With all the many hundreds of hashtags for every day of the week, special interest days, weeks or months. For example its Repeat Day today .. if you loved it once, why not do it again? I like being part of conversations, learning something new because every day is a school day in this game of life!

I’m still not having 6 kids, a car and a mansion thanks .. I’d rather my partner, daughter, cat and aspirations of van life!

Think of hashtags as labels of conversation.

Consider that the internet is one big room with millions of conversations happening. It would be great if would could know what those conversations were so that we could join in.

Oh how I wish this were possible on networking evenings!

Hashtags are the labels of what is happening in those conversations. The best way that people will know, like and trust you, is to show up in those conversations.

There are three kinds of hashtag groups to be part of:

Days of the Week

There are many many hashtags that feature a day of the week, this is a great way for you to create marketing content in your business that takes part in this conversation labels. For example: use #FollowFriday sometimes also known as #FF on twitter, to tag your friend, colleague, fellow business collaboration and talk about it.

Interesting Days and Awareness Events

There’s a great site that I use to figure out what is coming up in the future that I could use to start or continue a conversation.

It’s called: Days of the Year.

I like this site because its clear, friendly and free.

As well as providing our services and skills as a business, we can also be volunteers for a cause. Most causes have an awareness day, week or month. Show a rounded person in your business, what are you passionate about.

It doesn’t always have to be about philanthropy, the fact you’re a chocoholic means that you could have spoken about it being #ChocolateMacaroonDay today. Maybe you’ve bought some from a local shop and they did something unique in their customer service that you loved. That inspired you to do something similar in your own business. Mixing both a personal interest with something in your business.

Topics in and around what you do in your business

Thirdly you can use hashtags that relate directly to what you do in your business. Think of all the ways you can name your services. Mine would be #WebDesign #WebsiteDesign #Wordpress #WebsiteDesigner #WebDesigner and even add your country initials: UK. Making it #WebDesignUK.

There is an easy way to search and find what is popular and used frequently and those that are less popular and less frequently. I’d advocate mixing and matching both. When doing a # search on Instagram in their search box you will see the frequency number as well.

Always think about how to get your content shared for as long as possible. If you consider popularity numbers you’ll know that in the stream of conversation used 5 million times, your content will last seconds before thousands of other posts will push it out of sight. This is why we use less popularly known hashtags so that our content will be shown for longer within that hashtag stream. Do you remember this graphic from my blog in doing your marketing using your blog AND social media?

One thing to note, people DO follow hashtags. If you aren’t aware of it or aren’t following hashtags relevant to your business .. you’re missing out on being visible and part of the conversation.

Share your work, your knowledge and expertise, let people know you’re there. Choose the days of the week that you will regularly write and share a blog post full of value and supplement it with marketing posts to join the conversation. With hashtags that fit those days.

Remember to also engage and write comments on others social media AND their blogs. Don’t be the odd duck who just talks outwards, expecting praise and adoration comments. It won’t happen. You also need to comment and interact with others .. soon you’ll build a network of people who reciprocate and before you know it, you’ll have new networks of connections.

Be brave, be visible and part of the conversation, those hashtags are simply labels so that you know what the topic is that’s being discussed.

Wish I could have those as virtual reality bubbles above peoples heads in real life at networking events!

What will you talk about today using hashtags?

What will you comment on today via a hashtag search?

The richness of a brand experience means it can sometimes be confusing how to figure out all the elements of yours for your new or re-launching business. Yes, the logo is the one element we all recognise instantly, yet a brand logo can contain multi-part elements to the full logo brand. There are also colours, texture and patterns, as well as typography font choices that all make an impact on your customers and clients.

The summary TL;DR version.

In short, we’ll meet up either in person or via a video call, get to know each other and I’ll guide you through the process of making a vision board on Pinterest. You’ll gather all of your inspirations and make notes, we’ll then meet again and discuss and eliminate elements of your vision board to narrow it down to its core components. We’ll design a few rough design concepts and you’ll sit with those or decide immediately what instinctively feels like a good connection with you. Those will be shaped up in design phase, then refined further, polished into its finished state and then you’ll receive a full brand identity kit with a visual guide on how to use it.

OK, but what is Pinterest?

Pinterest is an online place where you pin your interests into mood boards or vision boards on a topic of your choosing. For anything that you would like to collect inspirations on photos, graphics, fashion, branding, memes, quotes, literally anything that you would normally collect as inspiration, can be done on Pinterest.

You can see on my business Pinterest, that I’ve curated a few boards surrounding the services I provide in this business. You will be able to do the same but specifically for your business. I’ve labelled these boards ‘Brand Moodboard’ so that you can see how I collected inspiration for my heart hobby microbusiness Athena’s Heart where I make chainmaille jewellery.

There are other inspiration boards where I’ve gallery full brand identity collections, as well as separate ones for logos, textures and colours, typography and fonts so that you have some easy access inspiration that I’ve curated for you.

So, what is the process of designing a brand with you Cathie?

Well, we know that between us we’ll make a full brand design and not just a logo (though I do also offer a very simple logo design option as well), I will advise you to use Pinterest to gather and make a mood board for your business.

Let’s break down the steps below, for the phases we’ll work through to design your full brand identity together..

1. Meet & Define Actions

We meet up over skype or zoom, we learn about each other, get to know your business and define the actions each of us do during this process of creating your brand.

2. Vision Board Inspiration

This is the longest part of the brand process, where we’ll carefully discuss and discard elements of inspiration for your brand.

3. Rough Concept

In a virtual or in person meeting, we’ll digitally sketch up some rough outlines for logo concepts. These will take elements of designs you’ve been inspired by and make them yours.

4. Design

This is the main part of the process where the favourite 2 (max 3) concepts will be made into semi finished designs.

5. Refine

No design is ever perfect on the first go. It’s during this process of refining the design, colours, patterns and fonts that your brand will find its form. It may take one or two iterations between design & refine to really nail it.

6. Polish

This is exactly what it means, we’ll polish your brand into its final form. All the elements of your brand identity will be output ready for you to use, along with a visual guide on how to use it.

7. Launch Your New Brand

Your brand is finished, you get to show the world your new business look and be consistently outstanding everywhere that your customers interact with you.

So that’s the way I work to create a brand identity. I’ll guide you through all of it to create a brand you are happy to promote you and your business with.

Are you with me? Do you want to work together to craft your brand identity so that you can stand out and be great, everywhere that you interact with your clients and customers?

Get in touch about a brand design.

Most people are familiar with the visuals of branding but it only works when supported by all the assorted events around it, of running a business.

You can be forgiven for thinking that a brand is just a logo, it’s what a lot of people think it is and you’re right to an extent .. it is THE thing we recognise when interacting with a business product or service. It’s how we ‘mark’ a business and there are a variety of ways to make logos. There are word marks, symbols and icons, letter marks, emblems and combinations of the above. All of these elements can make a series of logo elements that when combined provide aspects of a brand. This way you’ll have brand recognition across all platforms that you work within, ie. social media, website, printed promotional materials etc.

So there’s the logo, well that logo also has a colour or a few colours, more than likely a texture somewhere involved and may have a strapline / tagline, depending on how you personally name it. Mine is simply my services: photography, branding & design. Very simple and clear. Clarity can never be overvalued .. the ability to get a point across in a short space of time is very very valuable. It’s your elevator pitch in 5 seconds.

There’s also a business portrait, not well known as a branding move but it should be. As customers we buy from people we trust and recognise, a faceless business is just one in a million. But you, you have a story and your presence tells that story with 10,000 words in a single photo. Cliché I know, but still apt.

So all the above is what helps us visually recognise a business but what comes after is all about the soft warm fuzzy feeling we want to have. Although the cool, clinical calm of a job well done is never to be overestimated either. When interacting with a business we are seeking a solution, one that either inspires a feeling or one that removes a negative feeling and leaves us calmer, ie. removing stress. All of these feelings come from interaction with your business and that is the ‘hidden’ part, as a customer we don’t usually record a phone call dealing with a complaint, but we feel better if our complaint has been heard, appreciated for the pain it caused and resolved quickly by an excellent customer support person.

We feel great when we chuckle as a business having a sense of personality and wit, that helped us solve a problem with a smile. That is the business voice, its a living personality and outward presentation of value. Most often they can be very boring and dry, but the smaller and medium sized businesses that don’t have the thousands of voices talking internally (rather like the borg *geek humour alert*), then the ‘talk’ has a chance of vibrancy and life. Rather like how I’m writing this. I’m a person, talking to a person, I’m a business, talking to you a potential customer wanting to know about branding. It doesn’t have to be more complex than that.

A brand also shows through our website and social media consistency, do they look the same, share the same profile picture or style of ‘voice’? Do all the systems work together or disjointed. If it’s disjointed then that is a fragmented voice talking and consistency is a high priority in my book.

So in just one short blog post, you can already see that a Brand has a high visual impact, but what lasts beyond that is how we make customers feel. All of that is influence by how we interact with our customers .. so we need a smooth system to be able to talk to them in places they socialise, help them ask questions of us as a business, guide them in solving problems or providing solutions for some or all of their problem.

For me, you my reader are a potential client. You probably need help with branding a consistent voice for your business which includes its visuals. You don’t know enough tech to make your website and social media integrate smoothly, how to pre-qualify your clients using a contact form, how to build your business process so that it integrates with and is supported by your business systems.

I build websites, brands and do fabulous photography for you and your business, but what I really do is listen to your problems and provide a full business solution to help you find more paying customers. That there, is my value by integrating all the seen and unseen aspects of branding, supported by tech.