From the course: Launching Your Creative Business

Essential brand tools

From the course: Launching Your Creative Business

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Essential brand tools

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- Now that we've talked about how you look on screen, let's talk about some other brand essentials as you launch your business. So first you're going to want a home base. Those tools that promote your business and are a core essential of your marketing plan, like a website, portfolio, a logo and tagline. We'll talk about that more in a moment. Then you want tools for connecting to others. That might be a bio and headshot that you can send out when you're speaking. LinkedIn profile with keywords, business cards, email signature. All of these are great tools to connect with other people. I'm always amazed at how many small business owners don't take advantage of that free email signature. Your email goes out to hundreds of people every week. So make sure you put all kinds of information in there. Something that's coming up, a new blog post, a speaking engagement, something new on your website or portfolio. It's a great opportunity to connect with prospective and existing customers. Then also think about tools for engagement. That's your social media channels. I know a lot of people think how many should I have? I get that question all the time when I'm speaking. The answer is how many can you manage? You want to be sure that you're active in those channels on a regular basis. So if that means two, that's great. If that means five and you have enough people to populate that content, great. It's up to you how many channels, but you just want to be sure that you're creating constant engagement with your community. You can also be looking at YouTube or Vimeo pages. Maybe an e-newsletter that goes out on a weekly or monthly basis, blog posts or be a guest blogger on somebody else's blog. A podcaster or a guest on somebody else's podcast. So remember you need a home base, you need tools for connecting, and you need tools for engagement with an ongoing community. Those are three keys and essential brand tools. We live in a very audio visual focused world these days. Social media conversations, emails, videos, websites, they all need some kind of visual to anchor them. So why not create a logo that reminds people it is you in the conversation. You want to have something that stands out and looks good both in print and in digital iterations. It should have color that conveys something about your brand promise. There's a whole lot of color theory information out there so I'm not going to dive into all of that. Suffice it to say, you want something simple that won't get dated. That is the best way to go with a logo.

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