What to do if your staff or volunteers don’t get the whole “branding thing”
April 28, 2023
You’ve been reading about how to keep up a cohesive brand.
Clearly, you care about this. But maybe others in your organization aren’t as aware of the importance of staying on-brand.
What can you do to get your whole team on board?
1) Take responsibility.
If your instructions to your staff/volunteers were essentially, “Be creative and have at it!” then you shouldn’t be surprised that the content isn’t what you envisioned.
Your people deserve crystal clear guidelines from you. They are (likely) not professionals and they are (definitely) not mind-readers.
2) Make an action plan (blame it on me and the algorithm 😉).
Arrange a meeting with your people and say something along the lines of, “I was reading this newsletter from a lady who works in digital marketing. She recommended some new ideas to keep up with the ✨algorithm✨ and I’m hoping to share them with you.”
Come into this meeting with:
- A 2-3 page PDF brand guide with specific fonts, hex codes, examples of the desired copy, and instructions for how (and how not) to use your logo.
Free Copywriting Guide Template
- A mood board with posts similar to what you would like to see for your organization (use Pinterest).
- A list of post types (event announcements/recaps, sermon recordings, classroom spotlights, etc…) and how often each should be posted.
Free Content Calendar Template
If you don’t have the creative side or the marketing brain necessary to put these things together, hire a professional to create this infrastructure and train your volunteer.
3) Consider paying them (or someone else).
If a volunteer is managing your website, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc… don’t underestimate the amount of time that job takes (especially to do it well).
Additionally, don’t underestimate the value that a high-quality social media page brings to your organization.
This is your outward-facing marketing. This is what visitors see first. This is important stuff.
This person may not have the bandwidth in their personal life to put in the amount of time they might actually want to. An honorarium or light part-time hours may free them up to invest more time into their work.
4) Eliminate the platform altogether.
Evaluate whether or not you need this page at all. Is now the right season to be investing time into Tik Tok? (Spoiler: it’s probably not)
A poorly-executed page is worse than no page at all. Read that again.
Get realistic about the resources you have at your disposal and consider postponing your participation on some platforms.
5) Make a content library (or hire a designer to create one).
If you think graphic design just isn’t this person’s strength (but you frankly don’t have any other options), you can put together a big collection of custom post templates – all designed to suit your branding and audience – all very plug-and-play.
Or, you can hire a professional to do this ^.
That’s a bigger investment, but it pays off in the long-run.
(You can also purchase more generic content libraries from sites like Igniter Media.)
This concludes our branding series. Tell me what you think!
