For all the millennials out there struggling with literally everything, (Whoops, am I generalising?), I am personally writing for you.
Everything isn’t fine at the moment. But it will be.
Finances won’t be in check this week. But it will be.
Family life will cause you stress more often than not lately. But it won’t forever.
Wow, that’s enough woo woo vibes from me. However, I would like to take the time to share my recommendations this month, and let you all know that I am really damn grateful to have the following in my life at the moment.
This podcast has saved my financial brain more times than I should admit. Brought to us by Shameless Media, this podcast is honestly a no-excuse listen for your weekly reminder that money matters, ladies.
2. Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown
Honestly, the self-love, self-understanding, self-ish journey I am on at the moment is thriving for the story-telling of Brené Brown. She’s almost a God, but not a God. Definitely worth the Brené Brown spiral you will enter after reading the first few pages, she has a lot of content to her name ladies and gentleman.
Since graduating from university and starting my freelancing business, The S. Collective, as my side hustle, I have had numerous clients contact me with regards to re-branding.
I wanted to touch base with how you as a client can fundamentally ‘sweet-talk’ a designer into getting the branding package you haven’t imagined yet, but know is perfect for your business.
I don’t mean to make assumptions but I get the feeling a lot of clients aren’t being delivered the branding they were imagining. After long-winded conversations and the feeling of not being understood, this can be frustrating. So I wanted to share a few processes that will make your life, and the designers, that little bit easier.
Here’s how:
Start with a face-to-face conversation
So let’s say a typical designer-to-client relationship is complied of phone calls, emails and occasional text messages. These are all great for the initial points of contact. But to show you’re serious about this designers commitment to your up and coming business, take the time out to organise a meeting face-to-face or over video chat. If the designer doesn’t initiate this, move on and find someone who will.
Reply promptly
Nothing says you are serious about your request for branding than a responsive client – I suggest 2-4 business days.
Come prepared
All I can say on this one is supply a detailed brief.
Keep your emotions aside
We’ve all had a bad experience with a business relationship that has turned borderline ‘can’t tell if you’re bullying me or just in a bad mood today’ way. So if you are unsatisfied with the work the designer is supplying so far, approach them with confidence and remind them of your initial brief, they might have more on their calendar than they lead you to believe. Vise-versa.
Be open and respectful about the cost
Some designers charge way more than you expect, and some don’t. It’s just the industry and the luck of the draw. To prepare yourself for the budget conversation, give the designer a fair and thought-out budget and be willing to negotiate. They will most likely feed off what you have prepared and work with you to reach a happy medium.
“The Future is Female” has landed on my Instagram feed and on slogan tees more often than not lately. My interpretation of this? Women in business.
It’s clear that we’re well and truly in 2018 when some of the hottest small businesses to date have graced our Instagram feeds with the perfect amount of sexy and sweet. Providing us with nothing shy of some serious femme inspiration for a lot of lady-bosses out there.
Let’s begin with the Zulu and Zephyr cross Lara WorthingtonCami campaign which has to be the ultimate eyebrow-raise when it comes to women kicking goals in business this year *queue the female-on-female fist pump*. Not to mention, the entertainment industry has seen Lara move from project to project, slowing finding her feet in fashion and beauty.
Cami, combines her beauty label The Base and women’s fashion label (owned by women) Zulu and Zephyr to introduce the simplicity of Autumn fashion that we have all been searching for. Sorry to break it to the Lara’s haters, but this campaign has definitely hit the mark, and as creative director, she may have shown us her hidden lady-powers.
Who else has made an influence with their Instagram advertising and successfully filtered content for their online business? Have you heard of Zoe Foster-Blake? (that was a trick question). Well, we’re not on the topic of her female-empowering novels, we’re talking her skin care. The trained beauty therapist has recently launched Go-To Skincarewhich is literally the go-to (no pun intended) ‘stuff’ for super healthy skin. Not only has this girl boss reached the perfect target audience; she is creating a product that filters all the nasties from your skin care in the beautifully packaged up Go-To.
Product image of ‘Exfoliating Swipeys’ by Go-To Skincare
How do they do it? We want to know too, so we took it upon ourselves to bring some super-handy tips from multiple sources about using Instagram to help all the small-business-owning women out there!
Know your market
And vividly picture them sitting next to you as you write, create, snap or comment back. Hayley writes nine helpful tips, from her to you.
#creditorcreate
If there is one protest I would stand at in the pouring rain that’s to do with social media marketing, that’s on supporting #creditorcreate. Basically, don’t snatch a pic without crediting it.
Don’t always try to teach
So you’re passionate about your reusable coffee cups? So are your audience, but let them search for your informational video as apposed to giving it to them in every caption. It also boosts SEO by having the user navigate your account or website.
Be happy with small progress
Have you heard it before? Success doesn’t happen overnight, keep trying, keep producing, you’ll get there.
Stay true to one theme
The perfect example would be, @thelosttribe_. What’s evident here? Consistency, segregation from typical Instagram image filters, and loyalty. The audience knows what they are following and they are because it looks oh-so lovely within their feed, which is also a great marketing strategy to help differentiate your product.
What’s your interpretation of “The Future is Female”? Comment below! (If you want to).
EDIT: This post was written for a Social Media assessment. The task time was 1 week.
Building a digital brand: Brand-to-influencer collaboration
Hey you! wanna make your brand the best online brand of 2017? Let’s collaborate.
As Harry Styles’ new song title states Sign of the Times(listen here), that’s exactly what we’re talking about when we tell you that collaboration is going to lead to your greatest successes in building a digital brand. Social media is a “Sign of the Times,” and we should use it to its advantages.
Why? Not only will a customer engage with your brand if you are offering the best content, staying loyal to your platform (see previous post) and engaging them, but they are going to LOVE your brand if another brand they love, loves your brand.
Am I making sense?
Let’s break it down. Millennials love Instagram because it gives them people to follow, and people to follow means inspiration, endless inspiration in any aspect they search for. So when they start to follow a ‘social media influencer’ for example, and that influencer raves about your brand, that follower is going to listen- and we’re not the first to say this.
Anywhere from bloggers, to Instagram influencers, to YouTubers, contact them and tell them how much you love what they are about, and how much you would love if they checked out your brand. Remember to stick to your targeted platform.
How to know who to collaborate with:
Keep these tips as a rule-of-thumb:
One: Do not contact someone who will have zero interest in your brand.
Two: Get to know the influencers out there, get to know what content they produce, who they have previously collaborated with, and see if they are right for your brand.
Three: Think geographically Make sure you choose someone close to home, if you offer your brand to someone who is halfway across the world and you are a boutiques coastal business, people are less likely to engage with your brand and more likely to say “who the heck are you?.”
If your brand offers a produce of some sort, this is one of the easiest ways to get your foot in the door with influencers. Give them a sample, ask them if they love it, get their feedback, but don’t force them to instantly sharing your product. If you slowly introduce the ides and you get a feeling they are going to say “yes, I love the product” then offer them a fee to share their thoughts, or offer them a discount code to give to their following to show that you value their following just as much as you value your brand.
See how it’s connected?
For research purposes, listed are some of the most influential Australian-Instagrammers to date:
EDIT: This post was written for a Social Media assessment series. The task time was 1 week.
When you think about building your brand online, I can guess two things that may come to your mind. The first being social media and the second being advertising, or more precise… online advertising. So let’s take a savvy step inside the large/broad/extensive world that is social media and focus on how we can best advertise our brand, at a beginners level.
Before we begin, social media advertising is a broad topic and can become very complex. Here we are only focusing on how we can use social media advertising on a small scale, and have it work for our online brand.
Firstly, let’s begin by clarifying our platform. Social media platforms are where advertising your brand will either build your reputation, or demise it (and we all know what option we’d prefer). So let’s discover the right platform for your brand.
Instagram (IG): is the best platform for visually portraying what your brand has to offer.
Facebook (FB): has more opportunity to professionally share information, has a solid reputation, and gives more space for advertising content.
Youtube: is great if we are creatives showcasing our brand. Uploading content on this platform is only necessary if we need video to communicate our brand’s message, and we can therefore share it later on our website or Facebook.
Twitter: let’s not think about this (unless we’re President Donald Trump).
Therefore, it’s either IG of FB, or both, don’t limit yourself.
TIP: make sure to channel your energy into one over the other, or share the same posts on both platforms, this adds consistency to your advert/campaign/brand and therefore we are building trust with our followers.
Getting familiar and personal with one platform communicates to our audience that we value where they put their time when browsing through what our brand has to offer. For example, it’s not best practise for a beauty blogger to focus solely on updating their Facebook status when their followers are wanting to see their latest makeup creation on Instagram.
Now you have your preferred platform, where are we going to put our hard earned money?
Social media is great for low budget, small businesses, because for under $10 you can market your brand to multiple audiences.
It’s a small price to pay.
Keep in mind that investing this money into your social media adverts and promotions will overall leave you better off. If you aren’t getting a physical response from this investment, remember that just because a user isn’t ‘liking’ your advert/post, they may still see it, and this is what we want so remember to keep track of post engagements, and keep at it.
Now is when your inner marketing-guru come out to play.
Advertise the content you want your brand to be known for, chose the images that show a clear message of what your brand has to offer, and adjust the captions to show you are investing time in people reading them.
Here is an example provided by Google:
Google’s Facebook advert, find it here: learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalgarage-au
Happy advertising!
Much love,
Savhanna.
PS. Has social media advertising worked for you as a user/consumer? What made you ‘follow’ or ‘buy’?
Let’s look at building your online brand by starting to become a master of your own content creation.
EDIT: This post was written for a Social Media assessment. The task time was 1 week.
Building a digital brand: Content creation
Social media image by Savhanna Fowler
We all know an Instagram account that we simply cannot get enough of.
Building thataccount didn’t happen over night, there are long hours, tough decisions and trial and error processes that go into one ‘simple’ upload. So let’s talk content creation when building your digital brand.
Going online in 2017 is inevitable and if you are wanting your brand to succeed you need to take the necessary steps to not only making an appearance online, but maintain it through finding the perfect topics, the best photo opportunities and applying a great edit that will work for you.
What does it mean to be a content creator for your own brand?
Firstly, you are spending hours developing the style you want your brand to communicate, and then you are creating the best possible ways to deliver this to your audience. Remember, we need to keep them engaged, not just entertained, so the following is a breakdown of where to begin.
Step One: Engaging an audience
We begin with this step as it’s what you as content creators need to think about from the get-go. Your audience is your telltale if you are doing something right, or if you need to go back to the drawing board and try again. So to get to know the audience you are targeting, or begin to further understand your current one, ask yourself the following questions:
Are they responding?
What posts are they responding to? (eg. images, text, hard topics, light-hearted topics)
Is your audience asking questions? (and what are they asking?)
A few small details can determine if your audience is engaged with the content you are delivering.
Step Two: Finding a filter
Adding a filter may not always apply to your images. It’s also directed at the style you write, and what you write about. For example, if you are an author of a food blog, it would be in your brands best interest to keep all posts related to food.
Moreover, keeping consistent with your editing process of your images, texts, uploading dates, collaboration entities, etcetera, etcetera, you are giving your audience stability, which results in them staying around for a little bit longer.
My advice: keep your images clean, your text edited and you’ll be on the track to success.
It doesn’t matter if you are running a music blog or building a car-enthusiast Instagram, your viewers are going to connect and engage with your content if you are sharing where you go to coffee. Confused? People like to know that there is a face behind all these words and images, so make your content human. It doesn’t have to be as personal as your personal life, but it should be as relatable.
Content creation when building your brand online follows with how your audience engages with your brand. Remember, it doesn’t matter if you have 100 followers or 1M followers on your social platform or blog, if you are engaging them, you are building your brands longevity.
Much Love,
Savhanna.
PS. We would love to hear what your go-to image filters are! Comment below.
Savhanna Fowler 