We present to you a collection of tips that Johanna Both, cofounder of Tappointment, gives to Startups, with experience in “rebranding” used in her very company.
“After ten days and nights, and after drinking far to many cups of coffee, bottles of Coca-Cola, bowls of ice-cream and pizzas, our rebranding sprint is finished. After some final minutes testing and setting aside some time to sleep, I felt that other startups could benefit from learning about our experience. Of course, there is no magic formula. However, I have some practical tips and tricks to help focus you”.
Let’s go step by step:
• Find a new name
Don’t waste time looking for a name if you can’t use it online. Find a name that has a free domain. You can ask in Trademark if need be. We did a brainstorming session with the team and came up with over 60 brilliant ideas (admittedly helped by a lot of caffeine). However, we could only come up with a short list of names with a free domain.
• Hire a designer to create a logo
You have found the name of the century, but how do you make a good logo? Although you might have a designer already in your company, you should consider the possibility of hiring someone else. Why? Your designer might be busy with other things, like the website. In order to create more ideas in less time, it might be a better idea to hire a designer specifically for your logo.
In our company we are currently using Squadhelp, one of the biggest online open and distributing collaboration platforms, where you can find the work of very talented people and pay for just one idea. Actually, we had over 200 ideas and versions of our logo in just one week and between them over 15 that we liked.
Be conscious that this will only work if you are able to describe your expectations for the final product, your preference of color, and some ideas on the style you are looking for.
We had to do a lot of work to define all of this and also, we wanted it to look good for the company’s mobile application. Don’t forget, you have to give all of them regular feedback on their work so that they can create better versions. If you are active and answer, they will be more active and creative as well!
• “Plan for spring”
With the name and logo ready, the hard work starts because you now have to implement them in all the offline and online platforms of your company: website, social networks, posters etc. you are redefining an old version and starting a new project.
Prepare a plan with tasks, deadlines and responsibilities for all the members of the team. You can do this using an Excel table but could you use something more effective like Trello? It’s a free tool for collaborations and large projects, easy to use and available in a large variety of platforms.
• Give you website a face wash
Normally, one of the biggest changes made during the rebranding process is the redesign of the website called the “Landing website”. With the new logo and colours you can redefine your existing page or create a new one from scratch.
Help your designer with page layouts – also called wireframes- and models, to later craft into a design. You can draw on paper or use tools like GoMockingbird, a free online tool for carrying out projects between two people. One of its advantages is that it has pre-chargeable windows, allowing you to work quicker and modify aspects of the project. You can also see your design forming in real time as you are working on it.
Investigate new design trends before starting. To inspire you, here are some examples of designer website collections: Dribbble y Behance.
• Plan your social “labyrinth”
Yes, it’s a labyrinth and in order to not get lost you have to follow some basic rules to have online presence using effective social politics. If you are just re-branding you may only need to update your logo and appearance on social networks. However, you have to always take into account the following things:
1. Chose your social platforms intelligently. Think about your target and what works with said target. Be sure to have a strategy focused on them and post accordingly: compromise and activity are the most important factors.
2. If you are brave and want to be present in all platforms, use tools to manage them such as Buffer, which helps you post and program.
3. If your profiles are already active, be conscious that some social platforms limit you when are trying to rename the channel. For example, you can only change your name twice if you have less than 100 active users. Linkedin lets you change your name, but not the URL.
Here are some tips from the so-called “Social Evantelists” to help you get started:
- Learn more about Google Plus with PlusYourBusiness.
-Here you can find some tips on how to set up a Facebook business page.
-Here is a great post about using Twitter for business and marketing.
• Test, implant, and test again
Last but not least, implement all the results and test, test and test again… For this step it would be necessary to write another post just about this stage. Apart from this, it’s important to highlight that if you have a small team, it would be interesting for all the members of the team to take part in the “testing” phase.
Original post in Women 2.0
