Creating kick-ass brands isn’t for the faint of heart. Here at Urban Influence, we are up for the challenge — in fact, we love it.

But just because we are crazy workaholics who truly care about every single detail of your brand being absolutely perfect doesn’t mean we are the only ones who can make it sparkle.

In fact, you are one of the best qualified people to make your brand even better. Because you know it better than anyone.

So in this blog post, we thought we’d share some of our best tips for jazzing up your brand, that you, yes you, can do yourself in just a few minutes at a time.

Each one is a simple fix that can have huge impact, and we guarantee you don’t have to be a design-obsessed workaholic (ahem) to see exciting results in sales and customer love.
Refresh your About page

For most businesses, your About page is the most visited page on your entire website. And yet, most companies struggle to put something interesting and engaging there. Be honest: does your About page kind of suck?

A bad About page is a huge missed opportunity; even a “just okay” About page is losing you money & new customers.

Luckily, fixing it is easier than you think. Even if you’re feeling blocked or uninspired, here are a few easy ways to jazz it up:

– Make it easy to find. This is one of the quickest and easiest ways to add instant value to your About page. First, make sure your About is actually called “About”; that’s what people are looking for, so don’t hide it in another title like “Who We Are” or “The Journey”. Second, make sure it’s easy to see in your homepage navigation (don’t hide it in a hamburger menu).

– Add your company contact information. It’s a simple thing to do that will make customers who are in a hurry (and those who want to get in touch because they you sold them with your product & About page) smile because they don’t have to dig around looking for a separate Contact page to get the ball rolling.

– Add images. People like looking at faces, and will connect more personally with your brand if they can see your (or even some stock image models’) faces. You can find stock images cheap on sites like Stocksy, if you don’t have professional photos of your team or office that you love yet.

– Tell a story. People also love stories, and they’ll stick around for one, even if it’s not terribly thrilling. Start your About page by telling a customer story, talking about the pivotal moment that convinced you to found the business, or anything! A narrative grabs a new visitor and draws them into caring about your brand.

– Start by talking about your customer, not yourselves. Of course you want to share your awesome creds, but first, give the reader some context that has to do with them first. They’ll care more if they see how YOU fit into THEIR life, and not the other way around.

Check out this post for even more quick tips for leveraging this super important part of your website.
Get social

Even if you don’t have time or manpower to have a full-time presence on social media, you can still add tons of value to your users & become a brand they love to visit by leveraging social media well.

Don’t just use social to share your own blog posts or company news. Use it as a way to share related content that adds value with your readers, and helps you become a brand they actually want to visit on social media.

In just a few hours of reading news & blog posts on a weekend, you can load up a month’s worth of tweets & Facebook shares of interesting, relevant content for your brand followers.

Use Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule 1-2 (or more!) tweets per day of posts that help your followers be smarter and achieve their goals. That way, when you mix in your own blog posts & company news every couple of days, people will be more likely to actually read them and care.

Also: add low-key social icons to the header or footer of every page on your site so that people can always find your other online presence easily. Keep it subtle so it’s not distracting, but easy to find, so your fans can keep in touch with you. The more time they spend with your brand anywhere (on your site, on social, etc) the more of a connection they will form with you, which leads to sales and loyalty in the long run.
Start a newsletter & making signing up easy

In studies, it’s been found that a customer needs ~7 interactions with your brand before they’ll actually make a purchase. Along with social media, a newsletter is a great way to keep the interactions going with your brand so that you become known to & appreciated by your customers.

In addition, asking your users to make a micro-commitment — signing up for a newsletter on your website — creates a connection with the user to your brand, making them even more likely to make a purchase in the future. Giving you their email address primes them to give you even more in the future.

Plus, sharing knowledge and updates from your business builds trust. When your customers see you as a valuable resource, they’re more likely to invest in the other things you have to offer too.

Put a signup box (and a Call To Action that tells them exactly what value they’ll get for signing up) on every page and blog post on your website. Excluding sales/product/order pages, of course.

BTW, if starting a newsletter sounds too daunting — never fear! It’s one of the newest services we offer here at Urban Influence, and we’d love to help set up or manage one for you. 🙂
Feeling inspired?

Well, get to work! Or, give us a call. 😉

If these tips inspired you to want to really re-work your brand and bring it into the shiny, sparkly, best condition it can possibly be in, we’d love to help you do that.

We’re always here. Holler at us: 206.219.5599 or drop a line at http://uiclients.com/urban-2017/project-starter/.