Business

  • Branding, Social Media

    Practical Branding Tips for Instagram

    Branding makes your business stand out. From your logo, theme, and the entirety of your brand’s appeal– branding allows you to be distinguished among your competitors. 

    According to Instagram, as of early 2021, there are already more than 200 million business accounts on the platform. It ranges from the biggest corporations to thriving small businesses. With this huge number, the competition is already tough. But knowing how to make smart moves will give your brand the edge.

    Instagram branding is both challenging and fun for most businesses. While it allows you to channel your personality and creativity, it requires strategic planning. Curating your IG profile and bio are essential steps for great branding. But here’s how you can do better.

    Set Your Goals Straight

    Before starting anything else, you should clearly define your goals. It can save you time and effort on planning, but it also utilizes your resources. 

    Your IG branding goals should align with your business’s current status– may it be directed towards brand awareness, scaling, or customer acquisition. You can use these goals to plan your next steps in curating your account. 

    For this process, you can follow the SMART goal setting. It guides your objective to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Using this can give you a clearer view of your vision and a realistic action plan for your brand.

    Craft the Perfect Bio 

    The first few steps are about your brand’s basic information in setting up your account. Your name, display photo, and a 150-character bio should be utilized well. 

    Your name and profile photo are the most recognized parts of your account. And you want your followers to remember it well. Use the right profile picture– a unique representation of your brand. When it comes to IG handles (usernames), it should most likely be the same as your company’s name or a shortened version of it. This allows your audience to identify you even outside social media.

    Under your displayed full name is the IG bio. With a 150-character limit, you can put as much information about your brand as possible. You can include your brand description, services, and links to your website. Make sure to write a copy that perfectly describes your brand and is engaging enough to attract prospects. Also, take advantage of that free space and use it to display your seasonal offers or featured products.

    Develop a Theme and Stick with It

    IG is a visual platform, and you should use it to your advantage. This can be your creative space to showcase your brand’s personality and aesthetic. It includes a similar look and feels in terms of content, a consistent tone in captions, and the overall look of your IG feed. 

    First, your content may vary according to your offers and branding goals. Creating your strategy will help in a more consistent posting. You can create a content calendar, use tools to schedule posts, and even repurpose content from your website.

    IG captions help provide context to your posts. It can also include questions, polls, and other engaging content. Make sure to set a tone that matches your brand’s personality. Your captions can be informative, creative, or interesting– or maybe all of it simultaneously.

    Next is visual appeal—the theme, colors, and even letter fonts matter. Be consistent with the ‘feels’ you’re trying to show your audience. Stick with a pleasing color palette that matches your brand. 

    Lastly, take advantage of the Instagram feed. The grid format gives you a chance to create specific patterns, mix and match colors, or section them according to the year’s season. The possibilities are endless. You can also draw inspiration from other brands that you follow. But keep in mind to stick to your branding guide.

    Utilize IG’s Features and Tools

    Instagram has many built-in features that you shouldn’t sleep on. Aside from the built-in editing tools to improve your photos and videos, other features can enhance brand visibility when used well. 

    You can create a branded hashtag specific to your account to have your own space. Using this on your posts can improve brand recall. Encouraging your followers to use it can help you track your engagement and enhance your visibility. Along with this, you can also use popular hashtags to appear to a broader audience. 

    Instagram live is another feature that you can use to increase engagement among your followers. It encourages first-hand interaction with your brand, which can help with building a better connection. You can also use this to show the company’s behind-the-scenes happenings or teasers for your future offers. It allows your audience to know you and your brand better.

    Schedule and Publish Quality Content

    Publishing content regularly increases your brand visibility. Part of IG’s algorithm is increasing your visibility on the accounts that regularly interact with you and those that post consistently. But posting alone will not work. As a brand, you should provide value to your audience.

    There’s no fail in giving valuable content to your audience. It makes your brand a reliable source of information in your chosen field/industry. Having this kind of credibility encourages your followers to trust your brand. To consistently appear in their feed, you have to post regularly or, if possible, within a schedule. 

    It will help if you plan and schedule your content. Social media is not the only thing you will do. And even if you hired a social media manager, scheduling gives you more leverage in the coming days. It can also save you energy in curating your content, as you can do it ahead of time. You can do more important things while ensuring you can still provide quality content.

    Leverage trends and be social

    Social media users are always driven by following trends. It’s a way of staying in touch with the digital world and keeping users updated with profound changes. 

    Use this opportunity to stay in touch with your audience and see what they like. Keeping your brand updated to the latest trends shows that you care about what they are into at the moment. Participate in challenges, use relevant templates, and you can eventually create your own.

    Final Words

    Starting as a social site, Instagram grew and developed the potential for business platforms. It allows businesses and customers an improved interactive experience. Creating a cohesive Instagram presence shouldn’t be as hard. It is a strategic process that can be fun, too! Choosing realistic and practical steps in branding can help you turn your vision into reality in no time. Start channeling your creativity and watch your brand shine.

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  • Freelancing

    How Coworking Spaces Change the Way Work Happens

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    As the trends in the workforce evolve, there seems to be something special about freelancing and coworking that ties them together in such innovative ways. Gone are the days when working at a corporate office or at home are two different choices because now, you can have the best of both worlds in a coworking space – but with a little social distancing.

    Coworking spaces are built in a flexible environment that cultivates community, diversity, productivity, and scalability for professionals to work independently together. Over the last few years, coworking didn’t just change the way work happens but there’s a significant link to how professionals thrive in coworking spaces.

    The Rise of Coworking Spaces

    Studies show that more than 30% of today’s workforce is comprised of freelancers or independent professionals. According to experts, this number is expected to rise by 2020. With this increase comes the need to open more co-working spaces worldwide that plays an important role in how and where freelance professionals could work. As this industry grows, there’s a chance that many small businesses could use coworking as a competitive advantage in their respective locations. 

    But the real question lies on how these independent professionals could leverage coworking as a norm in their chosen career path, and which coworking space offer the best workspace flexibility options that remote workers search for. To start with, here are some of the benefits of coworking space that helps every freelancer thrive in the biz.

    Five Benefits of Coworking Spaces

    Coworking spaces have easily become an attractive option for remote workers, same goes for freelancers and entrepreneurs. The main reason could be that coworkers find an essential value in being part of a diver community of likeminded people – because sometimes, working alone sucks. But before searching for a coworking membership that works best for you, keep in mind these five benefits:

    1. Community

      Taking the first spot is the community. Working alone as a freelancer or an entrepreneur could be difficult because at some point, you may lose your sense of community. But with co-working spaces, you are given a chance to work independently without being alone. Coworking spaces may even introduce you to potential connections allowing you to rub shoulders with other business owners or like-minded professionals. To cut it short, nothing beats the power of a network that you can leverage for your future endeavors.

    2. Productivity

      Imagine working in an environment that’s free from the stuffiness of traditional office space and is built with a structure of the comforts of your home. Perfect, right? Who wouldn’t want to work there all day and smash deadlines like a pro? This is how coworking spaces are created—to boost your optimal productivity. There are no administrative tasks or operating costs to worry about—only you, focusing on work. Plus, being surrounded by hardworking professionals gives an extra push to motivate yourself. There are also other amenities provided that could help increase productivity.

    3. Flexibility

      Coworking spaces offer various membership options and payment plans. Since many small business owners and freelancers can’t commit to lease offices because of the hefty price tag, they opt to choose coworking spaces. Members are free to go from daily, weekly, to monthly—whatever the situation calls for as freelancers often have flexible working hours.

    4. Diversity

      Many coworking spaces have members and tenants who work for a wide range of businesses. This kind of environment gives professionals the opportunity to connect and collaborate with people from different industries. If anything, there is more collaboration and less direct competition in coworking spaces unlike in a traditional corporate office.

    5. Scalability

      Entrepreneurs or freelancers who run a business already have quite a few overhead costs. That is why coworking spaces offer flexible terms for business owners to eliminate those expenses. With coworking spaces, you don’t have to worry about utility bills or service charges. These places are well-equipped with tools that could help professionals and business owners alike.

    Shape the Future of Work

    What really makes coworking fun and innovative? Some research suggests that the combination of a conducive work environment and experience where a diverse group of workers shares energy and ideas are the main reasons why professionals thrive in coworking spaces.

    High levels of motivation seen in people who co-work is due to the fact that they can be more of themselves while at work. To sum up, coworking spaces shape the future of work because of its benefits for the workers. Professionals thrive when they have autonomy and are given their own space with enough support to reach their full potential.

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  • Books, Mindset

    3 Powerful Benefits of Reflective Thinking

    In a fast-paced society where reflective thinking is not top of mind, most people would instead act than think. Now, don’t get me wrong. We should all be a person of action. We should all enjoy seeing things accomplished. But at the same time, we should all become reflective thinkers and embrace the benefits of reflection.

    When I think about how EOS recommends scheduling a clarity break to its practitioners, I am reminded of this school of thought called reflective thinking. 

    A clarity break is a regularly scheduled appointment on your calendar with yourself. It’s up to you. But the doing of it is what matters. During this time, you should find a place to meet with yourself and take a journal with you. It could be any place where you can be alone and uninterrupted. Even EOS founder Gino Wickman finds a Starbucks near his home.

    Now, how does it tie with reflective thinking?

    The clarity break allows us to practice that. 

    As we go through this process, the goal is to reflect so that we might learn from our successes and mistakes, discover what we should try to repeat, and determine what to change for the benefit of the business. By mentally visiting past situations, we can think with greater understanding. More than ever, it helps us zero in on what truly matters.

    To top it off, here are the things clarity break and reflective thinking do to help us focus on the business:

    It Gives Us True Perspective

    According to Greek philosopher Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Carving out time for reflection helps us examine not just ourselves but the experiences that we had. When we practice reflective thinking, it leads us to put our experience into perspective and evaluate its timing. We might take some experiences for granted and fail to reflect on them unless prompted. But the clarity break allows us to process our experiences better, ask the right questions, and mine gold from our thinking.

    It Improves Decision-Making Skills

    Reflective thinking increases one’s confidence in decision-making, as per leadership guru John Maxwell. Even leaders have a moment of self-doubt. It comes from wondering whether a snap judgment made was the right thing or not. But having clarity from previous decisions could diffuse that doubt. 

    In reflective thinking, the goal is to create mental roadmaps to solve an issue so we won’t have to repeat going through the same process of finding a resolution again. Not only does it speed up thinking time and processing decisions, but it also gives us more confidence to approach conflict, and it strengthens our intuition.

    It Clarifies the Big Picture

    Setting aside time for reflection through a clarity break helps us see the big picture. When we engage in reflective thinking, we can put our ideas into a more accurate context. The clarity break encourages us to step back and spend time pondering what we have done and what could still be done to develop our organization. 

    Dick Biggs suggested a system to help us organize our thoughts on paper while reflecting on the bigger picture. He recommends creating three columns with the following: Year – Turning Point – Impact. In the EOS setting, this could very well translate to Quarter – Turning Point – Impact. Or I must say, Rocks – Significance – Action Point. Either way, this system could help us define our goals for the bigger picture during our time of reflection.

    How to embrace these lessons?

    Ultimately, engaging in reflective thinking provides the right perspective, counsel, insights, and direction we need for the future. It clears the path for growth and paves the way to accomplishing more goals, thus, clarity.

    When you are in a company run by EOS, clarity break is a privilege. It allows us to grab the opportunity to remove ourselves from distraction for short blocks of time. 

    Even if this type of privilege is unavailable, do not hesitate to spend time reflecting on your business or career growth. After all, nothing could firmly cement any learning like action.

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  • Books, Film

    10 Quotes To Live By From Michelle Obama’s Becoming

    Fascinating, compelling, and superb.

    Just like Michelle Obama herself, these are the words that escaped my lips after I’ve finished her empowering memoir-slash-documentary.

    Becoming is a captivating account of her life at the White House, from the perspective of a First Lady. As someone who was born from a working-class African American family, Michelle is a living proof of shattering the glass ceiling.

    Being a girl with big dreams isn’t enough. BECOMING that woman who achieved her ambitions and still open to transformations is what she is. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Michelle became a corporate lawyer in a legal practice where she met her husband and former President Barack Obama.

    If you haven’t read the book or watched the documentary, here are 10 quotes to spark your curiosity about Becoming.

    Michelle On Dreams

    “Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?” ― Michelle Obama, Becoming Share on X

    Michelle On Identity

    “If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.” ― Michelle Obama, Becoming Share on X

    Michelle On Evolution

    “For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.” ― Michelle Obama, Becoming Share on X

    Michelle On Failure

    “Failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result.”― Michelle Obama, Becoming Share on X

    Michelle On Your Story

    “Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.” ― Michelle Obama, Becoming Share on X

    Michelle On Time

    “Time, as far as my father was concerned, was a gift you gave to other people.” ― Michelle Obama, Becoming Share on X

    Michelle On Patiences

    “We were planting seeds of change, the fruit of which we might never see. We had to be patient.” ― Michelle Obama, Becoming Share on X

    Michelle On Control

    “The lesson being that in life you control what you can.”― Michelle Obama, Becoming Share on X

    Michelle On Bullies

    “Bullies were scared people hiding inside scary people.”― Michelle Obama, Becoming Share on X

    Michelle On Dominance

    “Dominance, even the threat of it, is a form of dehumanization. It’s the ugliest kind of power.” ― Michelle Obama, Becoming Share on X

    Michelle On What Others Think

    “This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path—the my-isn’t-that-impressive path—and keep you there for a long time.”― Michelle Obama, Becoming Share on X

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  • Branding, Marketing

    Find Your Ultimate Brand Voice

    Having a brand voice that is consistent and strong is a surefire way to stand out from competitors and be on top of the mind of consumers. After all, your brand voice is what drives all the content you deliver, from marketing to sales and customer service.

    With the advent of the digital age, lots of brands have flocked the Internet that consumers are bombarded with a cacophony of product information. Not to mention being exposed to various slogan shouts from traditional media like TV, print, and radio. That is why it has become more difficult for brands to have a distinct voice and be heard.

    Simply put, a brand copy is one of the factors that hooks consumers to your products, but the brand voice is the driving force that keeps it all forward and put together.

    When you learn how to marry brand voice with your copy, you’ve got nothing to worry about, because then your copy will work for you.

    But first, research what your potential clients would say and use the language that would pretty much get them the first time they hear about your brand.

    First, what is the voice?

    In copywriting, the voice is the sense, character, or idea the readers get when they read your content whether it’s on social media, website, blogs, etc.

    When you’re able to distinguish between the differences of your friends’ or family members’ personalities because of their own quirks, that’s their voice you recognize. Or when you find a note on the fridge and remember that messy handwriting is from a specific loved one, you know immediately who left that message—because the trust you have for them makes it easier to recognize who it was.

    As a business owner, it’s important to identify a distinct brand voice that would set off your marketing efforts. This will help your potential clients trust your brand and build authenticity for your products and services in the long run.

    To achieve that, your brand voice must have the three main ingredients: tone, rhythm, and vocabulary. Without these, you won’t be able to identify a brand voice that sticks.

    Tone is the character of the voice, it’s the color, it’s the feel of your voice.

    Rhythm is the pattern of the voice. Is it witty or serious? Does your brand prefer long sentences or short ones? It’s the musical quality of your voice.

    While Vocabulary is the words the brand use. It should be based on the tone and rhythm of the voice.

    In order to succeed in branding, the first step is to humanize your brand with a cohesive brand voice. There’s no better way to develop your brand’s voice than these writing drills you can do through the worksheet I came up with.

    By using your imagination and getting help from your team, I’m sure you’ll hit the right note in no time.

    Steps to Identifying Your Brand Voice

    1. Pinpoint your brand’s quirks – personifying your brand is the easiest way to get your buyer personas hooked. This is the main reason why there are brands you’ve completely fallen in love with and maybe, hated—because of the character they portray. Think of it the way authors develop their characters in storytelling, there are archetypes, personal wounds, motivations, and so on. These are the things that fuel your brand to achieve a distinct voice.

      Just like humans, a brand must have a personality that must be compelling enough to evoke an emotional response from consumers. This way, your brand can speak directly to leads, like an actual person.
    2. List down adjectives – This one comes as part of pinpointing your brand’s quirks, but I have to lay it out here to remind you. Talk to as many members of your company as possible to brainstorm ideas. Think of adjectives that describe your company’s purpose, or your company culture.

      To make it easier, describe the kind of character you’re building as you point out its quirks. Once the same ideas have been repeated within your team, then you must listen to that, and use those adjectives to jumpstart your brand voice.
    3. Name your ideal spokesperson. Even if you’re not planning to get one, think of a celebrity or a famous person you want to represent your brand. This is one of the easiest ways to give your brand identity.

      Once you have selected someone, briefly explain your reasons. Maybe you’ve chosen a comedian like Ellen DeGeneres for an endorser, then your brand voice must be funny. Or the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, then you may desire a sound that’s motivational and affectionate. Take your pick!
    4. Narrow down your ideas through a brand chart – Once you have identified your brand’s quirks, ideal spokesperson, and the adjectives that describe them, illustrate their relations in a chart.

      Later on, you will realize how it could be an essential tool that will serve as a reference for the copywriter and your marketing team. This is so everyone in your team can consistently use the same voice while promoting your products and services.

    Final Advice

    That’s it! I’ve created a worksheet and shared it with you all for FREE because I want you to nail down your brand’s voice, so I hope it helps. This is important because it will eventually become a guide to write powerful copy that sells. And once you sign up for one of my web copywriting services, we can dig deeper into this.

    Treat this worksheet like a piece of interview questionnaire wherein you’re trying to get to know someone’s personality through this guide. And that, my friend, is how you will develop your brand voice.

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