2020 has required businesses to reposition or rebrand to move online. In what may seem like a big task for those who’ve not done it before, where do you start?
by Kathryn Reynolds, Head of Content at Shiba500
There are a number of reasons that companies need to rebrand, it could be new management in the building or a merger that changes the product offering. It might be a company that has been in business for twenty years and now finds itself needing to refresh its look to reflect the times. …
How businesses have been finding creative workarounds to build brand awareness in 2020 amidst COVID-19 lockdown restrictions and global economic uncertainties
by Kathryn Reynolds, Head of Content at Shiba500
IMAGE: The Bubble Collection Paris in 1963 — Harper’s Bazaar
2020 was dominated by a health crisis that put the world into a tailspin as everyone — doctors, politicians, and civilians alike — worked to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
The restrictions continue and we adhere to social distancing, but as with any crisis, the world keeps spinning, and people need to make a living.
How does one do this…
How to practically turn your style guide into an on-brand content strategy
by Anna Bogdanova, Co-Founder and CEO of Shiba500
IMAGE: All The President’s Men
Creating a content strategy sounds like a monolithic task on paper, but what is a content strategy, really?
Well, it’s all about your target audience, mainly. It’s about understanding what they like, what their interests are, their hopes, dreams, their aspirations. It’s about turning up and sharing the content you’ve worked on and… hoping they like it!
You have your target audience (TA) on one hand. You have their portrait/s created through research and workshopping…
Naming and brand taglines are the first steps in your external messaging process. How to get from A to Name when it comes to naming (or renaming) your brand.
by Anna Bogdanova and Kathryn Reynolds
Your positioning statement and brand’s unique value proposition (UVP), along with your voice, tone, and style guide, are all internal messaging tools or frameworks from which you create all your external messaging.
What do we mean by external messaging? We made a full list here in our first blog post! (Did we miss any? Comment below!)
External messaging includes everything from naming and taglines, to…
How to establish your company’s voice and tone to align with your core values, and how to put together your brand’s verbal identity style guide.
by Kathryn Reynolds & Anna Bogdanova
In last week’s blog post we examined the how-tos of creating your all-important brand value proposition and your positioning statement. With these two pillars in place, this week we look at how this all influences your external messaging plan.
Your external messaging is all the content that your company puts out into the world, and how to get your whole team to align on brand voice, tone, and style.
Why is it important to get these guides right? Because it’s not just about what you say, it’s about how you say it. It’s an…
by Kathryn Reynolds, Head of Content at Shiba500
You’ve done your research, you’ve established your initial competitive positioning. What’s next? Establishing your brand’s value proposition.
In our previous verbal branding series blog posts, we looked at establishing your brand values and how to dive into market research to create your brand positioning.
Once you’ve decided on your positioning, you don’t just go straight into planning out your content calendar and writing out your blog posts and social media content. If you do that you’ve missed some important steps. …
by Anna Bogdanova, Co-Founder and CEO of Shiba500
So far we’ve explained what verbal branding is, why brand discovery is so important, and how to look inward to find your brand values.
Now we look to our external resources.
Market research, secondary or external research, whatever you want to call it — the purpose of looking outward and analyzing the space in which your company plays, is to begin positioning your brand within its competitive marketplace.
This research allows your company to root itself firmly while growing its wings.
The task may seem daunting at first, with the sheer amount…
by Anna Bogdanova, Co-Founder and CEO of Shiba500
IMAGE: IBM
In the first post in our verbal branding series, we explained the concept of verbal identity, then in our second post, we told you why it’s so important to work on it.
In this third post, we’ve prepared a step-by-step guide on how to develop your brand identity, by first approaching it from an internal point of view.
When we think of market research we often think of external factors. What is the current landscape for this product looking like, what are our competitors doing, what do our customers want…
by Kathryn Reynolds, Head of Content at Shiba500
In the first post of this series, we talked about how verbal branding is an important step in your company branding and identity building process. But what is branding when it’s at home? And why does your startup need to spend time on that?
Are there not more important things to be doing to get your business up and running?
There are A LOT of important things to do to get your startup off the ground and make it a success, between your business plan, your potential revenue streams, and all that…
by Kathryn Reynolds, Head of Content at Shiba500
“Words are the model, words are the tools, words are the boards, words are the nails.” — Richard Rhodes
Verbal branding is how you tell your story through the words you use based on your brand values. This may be your personal brand or your company’s brand, but when we talk about business branding, it refers to your company’s style and grammar guide, your voice and tone guide, and also to the words and phrases you choose to use to emphasize your brand values.
According to Crowdspring, “78% of consumers trust brands…
Shiba500
Shiba500 is a boutique branding and strategy agency that acts as a bridge between growth-oriented companies and business opportunities
