What’s your brand personality?
Let’s start off with a quick exercise – make a list of all the different personality traits you can think of and then pick three that best describe your nonprofit and/or which three you would like it to be known for.
Some examples that spring to mind:
- Caring
- Creative
- Determined
- Enthusiastic
- Focused
- Friendly
- Hard-working
- Helpful
- Honest
- Involved
- Opinionated
- Responsible
- Responsive
- Serious
- Trustworthy
- Warm
Projecting your organisation’s personality is vitally important, because in essence it’s your brand – what you are known for and how people perceive you. I would go so far as to say that your brand is your nonprofit’s most valuable asset. It is how you connect with and form emotional bonds with your supporters.
One of the main reasons I recommend blogging to non-profits is because it is a great way to show your brand personality. You can use it to display your trustworthiness, your transparency, your stories, your warmth, your enthusiasm and your humanity and as a means of building rapport with your audience.
Exploring the question of what your brand personality is/should be is a useful tool to use across the board – it helps ensure consistency of tone and message in all your communications (both on and off-line). Furthermore it can throw up inconsistencies in how you want to be perceived and how you are actually perceived by the public. (I run a communications audit with my clients before we even think of taking your brand online).
So what three personality traits best describe your non-profit? And if you are reading this and thinking but my organisation doesn’t have a personality, then this exercise is definitely one you need to do!
Come back to me tomorrow with your list and I will show you some practical ways in which you can use your online communications to project your personality.
Until then..get thinking, get writing and get ready to take the next step in successfully branding your non-profit organisation online.
Posted on June 13, 2011, in Blogging, Social Media Marketing and tagged branding, marketing, non profit marketing, personality traits, social media marketing, What's your brand personality?. Bookmark the permalink. 9 Comments.
Excellent advice!
A really useful exercise – am off to think about it now and will be back tomorrow to learn more
I work for a hospice and we aren’t online yet(!) I guess the 3 words I would use would be caring, compassionate, warm
Thank you for this useful exercise and I am looking forward to your post tomorrow.
A great post. I think all businesses need to demonstrate their reliability and trustworthiness in their online presence but this is something that is often overlooked by the absence of testimonials etc. I’d imagine being caring and compassionate is a message that non-profits definitely need to show they are demonstrating.
Promoting your brand using Internet marketing is a great way to sell your online products particularly if you have eBooks, software, videos to sell etc. Getting it right from the outset though is very important.
Pingback: How to use your blog to project personality | Social Media Marketing for Non-Profits
Pingback: How to brand yourself on Google+ | Social Media Marketing for Non-Profits
Pingback: How to brand yourself on Google+ | Social Media Marketing for Non-Profits