133. [Member Q&A] Audience, accessibility, and all the must-have branding for a new business

In this week's episode of Brand Your Passion, I asked members of the Brand Your Passion collective what questions they have for me about branding your passion. So today I'm here to answer all those questions and give you the answers as well. So you can all hear them and we can all learn together. So let's go.

Before we get started, if you want to ask questions like this and get your questions answered on the podcast, then you want to become a member of the Brand Your Passion Collective. This is just one of so many amazing things that you get and have access to within the community. I regularly ask the community what questions they have so that I can answer those questions on the podcast.

I ask them questions about the podcast that I release regularly so they can ask me any follow ups and I can include those in the podcast. I also asked them if they have any questions for me about how I brand my passion and I answer those questions on Branding Holly's Passions, a private podcast that you get access to within the community and every episode of this podcast and every podcast I put out there gets posted in the community so that we can continue the conversation.

So if you're listening to an episode about. Pinpointing your people and you have follow up questions about that or thoughts, or you want to know how people are doing that or anything like that. You can jump into the community, join the conversation, and we can all help each other to brand your passion.

So if you want to join us, the link to join will be in the show notes, but you can just hit to brand your passion. co and join us there. Okay, let's dive in.

Question 1: Minimum Branding for New Businesses

So the first question that I have is from Sunberry, who asks me how much branding would you consider the minimum for starting a new business, say someone selling stickers, stationery, or pins on Etsy, for example.

I think that we can massively overcomplicate branding and yes, there are a lot of things and a lot of work that can go into building a brand and eventually it will be great if you can spend that time, do those things work on your brand and really be intentional about that. However, My point of view is it is so much better and more beneficial for you to just start your business and start making money, start selling your stuff, start building your audience, and then you can evolve and get further into your brand as you have time, as you have money, as you have resources, as you have More knowledge about your business and your audience and all of that sort of stuff.

So with that being said, I think there are just a few key things that you need to start a business. The first thing that you need is your name. So again, this is something that people really overcomplicate, but it doesn't have to be that difficult. And just like with anything in branding, your name can change and ideally it doesn't or it doesn't change all the time, but you can change it.

So don't feel locked in to this or anything else I'm about to talk to you about because it can change and evolve over time. The best thing to do. is to pick something and get started. So you want to pick a name. I'll leave some resources down below as well about naming that I have recorded or shared or created before.

So if you want to pick a name, you need help picking a name, you can go there and learn about that. But I would say picking a name can be as simple as your own name or a brand name if you want that. Then the second thing that you need is a clear bio, so whether that's one sentence or some bullet points or it's The paragraph, you just need something clear that says, this is who I am, this is what I do, and this is what you can get from me or how my work will change your life or whatever.

So basically you need the three things, who you are, what you do, and why people need your work, right? So for example, Mine is hi, I'm Holly. I'm a brand strategist and coach for creatives and artists. And I help people do this, and this, right? So for you, it could be, hi, my name is Sunberry. I sell stationery.

Or handmade, hand designed stationery that will bring joy to your life, or whatever. You need something that positions you and tells people clearly what you do, and why they need your stuff, and what makes you different. Number three is some colors. Color is the most impactful part of visual branding design.

It increases brand recognition by 80%. People recognize my brand so easily from the pink and orange. And even without the rest of my brand, without my name there, people probably will see that and think of me. You wanna do the same? Even more important than a logo or anything else is some colors that you can use throughout everything that you create.

It can just be a couple of colors, it can be up to five or seven colors, probably maximum. But choose some colors, stick with those colors and use those colors everywhere. And the last one that I would recommend is some fonts. So similar to your colors, it's a really great way of distinguishing your brand.

Setting the tone type really speaks through the actual fonts. It creates a really clear sense of brand personality and who you are trying to appeal to. Even without, like we've said, logos, other brand elements, pairing some strong colors and some strong fonts together will make for a really clear brand from the beginning.

And you can make some really effective, powerful, clean, professional looking stuff with just some strong colors and some strong fonts. To recap, the minimum things that I think you need to start a new business is your name, Bye bye. A clear bio, some colors, and some fonts. Everything else is a really nice to have, something you can do later on, something you can worry about later, but I think these are the four key things you need to get started.

Question 2: Tools for Judging Accessibility

Okay, the next question is from Rachel. What are your favorite tools for judging accessibility in a brand kit? So this is obviously so important when it comes to branding, when I'm working with my clients one on one, or when I am teaching people about branding visually. It's really important that we consider accessibility.

And this can be in so many ways in terms of the colors, the font sizes the alt descriptions for images, like all of that kind of stuff is really important. So there are a few tools that I use that I find really helpful to achieving those things and making sure that anybody who interacts with a brand can experience it, how it is meant to be experienced, and they can have.

They can still read things. They can still see what's going on. They can still understand what this brand is trying to communicate. So the first one that I use, and I'll leave links to all of these in the description and the show notes, so you can check them out. But the first one that I use is called Stark.

This is a plugin, an app, a website where you can check all kinds of accessibility. So I use it a lot for color combinations. But it will also tell you. Things about like the alt tags or things that are wrong on your website. I have the plugin for Figma. They also have plugins for a bunch of different apps.

You can also install it in Chrome. And you can have kind of a hub in your account where you can track all the things that you need to track. It also allows you to view any designs from the perspective of somebody with a visual impairment and stuff like that. So it's a really. In depth thorough tool that will allow you to check for all kinds of accessibility.

So I highly recommend Stark it's free but you can also create a paid account if you want to do that, but I just use the free one. I have a team account that's free so that I can have multiple projects. And yeah, I love the Stark plugins. The second one that I use is Adobe Color, and there are like, tons of options that you can use that are similar to this.

There's the Coolors app, there's, you can just Google Color Contrast Checker. But basically that's what I'm using Adobe Color for, or any other tool like that. Basically what this does is allows you to plug in your colors and your color palettes and check the contrast between those colors.

So I do this in Stark, but I also double check in another tool just to make sure I haven't missed anything. And if you don't want to use Stark or you want another alternative, this is a really easy option. So I recommend the Adobe one. There's also another one I can't remember the name of, but I will link it in where you can put your whole color palette in and it will tell you which color combinations are approved or not approved.

That's really great, really powerful, and really important. So make sure that whatever text you're putting on whatever backgrounds is going to be readable. That you know what colour combinations you can use for text, what colour combinations you can use only for like decorations, or things that don't need to be clearly read or understood.

And what colour combinations are just not allowed at all, because the contrast is just horrific. Highly recommend a tool like that. And lastly, if you are designing anything in Canva, they have their own inbuilt accessibility tools. I can't validate like the quality of that checking, but it seems to do a pretty good job.

So once you, when you're in a design, when you're making something, you can just hit the accessibility checker and it will tell you if there are any issues with your designs. So make sure you're doing that. With anything you're creating, it will tell you if the contrast is wrong or you need to fix anything.

So highly recommend canvas built in tools. So those are my three main ones the Stark plugin and the website and the app the Adobe color or kind of an equivalent color contrast checker, and then canvas built in tools. Hopefully that answers your questions. And if you're listening and you have any other recommendations, please come and hop into the community and let us know, I would love to chat more about that, or you can let me know on Instagram too, or thread.

Okay, next question.

Question 3: Maintaining Consistency in Marketing

How do you maintain consistency in posting for marketing without burning out? This is really important and something that I think a lot of creatives struggle with, myself included. It's definitely, can be something that can, the pressure can Be there and also the time and the effort that it takes to create some, creating on one single platform can be someone's full time job.

It can be a lot as creatives to try and do that and be on multiple platforms and even outside of social media, do all the marketing. It's definitely something that I really want to talk about and want to help people with because it doesn't have to be that way. I think we have just over complicated it in our minds.

There's all this pressure. There are people out there doing these incredible things and it makes us feel like we have to be doing that or we're not doing enough. Ah, so much. I will say I have a whole full episode on the podcast all about this. So if you want to go to episode 114, after you've listened to this, that episode is how to prioritize your mental health when marketing your creative business and has a lot of tips and advice and conversation about that.

And again. We can talk about it in the collective as well and talk about how we can all help each other and help ourselves to make sure that we're not burning out while marketing our creative businesses. But if I was to give you some tips or some advice, here's what I would say. I mentioned over complicating things and the pressure to do everything and be everywhere and do all these amazing things.

One tip that I would give you is to simplify everything. What that means is number one, choose one platform and commit to that. Rather than trying to be everywhere. All at once, that is where it gets complicated and overwhelming. And we struggle to keep up with being everywhere all at once. So choose a platform.

So say, okay, I'm going to commit to Instagram or I'm going to commit to blue sky or threads or tech talk, whatever one you want to choose and do that. Really and commit to that and commit to posting there and building a community there that's strong and connected and engaged rather than a thin surface level community or audience everywhere, right?

So that's number one. Pick up one platform and commit to that rather than trying to do all of them. Also simplify the cadence or like schedule of when you are going to post. So again, instead of trying to post five TikToks a day or ten threads every day or whatever, Pick a cadence that actually works for you that you can actually stick to and do that.

You can always add to it, you can always work up from there, but I think saying okay, I'm just going to start posting once a week on Instagram, or I'm going to start posting once a day on threads or something like that. That will help you so much to not burn out, not be overwhelmed. And to just start posting and getting in the habit and giving yourself a break from trying to be like, Oh my God, I have to post 10 times every day on all the platforms.

Okay. Let's keep it simple. And also try to keep it simple in terms of the actual content. So you don't have to be like changing outfits a million times in your videos, editing reels, like you're like a. Film director or like building sets behind you or like setting up shots and stuff like that. Use stuff you already have one, or just create something super simple.

There are tech talks right now or Instagram reels and posts and carousels that are literally just like photos from people's camera roll, or like a video of you pouring a glass of water, like making a cup of tea or seven second shot of the nature outside your window. It can be so simple, but we just overcomplicate it.

So I think try to keep it simple in terms of the actual content you are creating and focus more on. The content of that content, if so instead of worrying about all these perfect shots that are amazingly set up, or, writing a thousand word blog post or anything like that, just focus on what do I want to say?

What do I want to share? And how can I do that really simply? How can I just like. Talk share a photo and write a nice caption. Or how can I do a carousel of photos that shows my process? Or can I film a time lapse and put some text over that? It really doesn't have to be complicated. And the best thing you can do is to try and simplify as much as possible and release the pressure of having to over complicate it.

With that, I would also say play to your strengths and your passions. It is so much easier to stay consistent when you are doing something that you love, that you find fun, and that is easy for you. If you love making videos, do that. If you hate making videos, don't do that. It's going to be really hard and you're going to struggle and you're going to hate it, and then you're not going to be consistent with it.

That's not to say don't challenge yourself. Definitely do that. We all need to try stuff and challenge ourselves and grow and, try out the different features that these apps have, but play to your strengths. If you love to write. And you love to yap, and you love to waffle yap on threads a little, and have fun doing that.

If you love writing long form stuff, write a newsletter and do that, and stick to that, and commit to that, because you're gonna love it, you're gonna have fun, and then you're gonna want to make it and do it more. So play to those strengths and passions. Also say repurpose as much as you can, where you can, when you can, either using stuff on different platforms, if you're going to do multiple platforms.

Write an email, break that down into thread posts or blue sky posts or whatever. For example, if make a. Podcasts, like I do, break that down into clips for Instagram, right? So be smart about how you repurpose the stuff that you're already making, and also re share stuff that you've shared before.

So people are never gonna remember every single post that you've created, every single text post that you shared. So you can repost it as is, you can adjust it and re share it. Just be smart about how you can repurpose the stuff you're already putting all this effort into and make the most out of it.

That is a really helpful tool as well. I would also say to schedule schedule, when and where and however you can. I would not be able to post and create as much as I do. Without scheduling stuff. If I was trying to create everything like on the day, that would stress me out so much.

And it would give me so much work to do every day. Whereas what I tend to and try to do is to batch things. So I'll spend like an hour or a couple of hours working on my content, and then I'll schedule all of that in advance. Or I will, if I'm launching something, I'll write all the emails at one time, and then I'll schedule all of those emails.

Same with the podcast. I try to plan them all or plan a bunch of them, record a bunch of them. And then that all gets done rather than trying to record each time. So batching really helps. So that is a bunch of tips about maintaining consistency and posting for marketing your business without kind of burning out.

But I think the overall essence is. Simplify as much as you can repurpose as much as you can to give yourself. Time and a break and, make the most of the work that you do put in and try to release that pressure. I know it's easier said than done. But try and release that pressure of the amount, the quality, the quantity.

Of the work, the marketing that you are doing. So just focus on like, how can I create really simple, but impactful stuff in a way that works for me and that plays to my strengths and that is fun and it's actually manageable. So I'm not sitting. Expectations that are way too high and then being upset with myself when I don't hit that.

So those would be my tips for that. Okay, the next few questions are actually questions that we talked about on live calls in the collective but I thought that they would be really helpful for some of you and I wanted to give you a glimpse of the kind of stuff that we talk about in the collective.

Here are some questions that I have had or that we have talked about on the course around the lessons that we have been going through together in the collective.

Question 4: Appealing to Gift Buyers

So Eli asked me, how can I appeal to an audience of people who don't buy my products for them, but as gifts for others? I think this is a really great question because often we can not think about or not be as specific as we can be in terms of who our actual audience is.

So when your products are often purchased as gifts, your audience might not actually be the people who are receiving the gifts. While that, end person is really important, your primary audience is actually going to be the gift givers, because they are the ones who are making that purchase decision and looking at your stuff and thinking, my friend would love this, or this would be a perfect gift.

You can, what I would recommend doing is looking for the common threads between the gift givers and their recipients, like the people they're giving the gift to, because there are usually shared values or interests that draw them to your products and make them think this would be perfect as a gift.

So understanding this kind of stuff is going to help you create messaging that resonates with both of those people with The people who are buying and the people who are receiving. So what I would do is two things. Number one is talk to both of those groups. I would ask the gift givers why they choose your products as gifts.

Learn from them. What is it that makes you want to buy this as a gift? That makes it a great gift that makes you want to buy it for someone else rather than yourself. Like how and when are you giving it as a gift? All of these questions. And then ask the people who get them, who are the recipients, what do they love about receiving your Work.

What is it that they think makes this a great gift? What, were they happy? Were they stoked? How did it make them feel? What are they doing with it? Really understand why it makes a great gift for these recipients and look for patterns in both of those responses to inform how you can market your business.

So then, speaking of that, number two is that I would create content that speaks to the gift giving experience. You could like, share gift guides for different occasions. You could create content around key moments throughout the year that people might give gifts. So holidays Valentine's Day, birthdays, like all of those types of things.

You want to really focus on those times throughout the year and market around those. Highlight what makes your products perfect gifts, which you will know once you've talked to those people. And show the different gift recipient kinds of people, and what they do with your work, and why they love it, and the testimonials from them, and all that kind of stuff.

My top tip would be to like consider doing a survey or having those conversations with the buyers and the recipients to focus on and understand what makes them purchase your stuff as gifts and what makes your products really great gifts. So then you can talk about that more, you can encourage people to buy it as gifts, you can get people talking about why they did buy it as a gift and why it was amazing and why they loved it and why they keep buying their friends your stuff.

That would be my tips there.

Question 5: Managing Multiple Audiences

Okay, another follow up question from that, you can probably tell that we were talking about audience and, people at this time is what do you do if the products you're selling have different audiences? Here, I think there are a couple of things, a couple of options.

Number one is that you can try and find the through lines. Between your audiences. So chances are, and this is something that I learned from Mariah cause, so not my concept, but she has this idea that when you think you have multiple audiences, often they actually not the different people they are. The same people with similar values, interests, motivations, dreams, goals.

But at like different points along that journey. So say for example you are a creative. You will probably, you might have people in your audience who are all like value art and they want to have. And celebrate art and support artists and all that kind of stuff. But they might be like a home collector who collects like is starting their collection.

So they're buying like lower cost, easier things to purchase. Then you might have people who are further along and they, have a bigger collection. They are buying like, Less, but more high quality or high cost items. And then you might have people further along from that, who are like people who commission artwork, right?

They want a specific custom piece for them that you can charge a lot more money for. So that's one example. We actually, there are a lot of things that tie those people together and they have a lot of the same motivations and interests and passions and values and everything, but they're at different stages along the journey.

So what you might be able to do is find the through lines between your audiences and figure out, are they actually the same audience that have the same common values, interests, motivations, all of those things that you can. Use to speak to them all. And then within certain situations, you can speak to different.

Like they're different parts of the journey. But generally you can talk about the same values, interests, passions, all of that sort of stuff. And maybe that's how you can combine all of your audiences. However, you might have audiences that are really actually super different. So you might be, teaching, I don't know, like soccer over here on one side of things.

And then on the other side of things, you are selling artwork and that has nothing to do with football. It's something completely different. So if that is the case, then you might want to split them into completely separate brands or sub brands. So for example, for me, I have maker moxie, which is all of you where I'm teaching creatives who want to DIY their brands.

And then I also have by Holly on it, which is for online educators like myself who want done for you services. So those are like. They're related, and they're definitely connected, and I have ways of connecting them both, but they are sub brands because the people within them have very distinct, different goals.

Yes, it's all branding but it's very different in the way I want to talk to them and communicate, and the work I want to share is very different. Same for I have a Reading like a bookstagram, if you're into bookstagram, it's a bit dormant right now, but I have a bookstagram, which has literally nothing to do with branding, creativity, anything, it's all about fantasy books, so side note, if you ever want to talk to me about fantasy books please do, but the point of that is that is So different.

The audience is completely different. Yes, there might be a little bit of crossover because there are obviously creatives who are business owners who also love fantasy books. Myself as an example, but the purpose of those brands is very different. And I'm not trying to sell the same things to those people.

So those are your two options. You can firstly think about whether actually your audiences are the same. And they can be connected and you can talk about the things that kind of combine them together and that they are all passionate and interested in or if that doesn't work and they actually are really different, you can create.

Separate, like completely separate brands or sub brands for your business. And one top tip that I think is great for creatives is that you can also tie everything together with a personal brand or personal website that sort of acts as a hub that way you can direct different audiences to the right place while maintaining your overall presence.

So say for example, so for me, I am in the middle of creating a personal website, but I have like personal Instagrams and social media platforms, where if you go to my personal Instagram, it links out to all of the different places. So it says like building brands at maker and Moxie or something like that.

And then designing brand identities and by Holly on it, reading books at books of Holly. So there are. Ways that when someone lands on my page, or my soon to be personal website, whenever that appears and is finished that when they land there, they can go, Oh, these are all the things that Holly does.

I'm interested in this thing, and I am this type of person, so I'm gonna go and check out the books. Or I'm gonna go and check out the one on one work, because I actually need someone to design my brand. So this kind of thing can help keep things clear for your audience, while allowing you to manage your multiple offerings effectively, if you do have multiple brands or sub brands.

So that is something that you can do if you are trying to balance multiple things. So hopefully that's helpful in terms of, what do you do if the products you're selling have different audiences? A, check if they actually are different audiences. If they are, you can separate them into different brands or sub brands.

And you can also consider having kind of a hub that directs people to the multiple things that you do. Okay.

Question 6: Understanding Your Audience's Personality

And last question is another one from Eli, which is in summary, how does understanding my audience's personality help me as a creative? And this is a really great question because I think, a lot of marketing people, a lot of branding people, we talk and yap on about How you need to understand your audience and people will probably sit in there why, what difference is that going to make?

So great question. Basically knowing your audience's personality and the type of person they are, what kind of stuff they love, like what really appeals to them is going to help you to create work and content that genuinely clicks with them. So instead of making. Assumptions or thinking, Oh, they just like me, so I can just create stuff I love yes. chances are they might be very similar to you, but instead of making those assumptions, you can intentionally craft things that match their vibe. So whether they're like serious and goal oriented or really fun and spontaneous, your brand can appeal to those things and talk to their personality and attract people with that personality.

So that they know, I'm in the right place, this is the thing for me, this is why I want to buy this thing and this is What I want to connect with my identity. So I think that's something that is really important that anything that we buy becomes part of our identity and is something that we use to express our identity and who we are.

So you need to know, who are my audience? What is their identity? What are the kind of stuff they want to represent them? And how can I use that knowledge to either create products or content that's going to make them want to buy it or share it or talk about it because it represents them. So for example, I love buying prints.

I have a whole gallery wall in front of me right now. And the stuff that I buy is generally like really bright colored, really fun, often has like silly sayings or inspirational sayings. It's usually related to being a creative or being an artist. I buy from independent artists because I love that.

So these are all things that someone who wants to attract someone like me could learn about me. And go, okay I can create like creative inspired prints that are really bright colored and that's going to attract people like Holly and people like Holly are going to want to buy that or share that and they're going to put it on these stories like that.

Is what helps, your audience build a community of people who love your work and really connect deeply with those people, because you know what they want and you know how to create that kind of stuff. And it really just helps to snowball the rest of your brand and your business.

That's all the questions I have for today.

So thank you to everybody from the collective who asked me a question, whether in the call for questions or in our live sessions. As a reminder, if you either want to ask questions like this for the next episode that I do like this you want to ask questions about the every day. Regular episodes.

Or if you want to continue the conversation about any of these topics or any of the topics that we talk about at all on this podcast please come and join us in the collective. It is the place for artists, makers, creatives who want to build your brand, connect with your audience. Grow your business and really build the creative business of your dreams.

So come and join us. We're doing some amazing things and they're really supportive. There are so many cool creatives. When I tell you like the amazing. People that are in there, it's just unreal. Like you can come and hang out with taxidermists, jewelry makers, ceramicists photographers, who else do we have?

Motion graphics designers, like so many different, unique, amazing people. So come and hang out. I would love to have you, but otherwise I hope you have learned something from this episode about the minimum things you need for starting a brand or a business. Favorite tools for accessibility, how to be consistent marketing your business without burning out, appealing to your audience of gift buyers, managing multiple audiences and why it's important to understand your audience's personality.

So hope that's been helpful as always. I hope you have a great week and please keep creating and I will see you in the next one. Bye!