Whether you are training to become a holistic health educator, practitioner, or entrepreneur, developing your online presence and brand awareness is essential. Creating a platform to share your unique voice will place your business in front of the audience that needs your expertise.
The essential building blocks of a brand are your purpose, your logo, and your name.
The first thing you need to know about your wellness business is your purpose. What does your brand stand for? What values and principles do you bring to the table? Once you know your brand’s purpose, you can ensure that all of your business writing and images support that purpose.
Your logo is what represents your brand. This is the image that your audience associates with you, and it should capture their attention and inspire a consistent aesthetic in your website and visual materials.
Your brand name should be easy to remember, easy to spell, and available in the domain name database. A simple place to start is your own name, though you can also consider your business location and health specialties.
You'll want to select a harmonious color scheme that is reflective of your brand. Here is a great tool to do that! Your color theme can be used in your logo, messaging, and other visual elements.
You might even consider learning more about the psychology of color to inform your selections. Here are a few resources to learn more: Small Business Trends - How to Use the Psychology of Color When Marketing and Color for Success: The Psychology of Color in Business. Also, be sure to consider accessibility with your color selections - will they be accessible to those who may have color vision deficiency (CVD), or is there enough contract for low vision visitors? Try this contrast-checker for accessibility. We’ll share more about your website below.
Throughout the development of your business, consider the images you want to represent your business. Try to use authentic image, such as your own photography, when possible to tell your story. Clients and customers appreciate authenticity from brands and are more loyal to brands they connect with personally.
Your logo is something that you can create yourself, or you can hire a designer to do it. If you choose to design your own logo, take a few tutorials to learn what essential design elements to include.
You can also look at other wellness logo designs for inspiration!
To design a logo yourself, you can use an image editor like Canva to alter images and experiment with fonts. Make sure to download your design in a vector file format, which will allow it to scale without losing quality.
Even if you’re not a programmer, there are plenty of tools available to help you create your own website. Squarespace is a website creator with a visual interface, drag-and-drop features, and advanced integrated SEO and eCommerce options. It is affordable, at $26 per month, and its templates are continuously being updated. Squarespace also integrates with G Suite, and you can register your domain through the site.
Another popular site builder is Wix. Like Squarespace, many budding entrepreneurs have built fully interactive and responsive Wix sites. When choosing a template, look for one that’s fully responsive and works well on phones and tablets. More people view websites on mobile than on computers these days!
Make sure your site template features a blog. As an expert in your holistic health niche, you’ll want to create and share content relevant to your friends, family, and prospective clients. With today’s site builders, creating a blog can be as easy as writing a Facebook post, so make sure that functionality is already built into your site.
Start your blog today! Follow the guidelines in our post: How to Start Your Holistic Health Blog.
Get started with our CE Course: Basic Blogging: Gain Leads and Clients for Your Holistic Health Career.
Next, you’ll want to consider your social media strategy. Get a head start with our CE course: Social Media for Success– Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Study up on what is most effective for which channels, and determine strategies for each. It’s best to have a consistent message across platforms, so start with one platform, like Instagram, before expanding into other platforms.
Instagram uses hashtags to attract followers who are interested in your message, which you tell through a visual story. With each image you share, you reveal information about who you are, your mission, and what you offer. You can make beautiful posts with Canva or another graphics creator.
You can only put one link on your profile page, so it should be either your website home page or a custom Instagram landing page. You can regularly update the landing page to feature whichever products or promotions you’re posting about.
Youtube is another avenue to talk about your unique offerings and insights. A video can be a powerful and easy way to share your message. Initially, recording and editing videos and adding all the metadata and summaries can be time-consuming, so save this until your other channels are running smoothly.
The number one rule of business cards is to keep it simple: too many photographs or details can make your card look cluttered and hard to read. Put your phone number, email, and website address on your card along with a brief description of what you do (i.e. ‘wellness coach’).
Cards can be obtained economically and quickly through sites such as moo.com and nextdayflyers.com. Fonts on business cards can be quite small, so do a test print to see how you like the design before printing. For a sustainable approach, consider an e-card that’s easy to scan and share at conferences and networking events. One example is a dot card, though there are many different ecard options these days.
If you want to guarantee that you’ll have a quality logo that will last the test of time, you can hire a designer to make your logo at an affordable price for a growing business.
There are plenty of well-trained budding designers who will offer unique, creative designs in the $300-$500 range. A professional designer will give a thorough and thoughtful exploratory process, and deliver a logo suitable for many formats.
If technology isn’t your strong suit, you can hire a web designer to create a beautiful and responsive site. When finding a designer, make sure they know how to optimize a site for mobile and computer viewing!
Once you’re ready, start creating your brand and building your story one step at a time. But don’t wait too long for the perfect moment. Start putting yourself out there and building your online presence!
To keep growing your knowledge and get further support for growing your business, check out ACHS’s business courses here!