In the days when a company website was the only aspect of a business’ online presence, controlling brand consistency was pretty simple. With everything all in one place, you only had one shot at getting your audience’s attention, but once you had it, there was only one set of branding you had to manage.
These days, online branding is much more complex. On one hand, you have many opportunities to attract an audience – your site, social media, and search, to name a few. On the other hand, it’s now essential to make sure that your branding is consistent across all these channels, in order to keep your brand at the forefront of your audience’s awareness.
This means that now more than ever, you have to be conscious of how you are portraying your brand, and keep the brand continuity seamless regardless of where your audience may find you. This sounds simple on the surface, but achieving and maintaining brand synergy is a skill that requires perpetual monitoring and diligence.
That said, it doesn’t have to be difficult; it’s simply a matter of being aware of the content of your communications in terms of visual branding and tone, and making sure that both are carried across all channels to ensure that the same overall message is broadcast everywhere, and in the same way. For example, if you have set up your brand style to be youthful, playful, and fun, and your website matches up to this tone, it won’t make sense to your audience if the content on your social media accounts is written in a more serious tone. You don’t want any question in the reader’s mind when they come across one of your social media accounts, that the brand represented on your site is the same brand as the one they encounter on social media.
This reinforcement of a consistent message across all channels is at the heart of a strong branding strategy, and is the key to keeping your brand in the minds of your audience. If your company has a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a Pinterest page, or any number of other social media accounts, the number one priority in your social media management should be to maintain this brand synergy across all channels. Doing so could make the difference in whether people remember who you are and what you do.
How does branding synergy factor into your social media strategy? Do you pay close attention to how consistently your brand comes across?
