Cohesive, cohesive, cohesive we hear it all the time. To make your brand stand out and be remembered you need to be cohesive, both on your website and on social media. I’m going, to be honest with you, I feel like it’s a lot more easy to do on your website than on Instagram. It has taken me a long time to learn to use plan my feed and use the same preset every time because sometimes you just want to live in the moment and post whatever is on your mind. But that does not give you cohesiveness, sorry to say it.
1. First, you have to find your target group (Sorry I have worked in marketing too long, target groups are important). Do you know who your targeting group is? I mean gender? Age? What are their preferences when it comes to style? What income do they have? When you have written that down, I recommend to create a mood board with photos that give you some atmosphere, go on Pinterest and find beautiful photos, logos, and quotes you can apply to your mood board, you can either create one on Pinterest as a board or get one here that you also can use on Instagram.
2. When you are done with finding the right atmosphere for your brand, it is time to create the brand board. If you need a brand board, you can find one right here?
3. You start with the colors, remember your, mood board, here. Stick with the colors and atmosphere, choose colors that fit your brand and your personality. If you are still in doubt, then Pinterest is again the place to go, just go search color palettes and all of the most beautiful color schemes will appear. You can narrow it down by adding earth colors, bright colors, pastel colors. But remember to make a color scheme with both dark and light colors. You might only use 2-3 colors as the primary colors, but you will need a dark one for example text on graphics, so your message is easy to read for the receiver.
4. You will also need a logo, you can make one in Canva or have a professional make it, in the end, you will happiest with the last option. A professional designer will also make different variations, with fonts and colors, to see if the logo will look good with your color scheme.
5. Fonts, ohhh fonts. I own so many fonts that I have no idea how many. But I have spend a fortune on fonts, one more beautiful than the other. Funny enough when I was to choose the fonts for I Love Monday I went with two really classic looking fonts. Optima Nova and Courier New, I’ve also added a handwritten font called Valerie. I use that for graphics and I’ve used it on my cover for my planner. So my advice is: find a font or 2 you won’t grow tired off within 6 months, some you can use in your logo and that is easy to read. You can always add an extra font for the girly-girly text on your graphics. If you are not interested in spending a fortune on fonts, my advice is to go Pinterest and search for beautiful free fonts. Then you can download a few and try and see which ones fit the best.
6. Add some style photos to your brand board to keep you on track of what you will use on Instagram and your website, either some you took yourself or get professionally-looking stock photos.
All of these following sites have free samples of stock photos so you can try which style you like the best before you buy any. They are all gorgeous looking:
There is also always the possibility to use Unsplash https://unsplash.com/ until you have your own photos. But if you use professional stock photos like the ones mentioned above, you are sure that your brand will be so much more cohesive.
7. Last but not least, make sure you have some super cool graphics that reflect your style and is repeated on your website and your social media profiles, like stories, feed and highlight covers. Have some templates ready that you always use, you can buy some in my shop, they work for both Photoshop and Canva.
If you want matching story covers you can find them here
And just one more thing, if you want cohesiveness in your Instagram feed, plan everything that you post, if you use one of these apps:
You will have the possibility to see how your planned feed looks like before you post it.
I hope this little guide has been able to help you get on track with starting your own brand and get it right from the beginning and really show your future followers, what you are all about.
Do you have any questions regarding branding? Or anything else? Let’s connect on social media, I would love to get to know you and follow you back.
Find me here:
My personal IG , I Love Mondays Shop IG , My Pinterest