To create the foundation of your brand you need to incorporate four defining elements. These include: Logo, Fonts, Colour Scheme & a Brand Style Guide. Other aspects that one also needs to consider when designing a brand might include, signage, website, finishes, paper type and product packaging. We at Decimal Agency have a hand in all of the above and our designers work hard in order to define our brands in the best way possible. In order to do this though you need to understand the importance and definition of branding.

Let’s simply begin with what defines a Logo. A logo basically presents a company, person or organization. The logo usually incorporates a name in a typographic print or if you are well known brand like Nike a simple swoosh tick logo defines the brand's name to the consumer. Your brand identity is what defines your company it’s the distinctive look of the organization that will help your brand stand out from your competition. A company’s brand identity should include their imagery, font, company voice and writing style.

Your Logo should stay unchanging, we say this because your consumers will begin to identify with your brand's logo and if it constantly changes you will begin to confuse and lose your customer base. Fortunately, with your brand identity you can be flexible and change up the look of your company every now and then so you brand stays up-to-date with ever-changing competitors.

Always keep in mind that image is everything therefore your Logo needs to be unique, bold and reflects an aggressiveness. This represents dependability and strength in the product you are trying to market to your customers. The logo also represents the ownership and legality of the brand so consumers can snuff out the fakes. This is to ensure that if another company copies your logo you can sue the organization and take them to court.

Just remember, your brand's logo is your biggest marketing tool. If utilized correctly it can become the main reason for product sale within the company and the status symbol for your brand.

Recently Facebook announced that there will be new updates to its News Feed Algorithm. This had agencies and publishers protesting as Facebook has decided to rather promote content from friends over ad content. They have called it “balancing content from friends and pages”. Unfortunately, agencies and publishers who depend on Facebook for traffic don’t seem to be in that balance.

Publishers and agencies almost solely rely on paid reach for their posts to be seen on Facebook since this algorithm has collapsed their opportunities to reach customers organically. Facebook is one of the biggest advertising platforms in the world and can be a very effective paid advertising channel if utilized correctly and as you can see below in 2015, paid impressions have grown by 8%.

To effectively utilize paid advertising for your brand you need to identify, your target market, who loves your brand, who identifies with it and who often shares content on their pages. This information will prove to be extremely important when targeting consumers in a post, and it will ensure that your content reaches the correct people.

To ensure that your ad delivery is also paced correctly you need to understand how your brands budget is spent over time. We suggest that you use a lifetime budget when you use paid advertising, this will help to reach a broad spectrum of consumers over a period of time depending on how much money you put into the ad and how many days this budget can run over. This is a core part of optimization which ensures you get a return on your investment.

Know that any advertising is good advertising as long as you have a clear understanding of what your brand stands for and who your target market is. Facebook has shown fantastic results when it comes to paid advertising and we suggest you experiment with this platform as much as possible.

The two most popular Social Platforms in the world Facebook & Twitter. Some say that Facebook is for connecting with people you went to school with and Twitter is for the people you wish you had gone to school with. Both platforms communicate in different ways to different users for a different kind of impact and both are equally unique.

Facebook went live across the globe in September 2006 with a rapidly growing user base. Twitter was launched in July of 2006 and had explosive grow between 2009 & 2011 with 200 million tweets a day in July 2012.

Growth in worldwide user base for Twitter vs. Facebook. (numbers are in millions)

But who are each of these platforms marketed towards and how do they compare? Twitter user base is seen to be younger and more diverse compared to Facebook. These users are of a higher LSM base, wealthy, educated and reside in urban areas. They are an advertisers dream.  Whereas the Facebook's market is slightly older than Twitter with 65% of Facebook users being 35 or older, only 24% with a degree of sorts and the majority of active users were women. Twitter attracts a broad range of news content and media while Facebook has a mass allegiance to events and news updates. 

The biggest difference though between these two platforms is ultimately the way in which they communicate. Facebook as seen as a more passive and relaxed form of social communication whereas Twitter is very active in conversation and in some ways brash

A major difference between Facebook and Twitter emerges in their methods of communication.

Facebook Statistics

• 968 million daily active users

• 844 million mobile daily active users

• 1.49 billion monthly active users

• 1.31 billion mobile monthly active users

• 83% of users outside of the US and Canada

Twitter Statistics

• 316 million monthly users

• 80% of active users on mobile

• 77% of users outside the U.S.

• 500 million tweets sent per day

Engagement is also another pressing rivalry between Facebook and Twitter. Unfortunately Facebook's engagement rate for organic posts seems to be in great decline. The biggest issue being that companies have pay to “boost” a post to gain any kind of reach from consumers. One advantage Facebook has in engagement over Twitter is that the content posted has a longer lifespan since tweets disappear so quickly due to the volume of information coming through. Your brand would be more likely to stay relevant on Facebook rather than Twitter because of this. 

We do recommend that you don’t take tweeting for granted though especially if you are a small business in a competitive industry. It’s important to stay ahead of your active Twitter competitors. We suggest that you tweet 5 or more times a day at difference times of the day to ensure you stay relevant and engage all your followers.

So who wins this lifelong Social battle, Twitter or Facebook? We advise that you play to the strengths of both Facebook and Twitter for your business. Use both platforms to their full potential to suit your social strategy. They both offer fanatic opportunities to reach people across the globe, so why not access as many avenues as possible to make your business a social success.

You may have all the expertise in the world but, if they're not motivated, it's unlikely that you will achieve your true potential. People who are Motivated have a positive outlook, they are excited about what they're doing, and they know that they're investing their time in something that's worthwhile. 

We at Decimal feel constructive motivation, & coaching can have a very positive effective on those around us. That's why we came up with our creative Decimal #MondayMotivation posts. #MondayMotivation is a motivational piece that we post on our Social Platforms in-order to reach all of our followers and provide them with a little inspiration to start off their Mondays. #MondayMotivation