7 Steps To Launching a Successful Lifestyle Brand

Instagram is where the party’s at and if you’ve ever wondered how people make a living posting their selfies and trips to Bali, then you’re not alone.

What exactly is a “lifestyle brand?” Nowadays anyone can claim to be a lifestyle brand. At its essence, a lifestyle brand embodies a specific lifestyle and leverages that lifestyle to connect and engage others who aspire for that way of life. The best way to connect and engage is through storytelling, and in the case of social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, it’s all visual.

Here are seven steps you can take to launch your lifestyle brand.

Identify your lifestyle. What vertical do you want to get into? Is your lifestyle brand rooted in travel, food, fashion & style, business, spirituality, culture, and/or entertaining?

Figure out the top three lifestyle topics that you’re absolutely bananas about and hone in on those. This is not the time to be “all things to all people.” Pick your lifestyle topics and stick to them.

Identify your niche. Once you’ve got your target areas, who do you want to connect and engage with? Do you want to build a travel brand for millennial Latinas, a fashion brand for over 40 entrepreneurs, or a cooking brand or help those recovering from trauma?

Your lifestyle topic and niche are different and should be approached separately.

Create a starter website. While Instagram may be where you go to build an audience, you will still want you own online home, also known as (a.k.a) your website.

Whether you choose WordPress or Squarespace to power your blog, pick the one that will be the easiest for you to manage and maintain. You don’t want to spend most of your time working on your site.

Browse other lifestyle brands. Spend a day looking at other brands. Proceed with caution. This is not an open invitation to indulge in brand envy. Simply browse the landscape and get a sense for what others are doing and how they’re doing it. Look at big brands to see who are the leaders you may one day want to work with.

After you’ve looked at enough brands, walk away and don’t go back! You don’t want to get caught up in comparison mode as you are honing your own brand.

Outline the next 4 weeks of content. When you launch any new brand online, you’ll want to have a batch of content already created. This includes having a handful of blogs written and a batch of graphics ready to share on social media.

Batching your content will give you some traction with marketing as well as prepare you to work in advance so that you’re launching a brand that’s consistent with posting.

Sign up with influencer networks. Collectives such as We All Grow will connect you with a community of other lifestyle bloggers, as well as the brands who want you to work with them. You will also get invaluable wisdom and advice from others who are on the same path as you.

Sync your social media profiles. Once you’re ready to launch, make sure you have the social media profiles that match your lifestyle brand. A presence on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are the standard however you may also want to leverage Snapchat, LinkedIn, Good Reads, and/or Google Plus.

After you launch your lifestyle brand, stay on top of your brand and be consistent. Rome wasn’t built overnight and neither will your lifestyle brand.