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Your Brand, In Business Column Archive

Business basics for brand creators. Because keeping up with the details shouldn’t derail your big dreams.

Which Comes First: Design, Copywriting, or Branding?

by Abby Kerr

in Your Brand, In Business

I meet a lot of new clients with this dilemma: which comes first, the design of my new website, new copy for my site, or “branding” (whatever that is).

Design_Copywriting_BrandingIt’s the classic chicken-or-the-egg debate: which comes first? What’s the best strategic place to start? And if you start with the “wrong” element first, will it mess up everything else?

I love it when people ask these questions with an open mind. Because, truly, there is a best place to start.

Assuming you’re working with experienced creative professionals who understand content strategy, truly want your project to succeed, and don’t have too much ego on the line (because your creative project is not a p*ssing match to see which creative has the best idea), there is a best flow for bringing a business brand online.

First, understand the business you’re in (or want to be in).

Who are your customers/clients, what value are you offering to them, and how do you deliver that value? Get clear on your Brand Proposition (also called a Value Proposition) and your Unique Selling Position (USP). And yes — no matter what you do and who you are, you do have competitors (other alternatives in the market your customers could choose instead of you). Have a premise of what makes you different from your competitors.

Contrary to what commonly happens when solopreneurs and microbusinesses approach creative service professionals, it’s NOT the job of your copywriter, your web designer, or even your branding specialist to help you figure out what your business is really about. It’s your job, as the business owner, to be clear about your business before you approach. As creatives, we take our clues from you, the client. If you give us insufficient or off the mark input, what we create for you won’t serve your goals (or help you make money) six months or a year from now, and then you’ll want to (and need to) reinvest in “branding” all over again, from scratch.

Second, have an idea of what your Right Person — your Most Likely to Buy client — would respond to in a brand.

Your brand is not all about you — even if you’re a “personality brand.” Your visual brand identity, and the way you message your brand conversation, has to appeal to your Ideal Client.

I’ll use an extreme example to illustrate this.

Say you’re a well-to-do 47 year-old man living in Bali who prefers minimalist design, likes to garden, and is particularly partial to the colors walnut and green. You self-identify as a Thinker. Your Top 3-5 Voice Values are Depth, Intimacy, and Accuracy. But you’re in the organic, sustainable baby clothing business and your Ideal Client is a young American mom with limited disposable income who self-identifies as a Healer. So who do you design the brand for? Yourself, or your very-different-from-you Ideal Client? (Note: the answer is NOT always to change your business so you’re serving people just like yourself, as discussed toward the end of and in the comments on this post.)

Third, put your branding insights down on paper. And/or hire a branding specialist.

You don’t have to be “right” about your first instincts about your brand. You do have to have some ideas, and get them out of your head and into some sort of order before you approach a creative professional. Then be prepared to have them re-explored, finessed, and re-worked in service of your business goals and brand objectives.

Put your Brand Proposition, your USP, what you know about your Right Person, and your hunches as to color palette and other design ideas into an outline or a summary you can give to a copywriter for guidance and inspiration, or use your outline or summary to complete the intake questionnaire your copywriter gives you.

If you’re really stuck on this part, this is the time to work with a branding specialist. (In case you’re curious about The Voice Bureau, this is the type of person we work with best.)

Make sure you vet your specialist. What credentials or (more importantly) experience does this person have that earns him that title? What other projects has he worked on? Do you like the looks of the sites she’s worked on?

A branding specialist will help you get clear on what your brand is about, who it’s for, and why it will be meaningful to them. Most likely, you’ll walk away from your work with a branding specialist with some kind of Creative Brief, PDF, or other written document that can guide your decision-making about copy and visual brand identity.

Fourth, find and hire the right copywriter.

Don’t just hire the first copywriter you follow on Twitter. Take your time to get some referrals from people you know (whose judgment you trust), to follow up with clients featured on the copywriters’ praise page, to read those copywriters’ sales pages and get a feel for their process and rates (if published), and to check out their portfolios or samples. It may sound obvious, but if you don’t like the writer’s writing style on their own blog, sales page, or in their samples, chances are you won’t like what they write for you. Yes, a good copywriter will write your content in a way that will appeal to your audience, not necessarily hers, but if you doubt the talent or the chops of the writer at first blush, that’s a red flag.

Many microbusiness owners choose to write their own copy. That’s a great choice for some people. Others will choose to work with a copywriter to make the process feel surer, smoother, and easier — and of course, so they can take advantage of the copywriters’ experience with helping many other business owners launch their brand online.

Here’s how to know if you’re ready to hire a copywriter to write your website or other marketing collateral:

  • the thought of writing your own web copy makes you gag, cry, or fall asleep;
  • you really struggle with putting your thoughts into words on the page;
  • you have lots of ideas but struggle with organizing them;
  • you’re willing to invest time, energy, and thought into the intake and revision process, but are willing to take your hands off the actual writing and let the copywriter do her thing;
  • you have the money to hire one (figure that experienced professional copywriters charge at least $250 for a single page of copy, and up to $1000 or more for specialty pages such as sales pages).

As stated before, the copywriter’s job is to organize, structure, and express the ideas your website needs to convey. His job is not to help you figure out what your business really does or who you really serve. The copywriter can only work with the clarity you give her. If you don’t have clarity, neither will she. Copy written without adequate clarity results in low conversion (i.e. people won’t buy what you’re selling, no matter how great the sales page ‘sounds’).

The copywriter will do her own intake based on her internal process. Usually this will take the form of a questionnaire or an interview. It’s helpful to give her the Creative Brief or outline of branding points you already have, but be prepared for her to ask you a few questions you may not have thought of already.

Now, you’ve heard the saying form follows function? This is entirely true with a business website. The web designer generally follows the lead of the branding specialist and/or the copywriter in creating a visual design that will support what the content needs to do to help your offers convert.

Most Voice Bureau clients are in the process of bringing a new brand online, or reiterating an existing brand. We suggest that once the copywriting project is underway, the client then begins to approach web designers, or lets us matchmake her with one we know, like, and trust.

Fifth, find and hire the right web designer.

In this day and age, there’s no need to go to a web designer and a web developer separately. Web designers should also develop (i.e. build and code) your site, or should seamlessly outsource the development so that you’re none the wiser.

As with vetting copywriters (see above), vet your web designer. When you contact her, tell her you’ve already worked with a branding specialist or are currently working with a copywriter and you do have a content plan for the site to share. (Content plan = what pages make up the site, which pages appear in the main navigation menu as opposed to being linked to from other pages, and what’s the most important thing for the site visitor to do on each page.)

The web designer’s job is to create a visually pleasing, user-friendly virtual home for your content to live. She has the ability to see what layout(s) would best support your content and your buyer’s journey through your site. She’s essentially a problem-solver. If you hire a great web designer, you can trust her to see things you can’t see about the way your site needs to look and function.

Her equally important job is to make your brand memorable through telling your brand story visually.

So the best process flow for bringing a business brand online is: 1st —  branding, 2nd — copywriting, and 3rd — web design.

If you put design before branding and copywriting, you run the risk of building a visual design that doesn’t support your business goals and brand objectives, doesn’t appeal to your Right Person, and isn’t the right ‘house’ to support the goals of your content.

If you put copywriting before branding and design, you leave the most important elements of your business in the hands of a copywriter, who may or may not have the business development skill set to support you in designing a brand conversation that works.

If you put ‘branding’ last, you run the risk of building your entire business on an unstable foundation — one that’ll cost a pretty penny to redo a year down the road after your first ‘brand’ isn’t connecting or converting. (I put ‘brand/ing’ in quotes here, because every time I’m approached by a prospect needing help with ‘branding’ immediately following the launch of a new website, I know that somewhere along the line there’s been a profound misunderstanding of what branding is and where it comes into the picture.)

At The Voice Bureau, we offer all three services under one astute roof — so you can relax and let the process unfold all around you.

No need for a siloed approach, where you as the client have to toggle between different creative pros, making sure all the I’s are dotted and the T’s crossed. That’s our job.

Need help with a project of your own? Learn more about how we work.

In the comments, would you share with us:

Your experiences with the chicken-or-the-egg debate when it comes to branding, copywriting, and web design. Did you start with the wrong piece and end up with a jumbled mess? (Trust me: most of us have been there!) How did you find your way back to brand clarity?

(Image credit.)

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Boundaries for Creative Business Owners

by Abby Kerr

in Your Brand, In Business

I gasped when I saw the title of a certain blog post flit through my Tweetstream that morning.

“Bag your boundaries,” says the super successful business owner.

WHY? was my first thought. Designing and keeping clear boundaries is one of the things that’s helped and is helping me grow, professionally and personally.

A photo of a busy city street at sunrise, full of traffic, with the words "Do you actually need boundaries in your creative business?"

Boundaries in creative business: what are they good for?

Boundaries help me sleep better at night (no reading email in bed, no responding to important client emails from my iPhone, no work on the weekends unless it’s my idea). They make client relationships run more smoothly. They enable good projects to get done more efficiently. And I’ve noticed that when my peers, colleagues, and clients step up to enforce their own thoughtful boundaries — business gets better, blood pressure goes down, and those Wrong-Fitting clients show themselves the door.

You can read the super successful business owner’s take on boundaries here.

Here’s my thoughtful alternate take on why boundaries are so important for values-based microbusiness owners:

She writes:

“You know what’s a major turn on for potential clients and collaborators? This: ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to makes this awesome.’ Hellohhh, beautiful.”

Well, now.

As someone who works every day on creative projects with small business owners, both 1:1 and as the leader of a team, I appreciate the spirit behind this perspective. It’s gorgeously open, enthusiastic, and in the big picture, it seems ‘right.’ However, I think it’s irresponsible advice, especially in light of an audience comprised of many newly minted coaches, creatives, and solo business owners. Let me tell you why.

I completely agree that as service providers, it’s necessary to do our best work.

We owe our openness to the creative process to our clients. Even if, occasionally, that somehow takes us past the promised number of revisions, or if we go 15 minutes over the hour on an intake call. I would rather deliver my best work and feel inspired doing so than stick to my contract to the letter but deliver work that I don’t believe is my best effort, and that I doubt has an optimal likelihood of satisfying the client’s business goals and brand objectives.

But, I think newbie practitioners and those who have a hard time with boundaries anyway will take this business owner’s post as a license to consistently overdeliver (to the detriment of their business and their craft) and a credo to bend over backwards, because “DLP says it’s good business.”

As creatives, most of us have had clients who would have gladly run us ragged requesting endless re-works and revisions if we’d let them. Not because the work we deliver isn’t good or great, but because the clients are not actually ready for the process we deliver. Thus, they feel perpetually dissatisfied, confused, and unclear as to what they want.

As Creative Director of a boutique copywriting, branding, and marketing agency, it’s important to me as I build out systems and processes for The Voice Bureau that we don’t sacrifice the human touch in favor of a more scalable and sustainable business. There’s a balance between boundaries that work to support client relationships, and boundaries that simply keep everyone from feeling seen, heard, and satisfied.

In the comments, I really want to know:

What are your thoughts and experiences around boundaries in your creative business life? Good? Bad? Do yours need tightening up or loosening up?

***Please know — I do NOT see this conversation as about the writer of the original blog post, so please keep that in mind as you craft your response. This is about a topic that is VERY important to business owners and I welcome all points of view.

(Photo credit.)

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What To Do When Social Media Bums You Out

by Abby Kerr

in Your Brand, In Business

Photo of a pensive looking woman with the title 'What To Do When Social Media Bums You Out'

Unfollow and unfriend everybody.

The End.

Just kidding. There’s more to this story.

Seriously, though, I’m up writing late this evening (10:34 PM is late for me, who is wont to go to bed on Granny Time). There’s been something on my mind lately that I really want to talk about, but haven’t been sure where to start the conversation, or what effect it might create. So I’ve decided to share it here.

You see, I seem to be having the same conversation lately with everyone I talk to: clients, colleagues, friends. So many of us — and I certainly include myself in this group — are feeling SO OVER THE INTERNET. Especially over social media.

For me, the OVER IT-ness is specifically around Twitter.

Before you tell me, But Abby, Twitter is what you make it — I so know that. I have been making it what I’ve wanted to make it. And therein lies the problem. And so now, I’m making it something new — something I need right now.

But first, let me tell you a story.

Input is my party trick.

When I used to teach high school English (in my pre-business owning days), I had a sort of party trick I’d demonstrate to students on the first day of school, every year. Within 55 minutes (that’s how long each class was) of taking attendance for the first time and putting a face to each name, I’d do The Name Thing. I’d lay the roster facedown on my desk and proceed to go seat by seat, row by row, and recite the names — first, middle, and last — of every student in the classroom. Up to 30 students per class, up to 6 classes a day. My accuracy rate was about 80-90%, the first time through.

What’s my trick? It’s not a photographic memory, but a high Input strength. My mind is constantly in Input More mode (even when I’m dead sleepy, quite sick, or otherwise compromised) and I rapidly catalogue and archive new info according to my own specific schemata. I collect names, data, and details like other people collect baseball cards. Or tattoos.

Input has been my way of getting through the world. I rely on Knowing Stuff About Stuff.

For this reason, Twitter has been a huge joy — a perpetually updated feed of info parcels for my consumption, some of them even wittily wrought! — and a huge hindrance to my being able to stay in creation mode, in flow, and at peace. Because my penchant for multitasking is so high, I move my business forward on the daily while always knowing what everybody else is up to.

I want to quit that habit.

Breaking up is hard to do.

I’ve been using Twitter for business since 2008 (certainly not the earliest days of Twitter, but, well, a good while!) and I’ve been on Facebook longer than that. These platforms have changed through the years, but one thing is certain: the inflation of airy ideas and plastic promises into near-religious doctrine (in 140-character homilies) is at an all-time high. (Are you with me?) Not to mention, the ego battles, the link blitzes, the snark fests, the one-sided humor, the political diatribes, etc.

I’m not saying I’m not part of it. I certainly contribute my own biz-promotional tweets to the mix. There’s nothing wrong with any of us using Twitter for business. Heck, if I didn’t have a business, I probably wouldn’t even be on Twitter. (It’s a privacy thing for me. Not so into sharing my personal life over the interwebs. No judgement if you do.)

Now granted, Twitter is quite often a wonderful, validating, ego-supportive place to be.

But is that really so good for a creator, or a teacher, or a consultant, to be petted, praised, and stroked? Are we training our brains to need the ongoing validation, the retweets, and the backchannel high-fives that flow in over DM? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my creative output to hinge one iota on some kind of Pavlovian response.

On a delightful day, of course, I adooooooore Twitter. It’s one of the most fun places in the world for writers. We get to communicate in short, poem-like bursts of concrete ideas. We get to practice our dialogue-writing skills. We get to experience the rush of a first-time share from Somebody Big, the tiny thrill a new @ reply serves up, the internal jazzle of a really good 3-way, 4-way, or 5-way convo with mutual tweeps.

And yet — I have to notice, and admit to myself, and respect, that my MOST productive days are the days I spend the least time on social media. And the weeks when I feel really, really great are weeks when I’m a little social media-lite.

I can’t do Twitter like I’ve been doing it anymore.

And so — I’m making Twitter an easier place for my brain to be.

This week, I embarked on what will likely be a massive unfollow of Tweeps. I’m radically paring down my Home feed so that I only see the kinds of content I feel drawn to engage with, right now, this week.

If I want something different next week, I’ll add more Tweeps. Or delete a few more.

Yes, I know this is why Twitter lists were invented — so that we could segment who we follow into feeds that make better sense to us. Tried it; ultimately, it’s not the solution I’m looking for. Lists just give me one more schema to layer into my schemata. But maybe Twitter lists are a great solution for you.

In doing this massive unfollow, I’m accepting that :

(A) since I’ve been a really friendly, conversational Tweeter, some people may take offense to my unfollow and (A1) unfollow me back if they see following as a reciprocal deal (it’s okay with me if you want to) or (A2) get offended with me (though I hope a social media unfollow doesn’t bum you out that much), and

(B) as a Connector, this may somewhat compromise my ability to . . . connect. Or not. We’ll see. It’s an experiment.

Someone I like a lot challenged me last year to spend 6 months deepening the business relationships I already have rather than intentionally expanding into new relationships. She also challenged me to stop pretending to be an Extrovert because it’s not good for my Introversion. [Ahem.] I can sense that the time for all this is nigh.

Many of the people I’m unfollowing are friends, friendly acquaintances, peers I respect, and clients. Many of the people I’m unfollowing on Twitter are people I look forward to remaining connected with elsewhere (like here or here). Some of the people I’m unfollowing are people with whom I’ve never exchanged Tweet One.

And that’s all right with me. Reducing some of the connectivity that this digital life affords us sounds like just what my soul is ordering. And I’m choosing to listen to my soul, not to the electronic chirp.

Now true connection (as opposed to connectivity) is something I’m still interested in. Tami and I are designing for true connection over on Google+, where we’ve just opened our Voice Bureau Community. If you’re into thoughtful conversation, not just noise, please consider joining us there.

In the comments, I want to hear:

What about you? What do you do (or what will you do, starting now) when social media bums you out — hampers your flow, harshes your mellow, impedes your process? 

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