about. The way to use this to stand out though is to niche down so far that you become the only person ever that helps this specific client. This will be really hard to do, but it’s not impossible!

Question the norm and the flow

I’m not saying to go against it and I’m not saying to disregard it completely, but take a look at the trends that are happening with your competitors and what they’re all doing and ask yourself why. If you are talking to your competitors (which is always encouraged!) then ask them why they’ve decided to take that stance.

Going with the flow means you are one of everybody else that says the same thing. And yes, it may be the right thing according to your services and what you offer or maybe even your morals or other reasons, but going with the flow will not make you stand out. Now, if you’re one of those people that likes to go against the flow regardless of what direction it’s going in, then this one will be easy for you, just do your thing.

On the other hand, if you’re agreeing with the flow, then I’d suggest diving deeper into it and questioning it. You can still go with it, you can still offer your services the exact same as before, but ask yourself and, almost as importantly, ask your audience why you’re all following this. I’m going to use the brand strategy industry as an example in this because I’ve seen most of my competitors talk about how the first step in your brand strategy is your core (who you are and why you’re doing this).

I don’t agree with this because I believe that this changes. This is why I talk about audience-based brands and building your brand based on your audience first, not on your goals and visions and dreams for your brand. Those are important, yes, but those change. I’ve written a lot more info about this here if you want to take a look, but the crux of it is: I started questioning why everybody starts with the core and this didn’t make sense to me. Or to most of my clients.

Now, I do want to touch back on a point made before these 4 breakdowns. Going against the flow does not mean you will get new eyes on your content. In fact, it most likely means the opposite. Popular opinion is popular for a reason and going against that either gets you buried, ignored, or (if you have enough of a following) can make splits and change the flow completely. If you’re stubborn and want to do it your way from the beginning, be aware that it will be a slow and painful journey (speaking from experience).

1. Use a cornerstone document for your entire brand.

2. Build an internal workflow that translates to a client journey.

3. Create your brand for your audience, not for yourself.

This article will be all about the first one (to keep them shorter) so make sure to stick around for the other tips!

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Use a cornerstone document for your entire brand.

Let's get started right away with what is a cornerstone document and the purpose of using one for your brand. Firstly, I've already written a detailed article about The power behind cornerstone documents. That one goes into a lot more details, information, and even some examples, so make sure to read that if you want more info. For now, though, here are the basics.

The original definition of a cornerstone is the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation. All other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entire structure.

Construction, right? And it kind of makes sense, it’s used as a guideline to build something bigger and better.

A cornerstone document is similar in the sense that is used to build your entire brand or individual aspects of your brand (like your content).

For example, cornerstone documents can be used to help you repurpose content and make content creation easier. This is when you write big, break it down into smaller parts to use on different platforms, then break it down even smaller to turn into graphics, and so on and so forth.

In this example, the first big write is your cornerstone document.

And, as I mentioned, it's not limited only to your content. Hint, hint… your brand guidelines are a cornerstone document too.

The thing is, using the concept of cornerstone documents is very useful in…

◇ keeping you organized and for you to keep track of everything,

◇ making sure you are consistent in your message and style, and

◇ creating any type of content based on your document is much easier and faster.

Sounds too good to be true? Probably. So, let's be honest and blunt. It is too good to be true. I mean, yes… a proper cornerstone document can definitely help you with all of these things and more. However, creating one is… painful, to say the least.

The best way to get this is to create your document first and then build everything else around it. And make sure it includes everything. This, however… can be very hard for anybody to do, especially for perfectionists. Because we are always learning and growing and the information in this document can change as you grow. So, the point here is to create a fluid document that changes as you grow and evolve.

Feeling overwhelmed? Don't worry, I'm going to share a secret with you…

Grabbing all your content and putting it into one document probably won't help you much. Creating a folder on your computer where you drop all your visual assets may make it easier to find them in the future. Filling up your to-do list and calendar with tasks for your business will only slow you down.

What matters is knowing what your assets are! And knowing what they are, means creating a brand strategy that encompasses every single aspect of your brand and business. Here's the best way for you to test how much work will be included in your brand's growth…

Ask yourself, if you were to hire someone on your team TODAY, how much work will it be for you? And this is a legit question, even if you don't plan on expanding your team. The truth is, you know how much easier it is to get someone else to help you with your business. Whether it's your social media, your finances, your website updates, your graphic design... whatever it is… delegating is one of the ways you grow.

And you know this, since others delegate their own business work to you, right?

Build an internal workflow that translates to a client journey.

Well, tip two is one that a lot of people get confused by at first when I mention it. After all, what do workflows and client journeys have to do with one another, let alone with your brand? If you want to know the exact details and get a more in-depth view of this one, take a look at my article on The power of detailed workflows and Workflows, client journeys, and your brand.

Otherwise, here is a very quick overview:

What do workflows and client journeys have to do with one another, let alone with your brand?

• The quick answer… everything.

• The long answer… everything your clients care about.

Okay, okay, let's break it down a bit more.

An internal workflow is how you create and use any function of your business. For example…

1. Look through social media at competitors' profiles.

2. Record their top content down in your notebook.

3. Put in a future date when you'd like to put up your version.

4. Write your own version and create the graphics for it.

5. Schedule it or put it down on your calendar when to post.

6. Go back to social media and respond to interactions about it.

Okay… maybe yours isn't exactly like that, but you get the idea.

A workflow can be for how you create new content for social media, how to create a new freebie or lead magnet for your clients, how you onboard your clients or maybe hires, how, how, how… Basically, anything that you do that is repeated has a workflow. And that repetition can be daily (write your to-do list), weekly (schedule your social media), monthly (onboard X amount of clients), quarterly (create a new freebie), or annual (file your taxes).

And these are only examples. But basically, if it repeats… having a workflow makes it much easier for you.

On the other hand, a client journey is very similar to a workflow except it's not on your end. In the example before with creating content for social media, here is an example of the equivalent client journey…

1. Go on social media and look at new posts.

2. Access your latest post and interact with it.

3. Scroll away or close the app.

4. Go on social media again.

Shorter and much easier, yes… but in order for your clients to find your content, it should be on there. In order for them to interact with it, it should be worthy of interaction. And in both the case of your workflows and your client journeys, they are dependent on your brand. I'm going to keep going with the same example of social media for multiple reasons, though the main one is to keep things consistent.

One of the parts of your brand strategy that you want to focus on is called your brand’s essence. This includes your brand’s personality, voice and tone, and language style. When you create content, you want to make sure that your personality shows through in how you write it, your voice and tone can related to what your audience is expecting, and your language is consistent with your previous posts.

And let's go back to the workflows for a moment, because having the right tools for your workflows, makes an impact on both your brand and your audience. Let's say you use a scheduling tool for social media. This allows you to batch your content creation, make sure everything goes live when you want it to, and gives you some free time. The opposite could be stopping mid-project to go on social media to post, being so absorbed in what you're doing that you forget to post, or grabbing your phone during vacation time to make sure you've posted when the algorithm says so.

Both of these translate to your audience…

◇ They will see that you're either posting regularly or not (and I am not saying one is better than the other!),

◇ they will see how fast you respond to their interactions,

◇ they will see the words you use on a regular basis…

◇ they will get to know you and your brand.

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Think of it as your modern business card. You can do without it, but it is much better (and more credible) for your business to have one. And to touch on a quick language change above, there is a difference between your business and your brand.

We live in the digital age, and while having a social media account is all fine and dandy to help you with your reach and increase your audience base, the goal of any entrepreneur isn’t to keep people on social media. You want to get people out of a platform that is filled with millions of users and billions of distractions, and take them to a place that is all about you and then. And let’s not even get started on your dependence on social media.

I previously wrote an article on The biggest mistakes to avoid when creating your brand and there is an entire section in there about depending on social media. Take a look at that for more info on the topic. Otherwise, in this article, I am going to talk about the basics of creating a website for your brand.

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WEBSITE CREATION

So, you want to create a website. There are so many tools and free services readily available on the web for you. Use the resources available at your disposal. Now, I am not saying learn how to code, but you should at least know what is involved in creating a website.

In fact, forget about coding at all, unless that’s something you’re interested in. Most modern website creation platforms are all visually based. This is what we used to call WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). When the term first came out, it wasn’t exactly true as you had to go in and tweak the code for pretty much every customization that you made. Now, though… it is so much easier!

Having said that, I do want to clarify a few things…

1. Don’t go with the basics

2. Customize as much as you can

3. Learn how to or pay someone to customize even more

Outside of that… the first thing you need to keep in mind is that website creation takes time. Yes, all of these new platforms, themes, and templates definitely speed it up. But speed isn’t always the best. Especially when you end up with a website that looks exactly like ten others (some of who may be your competitors) with some different text.

TIMEFRAME

How long will it take? Well… anywhere between a day and a year. There are too many factors to take into consideration during website creation in order to get an accurate estimate. This can include the number of pages, graphics, the amount of content, different features, your own skills (or whoever you hire), and so many more.

A few years ago I found an article that tries to quantify the timeframe for website creation and it was updated again. You can take a look at it here for more info, but here’s a quick summary of his timeframe…

• Consider how soon can you or your web designer start working on this and how much time you can dedicate to it.

• If working with someone else, ask them for their process to get a rough estimate of how long it’ll be before you can review the work.

• Think about how picky you want to be between the review and launch stages, and if you want to do any promotions for your launch.

And while in the article these three are more geared towards hiring someone to create your website, they do apply if you decide to do it all yourself too. He breaks down website creation into multiple stages that take around 12 weeks to get from concept to completion. Personally, I think this is a pretty good time frame.

Having said that, using themes and templates and then modifying them, definitely speeds up the process and can drop you down in half (I have previously completed a full website design and development in a week with the discovery stage taking almost a month before that).

For all of that, I want to clarify that I think website creation is broken down into three main steps before you even think about platforms, or cording, or hiring a web designer…

• Structure your content

• Look for something you like

• Get it done with the right designer

STRUCTURE YOUR CONTENT

What is your website going to be about? What do you want to display? Is it a portfolio or a service? Is it for your brand or a place to rant online? Start writing everything down and group it. Grouping, in this case, means you are starting to structure it and create a site map.

A good way in knowing how to structure your site is by looking at your competitors’ websites or even other websites on the same or similar subject. For example, it is pretty much a standard for all portfolios to have an About me and somewhere to display the portfolio pieces. The content displayed there could also give you ideas for what to write on your own, but make sure you don’t copy anyone else!

When you are working on structuring your website, I do want you to get into the headspace of your audience and users. There is an unspoken (?) rule of three that I like to implement in pretty much everything I do, but it’s especially easy in website and app designs.

Think of it this way… where do you want your audience to end up on your site as a final step. For example, if you’re selling services, making the payment would be a good final step to have. Your goal is to get your audience there within three clicks or less. No matter where they start on your website.

Now… when it comes to payments with all of the confirmations and additional steps, it can be hard to get to three steps, so combine all of the payment confirmations into one and think of it that way.

Here are two examples of a three-step to the final goal…

• Your audience lands on your homepage where you have a link to your latest product, click one leads to the landing page for that product, click two leads to the sign-up or purchase button, click three is a combination of or the single payment button.

• Your audience lands on one of your blog articles from social media. Click one leads them to your lead magnet landing page, click two leads them to a form to fill out, and click three leads them to a thank you page where they can download your free resource.

Having said that, most of your audience will take the longest route possible to get to the final step, especially if money is involved and they don’t know you. In the first scenario, they may click through every single page on your website before ever getting to the landing page. That doesn’t mean you should add extra steps. In fact, if you can remove steps or confusion (for example, remove all other links on your landing pages, so they can only go to the next step), then do it!

LOOK FOR SOMETHING YOU LIKE

There is some nice stuff out there, right? Usually, at this stage, you already have an idea building on what you want your website to look like. So keep browsing. At this point, you can stray a little further out from your competitors and industry. Look for anything and everything that you like and save it, either as links or as pictures.

Keep in mind that at this stage, your content and structure may start changing. If you see another site similar to yours that just has the best header, you may want your site to have that type of header now. You may find out that you planned for too much content and not enough space, or finally have decided on the exact number of pages you want. But the most important thing at this point is to know how you want it to look and function. Think back to the three-click rule!

GET IT DONE WITH THE RIGHT DESIGNER

Now that you know what you want to say and how you want it to look, all you have to do is get to website creation. You can either do it yourself, if you feel confident about the time and skills required, or you can look for a designer. If looking for a web designer, you can find them on social media, company websites, work blogs, classifieds, message boards, and many more places.

The trick here is to be clear and concise with what you want in order to get the right designer for you. And be picky! This is your project and this is your website. If it’s not going in the right direction, stop it. The most important thing at this stage is communication. If you’re working with someone else on your website creation and you lose touch for a few days, get it back. If they lose direction, point them in the right direction.

WEB DESIGN VS WEB DEVELOPMENT

Now, having said all of that I do want to clarify something… there is a difference between a web designer and a web developer. Some can do both, some can’t. Here’s a quick description of each so you know what you’re looking for and what to ask potential partners.

WEB DESIGNER

A web designer is a person who helps your website look the way you want it to. This includes anything from banners and sliders to fonts, colours, graphics, and more. This is the person that you would tell them what you have in mind, and they would make it.

The process usually involves the creation of wireframes, the visuals based on your brand strategy, and the adaptation of the previous into a digital version of your first website draft. Some web designers have enough knowledge of development to be able to create everything for you from scratch. Sometimes though, your website would require some more specific coding and for the web designer to bring in a developer.

WEB DEVELOPER

A web developer can use HTML, CSS, jquery, PHP, or other computer languages to write some weird letters and numbers. Next thing you know you just need to add text and images and have a beautiful banner for your website. The developers can also create your website from scratch without the use of templates, so you get completely custom website creation.

One of the most important things that a web developer can do for you is to figure out the hosting. This includes servers, domain name, bandwidth, etc. If that stuff means nothing to you, then getting a developer will definitely be worth it. If you still don’t want to use a developer, you can find information on this depending on your website’s progress. The process of finding a host and server can be a little daunting at first, but it is needed in order to give access to other users on the Internet to your website.

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Unlock the Power of Your Brand Personality

In a world overflowing with choices, how does your brand stand out? The answer lies in understanding your brand personality through the lens of the twelve archetypes identified by Carl Jung. Brand Personality Archetypes offers a transformative exploration of these powerful tools, guiding you to connect with your audience on a deeper, more authentic level.

Discover how aligning your brand with archetypes like the Hero, the Caregiver, and the Rebel can enhance your messaging, foster loyalty, and create lasting engagement. This book provides practical strategies for defining your brand’s narrative, ensuring every touchpoint resonates with your audience's core values.

As a seasoned brand strategist and designer, Kristina Konstantinova shares her insights and expertise to help you navigate your branding journey. Whether you're launching a new venture or refining an established identity, this book equips you with the knowledge to harness the subconscious motivations of your audience.

Plus, access an online quiz to reveal your top three brand archetypes and dive deeper into the unique personality that defines your brand.

Are you ready to unlock the potential that lies within your brand? Transform your brand story today!
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Branding for Perfectionists

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The book

Learning about your brand personality is an important step in learning more about your brand what it can do for you, using the power of the subconscious.

You may already be familiar with the different archetypes and how they can help you with branding, you may have even taken the free brand personality quiz I offer, or even read up everything I have about the different archetypes here - but this book helps you take it a step further.

Inside, you will find not only all the information about the archetypes shown here, but also extra information on each archetype, mini exercises to help you understand your brand better, and a BONUS CHAPTER that talks about your audience’s archetypes - because we all know that they’re not always the same as your brand’s - and how to interact with them based on your own brand’s archetype.

If this sounds like something up your alley, don’t forget to pick up a copy!

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THE BRAND CORE

Firstly, to explain. The brand core is finding out what your brand is on the deepest levels. This is your foundation and the strongest part of your brand that is least likely to change over time. This does not, however, mean that it can’t change or evolve. As every person evolves, so does their brand. The brand core is the reasoning behind what you’re doing, and you use this when you begin to grow and expand. Take into consideration everything you’ve thought about so far when you decided to start this journey and apply it to creating a strong brand core that will be the basis of everything you do.

The brand core consists of your purpose, values, vision, and mission. Having these as the foundation of your brand will make it easier to build upon.

• Defining the reason why your brand exists and how it connects to your audience

• Discover the core values that are important to your brand and you, as the founder

• Revealing your dreams and the goals that you want to take in order to reach them

In this article, I'm going to focus on your vision and mission - which is the last of the points above.

REVEAL YOUR VISION AND MISSION

I like to use the word "reveal" when talking about the vision and mission because these are not things you research, find or copy from someone else. These are things that you already know, even if only in your subconscious, and one of the reasons behind creating your brand. You wanted it to do something and get somewhere. That is what the mission and vision are.

Personally, I like to split the two up with the following definitions:

1. Your brand’s vision is the big goal, the big idea, and what you want your brand to accomplish at its highest possible point.

2. Your brand’s mission is the steps you will take to get to that final goal and how you can achieve your brand's dreams.

A simpler definition that has grown from this is: your vision is for tomorrow and your mission is for today.

So, where is your brand heading and how?

Your vision is used to set a direction for your brand and strengthen your purpose. You will be using your values (so make sure you know those first) to help you support and create a vision statement so that you can connect with your audience while achieving your goals. Once you have a solid vision statement in place, you want to figure out the steps your brand should take in order to achieve that vision.

These steps are your mission and what your brand is doing at the moment that will help it achieve its vision.

Before you get started on your brand's mission, I want you to dream big and then go small. That means vision first then mission.

BRAND VISION

Firstly, you want to figure out your brand’s vision. This is the long-term goal you want your brand to accomplish and it both reflects and builds upon your brand strategy, taking everything into consideration that you have in it including your positioning, your audience, your purpose, and so on. These are the materials to help you build your foundation.

Quick note: the vision for your brand does not necessarily have to be based on your industry. For example, I do branding through design and strategy. Even if I changed my services, my brand's vision would remain the same: focus on perfection. In fact, I could become a chef (if I could cook that well) or a seamstress, an athlete, or anything else, and my brand's vision would still remain the same because that is what is important to my brand.

Having a brand vision is extremely important. Without one, you are only thinking of the now and letting the world around you control your brand. You end up following trends, losing sight of what you stand for, and any future evolution will be sporadic, inconsistent, and can lead to some very ineffective marketing.

In addition, a vision can help you outline how your brand and business will grow (remember that your brand has a huge impact on your business).

And last thing quick about your brand vision. Unlike your mission, this does not really change unless you’re doing a rebrand. Think of the destination, not the journey. The journey may change, but where you end will be the same.

BRAND MISSION

Your mission is what drives your brand in the here and now. This is what you do in business and can be defined into individual steps and objectives, and it is how you will achieve these objectives and reach your vision. Once you know your vision, you want to figure out the individual steps you want to take in order to achieve it. These steps can be broken down as far as you want into more general outlooks where you know what to do in order to reach them or more specific quarterly goals.

Personally, I prefer the specifics because I love the idea of having a specific step to be on in order to get to a final result, but I don’t go so far as to plan daily or be too specific with goals that are further away because everything changes.

Whenever you’re making any plans, I want you to focus on creating flexible goals, which is one of the reasons why we’re calling them missions. The last thing you want to do is re-do your following individual steps every time you either exceed or don’t meet your goals from the previous step.

In addition, because your mission is an in-the-moment thing, that means it can and will change regularly. As long as your mission works towards reaching your vision, you can change it as much as you want and however you want. However, the point of a mission is to have an objective and the strategies and tactics to get there, so don’t change it because you changed your mind or it isn’t working right away.

Like with everything in your brand, it takes time to see real results.

READY TO GET STARTED?

If you're not sure how to define your brand’s long-term goals and your big vision, or the steps you will take in order to reach your goals, the first thing I will tell you to do is to find your purpose. With this, focus on you, not on your brand, and figure out why you're doing this. Keep asking yourself why, why, why, why until you get sick of it. And then ask a few more times to ensure you got an answer that connects with you.

If, even then, you're having issues with this, reach out to me and ask. I have both a course with one entire module focused on helping you find this and I'm always available to answer your questions!

I’ve used this metaphor before, but I want to clarify something. I want to imagine your brand as an iceberg. Your logo? That’s the flat surface that reflects the light when a ship gets close to it and draws attention. (A ship, in this case, is your audience.) But that’s only a small part of what is above the water. Everything below the water, the parts that hold up the ice above, are your brand strategy. They are not visible. But what is above the water is.

So, your brand’s visual identity is everything above the water. That includes…

• Logo

• Colours

• Fonts

• Patterns

• Backgrounds

• Photos

• Videos

• Icons

• Social media posts

• Style guides

• Business collaterals

• Website

• Online presence

• Marketing

• And there’s more…

Basically, absolutely anything that your audience sees about your brand, is part of its visual identity. There are some aspects that are not visible without diving deep into a brand, and some that are only on a subconscious level. So, focus on the surface. Focus, on what is above the water.

And, in order to create that, here are 10 steps to get your brand identity created…

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1. IDEA

Before you even think about anything else, I want you to start putting an idea together. Grab photos, colours, fonts, images, everything you can see that you like… put it together. Yes, your brand identity is based on your strategy, but this is something you can do at any point in your brand creation. And the reason why I like putting it first is that I want you to get it out. Get whatever thoughts you had in mind out on paper or screen and look at them.

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One other thing to keep in mind here. At the end of the day, your brand creation consists of two main parts... your strategy and your visuals. These are also known as your brand foundation and your brand identity (or visual identity). The visual identity is influenced and based on your strategy, so it makes sense for your strategy to come first. In the case of these four phases, the first three are all about strategy and the last is all about your identity. They are...

1. Position your brand

2. Build your core

3. Define your essence

4. Create your identity

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POSITION YOUR BRAND

Brand positioning means defining your brand externally and finding out where your brand is in the marketplace. The position of your brand is not a physical location; it is a place inside your audience’s mind. The goal when creating your brand positioning is to ensure that this space belongs only to you and your audience knows who you are.

As such, this phase includes doing research into your audience, competitors, and awareness goals in order to understand them better and how to leverage them to your benefit.

1. Discover your target audience. A target audience is a particular group of people that your brand is aimed at. You want to know who your audience is in order to resonate with them and, more importantly, who your ideal client is. It’s hard to sell when you don’t know who you’re selling to.

2. Complete a market analysis. Focus on your competitors with the purpose of discovering who else is in your market. You can use this analysis to figure out what options your ideal client currently has and what is missing so that you can position yourself as the more attractive option to them.

3. Prepare your awareness goals. By creating awareness goals early on, you will be able to figure out where your target audience is hanging out and when so that you can ensure your message reaches them. This is the step that will help you turn your target audience into ideal clients.

Keep in mind that all of the information gathered during this stage is important in many other aspects of your brand including your content strategy, visual identity, website creation, and even going into marketing campaigns.

In addition, brand positioning is never done. As you work on other sections of your brand, you may find yourself coming back to this section, and as your brand evolves and grows over time, so will all of this.

BUILD YOUR CORE

Brand core means finding out what your brand is on the deepest levels. This is your foundation and the strongest part of your brand that is least likely to change over time. This does not, however, mean that it can’t change or evolve. As every person evolves, so does their brand. The brand core is the reasoning behind what you’re doing, and you use this when you begin to grow and expand.

Now that you know why you want to do it, here’s the how…

1. Define your brand purpose. Your brand’s purpose is the reason behind why your brand exists. What this means is defining your personal reasons behind creating your brand and relating them to a cause that your audience can connect with, so you can talk to your specific audience and attract only people with the same interests as you.

2. Outline your values. Your brand’s values are the specific elements that make your brand stand out against the competition and help your audience remember who you are. At this point, you are making your brand into a separate entity that your audience can connect and communicate with as they want to.

3. Reveal your vision and mission. Your brand’s vision is the big goal, the big idea, and what you want your brand to accomplish at its highest possible point. Your brand’s mission is the steps you will take to get to that final goal. What this means is, when combined, you will be creating the steps to take in order to achieve your dreams.

The purpose of creating a brand is to create an authentic experience for your clients. Having these in your brand core makes your audience more confident about your brand is and what it stands for. In order to make your brand more authentic, you want to break it down in a clear manner and communicate these to your audience. This does not mean you should outright go out and say, “this is my brand core!”, although there is nothing wrong with that per se.

The brand core process is usually the shortest of the three phases when creating a brand strategy. The reason for this is because the core consists of putting your ideas and thoughts into words. The basis for this work would have already been at least halfway completed while you contemplated the reason behind starting your entrepreneurial journey in the first place. On the other hand, some of the questions you have to ask yourself when creating your brand core can put you on a different path altogether and create a different foundation than what you had in mind.

DEFINE YOUR ESSENCE

Brand essence means finding out what your brand is on the surface. This is how your brand connects to your audience and speaks to the world. This is when you make your brand more human and turn it into a separate entity for your audience to interact with.

Now that you know why you want to do it, here's how…

1. Express your personality. Using your brand personality will help you learn what makes your brand human so it is easier for your audience to connect with and talk to it. This will also help you in discovering more about your audience’s personality and the actionable steps you can take to connect with them.

2. Find your voice and tone. Your brand’s voice is one and your tones are many. By finding them all, you will learn how to speak to your audience, so you can connect with them and they listen to you. In addition, you will get comfortable talking to your audience during any event, even a global pandemic.

3. Keep track of your language. What you say is as important as how you say it. By keeping track of your language, you will be able to create a communication style that is unique to you and turn it into a language style guide. In addition, you will be able to find the words that will get your entire brand message across to your audience.

When you create your brand, you want to be authentic and true to yourself, so you can build trust. Turning your brand into a separate entity for your audience to interact with, makes that easier. In addition, a lot of the information you get from your brand essence will heavily influence your marketing strategy, content strategy, and visual identity.

When you think about your essence, I want you to connect it back to all other parts of your brand. For example, blog articles are written language. You want your personality to show through in the way you write your article (are you excited when you write it?). You want your voice to remain the same for all articles you’re writing, but to throw in some different tones depending on the topics you’re covering. You also want to use the same language throughout the entire article and for all of your articles.

CREATE YOUR IDENTITY

Visual identity means the appearance of your brand. If your positioning, core, and essence are your brand strategy and the inside of your brand, then your visual identity is the outside and the first thing people see. This is how your audience recognizes you and how your brand connects with their subconscious and conscious decisions.

Now that you know why you want to do it, here's how…

1. Create your visual identity. Creating the main visuals for your brand will help you focus on the most common visual aspects including your logo, colours, and fonts. In addition, you will be able to use all of your visuals to not only represent your strategy but also connect each of your decisions to your audience, so you can draw them in.

2. Add on your elements. A visual identity consists of all visuals in your brand, not only your logo, colours, and fonts. As such, you want to choose additional visual elements that represent your brand and make you stand out, while also deciding how all of your information will be shown, including data, and other visual rules and cues.

3. Organize your assets. As you’re working on your brand and showing people who you are, it’s a good idea to know what you want to show when and where. Create your business collaterals and templates, so your audience can start memorizing who you are and combine your entire brand into a set of guidelines that you can refer to.

When you create your brand, you want to be authentic and true to yourself, so you can build trust. However, showing that can be hard without any visuals. Most people only look at the surface and if that grabs their attention, only then do they dig deeper into the meaning and story behind it. Your visuals will draw your audience in, and when they are based on your strategy, they will keep your audience and help convert some of them into paying clients. Your entire visual identity is based on your strategy, every single part of it. There is no design without thought behind it.

When you think about your visual identity, I want you to connect it back to every single part of your brand strategy. For example, your ideal client’s goals and desires can have an impact on what shapes and patterns you use in your brand. And since so much of your strategy is based on your audience, every single piece that you use from other parts of your brand strategy will connect back to your audience.

A COMPLETE BRAND!

Once you’re done with these phases, you’re done with your brand! Well, as you probably already know, your brand is never finished. But you have the foundation and everything to work on. From now on, work on your brand the same way you would on any other part of your business… update it, research it, and help it grow with you.

In this article, I am going to offer the business English definitions of templates offered by the Cambridge dictionary…

1. [A] method or system that can be copied and used by others.

2. IT. A particular model for arranging information or images in a document, etc. that you can copy and use for your own purposes.

3. Production. A design or pattern made of metal, plastic, or paper that is used for making copies of a shape or to help cut material accurately.

   
   Let’s add one more definition here linking to production, but keeping it digital…

4. Production. A design or pattern made in a digital file that is used to make other files appear the same way.

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TYPES OF TEMPLATES

The first thing to note here, before I split it into two different categories, is that templates can vary. They can be as complicated as forms where only the checkboxes change to an outline stating what goes where.

CONTENT

Content can include posts, articles, emails, social media posts, and more. Here are some quick examples of content templates that can help speed up your entire business process…

• Posts and article templates can outline a specific length, a number of paragraphs, the flow of information, or all end the same way.

• Basic email templates can consist of signatures or away-from-desk messages.

• More advanced email templates can include generic responses to clients or making sure emails are worded the same way.

• Social media content templates can include the specific length, hashtag location, hook location, and different options for CTAs.

Technically, any content that you create multiple times, can have a template. Videos, podcasts, reels, Lives, etc. And they can all be different depending on the platform they are meant for. For example, Instagram captions have a strict character count, while Facebook posts can be longer. You can use the same template for both, or create a new one.

In addition, I’ve written an article previously about The importance of style guides for your brand. In that article, I talk about content, design, and brand guides. Because having a styling guide can help you with the type of language used on all of your content and create a general template for pretty much anything.

DESIGN

Since I already mentioned it earlier, I will first refer back to the same style guide article as earlier. These style guides are the basis of your templates, both for content and design. Outside of that, though, your design templates can include business collaterals, social media posts, lead magnets or freebies, downloadable products, videos, and more. Here are some quick examples of design templates that can help you out…

• The easiest example of a useful design template is a business card for a company, by making sure all employees’ cards look the same.

• Same thing with any other business collaterals such as white papers, letterheads, and internal documents.

• Most social media posts come with some type of graphic to draw attention and keeping all of those graphics in multiple template styles will ensure that all of your posts link back to one another.

• Lead magnets are an easy way to get closer to your audience, and you can create a design template to make the process of creating these faster.

• Same thing we downloadable products, by ensuring they are all the same size, your name and contact information are always in the same place, etc.

• A template can be very useful if you want all of your videos to have the same entrance and exit graphics, transitions, flow, subtitle or text effects, sounds, and more.

As with content, any design work that you or your designer do can have a template. Videos, podcasts, reels, Lives, etc. Basically, all of the same stuff as content. They can be different depending on your platform, and you can even have one template that includes both design and content guidelines, or multiple templates for each design and content and then mix and match in between.

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1. DON’T START WITH YOUR LOGO OR ANY OF YOUR VISUALS

If you haven’t heard me say this until now, no worries, I will say it again. A BRAND IS NOT A LOGO. A brand consists of so many different parts, and I am not talking about the colours, fonts, and photos you use with your logo. A brand is everything that you do! Your looks are only a part of it.

And when you are creating a logo, it’s NOT FOR YOU. A logo is the face of your brand so the point isn’t for it to be something that draws you in, the point is to attract your target audience.

And then your brand strategy comes into play by helping you convert that audience that your logo attracted into paying clients.

If you changed your logo fifty times, then you are targeting fifty different audiences!

Now, I am not saying to never change your logo, however, if you do change it, make sure you do it for a good reason, in a way that betters your brand, and let your audience know. Otherwise, you may end up losing your current audience AND confusing any new people that come your way.

The thing is, logos are supposed to be long-lasting, memorable, unique, and representative of your brand. Their job is to draw your target audience in so that you and your content can convert them into clients. As such, creating a logo before you know what your brand stands for or who your audience is, is never a good idea!

The alternative is for the logos, or any of your visuals, to be created based on your personal preferences, design trends, and what others are doing. This usually leads to the logos being changed later on, which can cause issues with your current audience losing track of you and confusing anybody new.

Take a look at my articles, 4 questions to answer before getting a logo and a brand is not a logo for more information this. There are still some that think that the logo is the cornerstone of your brand. But the thing is, do you really need a logo? Here are some questions to answer that can help you figure that out.

2. KNOW THE VALUE BEHIND YOUR BRAND

How valuable is your brand? The other day we were talking with a friend how, as a coach, you can’t expect somebody to buy your services and get a monthly retainer if you’ve never done it yourself. The experience is a huge part of better understanding your audience.

So, I want to talk a bit more about this. Firstly, a value ladder is a classic tool that helps you map out your services in a visual way, ascending in both price and value. However, I want you to take that ladder and instead of creating something for your clients based on your services, I want you to look at it for yourself and your business. You can use a value ladder in any part of a business to see how much value you place on it. For example, your brand.

Let’s go with the popular example of logos (even though I said not to start with one above). If you pay for a $10 logo or create a free one on Canva (not a good idea, by the way) and do nothing else, then that’s how much your brand is worth. Your clients won’t see a value beyond that.

Keeping that in mind, I want to talk about Nike for a moment. That swoosh logo we all recognize cost $35 back in the 70s. Going with my previous statement, you’d probably agree with me that Nike isn’t worth $35. But the thing is, for a company with a net worth of almost $35 billion, it’s not that swoosh that got them there. Think about the brand strategy behind Nike, the slogan of just do it, and the years of research and positioning that the company did. Consider for a moment, if you ever decide to buy Nike shoes is it because of that logo or because of what that logo represents?

So, when I am talking about the value behind your brand I don’t mean go and spend thousands on getting a logo. I mean go and spend time to do your research and figure out what your audience wants. A strong brand based on research and experience, with strong positioning, core, essence, and identity can help turn a swoosh into a JUST DO IT and your $10 logo into a $10 million brand. And 45 years of learning about your audience and becoming an authority in your field doesn’t hurt either.

In addition, I had a post previously talking about popular branding myths. I want to stress two of them here because they have an impact on how you view the value behind your brand. Value is not only about money.

THESE ARE THE MYTHS THAT ONLY BIG COMPANIES NEED A BRAND AND THAT PEOPLE DON’T CARE ABOUT B2B BRANDS.

So, here’s the thing… it doesn’t matter if you’re working for yourself, by yourself, and plan to continue that way for the rest of your business, or if you have 50,000 employees worldwide and are opening another office on the other side of the world, or if you are at any stage in between, above, or below those, a brand is for anybody trying to sell.

Because it doesn’t matter how big your business is, a brand isn’t built for you it’s for your audience… so even if you have an audience of ONE (unlikely) you want that one person to know not only that you exist, but that you exist FOR THEM.

On that note, what is the difference between a business-to-business brand versus a business-to-customer brand? Since a brand isn’t built for you, even if your audience is another business, that means your brand is for them. The purpose of the brand is to connect with your audience, no matter who they are.

I want to give you an example that will automatically debunk both of these myths. I am an entrepreneur and a small company of one. When I was interested in hiring a business coach, I was looking online for someone that I can connect with. I was specifically looking for female solopreneurs, individuals like myself, that have some of the shared values that I do and a personality type that I can connect with as an individual. As such, I was looking for value information, online presence, response times, language (a big one for me is spelling), personality… I was looking for a brand.

So, as an individual service provider… having the core and essence of your brand that your audience can connect with will help them choose you, while positioning and the visuals of your brand will help them know you exist.

3. DON’T RELY ON SOCIAL MEDIA FOR EVERYTHING

If you suddenly lost access to social media, will that stop you from getting paid? The answer should be no.

There are a lot of things that can happen when you rely on somebody else, especially a big corporation that doesn’t care about the individuals. (Yes, I know this from experience, I’ve been messaging the support team for Instagram for almost a month now since I lost the reels function and still no reply.) In my case, it was only a feature I lost that made me change my content planning a bit… but forget losing a feature…

• What are you going to do if your account gets blocked?

• Or if the app you’re using (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, whatever) gets blocked in your country?

• Or if they decide to start charging users based on how long you’re on there?

Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with branding. I’m going to talk a little bit on here about the impact of not having your own platform for your brand. Imagine the worst-case scenario and you can’t get back on your favourite social media platform for whatever reason. And there’s no news if you ever will be able to or not.

Consider the following…

• How will you find your audience?

• How will your audience find you?

• How will you communicate with them?

And these are only in the worst-case scenarios with social media. What about regular every-day stuff? What if post lengths drop to twenty characters, or no more photos, or only AR videos will be allowed? What if Instagram suddenly went purple and turned off the DM function?? Any of these things can happen. I want you to consider what type of impact these will have on your brand. If you can’t get any more clients, then that means you are too dependent on that platform.

Your brand shouldn’t be created in a way that accommodates whatever platform you’re on or what type of content you can post on there. The purpose of a brand is to connect with your audience, so if your audience is expecting AR videos and communicating only through comments, be prepared to change your content strategy. But do not change your brand strategy.

Now… I am not saying to stop using social media. What I am saying is to have it as part of your brand, not everything on there.

Because, at the end of the day, your brand guidelines are all of that and more. First, I want to go back to yet another article I wrote on the importance of style guides for your brand. To summarize that point, there are three types of style guides, content, design, and brand.

Your content style guide focuses on your language, voice, tone, and basic rules (ex. Canadian vs American spelling). Your design style guide focuses on your colours, fonts, logos, and other visual elements (ex. patterns or photo styles). And your brand style guide is a combination of the other two, plus a few extras like your brand's vision, mission, personality, and so on.

This brand style guide is what is also known as brand guidelines.

Inside this one huge asset, you’re going to find everything you or anybody else is ever going to want to know about your brand. That’s the point of it… to collect everything in one place, organize it, and make it easy to use. 

WHAT TO INCLUDE IN YOUR BRAND GUIDELINES

Here's a quick breakdown of some of the information that you can include as part of your brand guidelines...

• Your entire brand positioning including information about your target audience, different segments, ideal client bios, list of competitors, differentiator, and maybe even your awareness goals and platforms. Think about everything that tells you where and how your brand is visible and to who.

• The meaning behind your brand and what propels it forward. This can be your mission, vision, purpose, and values. Focus on statements that you love and can easily pick out to throw into a marketing campaign when you're short on ideas, but also statements that keep you going forward and striving to be you.

• You into enneagrams? Add in your numbers, add in your clients' numbers, talk about what makes your brand human and how to keep going that way. The earlier mentioned content style guide? That would go in here as well with your spelling, specific word usage, voice style, and different tones.

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Firstly, please note that a visual strategy is not the same as visuals based on strategy! When it comes to your brand, strategy comes first and then the visuals. In this article, I’m going to give some quick examples of some of the parts of your brand strategy that have a direct impact on your brand visuals.

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WHAT IS A BRAND?

If you haven’t had the chance yet, I’d suggest going back and taking a look at my article on A brand is not a logo to learn more about what a brand consists of. In there, I have a breakdown of the two main parts of a brand (strategy and visuals), as well as where your brand is used, where it is seen, and where to start. Outside of that, though, here is a quick breakdown of what it means to create your visuals based on your strategy.

YOUR VISUALS STAY WITH YOU LONG-TERM

When you create your logo, choose your colours, decide on your fonts, and pick all the graphics that will go along with your brand (and the rules for future decisions), you don’t decide these because you like them. Yes, your personal input is important and has a huge impact on the final results, but the visuals aren’t based on it.

I want to share a personal story here. Before I got into branding and strategy, I used to be a graphic designer. I’ve been doing graphic design work for over ten years now and I love it! A lot of my work came from referrals, but a lot of it also came from online job sites that post individual projects looking for creatives. A lot of that work was also logo creation.

All logo design projects I did before fell into two main categories…

• The ones based on personal preferences and likes

• The ones with briefs and research to back them up

A couple of months ago I was curious and went back through my old logo folio to take a look at some of these designs and yikes! But that’s another story. After looking through the logos I had in my folio, I decided to go online and google each of those businesses. And here’s a random fact for you… every single logo that was part of the first category is not in use.

Every. single. one.

I am not exaggerating here! I actually went to people’s websites, social media, yellow pages, wherever I could find them online. Not one of those places had my logo designs anywhere. These were the logos that came to me with requests like I like this colour, or can we go with this graphic? or this trend is awesome.

That’s some food for thought for you. Because when I talk about brand strategy, having a design brief, and doing your research, it helps! Knowing the reason behind why you want your logo to look a certain way is what makes that mark last. And consistency and repetition and extremely important when it comes to making your brand memorable. You want to create something that is long-term, so give it a strong foundation!

STRATEGY TO VISUALS

Let’s start with the easy things. Please note that all examples herein are either from previous clients I have worked with or are gross exaggerations or stereotypes in order to get my point across. No insult is meant with any of these! At the end of the day, a brand is created for your audience with the purpose of drawing them in. This is the same whether you’re a solopreneur, freelancer, or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. As such, knowing who your audience is will help guide everything about your brand, including your visuals.

LOGO.

Let’s say you are a business genius and want to help artists with getting their finances in order and figuring out their expenses and how much to charge. As someone in the analytical sphere, you’d probably be more interested in clean, sharp lines, well-balanced, and geometric shapes. However, your artists may prefer something smoother, more asymmetrical, with curves instead of edges and a weirder design. The trick here would be combining your own purpose and values with those of your audience to create a logo that draws them in, but still represents who you are!

COLOURS.

Let’s say you are creating a service where you are asking high-school girls to join your club. Their purpose in it would be to connect with others like them and maybe share make-up tips. Would your colour palette be bright and shiny with eye-catching colours? Or will you go for something more muted and dark? Something as simple as knowing who your audience is will help you decide on your colour palettes. And combine that with their interests, values, and purpose with your business and you get so much more information!

FONTS.

Oh, I can talk about fonts all day long! In fact, I had so many articles about that, that people were getting confused if I do branding or typography. I have now removed them from here and will be sharing a book on typography sometime in the near future, but for now, keep this mind. Everybody, as a collective, already makes certain assumptions and associations with specific visuals and fonts.

There are seven main classifications of typefaces and each one promotes a different feeling or expectation. Something like knowing your brand’s personality will be very helpful here in figuring out if you want to challenge those assumptions or use them to your advantage.

PHOTOGRAPHY.

I am not referring to your own photos here, though if you have those skills, all the better! When I talk about photography, and videography for that matter, I am referring to the rules of the images you use. If you are using stock photos, consider who your stock photos are of. Are you representing your audience and yourself in the photos you’re using? Without knowing who your audience is or the image you want to portray, then you’re picking anything based on the topic. (Ps. style guides are extremely useful in this scenario. Check out my article on The importance of style guides for your brand for more information on that.).

AND THESE ARE ONLY THE BASICS!

• The backgrounds can be based on your competitors

• The orientation of your photos can be based on your platforms

• The movement behind your infographics based on your purpose

• The lighting in your videos can be based on your values

• The patterns on your borders can be based on your vision and mission

• The colours and style of your graphics can be based on your personality

• The layout of your text over images can be based on your language

• The fonts and typeface combinations can be based on your tone and voice

And all of those are connected to your own personal preferences and your audience.

In my opinion, online marketing consists of 5 main areas to focus on. These areas can each be seen as a separate online presence, but I urge you to look at them all together. For example, SEO is most commonly referred to for sites, but the keywords can be used as hashtags on social media. Without further ado, here are the five areas of online marketing you need to know about.

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1. SEO (search engine optimization)

Search engine optimization involves complicated algorithms and using specific keywords and text to make sure your site has a better ranking on search engines. You want to make sure to know the basics of SEO and how to apply them to your website, in order to improve your online marketing strategy. The main thing to know when it comes to SEO is the importance of keywords. Use hashtags, repetition, and variation for what your product or service is and what it does.

1. Use SEO plug-ins or add-ons to your site to check everything is working right (ex. Yoast SEO)

2. Create new content on a regular, scheduled basis (ex. Post blog articles every month)

3. Share your information using hashtags on multiple social media platforms

My experience

Since I started my business I've been focusing on SEO. In fact, I used to offer SEO services when I first started for the simple reason that I have an educational background in writing, and writing to set guidelines can be really easy. As such, SEO is a big one for me and I check it regularly, especially with the optimization changes that happen, so I do keep an eye out on that - though I do use helpers/plugins to make my life easier.

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Q. What format are the templates and exercises?

All templates and exercises will be accessible through Google Docs. Meaning, all you need is a Google account to copy the files into your own drive, and then you can go crazy with them! 

Q. How long does it take to complete?

The timing will be open for you to take as long as you want, and with lifetime access that can be a while. However, I want to challenge you to complete everything in 12 weeks .

Q. What if I’ve already done some of this research?

If you’ve done any of your research already, it’s implemented, and working - we’re not going to fix what’s not broken! However, I do suggest going through the exercises to double-check you have all of the final results, as most exercises are interconnected and the results from one can be used in another.

Q. Is it live or recorded?

All of the videos for the lessons are recorded so you can access them at any time and go at your own pace, no need to wait for anybody else!

Q. What if I have any questions about the process or exercises?

You can ask questions as comments directly on the individual lessons. This is the fastest way to get your questions answered and others can interact with them too!

Q. Can I use this course for multiple brands?

Yep! All you have to do is duplicate everything for each new brand you want to work on!

Q. How long are the videos?

The videos are all short and quick. There are only two that go over the 10min mark, so they are all nice and easily consumable.

Q. How long do I have access to this course?

You will have access to this course for minimum a year and then for as long as you stay subscribed here! And since it is 100% self-paced training, you can log in and complete it as quickly as you like.

Q. If I no longer want the course, am I entitled to a refund?

Unfortunately, due to the digital nature of this product, refunds are not available, as you will have access to all course materials even if you get removed from the system. However, if you're unsure about anything, let me know and we'll see what we can work out together. 

Still not sure if The Brand Framework is for you? 

This program is a perfect fit for you, if…

• You want to start connecting with your audience on a more personal basis, have regular clients, and get paid your worth.

• You're an expert in your field and know how to do your shit, but aren’t sure how to let others know you’re good at it.

• You’ve googled branding and spent hours down the internet rabbit hole and are finally ready to get the answers.

• You’re hardworking, dedicated, and motivated in your brand to continue working on it on a regular basis.

I want in

• You're ready to stop downloading all the freebies and checklists.

• You want to make a name for yourself and invest in your future.

• You have the time, drive, and motivation to put in the work.

• You’re committed to working on your brand and following up with it.

• You look at your audience as people you can serve and connect with.

• You believe that this is the right time to commit for your business.

• You're feeling overwhelmed and it's causing inconsistencies.

• You are ready to dig deep into understanding your ideal clients.

THIS IS NOT FOR YOU IF…

• You're looking for a quick result or five-minute answer checklist.

• You think this is a cheaper alternative to getting a coach or consultant.

• You want to just try it out to see if it may work for you or not.

• You don't have the motivation to work at your own pace.

• You need someone to constantly push you to keep going.

• You think you can cut corners and still get the full experience.

• You're looking for a get-rich-quick scheme or numbered ROI.

• You believe that having a brand will magically solve all your problems.

With this course you will get:

• Step-by-step video lessons and exercises

• Lifetime access to all course materials and future updates

• 12+ in-depth modules with exercises and examples

• Accessible on any of your devices through the FreshLearn app

• On-page support and community building

You want the full experience and to dig deep into understanding your ideal clients.
I know this because others have said the same thing…

This framework can work for you, regardless of how far you are into your business and brand creation!

Don't believe me? Here are a few tested scenarios…

You've been doing this for a while

You are busy with clients and work and loving every second of it, but aren't spending any time working on your business.

This is leading to you hiring help that doesn't understand your brand and doesn't always deliver, which ends up leading to even more work on your end to fix it all in order to meet deadlines.

You can use this framework to build your foundations and set guidelines to make sure your brand is growing.

You're trying to grow or pivot to a new area

You know what you're doing and you're doing it because you love it. Unfortunately, sometimes it feels like it doesn't love you back.

You have a hard time connecting with your ideal clients or reaching your true audience, and this leads to you changing who they are with the hope that someone will notice.

You can use this framework to nail down your ideas and start doing what you're meant to be doing: growing.

You're starting a new business or idea

You have the passion, the time, and the will to get that new idea out there, but it's overwhelming to try and do everything on your own.

You find yourself struggling with figuring out where to even start. This leads to changing your mind constantly, going back to fix things, and watching dreamily at others' success.

You can use this framework to get started with confidence and without feeling lost or overwhelmed.

This is for me!