Firing out memes before they go stale, reacting to live events and amplifying their colleagues’ posts to turn them into internal influencers — here's how you keep your socials strong, and up to speed, without compromising your brand.
What does “on brand” even mean, anyway?
Your authenticity is far more valuable than one viral moment. If you’ve ever caught yourself saying something doesn’t “feel” on brand for you, take a step back and consider why it isn’t resonating. Is the messaging not aligning? Is the tone off? You should be able to clearly illustrate that feeling to everyone in the business.
Go back to basics and rip up your rule book. Your brand guidelines are probably written for a very different era of content marketing, where you’d dust off the guidelines occasionally. Now, when there’s more content to approve more quickly, make sure everyone’s on the same page, even if that page is a live document that’s constantly evolving.
Here’s how to nail your content guidelines properly
1. Know your values
When you know your values, you know where to draw the line. How provocative is your brand willing to be, and what do you stand for? If you know your brand inside out, you’ll be able to align your messaging with trending moments easily. That means your whole team can equip themselves with knowing which bandwagons to jump on, and which are better left to die.
2. Shift your tone
Adopt a slightly different tone for each social channel if you haven’t already, and ask yourself if your tone is restricting you creatively. Meet your audience where they are: people on LinkedIn aren’t looking for the latest riff on celebrity gossip, and people scrolling Stories don’t need to watch a seven-part series on your company culture. Social media is all about having a conversation, and nobody wants to talk to the boring guy in the suit still talking about work at the bar!
3. Tool up
The phrase “work smarter, not harder” has never been truer as more assets are needed more often. So expand your content toolkit. Keep your content engaging and on-brand in just a click, and let Storykit take all the hassle out of great content creation by speeding it up. You write the words, we’ll automagically create social-ready videos.
4. Get specific
What colours and fonts should you use on Instagram Stories? What sounds are appropriate for Reels and TikToks? What kind of punctuation should you avoid in blog posts? What are some examples of trends that would work for the brand, and which definitely wouldn’t? Illustrate the guide with real-life examples so you’re all singing from the same hymn sheet.
Experiment, test and prepare to fail
Play with emerging features and platforms to find the right fit for your brand. If you’re trailblazing a trend, you’re subconsciously showing your audience that you’re innovative, and opening doors for new audiences at the same time. It might just pay dividends! Or it might not. As long as you know your parameters, that’s okay too – after all, if no feelings are hurt, then failed efforts on social will all be forgotten with the next scroll.
Keeping your content on brand at scale doesn’t have to be an impossible task. Join Jonna Ekman, Marketing Director at Storykit, and Fredrik Strömberg, our co-founder and CPO, as they discuss keeping your content on-brand and on-message in the latest episode of Storykit Talks Live. Watch the webinar on Youtube, here, or listen to it as a podcast, here.
