DIY Graphic Design: Tips and resources for the amateur designer
Thinking of doing it yourself? Here are some tips and tricks.
If You Build It, They Will Come: Smart Social Business
by Natalie Stoner
There are myriad reasons for establishing social media profiles for your business. Social engagement creates value, that’s a given, but how does it accomplish this feat? Value can be created through:
- Building customer relationships and staying connected
- Marketing
- PR / Image control
- Recruiting
- Crisis monitoring
- Collaboration & innovation
- Establishing thought leadership
So how should you go about launching social for your company or brand?
We’ve got you covered.
Controlling the Message: Authority Always Wins
by Natalie Stoner
Establishing subject matter expertise or thought leadership can be an effective way to control the message. If you want people to use specific language for a topic or if you want them to understand the functioning in a particular way, you can direct the conversation using the tips in this infographic. It takes persistence to get established, but the work will pay off when you are a go-to resource in your industry. Whichever track you choose, you can direct and control the conversation about your area if expertise with a little bit of strategy and some good old fashioned elbow grease.
Making Quirks Work
by Natalie Stoner
We live in a world where the influence and impacts of branding are inescapable. We are literally bombarded by branding every waking hour, experts estimate that we are exposed to as many as 4,000 ads each day. How will you differentiate yourself in a super-saturated marketplace?
Our suggestion: make what’s unique and quirky part of your focus. Keep the typical value proposition and add to it what’s fun, exciting, and unconventional about your company & brand to differentiate.
We don’t suggest that you throw the baby out with the bathwater and strictly promote weirdness, but, rather, use it to add sparkle and interest to your differentiators. Big names such as Apple, Virgin, and Google make it their practice to challenge and delight, putting the spotlight on what makes them unique. This kind of rebellious branding has made them fortunes and it can work for you too!
Rebel Branding
Building Successful Buyer Personas
by Natalie Stoner
In use since the mid-1990s, personas are now one of the most valuable decision-making tools used in marketing. Personas are carefully-crafted, imaginary or hypothetical archetypes developed using data about a brand’s typical customers. These personas are developed using various types of true demographic data so that they represent a company’s actual customers.They help marketers throughout the design and development of campaigns. By identifying the different types of buyers and creating materials that address their specific behaviors and desires, more strategic, targeted campaigns can be built.
Get your branding off the ground in three easy steps!
by Natalie Stoner
You have a business. Now, you need to consider your branding. Brand is more than just your products and services, it is the emotional connection you have to your customers over time. Branding should inspire them, make them feel the way they want to feel, touch on their desires and aspirations for the future. Branding is your opportunity to tell an enticing story about your offerings. Branding should consistently convey your values to your audience and remind them, again and again, of why they want to align themselves with your product or services.
If you develop and sustain an emotional connection to your customers through your branding, you will naturally build trust and loyalty.
It is that simple.
This probably all makes sense to you, but perhaps you are still not sure where to begin? Below are the first steps you will need to take on your journey. These are three key elements that will ensure awesome branding.
Many Brains, Multiple Intelligences
by Natalie Stoner
As you pursue your career as a social media / marketing guru, it is helpful to learn about the theories from psychology and social psychology that have informed many experts in the field of advertising. One such theory is Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences.
Knowing that different people process information based on unique skill and ability profiles, can help you target your messages to the specific segment of your audience that you you most want to reach.
Branding 101: How Color Impacts Brand
by Natalie Stoner
Color theory and psychology are very important to consider when creating or re-vamping a brand identity. People have an instantaneous reaction when seeing a color, therefore it is an important factor to take into account when branding your business. You send an automatic message when you choose a particular hue to represent your company and this can subtly affect how your audience perceives your brand. Let’s explore the quick impressions made by this key visual component.
Visual Content Creates Value
by Natalie Stoner
The overall pace of life has speeded up, people want information in a form that can be quickly and easily processed. Visual content meets that need. A picture really is worth a thousand words. Images and video are the primary language of the modern digital world and your relevance as a brand is, in part, dependent on how well you can employ this language.
A brief observation of activity across social platforms will demonstrate anecdotally, what research continually confirms; visual content dominates when it comes to user engagement. If that is not enough motivation for you to get visual, this infographic shares some key statistics and compelling facts in the ongoing conversation about the value of visual content.
