In my announcement about my rebrand, I shared how the name and tagline were formed. In this article, I will share the other details that are involved in a rebrand. Moreover, I delve into how/why it takes a community to undergo such a transformation. Women in recovery are no strangers to leaning on a village. Let’s face it, no one transforms alone and better yet, why would you? It’s so much more fun together.
If anyone has a brand and now realizes it’s time to change it, hopefully, these tips will help you.
To Hire or Not to Hire?
That is the question! I work full time and help women in recovery so I knew I would only have so much time to work on the behind the scenes stuff. That being said, I definitely knew I would be hiring someone to assist with the website. That someone is my friend, Kevin Clack of Clackapedia.
I pay Kevin to host my website and he does a great job.
Kevin was instrumental in transferring all of my stuff from Ms. Fiology to Recovering Women Wealth. Additionally, he helped with some other details in setting up the site.
For me, it was well worth it to hire Kevin for this assist.
The other person I hired in the rebrand was my good friend’s 15-year-old daughter, Gwen, to take some pictures of me. Gwen is really gifted at photography so we packed up a few outfits and went to a local beach on Lake Erie. I have a whole slew of pictures Gwen took and will be splattering them throughout future posts.
Once I picked out the WordPress theme for my new site, getting these photos taken was the very next thing I did.
Advice From Others
Another consideration when you’ve got a brand and a following is to transition your social media accounts to the new brand. When I started this process I had no idea if this was possible or not, so I asked the question in the private FinCon Facebook group.
What is FinCon you may ask? It’s a financial conference that happens once a year in a new location each year. A lot of content producers in the personal finance world attend. It’s a blast & very informative!
Anyway, it seemed like the appropriate place to ask my question and there were no shortages of kind people who stepped up to offer advice.
Drew Duboff was incredibly helpful in how to transition my social media handles. Drew was very generous in offering tips and advice. He basically told me that if I had any type of following, it would be wise to keep my same accounts and rebrand them. Then he provided examples and images on how to do this.
Additionally, Drew is for hire for online entrepreneurs looking to scale!
Melody Johnson from Her Design Life also jumped in with some play-by-play directions on changing the social media accounts. Furthermore, she hopped on a phone call with me. When I told Melody I was going to hold off on rebranding as I was coping with some depression, she simply offered support and encouragement. I meet the most awesome people. 🙂
Melody is also for hire and seems to be exceptionally gifted in helping women find their brand. Melody has a blog, podcast (Earn Save Thrive), and private Facebook group so she is certainly building a thriving community.
While I value the advice and tips these two gave me I did not hire either of them for further assistance. However, if they offer what you are looking for, I’d highly recommend both as they were expert and generous in their advice to me.
Social Media Transition
It’s mostly intuitive once you start playing around in your accounts but I’ll share details below.
For me, the first key was finding out it’s possible. Then once I received unanimous advice to keep my social media accounts and just change my handles, I moved forward with the rebrand.
Firstly, I worked with Kevin to get the site all setup and made the big announcement to my email subscribers first. The second wave of announcements went out to the world with my break-out post and the sharing on all the social media platforms.
I figured I wanted to tweet it, share it, and post it on my socials with my former, Ms. Fiology handles so everyone would know it was me. Next, I announced that I would be changing my handles.
Okay, so I didn’t check to see what type of handles would be available on Twitter when I thought of my new name, Recovering Women Wealth. I didn’t care, though, because I knew it was the name for me!
Finding a Twitter handle was not so easy. RecoveringWomenWealth was too long. RecoveringWomen was taken. RecoveringWealth was taken. WomenWealth was taken. Gesh!!
Well, I settled on DeannaRWW and you know what…I think I really like it! Some of my friends on Twitter gave me confirmation also.
Then I changed my name to Deanna @ Recovering Women Wealth. Here’s how you do both:
- Go to your twitter profile page and hit edit profile
- There you can change your name, bio, and website.
- Save changes
To change your handle:
1.) Click on your profile pic and then settings and privacy
2.) Try some different handles (usernames) to see what is available.
Voila!
Instagram was fairly easy and I did it all from my phone since Instagram is made for phones.
Once in your Instagram account, you’ll click on the person icon in the bottom right corner.
Then you can click on edit profile.
From there you can make all of your edits.
Okay, so I may not be the best at giving Facebook rebranding advice because I’m not fully done but you can learn from my mistakes! Isn’t that one of the best things about community?! We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We can all glean some knowledge through each other’s failings.
On my Facebook business page, I did the most important things first of changing my profile and header picture. A girl has #priorities.
Next, I went into editing my page information…
This is where you can edit things like your description, categories, website, and email address.
Lastly, I went to the “about” section and this is where I’m having difficulty. I’ve tried changing my name to Recovering Women Wealth and Deanna at Recovering Women Wealth. Both requests have been denied and the message I’m receiving is that they may be misleading. I’m so confused about that and have submitted an appeal.
I suppose I could delete this page and start a new one but I was hoping to avoid that as I have some reviews up.
Well, I’m open to your suggestions if you have any…
I actually received no direction on this social media platform but it was pretty easy to figure out. To make any edits to your Pinterest account, you click on the three dots in the upper right-hand corner. Then click on edit settings.
Once you are there you can edit things like your photo, display name, and username (see below). Additionally, to edit your email go to account settings from here. Lastly, you can edit your website under Claim.
Now the question remains if I will make new pins for all my former posts with the new site name? It’s probably worth it but this will be something I’ll chunk away at slowly.
Other Considerations
Some other things that one needs to think about when rebranding are:
- Your current email subscription list
- Your Social Media Share plugin
- Your social media follow icons
I am not going to explain exactly how to do each of these since there are different email marketing automation platforms and plugins. However, generally speaking, you will need to address each of these.
I use MailerLite and it was fairly simple to keep my email subscribers of Ms. Fiology subscribed to Recovering Women Wealth. First, I announced the rebrand to them and explained they could unsubscribe at any time.
Second, I changed my campaign layout, my logo, and email.
Third, I authenticated my new site with MailerLite.
Fourth, I updated my RSS feeds on my campaign.
That was basically it. MailerLite’s customer service team (and Kevin) were incredibly helpful with my questions on how.
I use Shareaholic for the social media sharing ability on my site. I had to go into this plugin and change my twitter handle to my new one. Simple.
Lastly, I needed to update the links on my social media icons.
Ooh, one more thing! I’m emailing any other site which allowed me to guest post or podcast who interviewed me and am asking them to link to my new site. I’ve got redirects for now but this cannot hurt!
I’m feeling mostly complete about this rebrand but I am going through all my old posts and updating images with my new name, Recovering Women Wealth. Again, I’m chunking away at this a little at a time.
Have I missed anything?
Closing Thoughts
The rebranding has been a lot of work and I certainly couldn’t have done it alone. But it’s oh so worth it! It’s now really clear who I am writing to. Furthermore, I have a better chance at reaching more women in recovery with a name like, Recovering Women Wealth.
I’m on a mission and excited about this next chapter.
Reader Questions: What transformations have you undergone recently? What did you learn in the process? Who helped you on that journey?
Theme pic by “My Life Through A Lens” on Unsplash
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