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5 things that are KILLING your company brand

Your brand is having trouble growing and it’s driving your anxiety through the roof. A common mentality in business is that “if you’re not growing, you’re dying.”

We at Blueforest Studios want you to have a thriving, vibrant company! Our main focus is improving your brand through video production. Before we can do that, we must first mend the wounds in your branding. Join us as we write your prescription for a healthy business.

Common mistakes that are killing your company brand

1. You don’t have a simple way to explain your company brand

Your audience wants to know exactly what you do within moments of discovering you. It’s nice if you have a whole story behind “why” you do your work. Unfortunately, you’ll be telling it to deaf ears if you’re opening with a list of reasons.

Start clean and simple: be able to explain what your company does in 1-2 sentences. Focus on what benefits your audience gets, rather than the features that make your work sound nice. Here’s an example: do you buy a premium dish detergent because it has “super duper suds action,” or because it cuts your cleaning time in half?

2. Not enough social media activity

If you don’t post often to social media, you might be scaring away your audience. Most modern businesses are well aware that social media is necessary. However, a Facebook page with no content is equally sketchy as no page at all.

The remedy for a ghost town social media account: post some stuff. Simple, right? Just remember to make all your content relevant, helpful, and at least a little entertaining for your audience. Most importantly, post regularly whenever it’s convenient for you– whether twice a week or twice a day. If your audience sticks around to comment and discuss, you’re on track.

3. Too much social media presence

There’s a polar opposite to being inactive on social platforms: being too active. If you’re using ten different social sites for your brand and you’ve got a four-person company, slow down. You’re likely not using each medium to its full potential. Let’s take a walk through this idea. If you’re using Twitter, you shouldn’t be posting the same exact content you’re putting on Instagram. Twitter isn’t a visual-first platform, so don’t treat it like one. Many brands have been seen posting similar content across all their online spaces, but they never reach great engagement on any of them. You can rise above just by being awesome at one or two platforms.

Cool it on Facebook!

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4. Selling yourself way too much

Few people would be comfortable if their daily shopping involved bystanders reaching for their wallets. That’s what the online experience can feel like nowadays. Advertisements are everywhere– even simple YouTube videos have become sponsored content.

Our advice? Don’t sell so often. You can open many more doors for your brand if you choose to teach your audience. Since an empowered customer makes more confident purchases, your goal is to share knowledge. Inform them of options in your space and be honest about who can be helped by your services. You want to serve an audience that truly needs (or wants) your work. A customer who’s not 100% convinced may be more likely to request a refund or worse– spread negative reviews about you.

5. Your brand’s online reputation could be better

If a Google search does reveal negative associations to your brand, this is a critical area you’ll want to fix. Online presence is more than what you do, it’s also what others say about you. For some brands, you’ll find entire websites dedicated to people discussing how much they hate a brand. If they’re better at SEO than you, you’ve got a real threat to your company’s life.

There are many ways to manage this, but there are some DIY solutions. You’ll want to actually respond to negative comments on social media rather than delete them. That said, only do this if you have a plan for managing this. If you post generic responses, you might only inflame the issues. Try to defuse situations by being understanding and sympathetic to their needs, and offer alternative solutions if possible. If worse comes to worse, you may need to hire an online reputation management firm. Most cases shouldn’t need an extreme solution like this though.

This process of brand management can be challenging. If you ever need more guidance, feel free to set up a chat and we’ll personally guide you closer to your goals.