Consistency is key when it comes to building your business. So what is Brand Consistency? Brand consistency is defined as the expression that affects the way people think about your business. The more consistent your communication with your audience, the more consistent your branding is. Having consistency within your brand means that your target audience is constantly being exposed to your content and core brand values. This will ultimately aid in building your brand’s recognition as well as trust with potential customers. Being consistent on Social media allows you to easily stand out from your competitors, be recognised by your target audience as well as improve your brand perception. Once your audience recognises what your business is and what you aim to do, it is easier for them to build an association between your core messages and what your brand aims to do on social media. To help you develop your brand on social media we are sharing our best tips for creating brand consistency on Instagram:
Where to start
The way your brand is represented through social media has a huge influence on whether you will be able to attract your target audience. Being consistent is integral for any business that wants to gain trust among its audience. Easy ways to create brand consistency on Instagram can start anywhere from your visuals, tone of voice, fonts, graphics, colour palette, and even your communication with your audience through comments and direct messaging. Investing your time into creating a professional and consistent Instagram feed that is in line with your brand voice and design guidelines is so important. This is what helps you build trust with your followers. The content you share on Instagram should have the same look and feel as your website and physical store.
Maintaining Brand Consistency on Instagram
You should have a consistent logo/profile image and username which should be the same across all social media platforms. This helps customers quickly and clearly identify your brand, no matter what platform they are on. We also recommend picking one or two fonts to use on your website and social media posts. Make sure to also define your brand colour palette to use for grid/story posts on your social platforms. Lastly, don’t forget to have a clear brand personality. Ask yourself if your brand was a person would their language be informal and colloquial? Or more sophisticated?. Work this out and then stick with the same language when writing your captions and communicating with your customers/followers; this will help build a solid relationship with your customers/followers.
Post often and Consistently
Maintaining consistent posting is key on Instagram so that you regularly show up in your followers’ feeds and they continue to engage with your content. We recommend posting once a day to your Instagram, and you can easily use tools for scheduled posting like Sprout Social to help you find the optimal times to share your content and to post at a scheduled time every day. We also recommend using Instagram Stories as consistently as possible. Posting stories that match the brand look and feel you’ve established on your Instagram profile; to help keep your brand top of mind and further drive interest in your feed.
Develop A Brand Aesthetic
Developing a brand aesthetic is key to making your brand recognisable to a customer/follower. Having clear values, tone of voice and personality all come together to guide your brand aesthetic. We think the best way to build your ‘aesthetic’ is to simply think of your brand as if it was a person. Who does this person appeal to and how might you make them more appealing to your ideal demographic. We use this comparison because when you see a person for the first time, how they look (wrongly or rightly) gives you an opinion of who they are. Once they talk, that opinion might change. If they consistently wear a particular colour, you start to associate it with them as their favourite colour. Also, if they speak in a distinct accent or repeat specific words, you learn to know that they’re the ones talking even if you are not with them in person.
The more you see of them, the more you learn about their personality. The same goes with Instagram and social media, the more consistently you post the more your audience interacts with your brand and gets to know what you stand for. Your use of colours, language, fonts, words, images, and other design elements is much the same. Ask yourself what kind of person your brand is and represent them accordingly.
These are the 5 main factors you should think about when discovering your brand aesthetic:
- Fonts (size, colour, type)
- Brand Colours
- Photography and video style
- Language (formal, informal, casual, etc)
- Mood (trendy, boho, curated, improvised, minimalist, etc)
Cement your Branding
Once you’ve decided on the above brand elements, you need to make sure that everyone who works on your Instagram knows it inside out and sticks to it. After all, one of the worst things on social media is inconsistent posting. We recommend creating a social media guide for everyone to make themselves familiar with your brand’s new style of posting/communication. This should be an easy-to-use instruction manual with your brand colours, fonts, feed style, image style and caption examples.
Anybody on your team should be able to use your Instagram brand guide to create cohesive content. Content accessibility makes consistency easier to achieve. So, make sure all relevant team members have access to updated logos, colour palettes, and other content elements via your style guide, using Canva is a great way of doing this. Ensuring all of your team are aware of your brand’s new style will help to avoid any posting mistakes. It will also help to keep your social media looking consistent and professional.
Learn from your audience
Coming up with fresh content ideas can be tiring. What’s even worse? Fresh content ideas that underperform on your socials. How to avoid this issue? We say try letting your audience and analytics choose the content you post. Say, for example, you’ve posted about a topic that really resonated with your audience. Do some community management, read through comments and DMs, and respond to followers; are you noticing that your followers are asking any follow-up questions?. If so you could be using these to help your engagement by turning their questions into an informative post.
Similarly, if you posted something that performed well but it has been months since you posted it, feel free to repurpose it!. Do this by simply changing up the image and editing the caption so that it isn’t exactly identical. Repurposing high-performing content has the chance of increasing your engagement. Notice that your audience is telling you exactly what they want to see so make sure to look at your analytics, read and respond to comments, and customize your content accordingly. A huge component of consistency is working smarter, not harder.
In Conclusion
It is important to remember that growing your audience and business on social media is a long game. It’s not something that happens in a few days, it takes time, consistency, creativity and overall hard work!. Whilst there are shortcuts such as giveaways and competitions, those tools might not end up benefiting you in the long run. If you want to grow your audience on Instagram, you need to remember to stay patient, make quality content, and stay consistent. Building your business on social media is a process but we can promise you that following these tips on your Instagram will help you to stay both accountable and consistent. And once you’re posting consistently while constantly improving the quality of your content, growth will be inevitable.
