7 Critical Components For A Memorable Brand

4. Bio

Just as your elevator pitch needs to be everywhere you are, so does your bio. There is no better example of a wasted opportunity than one where a new potential fan stumbles upon your Facebook page (or your website!) and wants to know more about you but there is no bio available there.

Your bio gives you the opportunity to control YOUR story, telling new and existing fans what you want them to know about you and what has influenced you to create the music that you make.

Apple, Billie Eilish, Coca-Cola, Google, and YOU.

You are a brand. Everything you do, post and put out informs your brand.

While social media has leveled the playing field for the music industry, making it so ALL musicians now have the ability to build a fan base, it has also leveled the playing field for every company in every industry.

We are all competing for valuable eyeballs and memorable moments.

In the eyes of the average social media user (your potential fan), your presence is the same as any and every other musician, company, and organization out there… and only those who establish an effective brand will be able to keep their attention and loyalty.

So how do you establish an effective brand?

Create consistency across all platforms.

If you have a defined look and feel on one platform, it is important that the look and feel remain the same on other platforms so your fans (and new fans!) can identify you easily everywhere else.

The stronger your brand becomes, the easier it will be for your fans to identify you through the social media clutter.

Here are 7 different elements of digital branding that you must ensure are consistent across all of your platforms:

1. Start With Arresting High-Quality Images (or Video Snippets)

Profiles pictures, timeline banners, logos, album covers, etc. should all be of the highest quality (i.e. no fuzzy or grainy images taken from an iPhone) and should be the same on all platforms. Your profile picture on Facebook should be the same as your profile picture on Twitter, Youtube, Google +, Soundcloud, etc.

Studies have shown that photos of people looking at the camera test well with their audience. I recommend doing a professional photo shoot with some of your favorite / most used outfits you like to wear on stage so that when visitors come to your site and socials, they will have a good idea of what you will look like live, and they will also get a sense of professionalism from the quality of the photos.

Your appearance on social media, your website, etc. is going to tell a lot of potential fans and industry professionals more about you than you might think. It’s important to put thought and creativity into your onstage look and your press photos, behind the scenes vibe, etc.

Use Canva to get creative with your cover photos. This is a great alternative if you don’t have a go-to graphic designer.

2. Have a Matching & Memorable Color Palette

Part of your personal brand is to express who you are as an artist. This gives your fans a chance to get to know who you are. As you think about shaping your personal brand, look to the Similar Artists section, your role models, and icons, and most importantly inside of you to come up with this personal brand.

Your branding and image are a major part of who you are as an artist. Having a strong brand ties not only into what your music sounds like, but also how you look/present yourself, your logo, visuals, and beyond. This is why it’s vital to stick with a style that is not only true to you as an artist, but also something that ties your entire act together.

Color Story: In general, we typically recommend sticking with 2-3 core colors to be supplemented with a neutral color. To help hone in on your colors, at the end of this plan is a chart that you can use to determine the colors you want associating with your brand.

Coolors.co

This website has a fantastic free tool for when you want to define (or redefine) their brand! This will quickly and easily help you come up with a custom color scheme to use in your branding.

Once you’ve created an account you have the option of choosing from hundreds of pre-designed color palettes or generating your own. (here is mine so you can see what it looks like)

To randomly generate color palettes you just hit the space bar and coolors.co creates a palette for you based on what colors go together. once you see a color or two you like you “lock” them in and then they will begin to select colors that work with what you have already selected until you have lock in an entire palette.

You can upload an image like your logo, album cover art, or recent press / social media profile photo and pull the exact colors for your palette directly from it.

Once you’ve created a palette you can edit your colors to make sure you have just the right shade, and then you can export the palette and the Hexcodes so that you or your graphic design can move this scheme across all platforms.

Note* Coolors offers and IOS app as well as an add-on for Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to immediately use the palettes you’ve created.

3. Elevator Pitch

An effective elevator pitch will paint a picture of what you sound like to those who have never heard you.

If you’ve taken the time to create your pitch, make sure that it is everywhere you are so that no matter who finds you online, on any platform, they will have that same picture painted for them about what you sound like

5. URLs

Take a look at the Rihanna. You will find her at RihannaNow.com and Facebook.com/Rihanna. Can you guess her Twitter handle? (hint: it’s twitter.com/Rihanna).

If you want your fans to find you, you need to make sure that you are able to be found. Don’t make this an impossible feat by creating a website called yourband.com but setting up a Facebook fan page at facebook.com/yourbandfansmusicusa…

6. Owned Content

Social media is of course all about the content. There is a massive differece between posting other peoples content and making your own. Of course all interesting brands utilized owned media. This means being cognicent of

The look, feel, style and frequency of the content you publish (images, music, videos, blog posts, etc.) MUST be consistent on all platforms in order to stay relevant and keep your existing fans happy. If you change your content style from week to week, your fans won’t know what to expect and will be far less likely to come back or look for you on other platforms.

I personally know that no matter what platform, be it Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, etc. that I look for Mashable.com, I will get the same style content regarding social media and tech.

Our client, Luke James Shaffer, keeps a GIF Instagram story highlight on his profile to vary his content and show a little bit of his personal life as well as his sense of humor.

7. Authenticity & Consistent Posting

Keeping with the idea of consistency, your brand should reflect yourself in the most honest and real way. If you stray too far from your authentic self, fans will quickly pick up on this fabrication and find you less relatable. You can easily create a strong and loyal fan base through presenting the real you. People want to feel like they know you personally. By creating a sense of familiarity through being real with your fans, you also maintain consistent branding.