Is your branding consistent across all of the different platforms and elements of your brand? Unless you have invested thousands of dollars to have every single element of your brand created by a designer, there is a good chance that you may have some inconsistencies. In this episode, I’ll share why consistent branding is so important and a process you can follow to start making your branding more cohesive and professional. 

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One of the struggles I see all the time with food bloggers is a lack of consistency in their branding. This can take form in a lot of ways. Maybe your Pinterest graphics are totally different than the branding on your website, maybe your messaging and content is all over the place,

Remember that branding is not just a logo. Your branding is the entire presence of your brand. 

Consistent branding can also help build a foundation for your brand so that you can add other parts of your business, like physical products or ebooks, and have them all work together. As you grow your team and support for your blog, it can also help your team to understand your brand better and maintain consistency in the areas they are working on. 

Let’s think about brand consistency in this way. If you walked into Target and as you walked in it it looked more like Home Depot, you’d be pretty confused. This is exactly what happens when your pins have one brand aesthetic and your website is totally different. It creates confusion and distrust for your brand. 

Another important benefit is that your blog will be viewed as much more professional. If you are trying to create brand partnerships and your brand looks unprofessional or DIY’d, that can hurt your ability to create successful partnerships.

Step One: Start by evaluating your branding.

One thing I’ve noticed is that when people have pieced their branding together it will oftentimes feel inconsistent. This isn’t simply because you aren’t a designer, but it can be because you don’t even like the branding you have for your logo, so you try to create something better through a Pinterest design or another element of your brand. 

Take note of how your branding makes you feel. If you aren’t proud of your branding, it will be hard to show up consistently and share the different parts of your brand. 

If you are not even proud of this starting place and you feel like your branding is scattered, it may be time to invest in branding. And when I say branding, I do not mean investing $5 on Fiverr for a logo. 

So often clients come to me because they have DIY’d and piecemealed their branding for such a long time and they are ready to finally be proud of their brand. They’re ready for the visual elements and brand strategy to reflect the heart behind their blog and what they want to achieve through it. 

If you are feeling unproud or even embarrassed of your branding, it may be time to invest. It’s time to ask yourself, what is the cost of having branding that you don’t like or aren’t proud of? Could that lack of consistency be what’s holding you back from taking your blog to the next level?

Step Two: Take stock of what you already have

Depending on how your brain processes information like this, you could create a Trello board with different cards for each of the elements of your brand, you could create a collage on Canva or you could even print these things out if you are more tactile. 

The point of this exercise is to see what you already have. Maybe you are consistent. Maybe you are all over the place with Pinterest templates vs Facebook graphics. Either way, it’s just good to know. 

Here are a few pieces that you may have and want to review: 

• Pinterest Templates
• Social Media
• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Instagram Highlights
• Business Cards
• Collateral
• Media Kit
• Rate Card
• Sponsor Report
• Email newsletter template
• Email signature

Once you see these different elements together, look at how they work together. Are you using the same color palette, fonts, and overall aesthetic? 

If you only have a logo, it’s really difficult to expand into things like Pinterest templates, a media kit, business cards, or even just be consistent with the look and feel of your Instagram feed.

Related: Why You Need More Than Just A Logo

Now that you have evaluated what you have, you can start working towards making it more consistent. Here are a few ways to make your branding more consistent.

Step Three: Get your branding out of your head.

This is part of why I wanted you to first take stock of your current branding. But, it’s also important to get the heart of your brand and your brand messaging out of your head. 

If you have not gone through my branding foundations workbook I would highly recommend going through that as it will really help you set that branding foundation for yourself.

When you go through this workbook and have all of your branding foundations in place (your audience, voice, niche and brand messaging) you’ll be able to refer to those when creating anything new for your business — whether that is a new Pinterest template or a new physical product. 

This is another great resource you can share with a team member who may be creating other assets for your brand!

Step Four: Create Templates

There is no reason to reinvent the wheel everytime you create a new Pinterest graphic or even social media post.

If you look back at that list of the items you already have, which of those are graphics that you recreate? 

Templates do not have to be purchased. You can create your own. I love using Canva for this and honestly use Canva so often for my clients when we are creating templates or files that will need to be redone, like media kits. 

If you’re using Canva, you can just duplicate your page and change the text or graphic out. I’ve found that Canva just works so much more efficiently for creating graphics like pins.

Templates help with consistency because you won’t get “inspired” to change things up the next time around because the template is already done for you. 

This is something I see happen a lot when people are not confident in their branding. They change things up every time trying to find something they love. To your audience, this is just going to cause confusion and a lack of trust. 

There is definitely value in having different templates for something like Pinterest, but you DO still want them to feel relevant and on-brand so that when someone comes to your website from Pinterest they are not totally thrown off by it being totally different. 

Now you have your action plan to be more consistent with your branding! 

1. Evaluate your current branding
2. Take stock of the pieces you already have and how they are (or are not) working together
3. Get your branding out of your head (download the branding foundations workbook!)
4. Create templates for graphics that you recreate often. 
   

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