A few of my thoughts and resources to share.

Branding is everything your organization does. Your brand is who you are as an organization. Marketing is how you communicate.

Social media marketing can be relatively low cost, and it provides a direct connection to your audience. Your social media is only going to be as strong as the effort and energy you put in.

The first step to branding your church or organization is not to start creating a logo or creating a marketing plan. The first step is to know who you and who you want to become.

Getting your business profile set up on a social media site takes time, energy and effort. Starting with a strongly branded business page is vitally important.

Content is what you post on social media. After you create your business profile page, you need to start thinking about what type of content to post.

Knowing what to include in your social media posts (images, videos, or links), when to post, and more can get confusing.

Your choice of color is important because it can give your branding and your messaging a certain feel or emotion. You only need to look at the world around you to see colors and how they can effect your and your emotions. 

Just like your choice of color is important finding the right font is crucial. Taking time to choose fonts carefully can give your branding and your messaging a certain feel or emotion.

People follow or unfollow organizations on social media for many reasons. Here are the top reasons.

In the simplest way, being authentic means staying true to who you are, what you do and who you connect with. You want your branding to reflect who you are. People need to know we are serious before they take us seriously.

Being consistent in your branding is probably the easiest to talk about but one of the harder ones to accomplish.

Once you know who you are (your brand) and what you want to communicate (your branding), the next important step is to create a Brand Style Guide.

Do you need some place to start your branding discussion in your business or organization?

Often times many people overlook copyrights when they are looking for images online. Copyright laws are a pretty serious business and many people are not aware. You and your organization can be held liable for using an image that is not yours.

It is not always easy to find images online that you are able to use. I have complied a list of other places I have found to find images.

Once you get to know yourself and who you want to become, the next step is to know your audience.

When you think about implementing your branding and marketing, you may have questions, I know now what I need to do, but how do I get all done? What if I don’t have any design skills? All you need to do is to look for resources to help you.

The United Methodist Church with the United Methodist Communications has made a significant investment in the brand of the denomination. United Methodist Communications also provides many resources to help local Churches with branding and marketing.