Consistency is a full time job….

“You have to stay true to your heritage; that’s what your brand is about.” ~ Alice Temperley

In Ms. Temperley’s statement, staying true to your heritage is all about consistency. Consistency though is a term that has numerous facets, and all are important to establishing, maintaining, and as much as possible, owning your brand.

In the overall context, consistency is about remaining aligned to your DNA…to your core values, guiding principles and the characteristics you brought with you to the dance. How you demonstrate this consistency or integrity to your core is demonstrated outwardly in several different ways:

• Consistency of voice – How you engage with the outside world in term of stance and tone must be consistent from occasion to occasion, and also with what is at the heart of your organization.
• Consistency of message –The content of your communications must remain consistent to themselves and to your overall organizational perspective. This lack of message to message consistency often can muddy the brand and lead to many of the differences in brand perception that can occur with different factions of your audience.
• Consistency of response modality – How you respond to external requests and events, timing of your response, who you respond to, along with the two points above can determine the overall strength of your brand in the mind of your audience.
• Consistency of execution- It is important to communicate proactively on a consistent basis. This is not to say that there must always be a rigid timeline, but you must be placing content or communications on a reliable basis. If you communicate three times per week, it is not the end of the world to miss once in a while and only communicate twice that week. Likewise upon occasion, four times in a given week may be desirable. The key is to maintain the perception of consistency with your audience.

Getting these visible manifestations of your brand in line with your overall organizational culture and philosophy will enable your organization to better communicate with your target audience and therefore be better able to maintain your brand image with the external world.

Tags: Branding, communication, consistency, Social Media, Temperley, UMN.EDU