Rebrand checklist - what do you need to update and where?
Rebrands can feel exciting — but they can also feel like, ahem, a lot of work. Especially if you’ve been in business a few years, you’ll be showing up in places that you might not even remember! I originally compiled this list to show my clients what we can rewrite when we work through Ick-Free Introductions together, but it also works really well as a rebrand checklist, so I thought I’d share it here too.
If you’d like it in a doc, spreadsheet or Notion version, then just pop your email in the box at the bottom of the blog and I’ll send it over!
How to use this rebrand checklist
Some of these points will be relevant to you and some won’t, so don’t feel you have to tick them all off (there’s no point in having a snazzy podcast intro if you don’t have a podcast, for example!) This rebrand checklist is more about getting you to think about all the places online where you might have a presence, and ensuring that they reflect your new, exciting direction.
As I said above, this rebrand checklist was created with written introductions in mind (because that’s what I do), but it works well for colour palettes, logos, new fonts, brand imagery, and everything else you might get in a rebrand too.
It’s also a useful resource for just giving your brand and online presence a onceover every now and again. Our businesses are fluid, but what we’ve written stays static, so every 6 months or so it’s a good idea to just ensure everything you wrote is still Gucci, even if you’ve not had a major rebrand. (If you want a 6 month reminder to do this, just pop me an email and I’ll send you one in half a year’s time!)
Your rebrand checklist
Social media
Facebook profile bio — this is your personal profile, and is useful if you utilise networking groups so that people you interact with can quickly see what your business is. However, if you’d rather keep the two separate, don’t worry about this one
Facebook About section — this is for your business page
Facebook Cover photo — some people like to use the Facebook cover photo to display a short headline or CTA, made on Canva for example
Instagram bio — 150 characters to explain what your profile is for
LinkedIn bio — Officially this is called your LinkedIn “headline”, and it’s the short description you have underneath/next to your name and profile picture. If you don’t edit it, it will autopopulate with your current role — but it’s prime real estate that deserves something more specific and attention-grabbing!
LinkedIn about — similarly to your website about page, this is a longer section allowing you to go deeper
LinkedIn cover photo — and similarly to the Facebook cover photo above, you can use this space to call people to action…just make sure you leave enough room so that your head doesn’t cover any text
Tiktok bio — if you set up your account to learn dance routines in lockdown like the rest of us, but have since transiitoned into posting business content, you might want to check your bio and see if it reflects what you can do (other than still semi-remember the moves to the Savage by Megan Thee Stallion dance…what a time that was)
Pinterest bio — though in most cases, your Pinterest profile isn’t somewhere people will be looking particularly often, it still doesn’t hurt to make sure it all checks out
Website
About page — this one is a biggie! Your about page is perhaps one of the most important pages on your website, so you want to make sure it reflects your current position, offering, and vibe
Blog signature — one of the many benefits of blogging for your business is SEO and increased visibility, so, hopefully, there’ll be people reading your blogs that have never heard of you or your business before. Make it super easy for them to know who’s responsible for the brilliant value they just received with a blog signature or sidebar (recently Squarespace made it super simple to do, so you can see mine below.)
Email signature
Welcome and evergreen sequence — the power of a sequence in an email marketing provider is that they can be semi set-it-and-forget-it. Make sure the first impression you’re giving your newest, hottest subscribers is the right one!
Press & Pitching
Boilerplate — your PR boilerplate is the PR version of your blog signature in that it’s a short, standardised paragraph that quickly describes who you are and what you do. Brands use it at the end of press releases to give the context and important facts needed to situate the story, but it’s useful to have even if you don’t currently do press releases
3-line Bio — a fairly short but impactful summary of you and your business for when you’re speaking to new audiences (e.g. if you’re speaking at an event and they want a bio for marketing material)
Author bios on different sites — if you guest write on someone else’s blog, or write on Substack, Medium or another platform, then make sure your bio reflects your up-to-date work
Podcast
Intro — if your episode intro is pre-recorded, make sure it reflects where you’re at currently in business
Description on your host — this is the blurb that people see when they view your podcast
Description on Spotify — depending on your podcast host, Spotify can sometimes override any changes made in your host, so it’s always worth double checking that it changes when you’ve edited it (am I speaking from experience here, as someone who up until recently had a podcast description that was 5 years out of date on Spotify? Maybe…)
How many of these did you already have on your radar? How many had you forgotten about entirely?
And don’t forget, you can get this rebrand checklist in a Docs, Notion or Sheets form by popping your email in the box below and joining The Thread!
