Why Brand Consistency Is Important On You Social Media Accounts

Why Brand Consistency Is Important On You Social Media Accounts A few weekends ago, I decided that my online presence was a mess. Visual brand consistency was non-existent. I have several different blogs and associated social media accounts, and they were all in a disarray. Accounts didnt look the same. They had different tag lines and graphics and information and the overall effect was that they were separate entities. That was a serious failure on my part. Why Visual Brand Consistency Is Good Whats the big deal about my social accounts looking a bit different? If you visited my Facebook Page, and then my YouTube page, and then Twitterthere was nothing about them that suggested they were related, active, or cared for. There were no visual cues that said were part of this larger family. They could have been owned by separate people and happened to have the same name, for all readers might have known. The look was unfamiliar, and unfamiliarity is a negative experience for your readers. When its clear the owner of social properties hasnt bothered to update, change, and unify the appearance–or even keep things in line with what new network updates require–it makes people a bit less likely to get involved. Those lacking visual cues on a social media property make it seem as if it has been forgotten. Simple Tweaks To Better Brand Consistency How do you keep your social media accounts in shape and make sure the visitors to them dont feel like youve neglected them? There are lots of detailed (and complicated) guides on achieving brand consistency freely available online, but really, the simplest and most obvious things are the most important. These are the things you need to do first. Use Uniform Colors Use the same color combinations everywhere, across all of your online accounts. Colors are identifiers. I have a set color scheme that I use on my blogs and across social media platforms. To make it easy to create and manage a color scheme, I use Adobe Kuler. It makes it easy to open up a tab, grab the hex color, and use that for my accounts. A few places where I use those colors are: Customizing my WordPress theme colors. Twitter background and link color. Custom graphics for Facebook views and apps on your page profile. Any standard graphic layouts I do for images posted to social networks. Use the same color combinations on social media profiles as you do your blog.Create Uniform Images The images you use in your icon and cover art on your social profiles are the first way your audience will learn to identify you. As usual, we see pictures first. While each network is different, I tend to think of it as follows: Icon remains the same. Clear, crisp, and simple. Must look good in either a square or round format (some social media networks use a square for the icon, others are round). Design accordingly. Cover image is the same, but in multiple sizes. Each social network uses a different ratio when it comes to the size of the cover image. Choose an image that will work well across all of them no matter how it is cropped, or design an image specifically for each network to fit their specifications. And also, consider that your image may adjust and change size for different screens. People view your social account on different sized screens. The cover image will change accordingly. This is Google+, at different sizes. I often change out the main image to fit the seasons or for other reasons. I usually use a photograph instead of a custom designed graphic because that same photograph gets used on my blog as a background. In other words, I try to connect the images I use on my website to those used on the different social networks. The image becomes the motif, while the profile icon becomes the identifier. You may have custom graphics that you use, instead of a simple photograph, and that is perfectly fine. The main thing is that the imagery matches across the board. And what does it look like when the images arent the same across all of the different networks? It looks pretty crazy. For example, check out my personal social media profile images below. Its all over the place. Am I a world traveler? Do I like nervous cats? Am I a big fan of Godzilla? Am I a cartoon character? Maybe I can get away with having fun on my personal social networks, but for a blog thats focused on creating a platform, definitely not. And, considering Google Authorshipmaybe its time I rethought my personal consistency, too.  At the very least, I dont have the default Google+ rainbow paper for a cover image, which suggests that someone either never visits Google+, has an account and doesnt care, or couldnt be bothered to take the time to upload a basic photo.