It's Business, Baby - Brand Audit with The Blogcademy

In case you haven't heard, last month our friends at The Blogcademy launched their hotly anticipated set of online courses, The Blogcademy Homeschool. First and foremost, let's get real here. The Blogcademy is not about telling people how they can make like a bajillion dollars from their brand new blog, despite what the naysayers think. The Blogcademy teaches skills about how to use blogging and the internet as a whole that are transferable to anyone who works online. I've waxed lyrical about my time at The Blogcademy workshop before, so when the girls' announced they'd be launching bitesize, online modules as well I was super excited to see what they had to offer.



First on my radar was the Brand Audit booster. I already knew the benefits of taking some time out from working in the business to step back and work on the business, and regularly write plans, goals and reports, but have never sat down and looked at how our brand is being represented online and off, through our marketing and collateral.

The module consists of a 10-minute video seminar with The Blogcademy's branding expert Shauna, two worksheets and a checklist of the steps to go through to conduct your own brand audit. Armed with washi tape and stacks of print-outs, I was excited to see what we might find.



Looking at the bigger picture with brand C&G, I was happy to see that we're quite consistent with the overall look and feel for the brand but it's cemented that I'm not sure how relevant it now is to our products and company ethos. Our brand has grown and evolved in so many ways in the past three years and I feel like our visual representation in our logos needs to now match that. Conducting a brand audit has also given me more firm ideas on the sorts of online content we can create to go alongside our existing products by looking at a snapshot of what is popular amongst our fans and customers.



Some more detailed observations and changes we've made as a result of our brand audit;
 - our social media profiles weren't looking completely consistent so we switched up the cover photos so that they matched throughout.
- we noticed a slight difference between logo representation on some of our collateral, so we've updated the artwork files for next print runs.
- found out some definitive themes in what is popular throughout our different social media profiles; for example, our top Twitter posts are personal tidbits and slightly sarcastic jokes, our top Facebook posts are inspirational, self love themed quotes/memes, our top Pinterest posts are pastel hair and glitter makeup and our top Instagram are quirky/off kilter images (James Franco in flower crowns, Gareth’s ‘beard garden’) and fun memes. Overall I was happy to see that our social media is coming across in a fun, inspirational, personable way and now I can dedicate certain content to each platform.
- we noticed that our the twitter and Instagram handles were quite brand-centric, so I updated to add a little personalisation in “account managed by lilac-haired cat botherer, Sophie” to match the content we were posting.
- we noticed that we never used blue colour from our brand colour palette, so we've updated to the punchy hot pink we instinctively use quite regularly.




Have you conducted a brand audit recently? Did you find anything surprising? The Blogcademy actually hits London this week with their two day workshop on 19th-20th and 22nd-23rd, and a little birdie tells me that they might just be able to squeeze you in if you were interested in coming.