Hi Friends,
Thank you for bearing with my while Baby had another bad health episode, and I had to delay answering the AMA questions.
August’s theme was branding and design, and I received a question from Katie Harbath. It was such a good question, and it got me thinking about my own brands and how I’m bringing them to you. So thank you Katie for inspiring me to make changes in my own business. You can read about the changes I’m making and what that means for you and this publication going forward at the bottom of this post.
asked:“Since going out on my own in April of 2021 I've collected a myriad of different brands including Anchor Change (name of my company - https://www.anchorchange.com/ and my newsletter -https://anchorchange. substack.com ), Impossible Tradeoffs (my podcast - https://anchorchange.substack.com/podcast) and Panic Responsibly (my mantra for these times and my merch store - https://www.panicresponsibly.com/). I also have my own personal socials on Instagram, LinkedIn, etc that are under my own name.
I'd love some advice on if I should be streamlining these more, and if so, how to think about doing that.”
Firstly, I LOVE this question! I have so many thoughts.
To answer your question simply, yes, I think you should streamline these. Let me explain why, and I mean this in a helpful way…
Your brand(s) seem far too chaotic for me. I have no real idea what it is that you do from that paragraph. There’s so much going on, and so many different names, including:
Anchor Change
Impossible Tradeoffs
Panic Responsibly
And your own name on your socials.
It’s a lot for your audience to remember. So, if you can streamline it, I would recommend you do so. Here’s how…
A few questions to ask yourself first:
Who are your target audience for each brand? Are they the same or different?
What are your values for each brand? Are they the same or different?
Do you want to niche, or leave room to explore?
If you find that your audiences overlap quite a lot, then it may make sense to have one unified brand that will serve them more effectively. What about your values? Are they vastly different across your brands, or are they quite similar? If they’re similar, then it makes sense to create one brand that really reinforces your brand message and values.
IMPORTANT: If your audience, values and messaging are different, keep your brands separate!
Brand Merging:
To me, Anchor Change seems like your main brand. Could you use this brand to be your primary business and have the other brands within this one? You could still keep the individual names for your sub-brands, for example, keeping the 'Impossible Tradeoffs’ Podcast name, but host it on your Anchor Change Substack or website. Maybe rename it slightly to something like “Anchor Change Presents: Impossible Tradeoffs”.
Again, you could bring your Panic Responsibly mantra and merch store to Anchor Change with that name, or you could reinforce the mantra throughout Anchor Change and lose Panic Responsibly as the name for the merch.
You know your businesses and brands better than I do, and it may make more sense to you to group your brands and merge them into a new brand under your name. This can give you the flexibility and freedom to explore the different areas of your business, without being boxed in to a niche that feels too restricting.
Social Media:
I personally think you have too many social media accounts. How do you manage them all?!
Like I said above, I’d choose a main brand in which your other brands sit under. This could be Anchor Change, or it could be your name. I’ve found that audiences LOVE knowing you as a person behind the business. So, I would bring your personal and business accounts together under one roof. Share your projects and expertise, but also share your personal thoughts, insights and experiences. Share your day to day life, and what inspired you to create that piece of merch, or that podcast episode.
If it all links, and I’m sure it will because these brands all stem from you, then make it easier for you and better for your audience, and have everything under one brand name.
Website:
Make Anchor Change your main website, and have a clear navigation menu where you link to your different sections of your brand: the podcast, your merchandise, and any other projects you decide to do in the future.
So many creatives have multiple strands to their businesses. It’s not unusual to have different sections within one brand now. It’s not really expected of us to have one niche and stick with it forever anymore. So don’t feel like you need to keep all of these parts of you and your brand separate.
Branding:
This is what’s going to make your different sub-brands feel like part of your main brand. Each sub-brand can have it’s own branding, but they should all have something in common so that your audience can visually see that they’re all part of your main brand. For example, my branding for my Finding Simple & Calm publication is a lovely green colour, but I have a blue colour that I’ve used for my Simple & Calm Interview Series so that my audience can tell that that is different to my usual posts. I’ve kept the fonts and layouts of the thumbnails the same, I’ve just changed the colour. You could do something similar, if you’d like to, so that your audience can differentiate between the different sub-brands.
Having one consistent brand, with slightly different but familiar visuals can help when creating social media posts. So for example, you could have one colour for your merch post on Instagram, and another colour to announce your new podcast episode. Think of it like each category or sub-brand in your business has it’s own colour. That way, you can visually see if you’ve been talking too much about your merch and not enough about your podcast on your social media posts.
Or, you could do a full re-brand and update your visual look as a mark of the fresh start you’re embarking on with merging the brands. It could be a great way to ‘launch’ your new brand and let your audience know that things are changing.
Make sure that your branding reinforces your brand values and messaging across all of your social media platforms and website. It should be consistent.
Implementing the changes:
You could make all of the changes in one go by ‘closing’ for a few months and telling your audience that you’re working on a rebrand and a refocus. A new year is a great milestone to ‘launch’ your new brand, but that’s quite soon, especially if you’re going to do everything on your own.
It may make more sense to implement the changes gradually, and start with merging the websites, or rebranding first, and then refine the other areas of your brand as time allows.
And also know that you don’t have to do any of this if you’re happy with how things are for you. You know your businesses better than anyone, and trust your gut when you’re making changes. If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.
I hope that’s helpful for you. If you have any follow up questions, please let me know!
How you inspired me to change my business:
When I was answering this question for you, I asked myself why I have two separate Substack accounts when there are a lot of overlap between my audiences. So I’ve made the decision to merge both of my publications. I’ve moved all of my posts and courses over to my main publication
, and will eventually close .I’m still going to provide the same teaching posts, and bring you more courses and workshops, but you’ll also get my personal posts too. Plus, having one account is going to make things so much simpler for me. Especially not having to log out and log in to different accounts to reply to comments.
So thank you for helping me to simplify my own business, Katie! 🥰
And that’s a wrap for our August AMA session!
I hope you found these answers helpful and that they inspire you to take action in your business. Remember, I’m here to support you every step of the way in your creative business, not just for design and branding.
Let me know what you thought of this Ask Me Anything session, and if you have any follow up questions, pop them in the comments of this post and I’ll reply to them.
The Next Ask Me Anything:
September’s AMA session will be held on my
publication, as will all of my new posts going forward. Please head over and subscribe to that publication so that you can continue to receive my posts going forward.Thank you again for being such an engaged and curious community. I so appreciate you!
Speak soon,
Hi Sophie! 👋 Will you be moving us paid subscribers of Overcoming Overwhelm to your other page or do we need to cancel on here and subscribe over there? Sorry if that's a silly question 🙈 😁 x
Thank you for the advice! Lots to think about. I’ll keep you posted on what I end up doing.