As the end of the year draws closer, here are some things you can do to recenter your brand. Did you like what happened with and through your brand this year? Are you aware of what ‘hit’ and what clicked or does the past year feel like a blur?

Are you ready to know?

If so, here’s some simple end of the year recentering for your brand.

1) Chances are, your brand got social this year. How did it go? Do you know which were your most successful social media posts on each platform, in terms of reach (how many people saw it) and engagement (how many people Liked, Hearted, clicked, repinned, retweeted, etc.). Once you know, you can be more conscious about creating social updates your Right People will love.

I’m by no means an analytics junkie, but I periodically go in and peek at analytics for each social media platform I use for business (Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest), so I can get a feel for what my followers are liking and responding to most. I just use each platform’s native analytics, so I’m not able to see results for more than 30 days or 3 months at a time, depending on what the platform tracks. (If you use an app that allows you to analyze a greater time span, feel free to share it in the comments.)

2) Do you know your top buyers, customers, or clients, in terms of the project that went the best, or repeat business, or both? Understanding who buys from you and why they buy is an incredible gift of clarity for you.

If you don’t already know, ask this person (or business) how they found you and what tipped them over the edge to hire you or buy from you. If this isn’t possible, or if it is but you want to take it a bit further, write down three things about this buyer/client/customer that you truly appreciated in working with them. Sharpen your own saw around your Right People profiling and your brand will click even more next year with the people who get you.

3) What FELT right this year? And why? Sometimes you don’t know the ROI of a certain technique or tactic but you just know it worked. Or you can sense it leading your brand in the right direction — you know it’s caught fire before anyone else can see the smoke. Or it woke something up inside you so deep and so real that you know it’s taking you somewhere important. Pay attention to that magic. It’s real and it showed up this year for a reason.

4) What DIDN’T feel right this year? And why? Did a certain project go completely awry? Did a client relationship fail to click the way you’d hoped? Did you launch something that never felt quite finished, and then it never earned its way in your suite of offerings? Did you implement a promising new idea that never panned out?

For each thing on your list, see if you can write your way into why it didn’t quite work. You don’t need to know for sure, you don’t need data to know, you don’t even need to interview Right People about their perceptions (unless you want to). Sometimes a hunch is enough. You’re creating your brand, after all, and if you’re not all in after a good college try, then something may need to be tweaked (or cut altogether).

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

What worked for your brand this year? Why did it work, in your view? We’d love to share in your end-of-the-year reflections.

 

Image Credit

{ 4 comments }

I have a dear friend who recently learned she & her family will have to pull up stakes, leave their house forever, & find a new place to live.

Their living situation is quite unique and so are the terms under which they’ve been privileged to live in the house. I won’t go into those. The important part of this story is that my friend is a capital ‘h’ Homemaker. I know no one more gifted than she at turning a house of any kind into pretty much the most imaginative, orderly, delightful, joyful, interesting, warm, and welcoming home you’ve ever visited. And you feel this way even as a guest. The feeling she creates is palpable, energetic, and yet relaxing. I’m sad that I won’t get to be a guest under her roof one more time before they have to move. But I have amazing memories of spending time with her there. I’ll never forget the way it felt to be there, the way it smelled, the way it looked while it was hers.

But I know that wherever my friend and her family land, she’s going to make the new place into the Best Place Ever. Different from the first place, but amazing in its own right. She has everything she needs to do just that. It all comes from within her, as the best stuff always does.

Branding is like that, too. The best stuff comes from within. It’s the stuff that’s inherent, that comes naturally, that makes us look like magic. Our Right People are drawn to the innate qualities with which we can’t help but present and connect, when we’re taking a strong stance in a realm we’re defining for ourselves.

To me, branding is so much more than choosing a color palette, curating a font family, & selecting a tagline.

BRANDING IS CREATING A WORLD.

Here’s what branding-as-creating-a-world feels like to me, as a brand voice specialist and content creation expert:

I love the imaginative work of feeling for the essential energies of what’s trying to come through in a written piece, in a visual mock-up (I draw these by hand, badly, in a spiral-bound college-ruled notebook, turning the paper to landscape and ignoring the lines), in the positioning of a product.

I loll around in the backstream, the undercurrent, of the thing that’s coming to be, and I see if I can feel the different nuances of it flow through my fingers, one at at time.

I dig the deep intuitively-driven process of sensing into the next forward lunge (or the 45-degree pivot or the hairpin turn) a brand needs to make to get closer to the next desired result.

I feel into the future of the brands I work with, and I articulate what that future looks like, or could like.

People change and so do our businesses. I myself am on my third or maybe third-and-a-half iteration of my work in the world, that is, the creative work that gets me paid. (It’s important to note that I also am pursuing a relationship with creativity that is NOT imminently for pay and I hope you are, too. If this feels like a convo you need to have, go here for more.)

Changing your business is a bit like moving houses. You were all situated, and suddenly, here you are pole-vaulting off the head of a thumbtack into a part of the map you never thought you’d visit. You’re straddling new coordinates and hoping your leg muscles and core can keep you balanced. You’re using the same ingredients but combining them in new bowls with strange new utensils and spices you’ve never tasted before.

How will things turn out? Will others like what you’re creating?

Never fear. Your innate, inherent brand energy is a through-thread that connects these new and ever-changing pursuits of yours.

You can leave the house of your business ten times in a decade but you always keep returning to creating a world.

And the worlds you create have one thing in common that is completely inextricable from them: the essence of you.

This is why I’m so drawn to American writer Ann Patchett’s quote about creating a universe. [See post image above.] While Patchett’s addressing her modality of writing fiction, I take this quote for myself into the realm of branding.

In designing and developing a brand and all its components, we create an order for the universe: that universe. In writing and sharing beautiful content that connects with our Right People’s needs, desires, and interests (and, of course, ours), we set that universe in motion.

I have left the house of my business many times through the years — mentally, emotionally, evne physically to an extent. I’m a person, just like you. I flag, I falter, I flail. Sometimes I have even wanted to say, eff it.

But I keep coming back.

What brings me back is creating a world. (It just so happens that this is my business’s value proposition, too: Make a world of your brand. Start with your voice.)

Make of your brand a world that other people can participate in if they wish to.

Looking for support with this? Check out THE VOICERY, our new, deep, personalized service combining brand voice with content strategy. I’ve co-created and co-deliver this alongside Katie Mehas, Doyenne of Operations at The Voice Bureau and content creation extraordinaire.

This is why I’m so drawn to Anthropologie, to anything Sarah Selecky teaches, to the dark and velvety worlds of Sarah Waters’ books, to my high school friend Tom’s debut novel, to the podcast Working, to Tatine Candles, and to certain dark and stormy Netflix series (like The Killing) — because they create a world and invite me in to it.

It’s why I love to read short stories and novels because every time I want to, I can just turn the page and step into another fully-feathered world. There something’s irrefutably magic about connecting with another perspective, seeing the world through other people’s eyes, hearing dialogue and dialect we may never hear in our day to day life yet somehow we feel like we’ve heard it one million times underneath your skin. Because it’s authentic and innate to those characters in that milieu. Just as your brand voice is authentic and innate to you.

Imagine what YOUR brand can be to your Right People. Are you creating a universe and setting it in motion?

In the comments, we’d love to hear you:

Talk about the world you’re creating through your brand. Describe it for us and tell us how you’re setting it in motion through content.

{ 1 comment }