Branding: what it is and why you should care

an introduction

If I asked you if you'd ever heard of branding you'd probably say yes, but if I asked you to define branding, you might have a harder time. Branding is a lot like SEO in the fact that you'll hear people talk about but you may not fully grasp how to apply what you know to something that will help you and your business. So what really is branding? You're probably familiar with the elements of culture which are rituals, artifacts, beliefs and values, norms, symbols, language, etc. Well, branding is the culture that creates your business. It's that foundation from which you create your business goals, stay organized, and become easily known. Every element of your business culture revolves around your business's brand and every time you put out content in the name of your business you are adding pieces of evidence towards your brand so it's important to be intentional with your content, with your face-time, and with your products. When you spend time considering your brand, what you stand for, and what you want to bring to your industry you can create a clear picture of what kinds of pieces of evidence you want to put into the world. The truth is that your brand is only partially controlled by you. Your audience has a large part in defining your brand for you, and when you don't give them a solid understanding of your mission and vision, your audience will try to fill in the gaps themselves, and who wants that? Think of every successful company you know--they all have a well-defined brand. This is necessary to succeed, you need to have a solid idea of what you're doing, why you're doing it, and who you're doing it for and it needs to be clear to your consumer.

So now that you understand a little bit more about why branding can be so crucial, where do you even begin? It's best to bring on a branding professional to help guide you through building or rebuilding your brand but if you're curious to go it alone you should start by:

  1. Defining your target audience
  2. Decide on a logo that can be scalable and includes a primary logo, a secondary logo, and an icon
  3. Create content that reflects the problem you're trying to solve with your business