Do you have consistent colours, fonts and a style that makes you instantly recognizable? Is your online presence delivering visual content that your audience can say “yup that’s my realtor’s post”? It can be all too easy to get lost in the pretty that’s thrown in our faces every day that we become tempted to change our look every other week, but if you want a brand instead of just a business, and a visual strategy rather than just throwing visuals into the void and hoping for a like and added hearts, then you need to get clear on what your brand looks like. Mood boards are a great way to start. They can be the place you refer back to every time you are creating content for your business, they work to establish your visual identity and keep your look consistent, but more importantly, they keep the way your audience FEELS important. Here’s an easy step-by-step process for using Pinterest to develop your brand and create a mood board.
Head on over to Pinterest (and if you don’t have an account, seriously what are you waiting for? Dreamy decor, real estate tips, marketing ideas, outfit inspiration, dinner ideas… it’s all there!) and create a board for your visual identity (you can see ours HERE). You might not know what you’re looking for at first so the most important thing is not to overthink anything and just start. This is your chance to run wild and start collecting everything and anything that makes your heart sing. One of the biggest mistakes I see realtors make is trying to copy someone else’s branding because “hey it worked for so and so and it will work for me too.” Nope. You are an individual and you’ve got your own unique brand of awesome that needs to shine through or you’ll attract the wrong clients (you know the ones I’m talking about). Try to stay away from other realtor branding and instead get inspiration from your favourite clothing stores and decor magazines. You want to include things like fonts, images, colours, patterns, and textures. If you are unsure if something fits, ask yourself “how does this make me feel” if it doesn’t make you feel the way you want your audience to feel about your brand… move on!
REFINE
Your next step is to do some weeding and begin to remove the images that don’t fit the look you are going for. Ask yourself how your board makes you feel, is there a general theme or emotion that your images evoke? Do you have a lot of pretty pastels? Is your board dark and moody? Bright and airy? If you’ve pinned more than 50% of a particular theme you might want to move ahead with that and eliminate everything else that doesn’t fit. If you aren’t sure ask a friend to take a look and tell you how they feel when they look at your board, if their answer is “I have no clue, it’s all over the place…” You’ve got work to do my friend. Once you’ve narrowed down your style you want to really refine your board to include only images that represent your brand, only colours that you will use in your marketing and a few fonts (3 max) that will work with your overall look.
FINALIZE
Now that you have your pretty Pinterest board completed, head on over to Canva and create a mood board. Pro tip: Canva is a great option for realtors on a budget and/or realtors who have extra time and don’t want to hire a designer for things like social media posts.
Canva has mood board templates that you can use to pop in your colours, fonts, logo, and images… it’s a great resource to have handy for your own content creation or to hand off a designer to give them an idea of your brand and eliminate the guesswork. Like to kick it old school? Another option is to print the pins on your Pinterest board and make a physical mood board that you can hang in your office to keep your brand’s visual identity front and centre on a daily basis. Either way, the end result should be a collection of images that act as a visual reference for all of your content creation as you move forward and begin to develop your brand.
That’s it! That’s how you DIY your own mood board and hopefully have fun while doing it. I’d love to see what you come up with. mood boards are kind of my jam! Link your board in the comments below so I can take a peek!
