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[Music]
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thank you
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this is WP product talk the place where every week we talk about the business and workings of owning running managing
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succeeding and even failing in the space of WordPress products and product ownership
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I'm Katie Keith CEO of planting plugins miss my line
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and I'm Matt Cromwell co-founder of give WP and now senior director of customer
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experience at Stellar WP and today's topic is what makes for a great
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WordPress product brand and why you might want to Rebrand now I've personally been looking forward to this
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one uh it's honestly something that I don't feel like it's very much conversation in the WordPress product space and yet it's really fundamental
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and really important so looking forward to this and to introduce Our Guest today we have
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a special appearance from Michelle frechette I am Michelle frechette from podcasts
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like WP Coffee Talk under represented in Tech WP motivate and the new podcast
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series WP constellations I'm introducing today's WP product talk guest Jose Volk
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Yost is an internet entrepreneur hailing from the Netherlands he's the founder of yoast the company which was sold to
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newfold digital in July 2021. he's an extensive background in digital marketing and WordPress yoast is married
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to Marika who previously held the physician of CEO at yoast until the company's acquisition
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the couple has four children together through their company Amelia Capital Yost and Marika invest in businesses
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that operate at least partially within the digital realm they also manage their own projects such as marika's Empower
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women's initiative it is my pleasure to get to know both yoast and Marika through the WordPress community and I've
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enjoyed following their initiatives that help make the community more accessible to underrepresented people I'm excited to see what will come as
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Amelia Capital grows and wish them amazing success and now here's Yost enjoy the show
Welcome
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hey welcome welcome thank you that was a nice intro
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we try we try to make people blush when they come on here yeah I'm all blushing now I'll have to thank Michelle for that
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so Michelle thank you if you're watching absolutely cool well here we are and
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like Katie said talking about branding I'm excited um and uh how we always kick this off is
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uh we want to encourage everyone who's watching to uh use the chat if you're here on YouTube
Use the chat
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um use the chat and give us your questions or your comments or your feedback or throw tomatoes at yoast or
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whatever you like um uh we can handle it if you're on Twitter use the hashtag WP product talk
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and we'll be paying attention um but uh the first things first is uh
Why is branding so important
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why this subject is so important um yoast this was actually your recommendation as a subject and uh so
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you're you're on the you're on the on the platform here why is this so important why is this such a big deal
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so in the end I think everyone when building a product once wants people to
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buy that product and a large part of that decision is do people trust you do
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people know you do they so all of these things are important and a
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lot of that is is always considered marketing but a very important portion
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of that is branding and and it's very important that people understand who you
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are but also have a feeling when they see your name they have to have that
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positive connotation to your name they have to trust you to actually fix their problem for you
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so um branding is indeed not talked about enough in the WordPress world I think
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one of the reasons yoast got as big as it was was because we did our branding very well
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and I would suggest that everybody who wants to build a product brand like that
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do the same and and and things about their brand and builds it and that's
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more than just creating a logo yeah absolutely for sure I mean I definitely
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have heard folks there's I've heard some mixed reviews on the aesthetic of yoast
The aesthetic of Yoast
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honestly some folks don't love it but I think every single person finds it distinctive like you can't not
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remember it that's the thing I think that's really interesting I I think that's more important than than
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necessarily having everyone love the imagery or whatever it is you're using
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um I I I think that the well it's one of the
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things that we did when we created yoast is it literally the second person we hired was a web designer or and a
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designer in general and the third person we hire was an illustrator and uh before
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we even hired any coders so having that that design and standing out
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from the crowd which is what you're doing literally has always been very important
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yeah absolutely I think it's really clever with the yoast brand how you've
Taking Yoast out of Yoast
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got kind of the right balance between a personal brand and also something that can stand away from you which is
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obviously important as you step away more um like you've got entirely entirely now
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I'm not involved anymore at all which is weird but it's but it's true it must be and with your name you'll always be
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branding wise symbolically and even right down to the little ghost Legos that people still have in their
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children's toy boxes and things but it is a distinct brand that can continue without which is really clever
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and it is we had we actually had a project at some point taking yoast out of yoast
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um and and our project was very much like because in the very beginning and and the WordPress uh old people will
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remember this like Katie is far too young for this to remember this I think but I I was in the header of every page
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like literally my avatar was in the editor of every page on that site and at
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some point there were like 25 people working at Yellowstone we still had that and I I talked to a friend at a
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conference and he was like dude you need to get away from that I'm like yeah you're probably right and and then we did so we we had the
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taking yoast out of yoast project and now it happens sometimes
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that I'm introduced at conferences as this is Juiced from yoast yeah yeah and
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I'm like yeah okay that worked nice
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Katie what about you um so yeah definitely an important topic
Stand out from the competition
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for all those reasons it also makes you stand out from the competition and can
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help to justify a premium price tag so if you just have kind of a really neutral brand that isn't very memorable
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people will expect to pay kind of middlely prices if you've got a really distinct professional brand then I think
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you can charge more for what is otherwise the same product because it's all about perception and as yo said a
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minute ago it's not just about visuals because it cuts across all of your customer contact points right down to
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things like the tone of voice that your support team use when they respond to technical support tickets but
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um not enough WordPress companies put that emphasis into their brand so we we should be talking about it as the
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WordPress product Talk podcast and whether it's worth putting that investment in to get a more distinctive
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brand mm-hmm absolutely yeah those are good considerations for sure I mean I think
What is a brand
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in some ways we should probably kind of distinguish for some folks that a brand is a kind of like an umbrella term for a
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lot of different things like you have your brand name you have your brand logo you have your brand icon
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um you kind of have often like a brand um voice um or tone or identity
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um that you want to represent in different ways uh we we could talk about all those things I'm not trying to limit
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the conversation but uh in many ways I think like starting with just the name itself like starting with yoast or
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starting with barn two we'll get into our our story talk a little bit later about these things but like those that
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that name by itself regardless of the icon or the logo I think is is uh unique
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and different um and can be the premium thing all by itself depending on on what that what
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that name is especially if you combine it with like a really slick domain if you're able to get away with like a
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really like a six letter domain in many ways you know nobody gets four letters anymore but
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um you know things like that can really be a big deal sometimes they're surprisingly cheap I mean yoast.com I
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bought only well that's not true it's like 18 years ago that I bought that I
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think but it it was only two and a half thousand dollars at that point nice
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all right what about yoast.nl do you have that one too we have yeah we have a lot of the different versions yet so
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um the funny thing is there's more people named Jost that I used the the
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same way of spelling it so it took some time to to com to get them all and also
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to use the power of a registered trademark and which you should do by the way if you're if you have a product and
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you have a name that you can register register that trademark yeah um to to actually get all the domain
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names and all the the Twitter handles and everything like that yeah yep really
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important um for me I think when it comes to branding uh the reason why this is such
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a big deal is it's really the very first impression of your product
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um you know they're gonna see the name they're gonna hear it uh from a friend um they're gonna see it online in the
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social context or an ad or something like that that's going to be the very first interaction
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um that they get in different ways in one way or another um and um I uh I I really think First
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Impressions matter a ton when it comes to um customer trust in who you are and what they want
First impressions
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to do and whether they want to spend money with you at all um I I think Impressions first impressions are a big deal well and it's
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also not just First Impressions right a lot of this is people hearing about you multiple times before they buy from you
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uh and and getting onto your website probably a couple of times before they
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buy we see especially with three medium products it sometimes takes more than a
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year for people to go from free to premium and uh and and that is building
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up that brand recognition and that well that that power that they attribute to
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your brand over time so it's that's also why consistency in
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these things is very important you have to be consistent about how you how you do all that yeah absolutely
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good points um who out there do you feel like is um some other really good examples of like
Good examples
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a brand name and WordPress that really nailed it okay so can I be highly critical yes
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please I think there's far too few companies doing it very very good because it's it's literally one of the
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things that Marie can I talk to a lot of our investments about like we need to to improve on that branding
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um so it's too easy maybe to shout out to some of our own Investments but I think
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after Rim is actually doing quite a good job with something that is also like
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not just a logo but also the atrium Summit and everything around that it
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became a part of their brand and I I think doing things like that like we did
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videos as well with yoastcon is super important to
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um also emphasize who you are and what you are but then you also have to make sure that
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everything that that thing is really is a good well representation of who you
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are as a company yeah atarim is a good example in terms of like a brand a re a relatively recent
No WP
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brand that ditched the wp like that's a good question to bring up here too Barn
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two also no no WP there yoast no WP with give like it's a four-letter word it's
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kind of like we we had to kind of go with the wp in some way or another because and it's a beautiful brand yeah
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yeah I'm just going to give that an example actually because you follow it you
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thing in all mediums even like Communications with Affiliates and things like that it's almost the brand
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is indistinguishable from the values which is unusual but you could lose the
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wp if you think about iconic for example they couldn't get the iconic.com domain but they've never called themselves
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iconic WP really mm-hmm yeah same thing with us like we there was no way we're going to get
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give.com um and we can't trademark give as a term uh but give WP we can and we have so
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um that's kind of a little bit of the struggle but like WP Fusion I like WP Fusion a lot as a brand name in terms of
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somebody who chose the wp um and it sounds like what it is like I like the idea of using the word Fusion
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for you know being a connector of things like I think they did a good job there but like another one is learndash didn't
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choose the wp I like learn Dash as a brand a lot personally a little bit highest
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slightly I like learn Dash too but we always used it too so I no I I agree but
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at the same time it's also like you're not by adding WP you're limiting yourself to the wp platform yeah
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basically for a long time and for some companies that might not be a problem at
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all but yoast for instance is it exists for Shopify as well and if it had a WP
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in it it that would actually be problematic problem problematic so um I mean maybe Katie I don't know how
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that is for barn two but I can imagine you doing similar things for another platform and I think you could actually use burn two there too yeah it would be
Pivoting
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an option so let's say if the terrible happened and WordPress lost its market
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share or something then we could pivot with our brand into more of um I don't know apps for other platforms so while
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that's not on the road map now it does give us that flexibility and that's a really good point about how having WP or
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even Wu or something else there's lots of variants like that in your brand does limit you because you never know what
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your future Direction might be however strong your business plan and goals
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yeah yeah and I think that it's important to realize if you do it right and your brand is bigger than a lot of
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these things so one of the so not everyone remembers
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this but what the plugin that's now called yo so it used to be called WordPress SEO in the beginning and then
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we started rebranding it WordPress SEO by yoast and a couple years later we we
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changed it to your cisio for WordPress and the funny thing is that over time you
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saw the Google Trends searches change and literally people started searching
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for yoast SEO mode and for WordPress SEO so your brand at that point becomes bigger than what you were before that
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and I think that that is actually well a a very good indicator of a strong
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business and I I think that that's something that you have to try and build over time a
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brand doesn't get built in two days it really takes a bit of time it also doesn't have to take two years
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but it but it is important that you're like that you're consistently doing a thing for a while before people actually
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trust a brand in the WordPress world one of the examples that a lot of people might know
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is post status it has actually become a brand for a community and and with that has has
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gathered well a lot of um Trust From A lot of people and it's
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where where all of us gather all the time so you so it's something that that's very like very at least very dear
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to my heart uh and I think that that's the sort of
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connection that you want people to have to a brand mm-hmm yep
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nice uh let's talk a little bit about our experiences um in um this subject in
Our experiences
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particular we all have um some experience here to that we could talk about
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um I I'll kick it off today like I think the big three that I've been directly involved in are are give WP of course
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another brand that a lot of folks don't know that we also carry is called WP business reviews and then most recently
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we did a big Rebrand in public of uh I themes changing to solid WP
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um and I think that I'll zero in on give and solid like one of the real consistencies between the way we
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approach the give brand and the solid brand where we really wanted to focus in on like a a really recognizable term uh
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and word um a word Mark essentially that folks would would recognize and would stick in
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their brain one way or another um of course these are like English terms
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um and um that is one thing to keep in mind too like we have we might want to
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talk a little bit about internationalization of brand names um but um
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and how that applies in different ways but um I think English does have a little bit of an advantage
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um in being so widely uh spoken as a second language for so many people
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um but um give in particular we wanted it to really be a short
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um uh four-letter brand as much as possible um even though we knew we weren't going
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to get away with the.com of that and that was really helpful even our slug on
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wordpress.org is just give g-i-v-e um and things like that I think were
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really useful um uh when we first picked it um and it's helpful in the cases like ours
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where we were kind of like first to Market when it comes to like a big donation plug-in essentially
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uh not exactly but close to it um so and that same thing with solid um
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we really were looking for something that um people would recognize and be familiar uh right away
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um that is one kind of downside I think to adoram um is that sometimes it takes a little bit of a mental jump to to
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really recognize what that term is and what it means and or or why you should remember it things like that
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um it pros and cons to both for sure um but for us we wanted something that really evoked like foundational
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aspects because we're really trying to do you know plugins that every WordPress
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website needs as the foundation of their site so solid WP
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um so and and it's supposed to sound very um Premier or Elite in some ways but
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also approachable and easy and straightforward too so um uh yeah
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um it's it's very clear that you've thought about it a lot more than we ever did [Laughter]
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so for me yoast was literally I had actually started my own business I was
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in the shop with one of my kids and I got a call from my accountant saying yes sorry that name's already been taken by
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another company that did the other name that I had you need to come up with another name and I literally was on the
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phone with Marika saying okay so what do I do and she said well just call it yoast like your bloke you're not gonna
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hire anyone anyway this is never going to go anywhere just
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call it after yourself yeah and then you're stuck for for a
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decade plus with a name that's constantly your own name which is sort of annoying yeah yeah no yeah so it but
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it was a good brand in many ways because it was short and memorable Etc so it has it has some very good things but it was
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I'm I want to say that we we fought about all of this from the beginning but of course we didn't
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I mean this is literally we're talking about 2010 yeah uh WordPress was yay big yeah
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and yeah no we were nowhere close to to what we were all doing did you think
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about Bond two and how did you get to Ubuntu I now want to know Katie because
Internationalisation
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Miller it would Barn at the time we now live you
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know somewhere completely different in Majorca not in the anywhere near the animals and things that we had in the
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old house and we're stuck with it and we talked earlier about internationalization apparently the word
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Barn is something to do with a baby in um Scandinavia and so people in Denmark
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and things are like what's your company got to do with babies so it's not even in good International English word and
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then you can never change it we also made the mistake of starting off as co.uk because the.com wasn't available
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so then we had to spend a reasonable amount of money to get the.com once we
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realized we were an international company which we'd never anticipated when we started designing WordPress
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websites in 2010 so that's another example of not really planning for your
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future growth yeah now that's such an interesting story I love it
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um and I I do I do have a real font spot for like both of those stories in terms of like we're just like hobbyists just
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kind of doing a thing on the weekend and we're just gonna give it a name and then all of a sudden it becomes this big deal it's like it's really fun I love it
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well it's also I I think in the end that's how a lot of Wordpress companies
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started yeah and in general how a lot of companies start is
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it just happens yeah and but like I mean that that's uh the space is changing you
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know and that's I think that's a little bit like where we all came from is like what we got away with like eight ten
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years ago we can't get away with as easily today um and so that's what I like about where
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you're coming from yoast now with Amelia Capital it's like you're you you're like if somebody's like I'm just gonna name
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it after myself or my after my first born kid and you're like no no don't do that like I did that and I wouldn't do
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it again right so so Emilia capitals actually has a has a fun story to it too
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because we our address is actually Emilia Vanessa Street here in the Netherlands and Emilia was a princess
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from the town that we uh that we are in or actually she was a Dutch royal princess that lived in this town for a
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while and the castle she was quite badass so we were like hey that that's a good name for our company but it
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I I do like a a name with a story uh to it uh and and well Emilia ticked all the
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boxes and we're we're well that's actually probably the second time I get to build a brand like that uh and and
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with Marika again and and we'll play with it create logos do the whole thing again and think about hey what what what
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do we want to be what does that look like mm-hmm yeah well it does definitely feel like a
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very different approach to a brand than yoast was right yeah but it's also a
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very different Beast uh so it's very much not a consumer brand
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um it's very much something that um well it has two places to be in I
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think one is the WordPress community and and the other thing is towards companies looking for investment which is a very
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different way of of looking at things um
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in some ways you want to look professional and like you know what you're doing when you when you're
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investing in other companies and of course we don't because nobody does um but
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yeah so you need to portray that nicely um
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so it has a different role to play and I think yoast is very very much more a a
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brand that talks to a very wide community of users um where both of you probably play as
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well I mean Barton 2 has is a bit more towards the e-commerce side and most of its plugins I think but I I
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um you're talking to a much larger market of users than we are with Amelia it has
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a very different approach well for you it's more of a supportive tool really isn't it so people will
Credibility
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apply for investment or something and then that adds credibility afterwards it's not so much for getting that deal
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in the first place I think most people want this as
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investors because it's Marika and me and not necessarily because we're called Amelia because nobody really cares I
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think at the same time once we start combining these Investments and people
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look at it at it more than maybe it might it might become a bit more than that but we'll see I we
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um we've got plenty of ideas for the next couple of years and uh and well it's it's all just starting literally uh
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so uh yeah looking forward to build on that and see where we can take that maybe we'll do an Amelia Khan at some
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point but then we'll have to come up with something better
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actually combining multiple Brands into a single brand because that's something that Matt you've been doing with Stella
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isn't it each of those was branded its own rights but you're bringing them together now they have this Mutual
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support network so I suppose an accelerator type program is similar
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um yeah I think umbrella Brands is like a whole nother conversation
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um those are harder um and even with Stellar like um
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Stellar Works only because we're making it work I think in many ways um it doesn't sound like a like if it was like
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Michelle just launched uh WP constellation um podcast you know constellation sounds
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like a grouping of things you know it just automatically sounds that way Stellar just sounds like awesome you
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know it's uh doing awesome things um but it's a whole nother conversation
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I think well it's also interesting because there's you've made it very different choices and for instance Syed
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did with it with his uh plugins because he's it's all the wp beginner family but
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it's it's not really an umbrella brand and and yet it is and there so there's there's a lot of different ways you can
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go about that and I mean the only thing that I I'm always a bit
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afraid of in these things is how not to confuse the end yeah uh which honestly
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with Stellar is a bit like it's it's a stellar it's a liquid web brand and there's like there's three layers to
28:51
that which is quite a lot to to comprehend um but umbrella Brands I well if you get to
28:58
that problem it's a good problem to have yeah true delicious brains is another good one
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um well that's not quite exactly an umbrella brand anymore but like um a holding brand for several different
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products um and I I it's an interesting approach because like none of their
29:16
product names sound like delicious brains at all and none of them sound related to each other in any way
29:23
um and delicious print itself doesn't sound like an umbrella uh term in any way but they just ran with it and they
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just made the website really reflect it really well um so I love the brand name though it's
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yeah yeah it's just very cool all of their products are or most of their products have WP in them though if if I
29:43
recall correctly but it is like yeah well migrate DB Pro not quite but like
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yeah yeah there's a couple of them yeah yeah and then they purchased ACF which also doesn't have yeah but they never
29:57
really co-branded that like whereas with their other products that had unique color schemes and logos even within the
30:03
wider brand which was quite nice yeah true true Katie you have a note here
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about what you would do differently next time I want to lean in on that a little bit okay
Design
30:14
yeah our brand kind of just just it's interesting we did the opposite of yoast who you just said your
30:21
I think was it your third and fourth hires were designers and illustrators and so on we literally just hired our
30:28
first designer a couple of months ago our first full-time designer we um our
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logo was designed by somebody on 99 designed so was the home page of our
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website which is not the most professional way to get a brand so I would definitely hire somebody proper
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either an agency or in-house that doesn't really matter but it's about having an individual you can build that
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relationship with so I would do that differently uh other things I would do
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differently um would be to aim higher our Brand's fine but really I would like it I would
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Aspire for it to be as professional as the best SAS companies I think we should
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be looking outside of Wordpress in our aspirations for our brand because Beyond WordPress yes the standard is the
31:19
average standard is higher so I'd like to up the level of our brand at some
31:25
point but we're kind of daunted about the size of that project so we're trying to evolve our brand gradually and now
31:31
we've got an in-house designer and he's designing so it's nice things like our t-shirts for word Camp Europe and all
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the swag and um all these things we've never had before but I would definitely do that
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differently and another note it's interesting to think about uniqueness
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because you never know like for example our t-shirts last year were the same color
31:56
as the volunteers at word campus and people kept asking us for directions
32:02
so this year it's actually a good marketing play lots of people talking to
32:07
you but for the wrong reason and then this year we've gone for quite an unusual color of blue and as you can
32:15
see yoast has the same color T-shirt and I just got off a call with some other
32:21
WordPress people and Jason Coleman had the same color t-shirts as me I thought it was unusual so
32:28
I think yoast is quite clever because that kind of burgundy dark red and your
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t-shirts always stand out at word camps as the only ones that color yeah yeah we that we did on Purpose By
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the way we actually because we were orange at first which I was gonna say yeah it was quite typical for a Dutch
32:48
company but we were quite sick of it at some point yeah uh and um we literally did an exercise where we
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put all the logos of all the big WordPress companies uh uh on a on a wall
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and just started throwing new combinations of colors into it like what are we gonna do and this one stood out
33:08
the most absolutely that's an ongoing joke in Stellar is that with Devin and I
33:13
in particular all of the brands are blue except for give is green and we're like the next brand we acquire cannot be blue
33:21
that's right but it honestly at a WordPress conference a lot of a lot is
33:26
blue but it's even worse when you go to cloudfest you'd think that all these hosting Brands looked it would would
33:32
have like very distinguished Brands and then all of them basically look the same hmm yeah but I agree with Katie it is
33:41
like aspiring to to be a bit more than than what what the average is in the
33:47
WordPress world is important in these things and I think that actually starts with something different than logos and
33:54
um and and names it starts more with like what are your core principles what what
34:01
is it that your company stands for what besides making money is important to your company and thinking about those
34:09
things and then Translating that into a story is probably a much more important thing that that a lot of companies
34:16
should do a bit more well exercise on I think yeah yeah that's going back to
34:22
what I was saying about brand voice I think in some ways um you know when I want that when people
34:28
think of solid WB they think of um the solid foundation for their whole website
34:34
um that are all about security and backups and maintenance like that's what I want them to hear every single time in
34:40
one form or another um we'll see if that works Katie but are you actually doing kind of
34:46
like a soft like announcement that you're like considering a Rebrand is that what you're doing right here is are
34:51
you telling us this breaking news no no it's something that you know I have been debating for years he in particular
34:59
thinks it's worth it and I'm like okay you lead the projects and he hasn't chosen to but yeah this was a problem
35:07
with our last Rebrand um it's the biggest uh the nearest we've ever come to falling out uh you know we've built
35:14
lots of plugins and other aspects of the business together and The Branding was the thing that was the most sensitive so
35:21
we're a bit reluctant to get into it again and I've been very clear that it has to be his project because I can't go
35:28
there yeah I can imagine yeah so it's more like a dream that we would click
35:33
our fingers and have this magical new SAS level brand but there's no immediate
35:39
planned to do it yeah yeah I'll talk to Marika about this we should probably just talk write about
35:46
this a bit more and she's done a lot of that That Brand Story type work here
35:51
and it is something that we that you you run into uh a lot with companies is that that is
35:57
hard to do that and it's actually it's a lot of work and it takes time away from stuff that you that that seems like a
36:05
lot more important in the short term um but I do think it's actually good to to go through that process and you
36:11
become a better company for it well in terms of return on investment when we first started selling plugins we
Return on Investment
36:18
just put the plugins on our main agency website which was fine but it wasn't that professional it was just average we
36:26
then did some work to just improve things like fonts and spacing and attention to detail and our conversion
36:34
rate shot up and we really saw the difference after that mini Rebrand and
36:40
then when we did the whole project to get our current brand there was no measurable increase in conversion rates
36:47
we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars no not hundreds tens of thousands of dollars
36:52
um hours and hours months of work and we didn't measure an improved Roi so I
36:59
wonder if there's a law of diminishing returns where once you're professional it's harder to quantify going to the
37:06
next level yes to some degree but I also think that there's that you just can't measure over
Brand is an Asset
37:13
fishing yeah and uh this in particular is is very hard to put a proper measure
37:20
on um and that you're also selling yourself short by doing that a bit it's it that
37:28
brand is important for multiple things it's not just important for who you sell to but if you at some point want to sell
37:34
your company then that brand is actually an asset that they that they will look at like hey this is good this is
37:40
something we can use um and I think that there's there's a lot
37:47
of a lot that you could do with that and um it just in thinking about hey who are
37:54
we to whom and how do we how do we portray that um and thinking that every one of these
38:00
things can be measured is honestly um I think one of the fallacies of
38:05
marketing in general at the in the in the last decade uh and it's getting less and less true
38:11
so yeah yeah or at least getting a lot more challenging to measure measure
38:17
accurately um yeah we could do an entire episode on on measurement and how you can do that
38:23
it's the best way to get Marika uh mad is to say that you can measure everything precisely because you can't
38:30
and um but it it is yeah it all of these
38:36
things tied together um I think good branding and and knowing very well what your brand is and what
38:44
you stand for also leads to easier decisions and marketing and and to quicker decisions in
38:51
marketing so it has a lot of these spin-off effects that that are super important to Growing your business
38:57
no absolutely uh yes do you have a note here too about the importance of your own events
39:05
um as you get bigger um what's that about yeah so for me it's and for us
Yscon
39:11
it's always been very important to to more to be more than just a WordPress
39:18
company or just an SEO company so we try to combine those things into yoscon
39:25
Marika created that entire program and I and I think that it's
39:31
super important once you reach a specific size and and you have enough of
39:37
an audience to be able to to pull that off that it's super helpful for everyone
39:42
not just to the outside but also to your team because you suddenly so what we
39:48
always did is we brought in what we thought were some of the best speakers in the WordPress space and in the in the
39:53
SEO space and combined them and it's super energizing because you you get all these ideas so after that a lot of
40:00
things would always happen in the company I think that's super cool to do
40:05
um and it doesn't have to be an event right it can be a a another thing as well but I I do think that it's
40:11
important to make your brand be more than just a logo it it has to be
40:18
an experience and it had there has to be if you can if you can attach experiences
40:24
to that to that brand name I think that's super powerful in the long run um and it's also
40:30
um Katie mentioned already like the people recognize their yoast college shirts and on work camps Etc it's always
40:38
like yes we're there we're there usually with a lot of people as seo's team and
40:43
you talk to a lot of people and you have a lot of fun conversations
40:49
um and you make some rules about that so one of the things that one of the first rules we always had was you don't get drunk in a Year's shirt
40:55
um uh because your brand perception is important I still get mad when we we
41:02
have Flags outside of our offices here in a couple of places and if those if those flags uh are ripped that you don't
41:10
do that to your brand you make sure that you replace them in time so it's it's something that you take care of and that
41:17
is uh and that is a bit more than than just um the physical appearance of it it's
41:23
very much also like how those people interact on a worst Camp is super important yeah yeah really simple
Brand Guidelines
41:30
application of that honestly is just when people try to put together brand guidelines and things like that for how
41:36
others should be using the brand if they're going to promote you or if they're an affiliate things like that the truth is in the WordPress space I
41:43
often see that the brands don't even follow their own brand guidelines on their own website or in their own
41:49
product like I'll often see people putting their their icon or their logo
41:55
like in these weird colors and shapes and all kinds of stuff
42:00
but without you know without any real uh care for their own style guide you know
42:08
um I think I think that kind of thing is also really important um uh because if you don't do it
42:13
yourself you can't reach out to an affiliate and say Hey you made my logo look like crap on your website like help
42:18
me out here it's like well you kind of do that yourself so it's hard you have to set the right standards so
42:26
um I like the way that um yoast again I like the way that you're able to use the Y icon
42:33
um and like like recently I'm seeing it a lot with the rainbow behind it for example um I think that's really really clever
42:40
um the way that's been able to be used in a lot of different formats um and with different approaches to it we've
42:47
tried to do some fun things with the give G here and there like we put a Santa hat on it sometimes during the
42:53
Christmas season and things like that but it's a little bit harder to get away with I think with our give G
43:00
um well you need a level of brand recognition that's pretty hard to achieve I think before you can do weird
Brand Recognition
43:06
stuff again with it and that takes time and money yeah uh and those sponsorships at
43:15
wordcamps are pretty costly so it is uh I mean it is that sort of thing that that you need to do to also get that
43:22
word out there yeah um but it's still like um uh I think it's worth it too and I
43:30
agree with you that that style guide is important but it's also like don't take yourself too seriously
43:36
[Music] um if you if you take your own brand seriously but also not too seriously I
43:42
think that's the best way of being at it yeah and that's why I love the barn too I mean even if it's weird in some
43:49
languages what that that it's it is what it is right it has a history and and that's a good thing yeah
43:57
absolutely well we are coming to the end and uh we want to wrap up with some of our best
44:02
advice so uh if you are working on a new product uh or a new brand
44:08
um we're gonna come rapid fire with our best advice right now so first up uh is
44:15
Katie Katie what is your best advice for folks who are building out a brand new brand yeah well we need to think about
44:21
people's different budgets and so on so as an absolute minimum create a simple brand that is highly professional and
44:28
will build trust and if possible if budget allows invest further in a more
44:33
professional unique brand identity that people will recognize much more
44:39
nice that's really good actual advice and I I would add to that that create
44:45
just a few rules of what it is that you want to do in the world besides making money because I assume that all of you
44:50
want to make money but what are the other things that that you want to achieve and that you would like the
44:56
world to see and write those down and discuss those with your company and see like how how do people react to this and
45:04
that bring that into your brand yeah a couple times in here yoast you
45:09
also mentioned like the non-physical aspects of your brand is that that is is that what you're touching on a little
45:15
bit there yeah yeah I think a brand is much more a
45:20
it's something that people can rally around so it is it is uh a flag but it's
45:26
also what that flank stands for so the rainbow colors for yoasts are
45:32
very much something that fits with the values the core values of yoast and um
45:37
having those core values and being being clear about what your company's core values are is is super worthwhile yep
Final Thoughts
45:46
absolutely that's definitely a guiding thing we did with give is like our tagline is democratizing generosity and
45:53
so everything that we do um with our brand and uh is all about how we can encourage people to be more
46:00
generous in one form or another um I think my best advice
46:06
um if you're just just barely getting started is to really focus on um recognizable names that are easy
46:13
um especially internationally I don't want to throw this company under the bus but I do have to mention like in in the
46:20
Work Camp Europe space right now we have a media partner named WP giz
46:26
um and uh spelled with a G and it's a little bit unfortunate honestly and it's caused a little bit of controversy
46:31
around where Camp Europe a bit because the pronunciation is a bit unfortunate
46:37
when it comes to English um and uh but they're doing some really cool media work honestly like I've been
46:43
watching them closely they're doing a really good job um so really focus on International pronunciation as much as possible and
46:51
develop a tone guide specifically because I really think between having a really great term and then having a
46:58
really strong and Clear Tone guide like logo icon colors all of the starts to
47:04
get a lot easier once you've really honed in on the word Mark and honed in on a really good tone guide in
47:11
particular those two things just um make everything else a lot easy going forward
47:16
so cool that's all we've got any other last final comments uh anything else
47:24
um special do you want to call out any great reveals coming up this way from Amelia or Barn two
47:30
oh I'd like to know more about what you're doing at wordcamp Europe oh yes so at work and Bureau we have a
47:37
couple of companies pitching us so we're doing a sort of like uh people have
47:42
called it a mini Shark Tank uh but yeah people are pitching us their new
47:48
products for investment we still have a couple of spots open now because someone dropped out so if if someone wants to
47:55
purchase their company we're still very happy to receive those pictures
48:01
um and we're also just going to be there and have fun and meet up with all our our WordPress friends so I'm really
48:06
looking forward to getting to Athens that's awesome sounds amazing so when is it because I didn't see it on the
48:12
schedule isn't it is it which schedule were you looking at at our side word Camp Europe
48:19
one um oh the timings now we'll publish the timings uh later this week so we will
48:25
make sure to check uh follow follow us on Twitter Emilia Capital it's very simple
48:33
um and what do we got going next week um we're bringing on Michelle right yep so we've just had her for the
48:40
introduction she is our guest next week and that will be the last full week
48:45
before word Camp Europe so we thought we should do a word Camp Focus WP product
48:50
talk she's um obviously amazing Community leader and we're going to talk
48:56
to her about maximizing your words Camp experience tips for specifically product
49:01
owners in how to get the most out of word Camp just right before we get to a lot of us put it into practice the
49:08
following week excellent I'm always looking forward to talking with Michelle for sure so thank
49:15
you everybody for a great week for a great conversation and uh we will see everybody next week with Michelle have a
49:21
good one