Do you have a logo for your business? Most people do, and that’s great. A logo is a really useful tool to communicate really quickly who you are and what you do.
Once your designer sends it over and it’s sitting there all shiny and new in your inbox, what do you need to do next?
Here’s some places you should make sure you put it:
- on your website, usually at the top of the page because people often click on a logo to return to your homepage, and it helps people to know they’ve reached the right place if your business name is sitting there letting them know.
- on your email signature. Don’t forget to include other information on there too – other ways you can be contacted, links to your social media profiles and you can include other things like an invitation to join your list or your Facebook group or to join your programme. Make the most of those opportunities where you email people who are communicating with you anyway!
- on your social media profiles. You’ll definitely need it for LinkedIn – for your company page too, and you might want to add it as your profile image on your Facebook business page or Twitter (although on Twitter, my opinion is that a photo of you is better, so maybe include it in the cover image) you might want to add it to your Pinterest account or Instagram and of course what you WILL need to do is to add it to all of these things as a post and shout about it! “Look what I’ve got!” – you could even link in your designer and tell everyone what a great job they did, I bet they’d appreciate that. Don’t forget to add your logo to your social media posts too! You can do this in Canva, or if you’re on an iPhone you could try the Watermark P app.
- this is where it gets more costly, you don’t want to be handing out your printed items to clients with your old logo on them! So you need to update (or if this is all new to you, make…)
- business cards
- letterhead
- compliment slips
- invoices
- quote sheets
- brochures
- banners
- leaflets
- anything else you have that you hand out to clients…
Aside from including your logo on all of the above, having a logo isn’t everything. If you’re really serious about your business then you need to focus on your brand – which includes your logo so well done on a great start! If you think about how everything else will look around your logo then that’s you considering how your business image will look and will be time well spent to make sure that your business stands out and communicates effectively at every touchpoint. So what do you need to think about? Here are some of the areas you should consider…
- What colours are you going to use? These may well be in your logo, so that’s a good place to look. You might need a few more. You’ll need to think about the different uses for the colours and how well they sit together, as well as what they mean.
- The fonts you’re going to use. Keep to a maximum of three. Make sure they’re legible and if you have one that you know gives off the right feel for your business but isn’t good for chunks of text then use that one sparingly – for headings, or to emphasise certain words. You might need to pick one generic font that works great with your brand on your website too. Try to make the other fonts a bit more unique.
- The imagery you’re going to use. What style is it going to be? Are you going to stick with black and white? Always use one of your brand colours as an overlay? Are the photographs going to be always on a white background or are you going to use a specific illustration style instead?
- Other elements. Maybe you’re going to have a sweep of colour that runs from one side to the other at aparticular angle, or you have a motif you want to use, or a border style or a character or some symbols. Hone them so they’re perfect and give yourself some guidelines (i.e. only use in the bottom right hand corner).
Using these in conjunction with your logo will give your business a much stronger image. Using them consistently will help you to show how reliable, trustworthy and memorable you are. That’s why consistency in branding is important – because it helps you to be memorable and to show people what you stand for over and over and over again so that it sinks in. You need more than simply a logo to achieve that.