The visual representation of a brand is one of the most essential parts of a company, especially for its social media presence. Since we’re living in a digital world now, having a solid social media presence contributes a lot to the success of a brand. However, not a lot of businesses know that, thus, they don’t really mind not having a social media presence or they don’t put in any effort to maintain a good-looking social media presence. Well, through this article, we want to convince you that social media is crucial to have nowadays and how important a brand’s visual identity is for social media.
What You Need to Know About Brand Visual Identity
Before we dig deeper, allow us to explain what a brand’s visual identity is. A visual identity is simply how a brand presents itself to the public through visuals. This includes a brand’s colour, logo, website, any social media page, packaging, physical stores and anything else the public can see.
Having a visual identity helps people recognise your brand better, creating a memorable image for them. For instance, when you see a red background with white wavy lines, you can tell that it’s Coca-Cola’s brand. Another example would be when you see a big blue bag with yellow writing on the straps and you know it’s from IKEA. These are only a couple of examples of brands that succeeded in creating a visual identity that is recognisable and memorable.
A brand’s visual identity is part of the umbrella term, brand identity. This covers the visual identity, referring to the external parts of a brand, and the overall brand identity which includes everything that has to do with the internalization of the brand. Examples of a brand’s internalization are its mission, vision, personality, culture and so on. You can find out more about brand identity in another blog of ours.
Furthermore, when a brand has a visual identity, it makes it much easier to implement onto its social media. For instance, posts on social media could be synced with the personality and colour scheme the brand has chosen. This makes it so pleasing to the eyes of the consumers and more likely for them to browse a brand’s page. Plus, a consistent look and feel based on the colours and design a brand has chosen makes it much more attractive than a brand whose visual representation is all over the place.
Importance of a Brand Visual Identity
A brand’s visual identity is especially important when you want your brand’s social media to stand out. A unique and aesthetically pleasing colour palette accompanied by great design makes for a memorable image. By having a memorable image, it’s more likely for your consumers or customers to remember you as well as gain their loyalty or even attract more consumers.
Take Nike, for example, their entire brand visual representation shows the audience who they are and relates with their target audience, gaining their loyalty and trust. You see an advertisement or a social media post by Nike and you can immediately tell that it’s their content. On top of that, Nike caters to their targeted audience, so their content is always irresistible to its consumers.
Speaking of being irresistible to your consumers, a consistent brand image that relates to its consumers is one of the most important aspects of a memorable brand. Aside from Nike, a brand like Mountain Dew is an excellent example of that. Their brand image and their products cater to their consumers’ interests. Mountain Dew’s main campaign is to be the go-to energy drink for gamers, extreme sports players and generally, people who like to take risks. Hence, their world-renowned phrase, “Do the Dew”. It’s short yet gets the message across to the right target audience. That, accompanied by the brand visual identity that they display, their consumer base is one of the most loyal to the brand.
So when we say that a brand’s visual identity is important for its social media, this includes its ads, its social media pages and everything in between. Having a social media page itself is already a huge help to a brand, especially when done just right. However, when you add in a consistent brand visual identity that relates to your targeted audience, it’s like the icing on the cake.
Building a Brand Visual Identity on Social Media
Once you have the base of your brand which consists of your mission, vision, and brand personality and you’ve established who is your targeted audience, building your visual brand will start to naturally fall into place like puzzle pieces. However, if you are still struggling to build your visual brand, here are a few steps you can take to kickstart the process:
1. Establish Your Colour Palette
Choose colours that are most suitable for your brand and its services or products. This will be easier especially when you’ve established a brand identity or personality. The colours should match your identity in order to deliver the right message. You can even implement the psychology of colour when choosing your colours. From there, you can choose the right colours and narrow them down to the main colours your brand will be.
2. Choose Your Brand Typography
Next is choosing the main fonts that your brand will use. This includes the fonts for headlines, sub-headlines, body texts and any other area that has text. Whether you want it to be BOLD or thin, or whether you want Times New Roman or Calibri. Typically, you could choose two fonts that suit each other which will be the default fonts of your social media posts or web texts. Additionally, you could choose an extra font as an alternative option.
3. Create a Branding Guide
A branding guide is as it sounds, it’s a guide for your brand. In other words, sort of a template. Here, you will compile the colours, fonts, logo options and every other aspect contributing to the visual identity of your brand. This brand guide can be used for future reference in terms of website edits or social media post designs.
What You Should Avoid
Creating a brand visual identity is overall great for your social media presence. However, there are some mistakes you should avoid in the process of building your visual identity:
1. Not Considering Your Targeted Audience
Whenever you are marketing your brand or building its visual identity, you should always keep your audience in mind. This is because your audience is who you are trying to convince or persuade. If you only consider what looks pleasing to you, then you might not attract the audience that you are targeting. Create a visual identity that your targeted audience can relate to or feel connected to. This can lead to brand trust that is beneficial for your brand and its social media presence.
2. Being Inconsistent
Even if you have a brand guide, your visual identity might not necessarily be cohesive. You could come up with a mood board that shows how your fonts, colours and logo come together. This design mood board should be implemented across any of your platforms such as your website to your social media accounts.
3. Being Too Generic
Your visual identity should be unique to your brand. This is not to say that you have to be completely unique. In this day and age, that’s hard to do since there are already so many brands out there. But you should at least avoid being too generic. This is to avoid being boring or seeming like just another brand with nothing special to it. Try your best to add your own spice to it.
Conclusion
To wrap it up, a brand visual identity is important for a brand’s social media presence because it creates a memorable image for your consumers. It also builds your consumers’ loyalty and lets them stay connected with your brand. If you’ve created your visual identity and avoided all the mistakes, your brand’s social media presence should go smoothly.
However, if you’re struggling to build your brand guideline or brand identity, we provide solutions that can help with that. Here at CR8 Consultancy, we provide solutions for your branding needs, including assisting you with your brand guideline based on your brand profile. To find out more, visit our website!
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