Companies spend millions of dollars each year promoting their brands. Unless you live under a rock, you know what the Golden Arches mean. You know what the food will taste like and what types of food and service you can expect. You even know (approximately) when you can get breakfast-type foods and when you will get lunch or dinner fare.
5 Easy Ways to Create a Brand Name
1. Use a good picture of yourself.
A head-and-shoulder picture is best. Have the picture really qualify who you are and what message you are trying to convey. Make sure you love this photo; you are going to have to look at it a lot!
Now use this photo everywhere. Use it as your avatar on every site that you are promoting. Put it on your blog. Use it whenever you make a blog comment elsewhere (if they allow the use of comment avatars). Use it on Twitter, Facebook Fan (Business) Pages, YouTube, Flickr, Linked-In, Slideshare, eZine Articles, newsletters, and AWeber marketing emails—everywhere you can upload a photo or avatar, use this photo.
2. Maintain visual consistency.
When designing the look and feel of your brand, you will need to make a few decisions. Then, from now until eternity, you will incorporate these three elements into any print media (invoices, business cards, letterhead, brochures, etc.) and digital media (your website and blog, other customizable social websites, newsletters, AWeber email templates, eBooks, and other online services and products) that you create or distribute.
A. Create a site background.
Brand naming agency: Do not make this too busy or distracting. You may decide to use a solid colour or a muted, large image. Maybe you have a logo that you would like to use as your major brand image. Maybe you are looking for a group of images that convey who you are and what you stand for. This is a significant decision that should not be taken lightly. This background will follow you anywhere, and you can customise it everywhere.
B. Pull out some of the major colours that are present in the background.
I would suggest trying to find at least three colours—one dark, one light, and one midrange—that coordinate with or match exactly your background. You will also need to decide which colour you want to use as your site’s default. I would suggest the lightest colour be the default background colour for text boxes, menus, tables, widget areas, sidebars, and other callout-type display areas. I would suggest the darkest colour be used as the default for borders, links, and titles. You can select the mid colour as text (unless you want to use black or white for readability), hover colours, alternate highlights, and other less commonly used text and display objects.
C. Pick a font or at least a font family.
Your font choice will set the tone and feel for your site. Do not be afraid to pick “non-web safe” fonts, as there are ways to embed the font of your choice into your website or blog. If you DO choose a font that isn’t one of the “websafe” fonts, make sure you choose another font or font family so that the viewer’s browser doesn’t get a chance to choose it for them!
3. Create a brand name for yourself as well as a memorable tagline.
Although you are creating a brand for yourself, you also need to create a brand name that can be used to further define who you are and where you are going. Next, you want to create a catchy tagline that further complements who you are, what your strategic goals are, what you offer the marketplace and your personality. Again, this is going to require a lot of thought on your part!
4. Don’t spread yourself too thin; specialise in something!
Unfortunately, many, many people try to become “Jacks of All Trades” when they first start out. I invite you to recall the second half of this saying: “A Master of None.” If you are trying to brand yourself, stick to what you know, what you are interested in, or what you want to become. Just because you aren’t an expert now doesn’t mean you can’t become one in the future. There is so much information available to be consumed and interpreted that anyone with enough time and effort can become an expert in anything!
When you begin building your list of contacts, customers, and followers, these people are doing so based on the information that you are providing. You will bore some people a lot of the time AND some people some of the time if you discuss wildly disparate topics! As your audience and expertise grow, don’t be afraid to branch out into complementary areas and niches.
5. Use a consistent “voice.”
When you start creating content—any content—you want to decide how you are going to communicate with your audience. Do you want to be seen as an authority figure with very formal written (and oral) interactions with your clients and customers? Do you want to be perceived as approachable and down-to-earth? Do you want to ooze sarcasm and maybe even be seen as a little (or a lot) crass?
