🎨 Visual Social Media Brand Impact Strategy💥
When you scroll through any platform, the first thing you absorb visually is the colors. The visual is what makes you stop scrolling and pay attention. That’s why it’s important to emphasize visuals when coming up with a social media brand impact strategy. Joining Adrienne Hill today is Jenny Taylor, an expert in all things branding, graphics and colors. Jenny helps clients create a cohesive look and feel on social media that not only attracts customers but also makes your brand recognizable at first look. Visual is the entry point to creating relationships. Stay tuned as Jenny gives helpful design tips you can start using today and a freebie to help you create your aesthetic!
#impactfulentrepreneurshow #guestinterview #socialmediabrand
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🎨 Visual Social Media Brand Impact Strategy With Jenny Taylor💥
If you’ve been building a business using social media and you’re struggling to get people to check out your offers and content because you can’t even get them to stop to scroll long enough to look at what you have, then you’re in the perfect place. In this episode, we’re going to talk about the strategy that you need to implement into your business to stop the scroll, grab people’s attention, and get them recognizing you and your brand before they even read a word of your content or even watch a second of your video. I help entrepreneurs build these skills, the structure, and the systems that you need to scale up to six figures in business. We’re talking all things visual aesthetics and branding. Let’s do this.
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I'm here with Jenny Taylor. I'm excited to have her as a guest. She is an expert in all things branding, graphics, colors, and having a cohesive look and feel on social media. Welcome, Jenny.
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Obviously, for anyone who's trying to get leads and sales from social, that involves all kinds of things, from images, pictures, videos and content. Given your expertise area, some people may not have met you yet. Do you want to tell us a little bit about you and your background and what brought you here?
I come out of the corporate world before I jumped into the entrepreneurial space. It’s scary because that's going to give my age away, but I spent about twenty years in the space doing marketing and PR, and anything related to communication where we were out representing the company.
While that experience was incredible, I sat on big fat budgets. I had these incredible resources, assets, teams and agencies that supported any project that we did from a corporate standpoint. When I came into the entrepreneurial space, my expectations were incredibly high, but my ability to pull in some of those big agencies and experts, I didn't have the budget for it. I didn't necessarily want to spend that money.
Even as I started to find success in the space, when you're a one-man, two-man, three-man, even a smaller shop, you look at budgets very differently than what I looked at budgets from the corporate space. I had to get scrappy with how to tackle everything related to my personal brand, which includes not only my content and all of the value, but also the look and feel of it.
Visual Social Media: The visual is the entry point. It’s the start of the relationship. If it doesn’t represent you, you could either confuse people or they may keep scrolling or they could stop and go “Yuck!”
What I realized was with my experience, and I had that high expectation, I struggled to figure it out because I knew the importance of getting content out there. I knew the importance of obviously providing value, but I also didn't want my content to look cheap, wonky or unprofessional and not cohesive. That was an area that I struggled with. I'm excited to be here to chat with people about it, to help them because it's important. We want to put our best foot forward for sure.
I know there are a lot of branding experts at the table here, and they all talk about how branding is more than colors, graphics and aesthetics, but colors and graphics and aesthetics matter too. They're huge. Can you talk to us a little bit about how important that visual aesthetic is, especially if you're trying to use social media as your means of attracting clients?
I agree wholeheartedly with the other experts here that branding is way more than the colors and the visual piece of a brand, but if your visual pieces are off, you are confusing the people coming to your content, whatever it is. I think about it this way, in the social media space, there is so much noise and people are fighting for our attention left and right.
Typically, we're very visual people. We have about five seconds to grab someone's attention and pull them in. In those five seconds, we're not reading deep content. We're looking at the visual piece of whatever the person is trying to communicate, and is it appealing to me? Do I find it interesting? Do I want to stay here and dig in more? If your visuals are off, you're pushing people away, or they're continuing to scroll right on by.
I feel like there needs to be a balance between the two. You can't have crappy content and great visuals and expect results. They go hand-in-hand but if you have this incredible content and the visual is off, people aren't even staying long enough to figure out who you're about or what you offer. You don't want that either as a business owner. We want as many eyeballs as possible on our content, but we also want them to stay and dig in to figure out, “Can this person serve me and what I need well? Do they solve a problem for me?” It starts with the visual.
The visual is what stops the scroll?
I can't tell you how many things I scroll by or if the visual is off. This is where I struggled in the beginning when I came into this space because I didn't feel like my visuals represented what I brought to the table. I can't tell you how many times I'll be scrolling through the social space. Sometimes, I will stop on a visual that is horrible. Not because I'm going to buy or I'm going to like and follow these individuals but because I'm like, “This person is so blowing it,” and you don't want that as a business owner.
If you're taking all the time to put together awesome content, great freebies, and you have this great value that you're providing people, you want every element you put out there to be working for you, as opposed to against you. The visual is the entry point. It's the start of that relationship. If it doesn't represent you well, you could either confuse people. They start to dig in content and go, “This isn't what I thought it was going to be.” They may keep scrolling or they could stop and go, “Yeah.” That's not the right one we want either. It's important.
You've talked a lot about creating content, assets, freebies and workbooks. What role does color and the idea of a color palette play in building those business assets?
Color is important. Color is going to enhance what you're doing. It also communicates. Colors evoke something in us. Color is important that you want the colors you choose to represent your brand to be intentional and on purpose because of who you are and what you're bringing to the table. You don't want people to be confused that they see all of these red, bold and aggressive coloring. They form a relationship with you, and you're soft, sweet and kind, it's confusing to people. You want that color to enhance what your content is. You want it to marry and be consistent. That's one thing because color communicates. Everything visual is communicating something in one way, shape or form.
The other piece of it is when you are able to dial in your style, which includes your colors and your fonts, and all of the things that would be the visual piece of a brand, people will start to recognize your content before they even know it's you. That's the ideal. You want people to go, “I knew that was you because the minute I saw that visual, it fits with how you show up in the social space. It fits with how your website came to life. It fits with the freebies that you give. Everything was consistent.” It matters.
It tells people that they can trust you because you're showing up in a way that you care enough about your brand to be consistent about it. It goes into that whole relationship where we have to build the relationship with people typically before they're going to buy something from us, but the visuals, I feel they opened the door and they help the relationship go along. If you're good at it, pretty soon people are going to start recognizing that stuff and going, “I knew that was hers or his,” because it looks and feels like who you are.
There are a lot of times I'm on social media and I'm scrolling, and I stop at something like, “That is so Jenny, that's beautiful.” I'm like, “She posted it. It’s Jenny.”
That’s ultimately what we want as entrepreneurs. We want our stuff recognizable before people even dive into it because they already know based on what we're presenting, but it's ours. That's a huge win in my mind.
For the readers who are recognizing how important the visual piece is but they have zero design, zero graphic, what advice would you give to them about how to start making progress in this area?
First, it's totally doable. I did it, I had zero. I've worked with agencies that did all of that stuff. I didn't have a design background. I didn't even know where to start. The cool part about the space now is that there's a ton of tools that are available for us. Obviously, you can always hire this stuff out, but I found that you can do it on your own.
If you enjoy this space and that side of things, I found it to be fun but you don't have to start huge. You have to start being intentional. I have some freebies, some tools for people that will help them even start to identify what colors would make sense for them based on who they are, what their values are, what they're even putting out there. Starting there is important.
The other piece of this too where I struggled, especially coming from the marketing space in the background, was it's okay to start and understand that your brand, colors and all of the visuals. All of it is going to grow with you as you grow as an entrepreneur. That gave me permission to start making some decisions because when I first started looking, I felt like, “I don't know, this is a big decision. What if I pick the wrong color? What if I pick the wrong ball?” It’s okay because as you grow, your look and feel will grow too. Even though my look and feel has grown, it's still consistent because you are who you are, and your business is what it is.
Visual Social Media: Color does matter. There’s an emotion behind and there is a feeling behind every color that we come in contact with.
Even as you grow, it’s going to grow with you. The biggest thing is to figure it out, start making some decisions, and start playing around. In the beginning, when I started, I had a lot of gold, and I don't do gold anymore, and that’s okay. In the beginning, that felt right for me. It's not part of who I am anymore. Start, but put some thought behind it because the color does matter. There is an emotion behind it. There is a feeling behind every color that we come in contact with. You want it to represent who you are and what you're putting out there instead of being completely opposite of what you're doing.
That's great advice. I know you mentioned there's a number of tools that can help. Do you have a favorite tool?
I use Canva several times a day. I didn't start with Canva. I started with PicMonkey. Both are good. I have found that Canva is user-friendly. Once you get over the hurdle of learning the basics of it, it is user-friendly, tons of templates, tons of assets that you can keep in there to make things time efficient for you as you're building. I felt that it was way user-friendly, way more so than PicMonkey. It is my design of choice. I love that there's a free option, so you don't have to pay if you don't want to. Also, as your visual branding evolves, you can pay for pro, and it's not outrageous. They have a lot more features. I feel the content that I'm able to create with Canva looks amazing.
It looks professional. I had this super high standard of things. I feel like Canva hits all of the things, affordable, user-friendly, the content is great, and they're constantly providing templates and tools that are important for us as entrepreneurs. When stories became a big deal in Instagram and now even Facebook, they were quick on the trigger to include templates to help us figure all these new things out. I feel like they're on top of it.
I use Canva too. Everything, you don't have to start from a blank canvas, a white sheet. They have tons of templates that you can throw the template in, switch all the colors to be your colors, and done. They make it easy.
When you're trying to figure out your colors and your look and feel, they also will tell you what colors are part of something. There are pallets in there. There are all kinds of stuff that make it fresh and easy.
Even if you have no design sense, they will help you.
I will say this to you. For all of you guys that are non-designers, probably one of the number one mistakes that I see people make is that they'll go, “Why love 5 or 10 colors? I want all these colors.” You want a 2nd and 3rd that is more of what I would call a neutral or accent color as opposed to 5 to 10 because even though you may like those colors and they may all go well together, it starts to get clunky and confusing. In design, especially when you're starting out, simple is much better. It's going to look more professional, crisp and clean. That's probably the number one thing that I see is it's like, “They probably should have pared back.” Trying to throw so much on there.
2 or 3, 4 tops, not 10.
Resist the urge for a million colors, even though you'd like them, and they're awesome together.
Simplicity is your friend. For the readers that are feeling inspired and they're realizing that they're either ready to build out their aesthetic or maybe upgrade their aesthetic but they're not ready to hire some expensive brand builder or graphic designer or something, where should they start?
I have an awesome pop-up challenge. If they want to opt into that, it will be delivered right to their inbox where it's day by day. It will give them a quick little assignment. It's not overwhelming, and by the time you're done with it, you will have the colors that make the most sense for you, or maybe a couple of different palettes that you can play around with and then make a decision on where you want to go with it. That's what I would recommend for your people.
It’s totally free. This is your gift to our readers that they can come out the other side, at least at a minimum knowing their colors and maybe they can start playing in Canva. Visuals and aesthetics matter, and a big part of that is picking colors and fonts, and creating so that everything people see from you, whether it's an image, a PDF guide or a story, they know it's you like, “Every time I see Jenny, I know it's Jenny.”
That's the goal. We want them to be able to pick and choose.
Be sure to grab Jenny's free gift. Your color palette will be ready and waiting for you by the time you get through the end of her content. Be sure to join us in the Facebook group. We can debrief on everything we've learned from Jenny. We can talk about all of the favorite tips that she gave us, how we're going to take action. Who knows? You might make your next new best friend in business somewhere in our Facebook group. Thank you, Jenny, so much for joining us.
You are welcome. It’s a total honor to be here. I'm so glad to be a part of it.
Helpful Links:
✅ The Pop Up Color Challenge - Jenny’s free gift
✅ Book a 6-Figure Strategy Call with Adrienne - Adrienne’s free gift
✅ Adrienne’s entrepreneur community on Facebook
Important Links
Facebook Group – Entrepreneurs Strategies to Scale
About Jenny Taylor
Jenny Taylor is a former corporate executive, talented artist, and entrepreneur. Her core values are collaboration, integrity, and freedom. Having successfully built a multi-million dollar organization, she has a unique perspective and insight on building team culture, servant leadership, balancing motherhood and career, and designing a life you love with the people you love.
She lives by the idea that women are better together, and believes that collaboration and linking arms are the keys to business and life success. Jenny loves to share her experiences in coaching people through fear and doubt, to build a successful business on their terms...with no alarm clocks!