If you want to be heard online then you also need to be trusted and you need to look professional.
Reaching people is only half of the battle. The problem is that a lot of the time, we see the things that businesses and bloggers post and then just ignore them. After all, we’re bombarded with messages all the time and a lot of them are low quality from dodgy sources. Why would we wake up and pay attention to one over another?
In order to ensure this isn’t what’s holding you back, you need to make your brand look as professional as possible. You may be just a blogger writing from your front room, but you need to make people believe that you’re a serious company that they can trust and that they should invest time and money in! So how do you do that?
Stop Saying We
Stop saying ‘we’ if there’s only one of you. You might think it’s making you sound professional but people can see through it and the result is that you’ll end up looking like you’re just playing make believe. You can be professional without being big!
Outsource
A mistake that a lot of small companies make is to try and do everything themselves – from their web design, to their video editing to their SEO. The only problem is that most of us aren’t that multi-talented. And if you don’t know how to make a professional looking logo, people will tell! You don’t even have to spend a lot of money – just ask someone who knows what they’re doing to handle these elements!
Invest in the Best Tools
This is important. If you are going to be handling any element of the design yourself, then you really need Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. And getting a powerful computer will make a difference too. Don’t try and wing it or get by because the tiny differences will show and your business will look rough around the edges.
Don’t be Satisfied
As business owners and markets it’s easy to get a bit too close to our own brands and projects. It’s key then to occasionally step back and honestly appraise how good the work we’ve done is. Don’t settle for a blog that isn’t at least as good as the very best in your niche. Otherwise, what’s the point?
