In today’s video, I’m going to give branding tips for content creators. I’ll be talking about lessons I learned from my 5 years of designing brands and websites. I’ll mostly be focused on the branding aspect. Being a content creator, who is also a business, has been an adventure. My content and business have evolved from 5 years ago. In this video, learn what I learned about branding and the hardships of being an entrepreneur.

When I work with clients, I don’t just gain monetary benefits. I also gain experience. With each client I’ve worked with, I’ve learned something new. Each client I served has helped me gain a new perspective on my work and how I’m running my business.

At the end of each project, I send out a survey to my clients. It helps me know what they liked and didn’t like about my service. With that survey, I’ve made little changes or validated the things I wasn’t sure were working or not.

I’m most thankful to my first client. She needed help with branding and web design. She was the biggest reason I focused on making everything simple and convenient. For example, a lot of people can’t code a website, so I can’t make it too difficult when I’m creating a website for a client. I started learning how to use builders and I focus on WordPress since it’s easy to create and design a website.

I also learned the importance of having a solid foundation. My first client had a rough idea of who her dream audience was, but having an outside perspective helped her narrow down her audience more. 

Surprisingly, she was not the other one who didn’t solidify their business foundation. I’ve had clients who didn’t think about their brand foundation until they worked with me. Luckily, I give out homework 2 weeks before the project starts, so they have time to create their brand foundation before the official project start date. 

Branding tips for content creators (Lessons from 5 years of designing brands and websites)

01. Why having a solid brand foundation makes everything easier

I know I keep talking about having a solid brand foundation every time I talk about branding, but this was one of the mistakes I made when I started my business. Your brand foundation IS your business foundation so it’s important to take the time to think about it.

When I first started my business, I was all gung ho about doing everything myself, working 24/7, and trying to get any client I can. I didn’t really think about niching down because I didn’t really know who I wanted to help.

I’m lazy, so I didn’t sit down and think about where I wanted to be in 10 years. I only thought I wanted to be successful. That’s it. And competitors, I didn’t even think about them because I felt like there were a lot of designers online. I thought all brand designers and web designers were the same.  

After 2 years of running my business, I was burnt out. 

Then I really started focusing on my business foundation. I found out I had different goals than other online businesses. A lot of businesses online focus on being free, traveling, and making 7 figures.

I don’t care about any of that. I like the idea of traveling but I get motion sickness and prefer to relax in my hotel room rather than go to a million different attractions in one day. Living a luxurious life is also something that I don’t care about. I just want to live taking care of my family and be able to afford to do what I want.

Honestly, I don’t run my business to be free. If I think about it, running my business is worse than working for someone else. I’m always working on different projects for my business and think about it 24/7. I even dream about my work sometimes.

I have never had that issue when working for someone else. Once I clock out, I’m gone and I never think about work. I had more freedom working for someone else than working for myself. It’s just that I think the work I do is very fulfilling. I’m passionate about the things I do.

Once I knew my goals, it helped me narrow down how many clients I want to work with, what projects I wanted to do, streamline my services, and know where I wanted to be in 5 to 10 years.

Knowing my dream audience

When I sat down and thought about it, I really love content creators. I love consuming YouTube videos, reading blog posts, and scrolling through Instagram. I knew those were my people. And after working with a few coaches who were also content creators, I felt like we worked well together, so they became a part of my dream audience too. 

Knowing who I wanted to help, helped me figure out the topics I wanted to talk about. Those topics came from what content creators and coaches were interested in. Just because I create content for creators and coaches, doesn’t mean I don’t attract other audiences. My content and services cater to different people, but it has helped me spend less time thinking about content ideas because I know what interests my audience. 

If you need help building your brand foundation, then sign up for The Ultimate Roadmap to Discover Your Brand Style. This email course will walk you through discovering your goals, audience, and competitors, and narrow down your brand style. 

02. How can having a brand make running my business easier?

As a designer, I struggle to find a balance between being creative and having things be convenient. At the beginning of my business journey, I wanted to do everything myself. I liked designing graphics, coding my website, writing blog posts, and so on. 

Eventually, I got really busy trying to do both my business stuff like creating content, posting to social media, updating web pages, and client work. I found that when I took on clients, I would stop doing my business work. I mean, making money is more important than doing things that won’t make money. But, I can’t just ignore stuff for my business because it’s helping me get visible. 

So, I had to ask myself, how can I be lazier in my business? The answer was simple: create templates. This is like a ‘duh’ moment. I already create templates for my clients, so I might as well do the same for my business. At that time, I only had blog post templates. I updated them to the standard Pinterest size since I only use those graphics for the featured image for my blog and Pinterest. Then I created templates for Instagram, social media covers, email covers, click-to-tweet images (which I don’t really use anymore), workbooks, thumbnails, scripts, and so on. 

Now, at this moment, I’m recreating all the templates I made (in Illustrator, InDesign. and Photoshop) to Canva. I used to think designers shouldn’t use Canva, but it’s really convenient. It’s online so I can use it from any computer or my phone. Plus, it saves me space on my computer. When you have a business and you’re juggling a lot of tasks, why would you make things harder on yourself? 

Having templates saves a lot of time. I just change the images, colors, and text and it’s done. It takes me 20 minutes to create 20 Pinterest graphics (That’s 5 graphics per blog, so 4 blogs). It takes me less than an hour to create a month of graphics for Instagram posts and reels. So, if you’re a content creator who gets overwhelmed and wants to save time creating graphics, then use templates. I cannot live without templates. 

You’re probably thinking, but Paigon, I’m a creative person who loves to try new things. Won’t having a brand keep me stuck being one thing? Haha, give me a hand emoji in the comments if you’re thinking the same thing.

03. I’m a creative person who loves to try new things. Won’t having a brand keep me stuck being one thing?

I know the thought of having a brand, using the same fonts and colors, and using templates can seem boring. I’m also a creative person who loves to try new things. But I have never felt stifled using the same colors and fonts over and over again. In fact, I would say it’s more creative to use what you have to create new things. 

Using your brand elements only creates consistency in your style. I create different images on Instagram all the time. Each image is different, but when you put the images all together, they look uniform because I consistently use my brand elements. 

A brand isn’t a static thing. It’s always evolving as you grow. My Instagram feed is the perfect example of how my brand has evolved. If you look at my feed from when I started until now, my style has changed a lot. But everything I created uses my brand elements. 

SUMMARY of Branding tips for content creators (Lessons from 5 years of designing brands and websites)

Basically, in these 5 years of designing, I learned how to be lazy. If I can find a shortcut for it, I will. In fact, I guess that’s my job. I help my clients become lazier by doing all the brand and web design work for them, creating templates so they won’t feel overwhelmed when creating content, and I give them advice on how to create videos in a lazy way. Haha.

You would think that as your business grows, work would get easier. Nope! As you grow, you’ll have more work and more responsibilities. It never ends. So, if you’re at the beginning of your journey, whether you’re a content creator, coach, influencer, entrepreneur, and so on, start thinking about how you do the things you’re doing in less time. What would a lazy person do? Write it all down so you don’t forget. This is the best time to simplify your tasks. You’re only going to create more work for yourself later.

And just so you know, having your brand foundation set makes web design easier. So, if you haven’t done that, sign up for The Ultimate Roadmap to Discover Your Brand Style.