How to build a consistent brand on Instagram

Do you want to attract your target audience and grow on Instagram - a consistent brand is the first step to any successful Instagram strategy. Today, I want to cover the basics on how to create a cohesive brand on Insta, let's do it!

Determine your brand identity.

One of the first things you need to do before you can truly build a consistent brand is by defining your brand identity. There are two ways I recommend doing this...

1) Determine your ideal audience

We have chatted about determining your ideal audience in multiple podcast episodes in the past and that is because this is a necessary step to take before you can build a consistent brand. Who are you creating all of this content for? What are they interested in? What are their hobbies? Where do they like to eat and shop? What is their age? Get to thinking and figure out the ideal person who would follow your online platforms.

2) Develop your niche & content pillars

Now that you have determined your ideal audience, you need to develop a niche and content pillars that will attract that specific type of person. If you haven't already, make sure to listen to our recent podcast "Do you need a niche? The guide to getting clear on your purpose & mission." This will guide you through the 4 evaluation stages needed to clear on your mission and purpose and help you narrow that niche down into content pillars.

Once you can determine who you are trying to reach and who you are as a brand, this will help you craft more consistent branding on Instagram and throughout other social platforms as well.

Set the mood.

One of the best ways to help you become clear on your brand is by creating a moodboard. Moodboards are great for bringing clarity to your aesthetic preferences - this will not only be helpful for you, but for any future team members you hire to assist you on content creation. This is actually something we do for clients who purpose our Instagram Strategy and Brand Services, we love to help them get clarity on their brand aesthetic, and what better way than a visual tool like a moodboard. This can be a mix of colors, textures, patterns, and quotes to help you better visualize what your Instagram feed should look like. Oh and they're super fun to make - just go to Canva.com and in the top search bar type "moodboard", you will see tons of template options to start from.

Develop a brand guide.

Now that you have set the mood, it's time to develop a brand guide. A brand guide is a rulebook containing specifications that detail a company or brand's visual identity, along with rules and guidelines for any public content creation and communication. Brand guides can include rules for official logo usage, font type and color, typography, and tone, along with the brand's mission statement, positioning, identity, and values. It's pretty much your entire business placed on a document to keep things consistent throughout your brand. If you want to learn how to develop a brand guide for your business, make sure to check out our Creatorly Media YouTube video that is launching this Wednesday at 8am EST. The YouTube Channel will be linked in the show notes.

Create a content strategy.

Now that you have developed your brand identity and created some branding resources, it’s time to develop a content strategy. Your content strategy plays a huge role in building a consistent brand, but it does even more than that. It will help build your target audience, keep your brand & schedule consistent, and attract brands for collaborations.

Developing a content strategy not only shows your expertise and knowledge about your niche in your posts, but it will also help you determine what type of content you’re wanting to create. There are so many ways you can go when creating content for Instagram. Will you be creating a business brand or a personal brand? Will you be showing your face or will the content be business-focused? Will you be curating content, creating your own content, or a mixture of both?

It’s important to make these decisions in the beginning so that as you build your audience, they know what to expect from you and your Instagram profile. If they followed you because of your humorous, relatable memes and TikTok reshares, but then you randomly started posting photos of your food - this might come across as inconsistent and could potentially harm your growth.

If you would like a deep dive into developing a content strategy and planning an entire quarter of content - make sure to check out a replay of the recent Back to Social Workshop I recently hosted. The link to purchase the workshop replay can be found in the description.

Wow, I have been doing a lot of cross-promoting in today’s episode. This actually brings me to my final note.

❗ Bonus Tip: Keep your branding consistent on all platforms.

This is just a bonus tip about brand consistency across platforms. When you build a consistent brand, this should spill into all of your main social media platforms - some might be a little different, for example - the content you create on TikTok might vary from the type of content you post on Instagram - because the audiences are a bit different. But your overall branding should be recognizable across all platforms - this makes it easier for you to cross-promote like we did today in this podcast. In this one episode, we shouted out our Instagram Strategy & Brand Package, a recent podcast, our content creation and planning workshop, and an upcoming YouTube video. This is because we have created consistency between our social platforms and services, so that you - as our ideal audience - can benefit from all our content and services.

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You might have heard the phrase “consistency is key” when referring to your posting schedule on Instagram, but hopefully this shows you how important brand consistency is as well. If you found this helpful, please share the love and write a review - and make sure to come back next week for a true battle, Reels vs TikTok - how to really grow using Instagram Reels!