Everyone has a “brand” these days — from products to influencers. But what actually is a brand? And why is it important?

Most often, people think about brands in the sense of their exterior, their brand identity. However, according to Marty Neumeier of The Brand Gap, a brand is “a person’s gut feeling, because brands are defined by individuals, not companies, markets, or publics. It’s a gut feeling because people are emotional, intuitive beings.”

Fortunately, there are ways to assist in how your brand is perceived by individuals by building your brand identity which most often includes:

Logo

Color palette

Typography

Iconography

Design system

Photography/graphics

Sidenote: At UMG Agency we build brand identities and marketing strategies. So what’s the difference? Marketing is what you do, branding is what you are. Marketing uses persuasion as a tactic, while brand building is about developing an emotional connection.

The visually consistent system of a brand identity is important in building four pillars of a successful brand: trust, reputation, perception and awareness. (You wouldn’t use the font Arial for all elements of your brand and then suddenly use Comic Sans — they represent two different “characters” and perceptions.) In today’s world, a brand needs to live, evolve and adapt while keeping these four elements.

Sustaining a consistent brand and “character” takes a lot of work, especially when it comes to social media. Social media is an incredible platform for building your brand. With each post, you are defining your value to consumers/followers and have the ability to engage with them. They’ll develop that “gut feeling” as they experience what you offer them.

Once you’ve established your brand identity, it’s time to really start letting your brand live. That requires planning, and you don’t have to do it alone. We shared our top four platforms we use to help plan and schedule posts in advance with a list of some of our favorite features.

 

 

Google Sheets – planning

We use Google Sheets for planning because we’re able to share it with members of the team and edit it at the same time, have different sheets to mark each month, and set up a weekly grid within the month.

Hootsuite

• Allows you to schedule content on all platforms (and at the same time)
• Auto-posts Instagram posts in business profiles*
• Allows you to see analytics and search discoverable images

Planoly – specifically for Instagram

• Allows you to schedule Instagram content
• Auto-posts Instagram posts
• Allows you to see analytics and search discoverable images
• Lets you see the posts as they would appear on grid
• Allows you to schedule Instagram story posts

Viraltag

• Can schedule one post to multiple platforms and across all accounts

What are your thoughts on branding and social media? What platforms have you used to plan and schedule posts?