Note from Jennifer: Thank you to Rochelle Melander, an excellent writing coach, for asking me to guest post on her blog Write Now Coach! Be sure to check out my post on breaking into content marketing writing as well as the rest of her blog, which is a great resource for writers.

One of the most common questions I get when I talk to other writers is, “What exactly does the term ‘brand’ mean in the context of content marketing?” The term brand is tossed in most discussions of content marketing (and I am very guilty of this) and it is actually a bit challenging to understand. People use it to mean different things, which makes the term even more confusing. And I think sometimes even the people using these terms aren’t exactly sure what they mean, so you are definitely not alone if you have wondered what the word ‘brand’ actually means.

A Definition

After doing some research, I decided that I like Jerry McLaughlin’s definition best. In his article “So What’s a Brand Anyway” published on Forbes.com, he wrote, “Put simply, your ‘brand’ is what your prospect thinks of when he or she hears your brand name. It’s everything the public thinks it knows about your name brand offering—both factual (e.g. It comes in a robin’s-egg-blue box), and emotional (e.g. It’s romantic). Your brand name exists objectively; people can see it. It’s fixed. But your brand exists only in someone’s mind.”

I think that’s why branding is such a difficult concept, because it only exists in people’s minds. So, when think of a Ford truck, you think rugged and tough. When you hear Disney, you think magic and youth. Mountain Dew invokes a feeling of high energy and adventure. None of these feelings are created by one ad or one piece of content. It’s more than just the colors of their website or their logo or their product. And it’s the product of years of consistent effort to create the brand.

What the Term ‘Brand’ Means to Content Marketing Writers

Once a company has established the brand’s identity (a process called branding–here is an article I wrote for OPENForum a few years ago that explains branding in more depth) then everything that they do needs to contribute to the brand’s image. And for a piece of content marketing to be successful it must be authentic to the brand. If you are writing for Disney, you will use much different language, tone and writing style than you would when writing a blog for Ford, beyond the obvious differences in actual content.

But the concept of brand gets even more confusing because potential clients and other writer often ask you what brands you have written for. In my experience, when someone inside a company talks about their brand, they are talking about the actual definition of brand that we talked about before. But if someone outside the company talks about brands or wants to know what brands you have worked for, then they are just asking for the brand name.

So let’s say that you are having a phone interview with a prospective client and they ask if you have any experience with content marketing in the parenting niche. If you have worked for Huggies, you would not say Kimberly-Clark (the company that owns the Huggies brand) or Huggies Little Snugglers (the product you worked for), you would say Huggies because that is the overall brand that you wrote for. I have recently seen this question asked on applications for working at various content companies.

For the next few weeks, take special notice every time someone uses the word brand and think about what they really mean. Brand isn’t really one of those terms that you can learn the formal definition and be done with it. But of all of the content marketing terms that writers need to know, I think that brand is the most important. In order to create effective content that will ultimately increase trust in your client’s brand, you must really understand what their brand is and what it is not. And to be able to do that, you really need to have a solid grasp on the term brand.

What is your experience with the term brand? Anything that helped you understand the concept that might be helpful to other writers? Ask any questions that you have.