Breaking Down PR is in full swing and I could not be more happy than I am now in this very moment to see how far a simple idea has come in such a short amount of time! As I said in my last post, I have always been restricted to what kind of content I create for a brand. Having to maintain a brand voice and tone was priority and now that I am creating something from complete scratch, is intimidating but yet exciting. I have the ability to form my own brand personality, tone, and voice. This week has been dedicated to continuing my research, studying themes, and trends on Instagram, Twitter, along with conducting a competitor and an audience analysis.
According to Campaign Competitors, “A competitive analysis is a way to identify competitors, and understand competitor’s strengths and weaknesses in relation to yours. It helps you gauge how to curb competitors and refine your strategy”. The important factor when doing a competitive analysis is that you are looking for information that relates to your brand, service, or product. In this case, Breaking Down PR, is a social media campaign which will be offering information to viewers to help better understand what Public Relations is, how to use it, and how to explain it to others. You may be wondering, what is the competition? Well in this case, there are other profiles who do similar things for their audience. By observing these other profiles, I am able to draw upon strengths and weaknesses from each and turn them into opportunities for my campaign.
I am happy I took the time to do this because it helped me in developing my style guide for the social media campaign. While the style guide is still under development, I did not fully understand the importance of doing a style guide until diving further into my research. According to George Costello from the Costello Creative Group says; “Style guides support marketing initiatives by guaranteeing that all messaging is related to your company’s goals. A brand style guide distinguishes your company from your rivals and establishes a strong brand presence to build long-term brand awareness. Over time, that consistency and awareness build trust. Apart from the term style guide, some companies also refer it to as ‘brand identity guides’ or simply ‘brand guides’”. Having a style guide, no matter what kind of business you may be conducting, is crucial to the success of the message, product, or service you are trying to sell.
While I knew the importance of a style guide, I never actually considered the process and details needed to go into a guide. Keep in mind, my past experience has been with companies who already had a fully developed style guide. To create a guide completely from scratch was challenging yet rewarding as well. According to 99 Designs, Shirley Chan, says, “Before you create a style guide, you need to know your brand. There are five key components: mission, vision, target audience, brand personality and core values”. By clearly defining these five components, made it easier for me in developing the Breaking Down PR style guide. I was also reminded of how important it is to consider brand voice and brand tone, especially when using social media.
Everything a brand does must be cohesive to the brand personality at all times. According to Felicia C. Sullivan from Medium; “Your brand’s core personality, disposition, outlook, and spirit shape its voice, tone, tenor, and temperament. As a result, the tone and voice drive how you communicate in all your brand’s actions and interactions. Your voice, tone, and temperament should be wholly distinctive and consistent in all aspects of your brand”. Having a guide will help me in ensuring that everything created for this campaign will align perfectly with the brand personality. From the images fostering the brand colors to the captions and text being used; uniformity will play a major role in ensuring the success of Breaking Down PR.
This week has been filled with so much research, it’s almost been overwhelming. I have gotten to a place where I need to now take a step back and ask myself out of all of the information I have, what is key to the success of this campaign? When is it time to say enough is enough with all the preliminary research? I believe I reached this realization of having to stop with gathering so much information once I finished my SWOT and PEST analysis to then move onto the beginning stages of creating the Breaking Down PR Style Guide. The research will always be a constant, but I am finding there is different life cycles of what research one needs given the phase of the project they are in; which means the project is evolving! I was able to get everything done on my agenda this week and I am excited to see what next week brings.
I hope you join me next week as I continue on this amazing journey of creating a social media campaign! Also, feel free to check out the following: my Week 3 Journal, the Breaking Down PR Style Guide Overview, and the Breaking Down PR brand image.
Thanks for reading!
-Austin
The Media Relations Nomad 