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Dear RSS Subscribers —

Please excuse the accidental post you received from me by RSS on June 21st, 2012 called Protected: Fake Post for Illana. I accidentally publicly published it when I was trying to share a photo embedding issue with my techie friend. RSS grabbed the mistakenly published post and sent it out to readers before I could modify the setting.

Thanks to all who let me know about this tech snafu! I appreciate you and your readership. :)

— Abby

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My brand is in flux.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been here, nor, I’m sure, will it be the last. {You do know that smart, active online brands reiterate in subtle ways every six months to year and a half, and in holistic ways every year and a half to three years?}

In fact, most of us have been here before. It’s not the greatest-feeling spot in the world but it’s the ideal place from which to consider where you and your brand are going next.Here’s what a brand identity crisis looks like in action. How many of these attributes can you identify with?

• Your tagline no longer matches your services menu, which no longer aligns with your email opt-in freebie, which no longer meshes with your visual identity. Everything feels piece-y. This is frustrating to you and you wonder how many of your right people are bouncing in 8 seconds flat because you’re not compelling enough across the board. {You don’t dare check Google Analytics to actually find out.}

• You want to blog about stuff that doesn’t snug up nicely with the previous content on your site. And you don’t want to make one of those big ‘I’m shifting gears’ announcements that {imaginary} mean people will roll their eyes at. So you don’t blog at all.

• You gasp every time someone on Twitter or Facebook links to their new creation which looks and sounds freakishly like what you’re dreaming of doing but haven’t yet pulled the trigger on. You wonder how they got inside your head, but then you remember that thing called collective consciousness that is so rampant in the blogosphere. You’re feeling the self-imposed pressure to RELAUNCH! RELAUNCH! but you know there are several foundational things that need to come into place first. You try to remind yourself that the only voice actually screaming this is the one in your head. ;)

• Your site is, quite possibly, gorgeous, but it’s hard for you to even look at anymore, like a face with whom you’ve fallen out of love. At the worst, you might be wholly embarrassed by your visual brand identity.

• Your total brand — from visuals to services to convo — no longer helps to support where you are going with your creative work in the world. You’ve come to the proverbial fork in the road: you’re itching to go one way, your brand would keep you tied to another.

How to resolve your own brand identity crisis — quickly, holistically, and without embarrassment:

• First, list out what’s wrong with your current brand presence according to you.

  Don’t just write, “My site’s color palette is all wrong.” Say what’s wrong, then give yourself 1} a reason why it no longer fits and 2} a desired direction for your course of action.

EX:

What’s wrong: “My site’s colors.”

Reason: “It uses clear, almost primary colors that feel overly straightforward and don’t invoke much curiosity.”

Desired Direction: “My clients are creative thinkers who want to feel spacious {so maybe, more white or lighter tones overall?} and are comfortable with interesting contrasts {I’m thinking, turquoise and cardamom yellow?}.”

• Second, next to each problem, write down who can fix this or help with fixing it. 

  Identify your resources and pinpoint the best-fitting helper or fixer for each item. You? A web designer? A WP tech expert? Your art student cousin? Your very best client? A copywriter?

• Third, record your minimum and maximum budget for each branding fix.

  For instance, to get a decent site or blog redesign from an experienced and talented professional, you’re going to invest at least $1500 for a template customization, but expect to pay at least $3000 or more for a really custom, complete solution {note: this does not include features such as a shopping cart or a membership gateway}.

  With copywriters, you can find newbies who are billing $50/hour for projects, or you can find more experienced writers who understand online markets who charge $500 for a search engine optimized About page, or thousands of dollars for a sales page.

  For each Branding To Do, ask yourself, what’s the smallest reasonable amount for me to invest in this fix? What’s the largest amount I can comfortably afford? 

  {If your budget doesn’t match your taste, it’s time to focus on growing your existing business for a while longer before you jump into full-scale changes.}

• Fourth, prioritize each change.

  What matters the most to you? What matters the most to your right people? In light of that, what absolutely needs to happen first, second, third, and so on, so you continue to make forward progress in a powerful way before your brand is totally revamped?

  Most active business owners don’t have the luxury of pressing pause for very long while they reiterate. Think efficient, elegant solutions rolled out in an orderly fashion that makes intuitive sense to your right people.

  For me, the first two changes that had to happen were rewriting my This Is Me and Is This You pages a couple weeks ago, months before my visual identity will change. Why these pages? This Is Me {what I call my About page} portrays the work I do with clients, shows where my experience comes from, and is loaded with my personality. Some essentials relating to the work I do have changed considerably since I launched Abby Kerr Ink in February 2010, so This Is Me had to change immediately.

  Also, the reality of who my right people are — the people I want to serve through my work — has become considerably more nuanced and specific over the past two years. It was high time for an updated Is This You page.

  Other pieces that will fall into place later, along with my visual brand identity revamp: tweaked business name and new tagline, multiple new blog series, a new free e-course {you voted on it back here, remember?}, new services with new client intake processes, virtual courses, and some creative collaborations with other online business owners.

• Fifth, implement the changes one by one, in the order they need to happen.

  Create a relaunch calendar. Don’t look back.

  Be patient with yourself and remember that your brand isn’t the only one who’s having an identity crisis. It can and will be resolved.

  Don’t downgrade what you’ve already done and where you’ve gotten because of it.

  The most important thing to do during a brand identity crisis? Stay connected with your audience. Keep your online conversation rolling. Keep promoting your existing services until you need to make room for new ones to take their places.

  Stay open to opportunities that come your way and don’t put them off until you’ve arrived {again}. Even when you’re in shift-mode, you have much to teach and share.

Are you in a brand identity crisis of your own?

What’s one thing you can identify about your brand that needs to change, how do you know it needs to change {hint: this ties in to serving your right people}, and what’s the direction you desire to move it in?

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Voice in writing. It’s one of the most amorphous concepts in the writer’s toolbox.

Voice is slippery to define. It’s tough to pinpoint exactly what someone’s voice sounds like, and even harder to say something concrete about your own voice. Because of all that, it’s easy to just turn your attention to some other more pressing primping-and-presenting piece of your online platform. Like your site design, the topic of your first digital product, or which online business program you should invest in. Voice is soft turf stuff.

So why should you, as a creative online entrepreneur, give a damn about voice?

I may be a little biased. Voice has always been a core obsession of mine, since childhood. I find myself unable to recount to one person what another person said without mimicking them {in a scarily accurate fashion, I’m told}. I dabble in fiction because I love embodying someone else’s first person point of view. And, for me, when it comes to music, lyrics are everything.

I live my life through a filter of who’s saying what, in what tone of voice, and what effect their use of language is having on others. Language, voice, tone, personal lexicon — it’s how I track relationships in the world. {It also makes me splendidly neurotic from time to time. But that’s a different story.}

Voice is the most indelible element of how we show up online.

Your site design can and will change over time.The tactic-of-the-moment {the Ask-50-Bloggers-The-Same-Question post, the Pay What You Can sale, the Manifesto-With-A-Worksheet freebie} will fizzle out. And your favorite social media platform will reiterate and make today’s concerns {should I hashtag stuff on Facebook? how should I structure this RT?} obsolete.

Your voice, on the other hand, is indelibly with you, and in you.

But what is voice, really?

I’m going to break it down here, in a brass tacks kind of way.

In my world, voice has 4 elements. They are:

Substance

WHAT YOU TALK ABOUT

For instance, hyperlocal marketing. Making organic baby food at home. Running a business while living with an autoimmune disorder. Orchestrating paint color palettes for stylish apartment dwellers.

Substance is your stuff, your content, your message. It’s what you and your site are about.

Style

THE MOOD, VIBE, OEUVRE, or GESTALT THAT INFUSES YOUR SUBSTANCE

You can think of style as the linguistic equivalent of your favorite outfit, or your preferred way of decorating a space.

Me? I’m a jeans girl. I’d wear jeans to a wedding if nobody’d look askance. But I’ve always got some type of feminine or slightly overstated detail on: a bold cocktail ring, or a necklace that just won’t quit, or a placket of ruffles.

This vibes with my voice: I’m casual and sometimes even colloquial, yet I pop out of nowhere with a $50 word because it’s the most precise and vivid one and therefore feels so worth using. I’m nothing if not precise. And I’m not necessarily writing for the 9th grade audience internet ‘best practices’ say we should pitch our copy at.

In writing, we talk about style by using words that conjure moods, personalities, and emotional states, such as lyrical, personable, affectionate, witty, nurturing, brazen, comical.

Tone

SAME AS TONE OF VOICE IN CONVERSATION. TELLS THE READER HOW YOU SEE HIM OR HER IN RELATIONSHIP TO YOU AND TO YOUR SUBJECT MATTER.

Are you sarcastic? Are you lighthearted? Are you gravely serious? Most of us have a natural tone we adopt most of the time when writing. When we’re relaxed and sure of ourselves, our natural tone shows up without us really trying.

Tone suggests the relationship you want to have with your audience, and your relationship to your subject matter.

If someone takes a professorial tone with you on their blog, chances are they’re expecting to have a different relationship with you than if they take the tone of a best buddy or confidante.

Tone is everything in online convo. Shift your tone and you’ve shifted the whole conversation. And all of your relationships. And your business.

Word Choice

OR, IN MY WORLD, PHRASEOLOGIE

Phraseologie is literally the building blocks of your conversation, the actual words you put down on the page.

All of us are naturally attracted to certain categories and types of words, and repelled or put off by others. Do you use short, simple, clear, familiar words, or do we occasionally need to Google one of your words to get at your meaning? Do you make up your own fanciful language or do you keep things pretty straightforward or by the book? Do you wince if you see a curse word fly through your Twitter stream or do you accidentally use them yourself in the presence of 4-year olds?

Why should you notice your own voice?

Because when you’re conscious of how you sound and the effect you’re creating through language, you’ve just given yourself access to making more powerful choices about how you show up.

Why should you notice other people’s voices?

Because it helps you see yourself in relationship to others. Wonder why people fall at the feet of Blogger X? Voice has a lot to do with that. Betcha she’s charismatic in her own way, writing from her boldest edge, and possibly even controversial or polarizing.

By contrast, why does everyone rush to console him on Twitter every time he comes out griping? Because that’s the side of himself he’s showing people, the side that needs caretaking. That’s the relationship dynamic he’s creating for himself through how he shows up in 140 characters.

Ever wonder what your voice sounds like to other people? There’s a service for that.

That’s one of the primary reasons my clients come to me, for that objective, nuanced, highly sensitive reading of how they’re showing up in the online conversation, on their blog and social media. I’d love to read your voice.

In the comments, I’d love to know . . .

What questions do you have about voice in the online conversation? Let’s air them here and I’ll share some perspective.

{photo credit}

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Over the past couple weeks, I’ve seen again firsthand the value in showing people what you do as a creative pro. As in — real life examples.

If you’re a web designer, flaunt a full and varied portfolio. If you’re a photo stylist, post videos of your work-in-action. If you’re a life coach, give a sample Mp3 of a live session. And, if you’re a copywriter and Voice Ally [ahem], show people the way you ‘read’ brand voices. And so I did, first in this post featuring Danielle LaPorte, Marie Forleo, and Chris Guillebeau, and then in its follow-up profiling people who volunteered on Twitter.

Today I’m featuring a complete, unedited version of a client’s actual VOICE PROFILE, thanks to the  generous permission of Corrina Gordon-Barnes, business coach at You Inspire Me.

Corrina Gordon-Barnes

Click here to check out Corrina’s complete VOICE PROFILE.

You need Adobe Reader to view this document. Download Adobe Reader for free right here.

Since launching my VOICE PROFILE service about a week ago, my current turnaround time has increased from 3 business days to 7 business days. Go here to learn more and to book yours now.

In the comments, I’d love to hear from you . . .

Does seeing real-life examples of other creative pros’ voices-in-action give you more understanding into your own? Something to push off of, or compare yours to? Is this helpful to you?

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