Brand IT Girl: 5 Ways To Refresh Your Brand In The New Year

5 WAYS TO REFRESH YOUR BRAND IN THE NEW YEAR

by SAM BELL FROM BRAND IT GIRL

The new year is the perfect time to take a big deep breath and hit the refresh button on life. The new year comes with New Year resolutions, and they can be anything from that long-awaited health kick to starting new hobbies and adventures. Let’s not forget refreshing our brands too. Try these simple Brand IT Girl brand refreshers and kickstart 2016!

1. Update your Visual Branding

Let me ask you a question: What does your brand look and feel like? What personality does your brand communicate? These are questions you need to be asking yourself, and more importantly, asking your brand! New years are so full of fresh perspectives, and your brand should benefit from this. So let’s start with what your clients and readers see first – the visual branding! 

You may want to consider a logo design update, especially if your logo was thrown together when your business or blog was just a baby. This happens so regularly, and a lot of people feel trapped with a logo they are not connected with. A clever designer will help you to transition smoothly into a new design that may have elements of the original logo and a designer with branding knowledge will help you if you want a complete change!

Re-evaluate what your brand is hoping to communicate to the people who interact with it and take another look at your visual branding. Does it speak for your brand how you would like it to? Are you still connected and excited by your brand? Consider updating your color palette to reflect the new year and the trends you are currently drawn to. There are simple ways of doing this without rebranding entirely! Have a look at your current brand colors and choose new shades of colors you’re already using or choose a new accent that still plays nice with your established brand colours. Create website graphics, blog images and tiles for your social media using your new, fresh 2016 colors!

Updating your visual branding can reignite the flame, and that’s exactly what your brand needs – it needs your whole heart!

2. Refresh your Website

The new year is also a great time to refresh your website. Your web presence is more important than you might think! People do connect with brands on their websites, so you need to double check that the page they are landing on is giving them the right information. 

These days, the majority of website visitors are viewing your website on their smartphones. For this reason, we web designers like to design for mobile first. Make sure that your website works properly, is mobile responsive and is visually pleasing on mobile devices. And it may be time for you to update your website layout/theme and there are some amazing resources for inexpensive pre-made website themes out there that work great on mobile too! (See here and here).

Don’t want to go all out? That’s ok! You could update your fonts, using Google Fonts, to give your website a cleaner appearance or perhaps clean up your sidebar?

Once you have refreshed your website, don’t neglect your social media! Give social media a spruce up too. Clean out old and underperforming posts, update your profiles and ensure all your info is correct.

3. New Brand Photos

One of the best things I ever did for my brand was to engage a photographer who understood the personality of my brand and who helped me to capture high-quality images that I could use across my website, on social media and in campaigns. The investment was so worthwhile and didn’t cost as much as I initially expected! When approaching a photographer, come armed with a mood board, a sample of your branding and a short paragraph about who you are as a brand and who your target and also a selection of inspiration images for reference.

Can’t afford a photographer? No worries, ask a friend to snap a few shots of you for your website. Just make sure you are in natural light and that photos are taken on nice, clear days – this will give you the best DIY photos! If you are after those great styled desk images, there are plenty of great resources on Creative Market or check out Alyssa Joy’s brand new range!

4. Set New Brand Goals and Strategies

The new year is also a great time to take a fresh look at your brand goals and strategies. My favourite way to do this is to use my 2016 Life + Business Workbook (you are welcome to download it for free!) to re-evaluate the purpose of my business and blog and what I want to achieve in the coming year. 

You can also do this yourself by listing your brand goals for 2016 and break them down into actionable steps or strategies.

For instance, a brand goal might be to grow your brand community and engagement. Actionable steps/strategies set out how you will achieve this goal and can also have sub-steps to help you clarify what you need to do. It could look like this:

GOAL: Grow Brand Community and Engagement

Actionable Step: Grow my mailing list

Strategy 1: Create an opt-in offer that my readers can’t ignore, provide unbelievable value so they know how much I genuinely value them!

Strategy 2: Create quality mailing list content so that my readers get excited to open my mail and tell their friends about it too.

Actionable Step: Grow my social media community

Strategy 1: Join some Facebook groups and Twitter chats and meet new people just like my brand and me!

Strategy 2: Offer my Facebook friends and Twitter and Instagram followers exclusive content and ask for their feedback too!

Setting up your actionable steps and strategies gives you smaller goals and a plan for achieving! And it makes those big lofty goals (like ‘engagement’!) less frightening!

5. Work on Your Copy and Establish Brand Language

One of my favourite ways to refresh my brand at the beginning of a new year is to review my brand communication. Have a look at your about page, profiles and service pages. Make sure everything is up to date and accurate and check all your links are working too!

Think about your copy and consider if you are communicating a clear brand personality through the language you use. There is nothing more confusing than a brand that visually looks one way yet speaks like a different person. In fact, thinking about your brand as an individual is a great way of combatting this inconsistency and is often one way I ask my clients to describe their brand. 

If your brand was a person, what would they look like? How would they dress and what would their interests be? And lastly, how would they talk?

Try this exercise before reviewing your copy and make some changes to communicate better as your brand and you’ll find that this reaches your target market better too!

Enjoy the new year and make the most of the spirit of optimism and possibility that floats around in January and February but remember, any time of the year is a good time for refreshing your brand!