Social Media Branding

Consistency is great because it helps keep the brand looking like the brand, and not the  whims of whatever person is tasked with creating the content being shared. Having a solid brand identity also helps set boundaries and manages expectations around what should and should not be shared, and how it should be shared. This is particularly helpful for very small teams (entire marketing team of 1 here!). 

That being said, you don’t want to be so rigid that you hide your greatest asset: your people! Creating a simple 1 pg. style guide and easy to use templates for your contributors is a great way to add the visual elements of the brand for consistency, without it getting in the way of their creativity. And provide the training! Show off your templates and guide, explain how to use them and why it is important to use them. Explain why things like colour and language and font choices matter - choices were made there, and not everyone understands that. Their experience with social, for example, has probably only ever been personal. But when you are posting as a brand, you are posting as something else that is the sum of its parts. 

I hate that I can’t find the brand now but a few years back there was a brand that used a yellow frame around all of their posts and colored filters on the content to indicate the type of content it was - e.g., yellow might be a product promo, blue was a pro tip, red was an event, etc. If I ever find it I will share. I just remember it being a really great strategy because the yellow frame would stand out and the filtered images made the job of identifying the type of content to expect so easy.