Small businesses: How to identify your brand

The business world is full of talk about branding. If you're developing your own small business, you'll probably face the questions about branding early in your process. The fairly vague term covers such hard-core necessities as a name and logo, needs that arise well before you actually open your doors.

Somehow, before you are experienced enough in your business to know what you're all about, you have to know what you're all about. For many perfectly intelligent adults starting up their own enterprises, this is a daunting task. How to go about pinpointing my brand? How to say/draw/communicate my presence in the business world through a name, a logo, a personality, a feeling, a reputation?

How, in short, can I distinguish who I am from others who are in the same field?

If you have built a better mousetrap, no problem. But if you are like millions of other hard-working, self-motivating entrepreneurs whose basic product or service is replicated everywhere, your choices in regard to branding are keenly important.

If you sell insurance, for instance, or run a restaurant, or a dental practice, branding is as vital for your business as it is for Coca-Cola and Microsoft. But since you spend your time helping people, or running your restaurant, or fixing people's teeth, you may not have much practice in how to brand your work.

Do you have a written business plan? Does it include a mission or values statement? If so, that's a good beginning. But whether this document exists or not, you have to begin work on identifying your brand with some focused introspection.

When you create a brand, you name the baby, and like a fairy god-person endow it with certain given characteristics. The brand acts as a metaphor for all that you represent to the community at large.

Your work on branding for your new business starts with attentive mulling over a few key questions: 

• what really motivates you,
• what turns you on,
• what do you care about deeply,
• what kind of transaction do you want to make with the world,
• what do you think is beautiful?

There are three basic learning styles, right? Visual, auditory, kinesthetic. You'll naturally use one or another of these to express, once you've considered some of the fundamental branding questions.

Taking the fruit (or just the feeling) from your 'moment of silence,' begin to tease it out by writing, drawing, moving, talking, collaborating, or whatever expressive action comes naturally.

A writer will wordsmith; a doodler will mind-map; a mover will build. All will finish up with shapes, words, tempos, colors, and laws that begin to inform their brand.

You might not be comfortable with the cavalier suggestion that you find a way to express your thoughts. Below are a few ways to make this a less threatening proposition.

Doodling

This is when you make marks absent-mindedly while something else is going on. Keep a bit of paper and pen nearby and let your hand dance with these instruments at moments throughout your day. It's best to use a pen rather than pencil, so you get past the concept of 'making mistakes.'  

While on the phone, or waiting for downloads, or at the doctor's office, let your hand move a pen or pencil around a little piece of paper. Don't try to draw anything, just let the instrument make marks. Follow your impulses with simple curiosity, and keep the pen moving without intellectual involvement.  

Twittering

Yes folks, this new social media tool is a great way to develop your brand definition. Actually, most any social network requires that you present your self in some way. By taking stock of your interactions online, you can retrieve many a clue about your native brand. 

Of course, Twitter is just a new form of writing, so this expression gateway is more precisely about putting your thoughts into the written word. Social networks provide a good format in that they necessitate brevity. But pen and paper will do handsomely as well.  

If writing's not a chore for you, use it liberally to explore all the corners of your thinking about brand. Then condense the flood of words, and your image will crystallize. 

Collage/collection

Sitting and doodling or writing may not be to your taste. If you're the more active sort, you can begin to study your own brand by making a collage or collection.  

You can amass the materials of your collection in any tangible way: i.e., it doesn't count if you just think about it. Make a list, or a pile, or an arrangement, series, or compendium, but be sure it's something you can see and touch.

Start with a theme, or without one. Concentrate on opening your mind to all possible inclusions in your collage or collection. Things that harmonize and things that contrast may both belong.

You've contemplated, and conducted a search, and you have produced a few mini-expressions around your thinking. You've opened the door, and you stand on the threshold. Now it's time to come out of the closet.

Scrutinize your expressions. Mix and match them. Take them very literally. If your doodles seem chaotic, work with and not against this. If your written scribblings don't lead anywhere, express the ambiguity. If your collection evidences no cohesion, what is the expression of that disjointedness? 

By now the symbols and poetry of your expressions are gaining strength in your awareness; you probably have a set of words, images, guidelines that approach a definition of your brand. 

Take your creation firmly in hand, walk it across the threshold, and emerge from the closet of self-scrutiny. Enter the business world, and let your brand dialog. It will morph as it interfaces with your market. But because you carefully cultivated the expression of your brand in the first place, you will remain in charge as it evolves. If you still believe in those basics you originally identified, your brand will lead you to the success of your dreams.

Need a sound strategy for sharing your brand on social media networks?  Wondering how to match your efforts with a good return? 

Social Media Marketing with Virtual Writing & Communications is an adventure in putting your brand to work for your business, with online presence positioning you to meet your objectives.