One of the most common myths people fall into when branding themselves is thinking that finding the perfect preset is the only thing that really matters. I hate to be bearer of bad news but, branding is more than a preset. The key aspects to creating your brand identity online are consistency and tone. Consistency means you need to show up. This means posting regularly. If you post once every month or so the algorithms are not going to work in your favor and few people will see your content. The people that post often are the users whom the algorithms favor. This may sound easy, but it is not for everyone. I still struggle being consistent on my personal social media accounts. I question whether I should share content or if any of my followers actually care. This is where finding your tone is important. If you know the tone and personality of your social profiles, then you can curate content to match. My tone on my social media accounts is fun and kinda silly, just like me. My feed is about the authentic me, not just my highlights reel. I am not telling you that you have to share the lowest moments of your life, but an unedited picture without makeup on can show a different side of you. Find your tone. Find who you want to be on social media not through comparing yourselves to others, but by scrolling through your camera roll and determining what experiences you want to share and memorialize. My page consists of my three favorite F words – friends, family, and food. Once I established what I wanted to share, creating content became easy because I always knew what I wanted to post and could post more consistently. Determine how you want to present yourself on social media and then follow through. That way your tone will be consistent and you can consistency post.
What else should I know?
While presets can be aesthetically pleasing, your pictures do not need to have “the” filter. Instead you can focus on a general color scheme. Decide which colors you predominately wear or are in the background of your images. Then, the majority of your images follow the same color scheme without needing a filter to make them match. This also prevents you from feeling limited in content when a preset does not make an image “postable” or match your feed.