Cowork Crew Replays

Showing up and looking good: creating a consistent brand

Speaker: Angela Lyons, branding and marketing Graphic Designer at Lyons Creative

Whether you have an established brand already, or are just starting out, Angela Lyons, branding and marketing Graphic Designer at Lyons Creative will help you be consistent with your branding.

Find out how to make sure potential clients recognise you – even in the places you might have forgotten about.  

Angela covers creating your own brand guide, and tips for keeping everything to hand and having a process whether you’re working with clients, posting on social media, or editing your website. Perfect for freelancers and small businesses who want their brand to look on point!

I think most of you know me, I’ve said hello. I’m Ange, I’m a Brand and Marketing Graphic Designer. I’ve been designing for over 30 years, and I’ve had my business Lyon’s Creative for 12 years. Thank you for having me here today.

Since I was six, yeah. Can you tell? And I’ve won an award for my graphic design skills, and you can look me up online if you want to find out anything more about me, and one of my values is be kind. So, thank you, Molly, for having me here today, and Penni and Jo, thank you so much.

So, what we’ll talk about today is what makes a brand. Examples of a business brand out there, so, you can see how they’re being consistent online. And, creating a brand pack for your business. And how to show up with your brand. And I think all of these things, tied together, when Molly actually said to me, what can we talk about today? And I thought, what about creating a brand? And I thought we haven’t got time for that, because that’s just going to be like, I’m sure you might know already that might be, a few weeks of talking about that.

But we thought about, what about talking about being consistent online and how you show up online in your business. And I thought, I’ll have a look at what I’ve got. And my mum always says to me, a Shoemaker never has his own pair of shoes. And I thought, this picture, is 15 years old and I think that I need to change it.

And I was looking around online, so on my social media profiles, like LinkedIn and Instagram, I’ve got this picture, it’s not even on my website. So that just shows that I’m not even being consistent. So then I even looked at my Spotify account and I’ve got this, and I have people coming to me, to collaborate me for podcasts, interviews or potential clients,

and I thought, this does not look professional. So it’s all changed, and I’ve gone for this. So this is actually a professional photographer and I’ve included my brand colours in here. And I like colour, as you can see. And I thought I’d include that within my profile picture. So what I’m trying to say is, even though I’ve been doing it for my clients for years, you don’t always have it on point and just, you know, take time, have a look at what you’ve got out there and see what your brand is saying about you.

But I don’t know if you’ve heard of this saying before that your brand is not your, just your logo. It all encompasses around the brand, encompasses your company values, your beliefs, your tone of voice. The tone of voice is how you speak to your potential clients and how you want to come across them. And of course, design,

and that’s what we’re going to touch on today. So one of the places that you can show up online, or a few places that you shop online with your brand and being consistent, I would say are your website and your lead magnets, brochures and reports and proposals. And you might be thinking, what’s the point of being consistent online or showing up and having a brand in place?

And I think that it looks professional to clients, if they want to work with you, if they want to be, they want to collaborate with you on certain projects and you could have, obviously show up online with your social media graphics. So LinkedIn and Instagram and I’ll touch on those in a minute and of course media packs.

So if you’ve got a media pack that you’ve got to hand that a client wants to work with you, I don’t know if you’ve, you guys heard of media packs before where, have you heard of it before? So a media pack is when you would put, say, for example, a radio station came to you and said, I want to work with you, but I don’t know anything about you, not online or anything.

So you could put all your images in there, you can put your social media handles in there and you can put a bit of wording about you. And they can also link out to a place where they can download images of you. For example, if they needed something of your, your logo, in place. So a media pack is something that you create and you can brand yourself around your business. And of course, business cards,

I don’t know if we’re going to hand any out today. But you could also have, digital business cards and put your QR codes on them, have you heard of digital business cards? So you can create QR codes yourself and, you can do that, I can’t show you, but later on I can show you where they are in a software called Canva, and you actually create the actual, image in Canva and put the QR code on top, I’ll show you later and then that will give you an idea of what to do, cause when you meet people,

instead of having the paper business cards, you can actually have, a digital one. And of course, your website, that’s another touch point where people will come across you. And, it’s good to have all these things in place, you have your profile picture there, images around you that are professional, your tone of voice and, obviously your logo. But again, before coming here today, I thought, let me have a look what’s out there and how I can help you and show you how people are doing it well.

And I think if you’ve got time, just have a look how people are showing up online and just be nosy, see what they’re doing. Look at freelancers or small businesses out there and don’t copy them, but see what they’re doing. So one of the people that I did have a look at was Charelle, she’s a marketer, and she’s on, this is her profile on LinkedIn.

And Charelle always shows up, and one of her brands, her brand colors, as you can see, is yellow. She just shows up all the time. I know Charelle, and I’ve met her in person, and she wears yellow. But one of the things with her, and this profile, I think is great, is that she’s got her profile picture there, she’s facing the camera, and then she’s also taken out the background,

she might have had, I don’t know, a plant in the background or whatever, but she’s put her brand new colours there. And then this bit on LinkedIn, the banner at the top, across there, that is a bit of real estate that a lot of people don’t use. And if you don’t fill that, it’s just a gray box.

And if someone comes to your profile, they can see, who you are, what you do and how clients can actually work with you. And also what Charelle’s done here is that she’s added places where she’s actually worked with people or she’s been featured. And I know that Charelle’s been on the news, so obviously she’s going to put the BBC News there, I mean, it was this like, I think it was a small bit on the news, but still she was on the BBC,

she put it in her profile, there’s no harm in that. So yeah, don’t not use this space because this is a bit of, area real estate that you can really be consistent in your branding and also tell people how, more importantly, how they can work with you and what you do. I clicked out into Charelle’s profile and, down below, and she’s got a feature section and in the feature section of LinkedIn, this is not even, she’s got one post there, but here and here, she’s actually branded this around her business and told people how she works with her.

And it looks like she’s obviously set them up in Canva or Adobe Express, and they’re design software, that you can set these graphics up in. So she set those up as graphics and they actually link out to her website. So there’s more information there. So that area is also a great bit of, real estate to show people about you and what you do and how you can help them.

I think is it LinkedIn, there’s a recent report on LinkedIn, and it said there are 1 billion users that are on LinkedIn, but only 5% post. So if you want to post, you’ll get you know, that’s a great bit of marketing there for you to actually sell your services. But why I’m saying this, is that there are also are people that just look around LinkedIn,

again, as I said, be nosy. But if you’ve got your LinkedIn profile in place, get your profile image and your banner, and also the featured sections, and also your service sections, that is, if someone comes on your page, even if you don’t post or you don’t comment, or your one of the lurkers, have this in place and have your brand in there

so you look like you’re a professional business and you’re, ready to work with your next client or collaborator. I clicked out into, oh, I’ve got too clicky. Again, quickly in to her website Charelle is still, so all of these places, can you see that she’s just like from one place, from her LinkedIn to her feature section to her website

she’s just being consistent. And with Charelle, the funny thing I noticed, I was working my way through her branding and I was like, she’s not got a logo, she’s not even got a logo. I think Charelle is her own personal logo. She doesn’t need one. But as you can see, she’s got loads of information. She’s actually a really good marketer.

So if you’re into marketing, have a look at her website. She’s got great blogs there. And I know some of her blogs are award winning, so have a look there. But she’s again, being consistent and we know it’s Charelle and she’s just, you know, showing up in her yellow dress again and her blue, and she’s obviously got a bit of the orange in branding there.

And then I clicked out into her Instagram page, It’s Charelle again! She’s got a sea of yellow all around her. And I think another thing with Instagram is the actual grid in Instagram, people say that it’s like your own magazine front page, so when people click onto your profile, they’ll see everything about you and what you do.

Don’t look at my Instagram, okay, because I’m not like this, but I started being off like this. But then recently, I suppose because I’ve been doing a lot of networking events, there’s a lot of pictures of me networking. But Charelle, when she’s like telling people how they can work with her, she does these reels and you can see she’s like continued with her branding throughout, everywhere

On her text backgrounds. So yeah, Charelle is, a sea of yellow, as you can see. But she’s, you can see that she’s being consistent with her branding. And again, another place in Instagram, more yellow! I think people don’t use these as well to sell their businesses. I mean, it’s nice on stories in Instagram. I don’t know if you know, stories?

They last about 24 hours on Instagram. But what she’s done, obviously she set up her stories page and then she’s clicked it into her highlights and highlights last for as long as you delete them. So that’s a place where you can actually store, it’s like a mini portfolio of how you work with, how people can work with you.

So what Charelle’s done is she’s got clients, about me, work with me, 1 to 1 strategy and mentoring. So she’s got these, all branded again and all these different touch points of where people can work with her. What else can I say about Charelle? Shall we move on from Charelle? She’s had enough. We’ve had enough of Charelle. But as you can see, the point I’m trying to make is that she’s just being consistent throughout her brand, at each touch point

you can tell that that’s her, and that’s how, she’s always telling people how they can work with her.

So other places where you can be consistent with your marketing, hi Penni and Jo, is in your merch. Your’e not wearing it today. Drat! But yeah, if you’re out at events and as I said with Charelle, she wears her yellow dress. One of my brand colors is yellow. I like wearing yellow. But put your logo on your merch.

Or if you’ve got mugs or you’ve got t shirts or whatever around, notebooks, whatever you’ve got, put your brand on there, being consistent with it, I don’t know if you know, WeTransfer pages, when you have downloads, if you buy the, if you’ve got the pro version, you can have that branded in your background, but that’s in the pro version.

You have to pay for that. So when people do a download, they literally see your, your branding there. Business cards mentioned. Email banners, I get loads of newsletters, sometimes I have no clue of where they’re from, so I might just delete, unsubscribe. Sorry, but unless you’ve got your name there or, you know, a bit of branding that really is instantly recognisable, people might just click off of that.

So just, you know, think about that. WhatsApp business profile. I don’t know if you’ve got, business WhatsApp profiles at all. It’s like a separate number from my, I’ve got one because I don’t want clients, see my personal WhatsApp stories or anything like that. There’s space there for a banner and there’s also space there to put your profile picture and also your services.

So that’s another area where you can be consistent with your branding and tell people what you do. Linktree pages, you can set those up for free and they click out, don’t know if you know Linktree, if you’ve used them before. So Linktree is like, like a mini website, but it’s got links that link out, but you set up and can link out into other pages, but it’s only one link.

But in that one page you’ve got other links. Does that make sense? Yeah. And you can actually brand that that page around your business. Zoom calls, I think some people, I’ve seen it, in the background, they put their branding and they might put a QR code there and that links out to them. Invoices, obviously when your’e sending it to your clients. I know that again, nothing’s done in one day.

I had, just black plain old text on my invoices, really boring, but I still got paid. But yeah, put your logo on there, put your branding on there. And Business Google Profile. That’s a brilliant place again, because that’s obviously worldwide on people finding you, and anything around your biz. Just anything that’s got a touch point where somebody can come in contact with you, put your branding on there and just keep being consistent with it.

I know this afternoon I’m going to do some of my branding, because that picture is not good. It’s 15 years old. I have changed my Spotify pick, though. And what you can do is put them, when you’ve got all these things together, is put them in a brand pack. So these are for, more so, for you as a personal reference.

I know some brand packs are about, some companies like Coca-Cola, for example, theirs is 100 pages long. You don’t even need 100 pages. For my business, I’ve got about eight pages and in there I include my company logo, colours and fonts and images, and my values and mission statement. So if I wanted to pass that on to somebody that was doing some work for me, I know they know that what my colours are, what my fonts are and, what images I would use.

And those images, again, can be linked out to a Dropbox somewhere or, a Google Drive. But yeah, brand packs are great if you want to, get all your information together. And also, again, being consistent, if you’ve got all these things in place, there should be no chances of going wrong. Should be! And creating your brand pack, you can create them either in Canva or Adobe Express.

I was going to do, part of this talk was going to go into it a bit longer, but I cut all that talk down. So, we can talk about that another time if you want to come and ask me some questions about Canva there and Adobe Express, they have their pro version, you can actually create your brand packs with a click of a button, but you have to obviously pay for that as a pro version.

But if not, you can set it up yourself. So once you’ve got all your branding in place, you can put that within your documents. Or you can. moving on. I say once you’ve, if you haven’t got a brand in place or you’re thinking about starting a brand, looking at you. This book, Brand Yourself, is a really good book

to get your brand and get going with it. And don’t just start drawing. Because I think that’s what a lot of people do. They think that they can just, like, create a brand and start drawing a logo. But there’s so much, as I said, it’s not just a logo, it’s about you and your values

and your company beliefs. This book is brilliant for that. Pinterest is a really good place. Pinterest is an online, I suppose, what would you call it? Moodboard, photo library of ideas, adverts. (People use it as a search engine as well). Yeah, and I think a lot of people don’t use Pinterest as a search engine.

I used to post quite a lot on there, and the monthly views, just like, were going like 3000, I haven’t post for a while, so it’s literally dropped down to about 200 a month, but it’s really great for SEO and people, if you put certain words in there. Do you use it a lot?

Yeah. I think it’s, a lot of people forget about it and just think, oh, it’s just going to have Christmas trends on there or summer trends, but it’s not about that. There are a lot of ads on there now. There are. Yeah. Home and fashion I reckon.

Yeah. And beauty. Yeah around those kind of. But it’s really good for branding if you type in branding and ideas around branding. Again, don’t copy. Just, have a look what people have got out there. It’s such a good platform. And I love fonts. So have a look at this book if you can.

It goes over the why fonts matter and how they, are suited in your business and why you should have certain fonts and what people’s, how people see certain fonts. So that’s a really good book to have a look at. And I should put this the other way round. But I was going to say, once you’ve got all these things together, ask your family and friends their opinion because I think sometimes we’re stuck in our own little world thinking, oh, this looks great, and then put it out

there and it’s not really representing your business. I’ve recently done, some branding for a scientist, and she loves Scandi colours. And I was like, that’s not your business kind of thing. And I can’t really design you a logo around, I did, but when she actually saw it, she thought, oh no. And then we worked it out and I said, I think you’re more vibrant.

You’re telling stories. So we switched it up again, and I actually asked her to show it to her friends and her family, and they actually said the same thing that I said. She should’ve listened to me in the first place. But anyway. But, so yeah, just talk to your friends or your family around what you create and around your brands.

And again, once you’ve got all these things in place, ask them maybe to actually go through your Instagram profile. You know, what other social media platforms you might have. You might have TikTok or whatever, and see how you’re being represented out there and see how they, how you come across to them. And then that is, I think that’s,

oh no, one more. So that’s the profile image, that if you’ve got nothing up there, we don’t want to be gray. You want to show up and show off about what you do. And then also what I wanted to say here was that these banners, what you have in place, you can change them. You don’t need to keep them the same all the time.

I know Ayo switches hers up, all the time. And it’s just telling people how, when they land on her LinkedIn profile, how they can work with her for next year. So don’t be gray. Be more Ayo and Cherelle. Think of Cherelle in your branding. That’s me. So you can say hello there. If you want to connect with me, follow me on LinkedIn.

So that is my talk. I hope that’s helped.

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