Where to Begin? Once you’ve made the decision for your business that you are going to build your brand from the ground up, you may find yourself a bit overwhelmed. I certainly did. In this post, I reflect on the beginning of my journey as I learned to focus on branding even while in survival mode.
What’s in a Name? This piece examines some of the considerations in selecting the right name for a well-branded operation.
Design Your Own Logo This tutorial provides a very hands-on approach to building your logo. Whether you are considering a totally new design or simply looking to adjust, adapt, and tweak an existing one, these tips (including where to find needed tools) should prove useful.
Know Your Audience A very basic but essential part of any branding exercise should be to make sure you know your audience and choose branding elements that properly reflect their characteristics. This article reviews some of the basics for you to consider.
How to Create a Mission Statement Need a little inspiration for crafting that ever-so-important message? This post includes a couple dozen great examples along with an exercise that breaks down the components of a good mission statement to help you develop yours.
The Role of a Brand Style Guide Once you have completed each of the above activities BUT BEFORE YOU BEGIN BUILDING BASIC TOOLS LIKE BUSINESS CARDS OR LETTERHEAD OR INCORPORATING THE ELEMENTS INTO MARKETING OR ADVERTISING EFFORTS, take the time to create a style guide that puts into writing the most basic rules that must be observed to properly build the visual element of your new brand.
How to Set Up Simple Print-and-Cut Business Cards Start with a blank Word document and develop business cards that are print-ready in only ten steps . . . this “how to” guides the way for you. A Corel Draw tutorial is available as well.
How to Easily Create Business Letterhead As integral as business cards and even easier to develop, letterhead created in Microsoft Word is presented as Instructions with Template Included and a Video Tutorial. Instructions and a template are available for Corel Draw as well.
Note: Many helpful downloadable tools/templates are provided to add extra value to the pieces described above.
With many small businesses of necessity reinventing themselves, we thought the most useful approach for us to take at this time in helping small businesses reboot was to highlight certain articles that – when read together – would provide a branding tutorial. (For those readers just getting started rather than restarted, this collection should provide a helpful shortcut, too.)
The Role of a Brand Style Guide https://brandbuildingforsmallbusiness.com/2019/09/17/brand-basics-part-3-the-role-of-a-brand-style-guide/ Once you have completed each of the above activities BUT BEFORE YOU BEGIN BUILDING BASIC TOOLS LIKE BUSINESS CARDS OR LETTERHEAD OR INCORPORATING THE ELEMENTS INTO MARKETING OR ADVERTISING EFFORTS (we’ll provide a refresher on those soon), take the time to create a style guide that puts into writing the most basic rules that must be observed to properly build the visual element of your new brand/rebrand.
Note: Helpful downloadable tools/templates are provided to add extra value to the pieces described above.
Disclaimer: While we only recommend products we know and love, we want to note we use affiliate links and may earn a commission for purchases made through those links.
Every business should have a custom thank you card on file – the piece gives you the opportunity to express appreciation to your customers, employees, business partners, or anyone else deserving of thanks while reinforcing your business’s brand; also, I love gestures that have double-duty impact at minimal (almost no) cost.
So, in case you don’t already have one of these gems saved on your hard drive, I’m going to take you through the process of making a 2-on double-sided 5×7” branded Thank You card in Microsoft Word.
1. Open Microsoft Word and create a New Blank Document. Change the margins of the page by selecting the Layout tab (at the top), clicking the Margins button, selecting Custom Margins, and changing the Top, Bottom, Left, and Right margins to .25 inches.
2. Click the Insert tab (at the top), click Text Box within the Text section, and select Simple Text Box. Click the outline of the rectangle, hover over the center handle of the bottom line, and click and drag downward to increase the size just a bit. Then, right click on the rectangle, choose More Layout Options…, click the Size tab, input a Height of 5”, select Absolute within the Width section and input 7”; click the Position tab and uncheck “Move object with text” from the Options section. Next, right click the rectangle and select Format Shape. Format the Fill as No Fill and the Line as a Solid Line, Black, 1pt in Width, and Dashed. Now your text box is ready to be customized.
Click the content within the rectangle, which will select everything, and press delete. Set the alignment to centered by pressing Ctrl + E and then type “Thank You”. Press the enter key to advance a couple lines spaces and then insert your logo (Insert tab > Pictures > This Device > browse to the image file for your logo > Insert).
Now you’re obviously going to want to do some formatting. I decrease the size of our logo to 1” in height (the width automatically adjusts proportionately), change the font of “Thank You” to Candellion in 80 pt. and add some line spaces.
3. With the rectangle selected, press Ctrl + C and then Ctrl + V to make a copy. Click and drag the outline of the second rectangle to move about a quarter of an inch from the bottom of the first and horizontally centered on the page (indicated with a green guideline).
4. Duplicate the page: press Ctrl + A to select all the content on the page, press the Insert tab (towards the top), click Blank Page in the Pages section (at top left), and then Ctrl + V to paste the content from the original page onto the new page.
Next, go to the second page and delete the content of the text boxes. You’re going to want to type your message here. (I used the Calibri font in size 11.) Copy and paste the content from one text box to the next (or type different content) and then remove the border of each box. (When you print double sided, the printer will offset the reverse side some small amount and the boxes won’t line up perfectly; therefore, you can just leave the boxes on the front as your cutting guide.)
5. Save your file, print double sided on card stock, and cut!
During the pandemic, has anyone not heard the expression . . .
For work.
For family . . . to stay in touch with members during this time of enforced isolation.
For entertainment . . . as celebrities find new ways to reach out to their audiences. (Everyone catch the cast of Hamilton performing a number with each member in a different remote location?)
What does ZOOMING have to do with brand building? Well, the app is another tool (a particularly useful one right now) for communicating with employees and customers – either singly or in groups. Much can be accomplished via video conferencing.
While the term and app ZOOM might be relatively new, various forms of desktop videoconferencing have existed for many years.
About a decade ago, I started supervising several employees who worked remotely from home – in fact, mostly from different states. Daily meetings using this kind of technology enabled us to keep in touch in a very immediate way – going over current projects, brainstorming, and planning for future tasks. The application we used (though not ZOOM) featured desktop screen sharing—allowing us to share files and make changes interactively, which eliminated one key obstacle that needed to be overcome for remote activity to be as effective as local.
Similarly, my daughter studied abroad back in the early 2000’s. Weekly Skype video calls made this period much more tolerable for us.
ZOOM has already made a huge impact upon the off-premises workplace . . . so I suspect every business owner should become somewhat familiar with the powerful potential of this tool and be able to participate in meetings as well as initiate them. By the way, getting started with ZOOM is free.
Note: While ZOOM is the app I’ve heard most commonly mentioned during these days of isolation and mandatory business closures, be aware that other programs with similar features are available. Skype, WebEx, GoToMeeting, and Microsoft Teams are just a few.
Getting Started
This brief article is not intended be an in depth ZOOM instructional guide . . . but is designed to provide just enough information to pique your curiosity and perhaps give you enough tips to approach your first experience without trepidation.
If you are being invited to participate in a scheduled ZOOM meeting, you will get an e-mail that includes a link to click to join the meeting. Upon doing so, a page will be displayed that informs you that a download is about to begin. When prompted, click “Run”; you will enter a meeting that has been assigned a several digit meeting name.
Note: If you have already installed a free copy of ZOOM (as explained in the next section below), you will be able to bypass this download by launching ZOOM and “Joining” an existing meeting by entering the multi-digit name.
If you are initiating/scheduling a meeting, you will need to download and install a free copy of ZOOM, which you can do at: https://zoom.us/support/download
Follow the installation instructions, creating a user name and password. Once your free account has been created, you will be able to access the screen below.
From this point, you can “Join” a meeting by entering the name provided by the organizer, or you can “Schedule” a new session yourself. The process is quick and easy and accomplished by completing this form:
If you have coordinated ZOOM with your calendar, you can generate invitations directly. Otherwise, you can copy the meeting details (including the needed link) into the clipboard and paste the contents into an e-mail to send to the recipients.
When the meeting is due to begin, you’ll be prompted with a selection to start the meeting. As everyone you invited tries to access the meeting, you will want to select the “Manage” option, which will allow you to admit the requestees into the session.
By the way, ZOOM traditionally limited free account holders to 40-minute meetings. However, the creators have recognized the growing need for videoconferencing of all kinds during the pandemic and have generously waived the time limit.
BTW — Kudos to ZOOM on some nice branding efforts
And – Once Again – How Does ZOOM Relate to Your Branding Efforts?
During this time of business closures and regulated isolation (a process that seems likely to continue for some time as businesses are gradually allowed to reopen), videoconferencing plays a key role in maintaining lines of communication with your employees (assuming you have some), customers (to provide a means of face-to-face contact when such opportunities are scarce), and third-party business meetings. As we have seen in recent weeks as whole music concerts and television shows have been orchestrated this way, the uses of ZOOM are limited only by our imaginations.
If you have any questions or comments on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. Scroll down to the comments section at the bottom of this page.
Be safe. Be well.
Observe the guidelines implemented for our collective good!!
As Bob Dylan wrote, “The Times They Are A-Changin’ . . . ” and will likely never be the same. Society cannot go through the kind of dislocations experienced during the current pandemic without being fundamentally altered, though in ways that may ultimately turn out to be good. (For example: During the global quarantine, scientific studies showed that the amount of pollution – especially in hotspots – decreased significantly.)
Hopefully, we have learned many positive lessons during this international “time-out” and developed a new openness to change.
Necessity may have changed your product or service . . . perhaps in a good way.
During this period of quarantine, perhaps (1) your business had to be closed; (2) you remained open but strictly as an Internet/Takeout-Delivery operation; or (3) you were designated as essential to survival and kept going as best you could under adverse circumstances. Regardless of the category that applies to you, your business will have changed during this time.
Once the crisis has ended, business owners will be faced with deciding whether some of the changes should become permanent ones. (For example, you learned that a segment of your operations could be conducted on-line. Do you try to revert to old ways . . . OR do you capitalize on what you learned and maintain or grow your Internet activities – recognizing an opportunity for immediate profit as well as a hedge against a future need to run your business in a state of emergency?)
With changes of the kind we are discussing comes a need for you to consider whether you must also now REBRAND.
REBRANDING
Over the years, I’ve probably been involved in a half dozen or more different rebranding exercises. Some were very necessary AND major, including top to bottom name, logo, byline, etc. adjustments while others were more minor and amounted to some after-the-fact tweaking of branding elements rather than new names and identities.
How do you know when the time has come? You certainly know when:
Your product and/or service is no longer clearly or accurately represented by the brand.
Your branding no longer resonates with your customers. (You may learn of this need by asking via a formal survey or focus group . . . or you may recognize that a problem exists because your customers no longer remember or relate to your name, logo, or product.)
A change of ownership occurs. (Perhaps your old name is no longer applicable or perhaps your new owner has a well-known name you want to promote. For instance . . . when Berkshire Hathaway purchased my employer in 2012, we wanted to make the name of our parent part of our own name so their branding qualities also became ours. While various permissions and legal ramifications must be addressed first, the results justify the effort.)
A new product or service has been added that you want to promote or a secondary activity has now become primary and dominant.
Sales suggest your current brand just is not working well enough.
So . . . how extensive a rebrand is required? For instance:
Is a name change required? If yes, do you want the new name to reflect the old name . . . or be entirely new. (For example, many years ago, the company that employed me was known as “The GUARD Network.” That name was chosen with the expectation of developing a diverse list of products that served many different industries. When that did not happen and the organization dealt strictly with insurance, the name became a bit of a handicap because people couldn’t tell what the company did. The decision was made to add the word insurance, but all parties believed the word GUARD communicated the right branding qualities of security and protection. As a result, the company became GUARD Insurance Group.
Is a new or modified logo needed? When a name changes in a significant way, a new logo is probably required. However, a logo might be changed or tweaked independent of the name. At that same prior employer, our logo was finetuned multiple times across a five-year period – always including a GUARD icon so the benefit of past branding could be maintained . . . but gradually simplifying that image, which became broader and a bit more abstract over time. For an interesting look at the evolution of some famous logos over time (as well as information on debranding), check out Debranding: The Future of Branding.
By-line? A change of by-line is another way to communicate an important adjustment without necessarily scrapping the investment made over time to your logo. (For Example, a restaurant that had started to feature delivery and take-out might start including that information as part of a new by-line – “Take out/eat in.”
Sometimes, the need for a rebrand is obvious . . . and I suspect that will often be the case post-pandemic. If you are not sure about the necessity, take the time to do some research with current and potential customers. In addition to evaluating the necessity, you might learn some useful tips about the correct measures needed to rebrand successfully.
Make No Mistake . . . Rebranding Comes at a Cost
Some of the expenses associated with a rebrand are obvious:
The cost of performing research (surveys, focus groups, etc.)
Cost of reprinting materials with the new logo
Signage changes to reflect the new name
Programming expense associated with changes to the branding elements in the computer system
Cost of promoting the new name via advertising, mailings, and promotional giveaways
Etc., etc., etc. (The list can keep going on and on.)
However, the less obvious costs must also be considered. For example:
Lost labor. Staff time associated with name change activities as opposed to normal duties is an expense.
Lost investment in the old branding. If you succeed in cleverly linking the past and present, perhaps some of that investment will be salvaged. If not – if a total break from the past seems advisable for some extreme reason – your effort in accumulated time and money will be totally lost.
Conclusion
Right now, we are still in the middle of a global health and financial crisis . . . so post-pandemic thoughts may seem somewhat premature. Still, we wanted to introduce this kind of thinking now so you can subconsciously collect information as you go along that might prove useful in the future. When that day comes, we have a number of blog postings that may be very helpful to you. Be sure to revisit “Building Blocks: The Beginning.”
The above illustration highlights just a few of the relevant topics worth reviewing.
Good luck. Stay safe.
If you have any questions or comments on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. Scroll down to the comments section at the bottom of this page.
Today, my goal was to come up with a meaningful article about branding that offered some concrete tips useful in the midst of a pandemic.
Nothing was coming to me. In search of inspiration, I went to google and typed “branding and the pandemic.”
In case you are wondering about the likelihood of those two terms together yielding any meaningful insight, I suggest you search the headline of this article yourself. Ten full pages of results were returned. (BTW—I stopped looking through the pages at that point because I grew tired of the exercise, not because the results stopped matching my request.) The illustration below from page 1 shows some of the many different variations on the theme.
See the bottom of this page for our Special Offer.
Skimming through the headlines as well as a few of the articles, you’ll find that every imaginable subject has been addressed – the good, the bad, and the ugly. While the amount of information is overwhelming, one fact becomes abundantly clear – branding is important during these difficult times and deserving of every bit of attention you can spare, even though no time and opportunity may seem to be available and the subject of branding may be the furthest from your mind and fairly low on your current list of priorities.
Many of these articles are good ones, and we suggest you use some of your many hours of isolation to acquaint yourselves with the range of insight and good advice being made available.
That said, let me ease your mind – we don’t plan to use this article to reinvent any of those wheels. Instead, we will remind you to read our earlier pieces on Crisis Management and building some strategic plans for “Weathering the Storm” and identifying parts of your business that you might be able to re-engineer to function in a mostly online environment.
Assuming you’ve already acquainted yourselves with these bits of advice, today’s suggestion is one that might be deceptively difficult to execute: spend some time on meaningful self-reflection.
Who do you think you are as a company?
What can you and your company do to ease the burden of the pandemic? (ex: make personal protective equipment; serve meals to first responders; deliver products to the elderly)
What impression do you want your customers to take away when linking your company name and the pandemic? Will you be considered a valued member of the community contributing to the greater good? Will you be thought of as being one of those organizations with so much talent and expertise that you were able to adapt your operations and offer a valuable product and/or service to others while existing under pandemic restrictions?
Once you arrive at an honest answer to these questions through this period of self-examination, what measures can you take to make that happen? Consider:
Who you have been (and whether that is who you want to be)
The steps you can take to be perceived in the desired way
The kinds of plans you can put into place to better equip yourself to deal with crises of this kind in the future.
Once you have a clear vision and understand your brand aspirations, we can help identify useful strategies to implement the results of your self-reflection.
Our Offer to You:
Feel like you need a little assist to make this self-reflection a meaningful and useful exercise? If so, we’re happy to help other business owners identify opportunities to adapt their resources and skillset to aid their communities (just one of the ways we can do our part during these hard times). We’ll also work with you on a plan for reinforcing your brand in a positive way while being of service to others. Just let us know a little about your situation in the comments below . . . describe your business and expertise, and we’ll start brainstorming with you.
Be careful. Be safe. Embrace this opportunity to understand yourself and your brand better. When the pandemic does finally end, you’ll be in a better position to resume more normal activities.
Branding is about who you are and who you want to be . . . and the steps to take to make that happen!
I sat down to write an article on the preparation of electronic files for various purposes – commercial printing, publications, the Internet, electronic ads, novelty items, etc. However, we are in the middle of a world-wide health and financial emergency, and my partner and I felt we’d be remiss not to address that subject instead.
When a crisis occurs, you have an opportunity to demonstrate that you are a good corporate citizen and simultaneously cement and communicate your brand to current and potential customers in a positive way.
Developing Your Message
One of your first priorities as a small business owner when trouble strikes is to send your employees and your customers a message about the situation. You need to be empathetic to their circumstances and emphasize that you are all facing the same difficulties because (most of the time) you will be.
You need to provide an overview of the steps you are taking to manage the crisis and (if relevant) explain any modifications being made to your products/services to deal with the situation and address special needs. Finally, you must emphasize the importance of good communication and outline in detail the best ways to contact you with any problems or concerns – phone, e-mail, text messaging, social media etc.
Needless to say, you have to prepare your employees for any changes to their roles due to the crisis, and you should coach them on the proper information to communicate when dealing with the public.
Once you have figured out the correct content of your message, you need to prepare versions for all of the various media you will be using:
[ ] e-mail
[ ] letter
[ ] web site posting
[ ] social media posting(s)
[ ] signage for physical location (including any changes to usual hours) and instructions for getting in touch
[ ] PSA (Public Service Announcements) for local media
[ ] Press releases communicating information of interest to the public
While not all of these vehicles will be appropriate for everyone, every business will need to utilize more than one, remembering that different customers have very different preferences for receiving information.
Memories Are Long
Part of being a good corporate citizen is to honestly assess the part your product/service plays in the community. Are you essential . . . or a luxury? If you are the former, you will need to reassure people that you will continue to serve them with the least possible disruption. You want to be sure to stay away from any language or unintentional suggestion that you are exploiting the situation for profit or gain. Conversely, any steps taken at such times to offer charitable assistance and lend a hand to the community at large are important. While your business might be suffering from a less profitable moment, too – chances are others are dealing with even more difficult circumstances and could use your help.
Memories are long. When conditions improve, your customers will remember your behavior. Did you lend a helping hand . . . or just help yourself?
Be Honest
In all of your communications, be honest and truthful. People have an innate ability to recognize when you are being evasive and less than forthcoming. While we certainly understand that some information is private or cannot be shared due to the likelihood of being misunderstood, you will do your business and your brand the most good by developing a reputation for being the kind of company a person can trust.
While honesty can be difficult in the short-run because hard messages sometimes have to get delivered, the long-range benefits will be worthwhile. People will be inclined to believe ALL of your messaging, which is one of the key benefits of building a good brand.
Be safe. Be well.
Observe the guidelines implemented for our collective good!!
Note: In the midst of a crisis, future planning is probably the furthest from your mind. Nevertheless, planning is also an act of faith and optimism for the future. An upcoming article will explore the reasons all of us should be developing contingency plans for portions of our business that can be conducted online.
Before a business owner invests the time, energy, and resources to systematically build a brand, some skeptics need to be persuaded that all this talk about branding is not a scam on the part of ad agencies and other marketers out to make money.
For starters, no less an authority of the business world than renown entrepreneur Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway fame was recently quoted as saying about the power of brands: “Give me a $10 billion budget and ask me to bring out another Coca-Cola that makes a dent in Coca-Cola and I can’t do it.” By inference, this statement seems to suggest that the branding of Coca Cola has a value of at least $10 billion (perhaps more).
Frankly, branding has a longer history than most people realize.
Do an Internet search for the term “history of branding,” and you get an extremely wide variety of responses. Some talk about the cattle branding done in the 19th century wild west. An organization called Skyward traces the origins back further, saying, “The term derives from the Old Norse word brandr or ‘to burn,’ and refers to the practice of branding livestock, which dates back more than 4,000 years to the Indus Valley.”
Most sources seem to agree that some form of the concept can be attributed to the Egyptians (and ancient B.C. times) with some credit being given to the Chinese, the Greeks, the Romans, and more due to the marks put on items such as pottery to provide information about the creator and creations. (For a good historical overview, read Skyward’s essay, “What Is Branding? A Brief History” found at https://www.skyword.com/contentstandard/branding-brief-history/.)
Obviously, the term branding has assumed a much different and more complex identity during the second half of the 20th century. As Taylor Holland notes in the Skyward essay, “The meaning of the word has evolved so much over the centuries that even people who do it for a living have never made the connection between modern marketing and livestock.”
Contemporary branding is a 20th century phenomenon. The advertising industry is generally credited with broadening the definition to include establishment of a corporate identity and promotion of sales. During the “Golden Age of Advertising” in the 1950’s and 60’s, the concept started to encompass the creation of a unique personality for products – giving them qualities that often elicited an emotional response that helped foster brand loyalty.
More recently, we have seen the concept expand even further to focus on something called “the brand experience” with customer service and ease of use playing increasingly prominent roles in effective branding. (For a quick overview of this process of evolution, see “20 milestones in the history of branding” – https://www.creativebloq.com/branding/milestones-history-branding-91516855.)
So . . . What Conclusions Can Be Drawn?
If the act of branding is, indeed, an elaborate scam, the charade is one that dates back thousands of years, has hoodwinked one of the 20th century’s most astute businessmen, and has evolved to reflect the needs of a changing world. While the act of branding has certainly become more complicated (as has the modern world), the process still involves quick identification of a product through visual symbols such as a logo and the association of those symbols with positive attributes. These characteristics will, in turn, always be useful to companies that must continually reprove themselves to their existing customers . . . while constantly being on the lookout for new ones.
Not Convinced?
Perhaps you are one of those people who need some numbers before you can believe. For instance: “Consistent branding across all channels increases revenue by 23%.” From 80+ Branding Statistics You Should Know For 2020 – Ryan McCready, June 19, 2019.
If you are one of them, check out these 80 facts and many others found in articles made available by searching “data proving the importance of branding.”
You’ve created your social media pages to reinforce and promote your brand, and you regularly dedicate your time to adding content. Now, you want to be sure you’re taking every opportunity to properly promote your social media presence. If your small business has a physical location (office, retail store, etc.), hanging a sign in a high-traffic area is a great option and relatively quick and easy.
I’ll show you the steps to create such sign in Microsoft Word.
1. Open Word, create a new blank document, and insert a rectangle. (When your cursor turns into a plus sign, you’re able to draw your shape.
By default, mine is blue. Right click the rectangle and select More Layout Options.
Set the properties to . . .
Size: 10” in Height and 8” in Width
Text Wrapping: Behind Text
Position:
Horizontal – Absolute Position of .25” ‘to the right of’: Page
Vertical – Absolute Position of .5” ‘to the right of’: Page
Set the Fill to No Fill and the Line to a Solid Line, Black Color, and .5 pt Width, choosing the Dash Type selection shown below.
2. Click inside the rectangle and type “Follow Us on Social Media”. Set the font to one or more choices that work as your heading and size to appropriately fill the space. Set the Alignment to Centered. I went with the font Candelion Regular in all lowercase at size 160 for “follow us” and (on the next line) Calibri in all caps at size 25 and added a space between each letter.
3. Next, decide which review platforms you would like to feature. We are currently active on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest and will be highlighting those. Then, go to Google to find logos. Most social media outlets will have a corporate page that makes their logo available to the public along with instructions for proper usage. For example, Facebook has a Brand Resources page easily found when searching “facebook logo” on Google.
As you find the appropriate source for each social media outlet, save the logos to your desktop.
4. Press enter within your document to advance to the next line space and then insert each of your saved logos (from the menu at top, press the Insert tab, and choose Picture) in the order you want them to appear on your sign.
Inserting each of mine took me to the bottom of a second page. So, the first step in adjusting sizing is to crop any excess space from the logos. (As you can see above, the outline of the Pinterest image is directly around the icon, so no need to crop that one.) That’s not the case for LinkedIn . . .
To crop, click Picture Tools (at the very top of the screen), click the Crop icon (at top right), drag the outer edges of the box tight around the logo, and press enter. Once all the logos are cropped as needed, try to match their size to about and 1.4” in height. (This will ensure you have adequate room for text.) To do so, click Picture Tools again and enter a height at top right.
Repeat for the other icons.
5. Click in the space after your first icon, press enter to add a line space, and type your profile name/URL for that platform; repeat for your subsequent logos. This process once again took me onto a second page.
Therefore, decrease the font size as needed. I went with size 20.
And then adjust the spacing a little for each line of text (so you have additional room between each social media outlet).
And you’re done!
6. Save your file, print, cut (on the dotted line, which is 8×10”), and frame!
A Note About Fonts and Colors: While the instructions described above will achieve the simple and modern design pictured, you can (and should) customize the look for your business. If you’ve been brand building from the start, you already have a Style Guide in place, and everything you create for your business should reflect the guidelines you’ve set for your logo usage, fonts, and colors. If you’re new to branding, be sure to review our story on The Role of a Brand Style Guide.
In an earlier article (Press Releases as Another Opportunity for Branding), we promised to do our first press release on Brand Building for Small Business, using the occasion of National Small Business Week May 3rd through May 9th to formally announce our blog – believing we now have enough content across many basic business areas to warrant introducing ourselves.
With the dual hook of this national celebration plus the rollout of our site as a free resource to the targeted audience, we believe we have enough substance to interest an editor.
Selecting our media targets on a budget was not easy. For this initial round, we have contacted about a dozen business journals (all of which serve a substantial small business readership) and an inexpensive distribution channel – IssueWire.com – that also circulates the first press release free. Clearinghouses such as this one can be very useful in getting the message out to a broader audience, though in a less targeted way than developing your own list of carefully selected publications. That said, this approach makes the processing of releases much easier, and feedback about the distribution is tracked and easily accessible. In addition to the most basic level of distribution, several special promotions can be added (at an extra cost) that target social media connections and Google search.
Our goal – we hope to gradually increase the readership of our blog and gain some valuable reader insights.
We will keep you posted about our results . . . and will write a follow-up article on the analysis of the results. Until then, feel free to review our press release piece and provide us with any feedback in the comment section below.
Special Note: Brand Building for Small Business has been identified by Feedspot (www.Feedspot.com) as one of the Top 100 Branding Blogs. Feedspot provides “the most comprehensive list of branding blogs on the Internet” so we are pleased to be part of that group. To learn more, visit https://blog.feedspot.com/branding_blogs/.
Brand Building for Small Business 