Messaging + Brand Strategy in Content Marketing

Today we are here to talk about messaging and brand strategy. I am a content marketing expert. I specifically focus on content repurposing so that you can work smarter and not harder within your content. And I'm joined today by Kris, who I met here on Instagram through the wonderful and fabulous Jess Miller. She is a money and mindset coach and is just incredible at what she does. And Kris and I have just been connecting in the DMS for, I don't know, it's probably been a year, maybe a little more.

My name is Kris Kiehn. I am a brand and marketing consultant for small businesses and startups in the consumer-facing and retail space. And I really try to help create that messaging and brand identity for clients to really engage with their customers and not just throw things up on the wall, see if it sticks or just throw messaging out there and doesn't matter if it engaged.

What’s cool is, that what Kris and I do is so parallel and works together. When we were talking earlier this week preparing for this, Kris, her business is the step before people work with me. Kris gets your brand identity down pat and good and clear. Then we can start jumping into things like figuring out your content pillars, content repurposing and your content strategy in general. 

Let’s talk about brand identity

When it comes to brand identity, at the core, we're talking about your tagline, your mission, and all of those things. We’re also talking, about the colors that you're using, and it's ideal to use between 1-3. Then also a logo, when you're starting out, sometimes people don't have a logo, but something an image that identifies you as your brand or company. 

So when we're talking about creating content for your social media feed, I create templates to help me maintain my brand identity. While I’m a late adopter, I'm a huge fan of Canva. So you want to create templates that use your brand colors between 1-3. This can look like a flood of color or maybe it’s just little accents of color. 

The other thing that you want to do is curate photos that also resonate with your brand. An example is that my tagline is “navigating the sea of marketing.” So a lot of my photos tend to be of the ocean or maybe pool or pool tiles, but those greens and aqua that resonate back to my brand colors. 

It’s a good idea to get some still professional photos taken of you or have a friend take some so that at least your face is out there. At the end of the day, people resonate and connect with the brand. And that brand is really you. It is not the product. It's not the service. There's the person behind that.

That's why sometimes those behind the scenes work really well because they're resonating with you watching you do.

People do business with people

When I used to work at International Training, the President, Brian Carney would always say people do business with people. So showing your face on social media, and putting yourself out there can only help you like relate to your ideal clients more, and make them feel comfortable doing business with you and buying things, and giving you their money realistically. You're communicating and sharing that voice of who you are. 

Have fun with it.

Don't be afraid to say here's my opinion. And to follow it up, here's why I think this really works: share your unique perspective. You don't just share the product or the pretty pictures and whatnot.

Don't forget to add your logo to your content

Here's why. Today I feel like so many people share images or they share posts and they put them on their stories and so many times they're not tagged and if you had that in that image, especially the graphic images that you use, then your brand is getting shared. So it always tends to tie back because I always will go to that story and click on that post just to go back to give some love to the original creator.

Let’s dive into content repurposing

This kind of segues really nicely into content repurposing, and I like how brand identity and having a brand-like voice and messaging and tone really ties into that. Because, like, Kris was saying, if you have a post that's like a graphic or something like that, and maybe it doesn't perform so well. If you have those templates ready to go and set up, you can just switch the content type of that post, and like maybe you turn it into a reel, maybe you turn it into like some type of carousel type thing, maybe it's just a photo, whatever it is, when you have those templates and the brand identity to leave back on, it's easier to create content in the first place. 

That is my overall number one thing about content repurposing is it makes it easier to create, like, that's, that's just it. You're gonna enjoy content marketing more if it's easy. If it's easy for you to do, you will enjoy it more; I can almost promise you that.

You have to expose your audience to your content more than once! 

Only 1% of your followers are really seeing your feed. So that's another reason why you want to repurpose, and then the other is that it sometimes takes 8 to 12 times to resonate and connect with someone.

Nobody is going to remember who you are the first time that they see your post, I tell my clients all the time, like let's look at the analytics. Let's see how things did, like if something performed well. Why can't we repost it exactly as it is? No one will remember what you posted three months ago or scroll back on your feet and be like, well, that's the same post as today. They did three months ago, like that's it's not a thing, people do not care that much. You care much more about your content than anyone else out there does.

To start get started with content repurposing, create that content bank.

My template is an Excel sheet; it has a bunch of tabs at the bottom. You can just dump all of your content in there to get a, like a real high level view of like, okay, this is what I have. So now, how can I make this all work for me? 

My favorite part of my content bank is actually my story bank. One of the tabs in my content bank is where I dump ideas—good, bad, ugly, whatever they are—in there. I’ll go back later and sort through them. I would really, really encourage you to write every single idea that you have down because you never know exactly when it could come in handy someday. 

I like to set aside 30 minutes a week where I'm just going through the saves on my phone from Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, whatever. I just go back through them because when you're saving things to come back to later, you're usually not planning when you will return to them. And I know this is kind of off to the side of content and stuff like that. But it's really helpful to look at what you're consuming weekly and think about how you can incorporate that into your content or your business or whatever it is.

I really love your tip about, you know, that 30 minutes a week, I have something for my own business because I manage other accounts that I have CEO Fridays, and on Fridays, I'm actually going through, and I'm jotting down ideas. Because if you step away, sometimes it comes back, and then that sparks of oh, you know what, or, Hey, I saw this, and I keep seeing this. So this is a trend. And I want to jump on that. Exactly, you know, and again, keeping it in your brand and then your messaging.

Content pillars

I have a great blog post on this, my blog. The general gist of it is content pillars are the 3-5 topics that you're going to talk about within your content marketing strategy, that will help you move toward your marketing goals, whatever those are. So, for me, my Content pillars are content, repurposing, content marketing, social media, and email marketing. Those are the four things that I really, really hit hard and try to focus on. Because those are the four ways that I help my clients. keep two accounts; some people will say this is a great strategy. Some of you have feelings on either side about having more than one account, one for business and one for personal. I like to keep them separate,

The two accounts vs one debate for social media

What I do to share my personal life on my business page is share things from my personal page. And, like, let it go that way. So, like, mostly, people would only see my personal life via the stories, but I think that's okay. Because stories tend to be a place where you're going to want to go more deep anyway. So yeah, that's my two cents on sharing your personal stuff. I think it's great. It helps you be more relatable.

There is no magic combination of you posting X amount of times a week, and you gain Y

I feel like that's a really common question that I get, like, how many times a week do I need to post to go viral or gain 1000 followers or whatever it is. There's nothing like that. If someone is giving you some type of advice that you need to post X amount of times to get why run for the hills, it's a red flag that no one can guarantee anything like that.

I mean, would you agree that you need to post at least one to two times a week just so that you stay active?

I always say when you're building your social media or even your marketing strategy, start small. There are all kinds of ways to do it. Don't let someone be coming into sales. Don't let someone's higher cadence of posting or marketing or whatever it is pull you down or get you discouraged because we all have different bandwidths and capacities.

Don't compare your journey to someone else's

I think that's true. I think I even had times where I would be looking and following someone and just thinking, wow, they're doing it so much better than I, but we all do and bring our expertise to the business in our unique way. And again, it comes down to people working with you as a person and your expertise. But it's the person who first wants to feel comfortable. They want it if they don't feel comfortable with you, and they can't find a way to believe in you, then it's not going to be a good relationship, either.

Have fun with it

Also, the one point we both wanted to make was to make it fun and make social media marketing fun for yourself. I'm not saying that you have to get up and do a dancing reel or something like that. If that's not fun for you, don't do it. But social media is truly what you make it. So, if you want it to be fun, it can be fun. You can like to create your little community there. by DMing, with all kinds of people relationships, I mean, it is such a beautiful thing that we live in a time where we can have these digital relationships that really connect us in a way that wasn't possible. However, long ago, like in the olden days, as my kids would say,

If you're looking for branding and messaging help hit up Kris. And if you're a more established, and you need to get organized with your content marketing, and figure out how to repurpose and like set up a framework of all that kind of good stuff. Hit me up and or follow me on social.