Use these 9 key build­ing blocks to cre­ate, strengthen and evolve your com­pany or prod­uct brand. Each carry weight. Each add to the nuance and depth to your image as a whole. Con­sider each when build­ing your brand. They should all sup­port and add to your iden­tity as a whole.

1. Prod­uct or Ser­vice: At the core of your busi­ness brand is the prod­uct or ser­vice you offer.
2. Name: A pow­er­ful brand has a mem­o­rable name. The best are typ­i­cally short in length, have an inter­est­ing illit­er­a­tion, are fun to say and/or inspire con­fi­dence in the com­pany as a whole.
3. Logo: When peo­ple think about brands they typ­i­cally think about the com­pany or product’s logo. A strong, mem­o­rable logo is impor­tant, and is usu­ally the foun­da­tion for a brand, but it is just one element.
4. Tagline: While the logo says who you are, the tagline says what you do, what sets you apart.
5. Color Palette: Most brand palettes are built off the brand’s logo col­ors, but not always. Per­haps the logo merely inspires a palette of bright col­ors, or pas­tels, or jewel tones, uti­liz­ing the logo col­ors as the base. Alter­na­tively, the palette might be a sin­gle color.
6. Fonts: Lim­it­ing your fonts to 2–3 font fam­i­lies that are used con­sis­tently across all your media sup­ports and strengthen your brand.
7. Voice: Your voice is the tone set in your copy across all media. It can be friendly and casual, pro­fes­sional and direct, clever or funny, even raunchy or sar­cas­tic. What­ever your brand, it’s voice should match in tone.
8. Imagery: This can include graphic ele­ments, pho­tog­ra­phy, video, illus­tra­tion, ani­ma­tion and icons. Imagery adds depth to your brand.  What­ever your brand, the imagery that sup­ports it should be con­sis­tent across all media.
9. Brand or Iden­tity Vehi­cles: Where you pro­mote your brand can be as impor­tant as the brand itself. Print, web, social media, radio, tele­vi­sion – these are the vehi­cles that carry your brand.

1. Home Page
Obvi­ously every site has a home page, but what should you include on your home page? And what should you save for another page?

A good home page includes a brief overview about what your com­pany does and/or the prod­ucts you offer, com­pelling imagery speak­ing to your ser­vices and/or prod­ucts, and con­tact infor­ma­tion (your phone num­ber if you want cus­tomers to call and/or your address if you have a retail location).

You also want to add some spe­cific direc­tion for the viewer — what do you want them to do? Call you for a free quote? Sign up for you use­ful newslet­ter? Shop your store? Giv­ing your viewer clear direc­tion with easy lan­guage will help them nav­i­gate through the site and get the response you want.

2. About
Your About page is where you’ll go more in depth about the com­pany and/or the own­ers. This the place where you get to tell the company’s story. It might include your Mis­sion State­ment, the Company’s His­tory and/or owner’s Bios.

3. Prod­ucts
If you sell or man­u­fac­turer a prod­uct, you need a prod­ucts page. You don’t have to show every­thing you offer, but you should show the range of your products.

Depend­ing on how many SKUs you have, you can either list out prod­ucts by cat­e­gory, show your entire prod­uct line, or just high­light a few items.

Be sure to include images of your prod­ucts and logos of well-known, key brands that you carry.

4. Ser­vices
If you offer ser­vices, with or with­out prod­ucts, your Ser­vices page is the place to list them. I usu­ally rec­om­mend a brief para­graph about each for the top 3–5 ser­vices you offer. Addi­tional ser­vices can be listed out in bul­let form.

Be sure to let peo­ple know what sets you apart from the com­pe­ti­tion. Do you offer a bet­ter price or a bet­ter value? Higher qual­ity work­man­ship? More expe­ri­ence to do the job right?

5. Tes­ti­mo­ni­als
Tes­ti­mo­ni­als help build trust with your poten­tial cus­tomers or clients. If you don’t have any, ask your best clients for them. Then include them on your site. If you’re busi­ness is on Yelp, include a link to Yelp as well.

6. Con­tact
While I rec­om­mend your phone num­ber and/or your address on your home page (and pos­si­bly every page), your Con­tact Page is the place to include all your con­tact infor­ma­tion. You should include your phone number(s), your address, a map that links to dri­ving direc­tions, your hours of oper­a­tion and an email form.

I gen­er­ally advise against list­ing email addresses since bots spi­der the inter­net search­ing for email addresses to sell to spammers.

The 7th Page: Your Blog
If you can write, you should blog. If you can’t write, you should hire a ghost blogger.

Blog­ging gives you the oppor­tu­nity to illus­trate your exper­tise, to show off your lat­est work, build trust with poten­tial clients and cus­tomers, and to improve your site’s SEO.

Cel­e­brate Nashville is a rich cul­tural event cel­e­brat­ing Nashville’s diverse minor­ity com­mu­ni­ties with music, dance, food and art. Orig­i­nally called Cel­e­bra­tion of Cul­tures, the event’s logo needed to retain some aspects of the orig­i­nal logo, while at the same time evolv­ing into a new design.

When work­ing with a new client on their web­site, I invari­ably ask if they would like to include a blog as part of their site. Most would not.

“Why would I blog?” and “What would I write about?” are ques­tions that often come up. Along with, “I don’t want to do that.”

But wait, let me tell you a lit­tle bit about why you might want to.

Most new clients are build­ing a web­site for one rea­son only: to grow their busi­ness. They want new busi­ness, new customers.

For the small, local com­pany, blog­ging is a great way to do just that. Why?

First, blog­ging on the topic of your busi­ness demon­strates that you are knowl­edge­able and have exper­tise in your cho­sen field. It builds trust with your audi­ence. In fact, they more they read, the more that trust grows. And every­one prefers to do busi­ness with some­one they trust.

Sec­ond, the more you blog, the more you improve your SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Opti­miza­tion and it’s the stuff that helps you get found on search engines like Google. That’s because search engines like fresh con­tent, and a blog pro­vides this.

Third, you can use your blog to pro­vide impor­tant infor­ma­tion to your cus­tomers, like how-to’s and ref­er­ence materials.

Way back when you started your busi­ness you didn’t have a lot of money, so you cut a few cor­ners on your logo. Either you designed it your­self (and you’re not a designer) or you bought a pre-made logo from one of those $99 logo web­sites or pos­si­bly you hired your cousin’s sister-in-law’s kid ’cause she’s “good at art and stuff”.

What do you do?
Hav­ing a bad logo will def­i­nitely hold you back when you’re look­ing to take your busi­ness to the next level. You may not even real­ize you have a bad logo, but you find that you can’t seem to gain trac­tion with your brand.

There are two approaches to chang­ing your logo, each with their own mer­its and challenges.

The first is to toss the old one and start from scratch. The advan­tage to this approach is you get the strong, tar­geted logo you wanted right away (assum­ing you hired a good designer).

The prob­lem with this is that maybe you have a lot of clients who won’t rec­og­nize you when they see that new, splashy, com­pletely dif­fer­ent logo from the one you had. With this approach, you’ll also need to launch a cam­paign to exist­ing cus­tomers telling them all about your new look. And depend­ing on what you offer, you may need to reas­sure them with copy like, “brand new look, same great service.”

Depend­ing on how big your com­pany is or if your reach is wide, this could be an expen­sive endeavor. You might need to send a printed direct mail piece in advance let­ting them know about the upcom­ing change, and fol­low up with a sec­ond after the launch. You’ll want to announce it in emails and on your web­site and on your Face­book page if you have one. You might even need to include new tv and radio spots, if you’ve adver­tised there in the past.

The sec­ond option is if you have a good idea, but a bad, or dated look­ing exe­cu­tion. You can evolve this type of logo over time, mak­ing small changes over the course of a year or sev­eral years. This solu­tion doesn’t require the big announce­ment and expense of the first option, but it requires patience and an ongo­ing rela­tion­ship with your designer.

When is a bad logo a good thing
Does your logo look dated and cheap? If you’re in the dis­count busi­ness, or sell cheap prod­ucts, a bad, dated logo can actu­ally help you. That’s because it’s con­vey­ing just how cheap you are, which is what we call a sell­ing feature.

Ulti­mately, you don’t have to put up with a bad logo. The sooner you change it the sooner you can start build­ing and posi­tion­ing your brand exactly where you it.