SWOT Analysis

Developing a strong brand for your organization is all about how you communicate your organization’s mission and values to your current and future members. What do you want others to know about your organization? What are the experiences and feelings you hope to create for students at Clemson?

Remember that your brand statement will look different from your mission and vision. While your mission describes what you value and what your organization will do from an internal perspective, your brand statement focuses on how you will communicate your mission and vision to your audience.

Brand Brainstorming

When writing your brand statement, consider the following questions:

• What does your organization do?

• Who does your organization serve?

• Why is your organization important?

• What visuals, colors and texts will you use to reflect your organization values?

Increase Brand Awareness

Once you’ve created a brand statement, there are several ways to increase your brand awareness.

• Include asking for social media handles on your member interest forms so that your officers & organization account can easily follow them online.

• Create a fun social media challenge where members gather new followers from their own networks.

• Follow other Clemson organizations to build community and find new ideas and opportunities for collaboration with your peers.

Relate to Your Audience

New members are more likely to buy into your organization if they feel connected to your organization’s mission. To increase feelings of connectedness with an audience, relate your vision to their interests. In in other words, know your audience! If new members will join as general body members, give them a clear picture of what their membership will look like. What opportunities can your organization give them that are unique?

Celebrate Victories & Growth Areas

Celebrate and draw attention to the organization’s achievements and talk about how the organization got there. It’s also beneficial to evaluate the defeats of your organization, and what could’ve been improved upon as an organization, since new members can help your organization through new ideas and new experiences.

Use Images

Pictures are worth a thousand words. Show your audience how awesome it is to be in your organization with photos of members at events!

Keep it Accessible

The purpose of marketing is to reach the largest audience, and making sure your content is accessible supports this goal and shows your student organization is

• If you use Instagram Stories for your student organization member spotlights, event videos, or promotion, add closed captions through editing the clips through the app. You can also add captions through the Instagram Threads app or Clipomatic. Adding captions allows Deaf individuals, people who are hard of hearing, and people watching in a loud room or with their volume off to still interact with your content.

• Use alternate text if you have text in images, like if you post a flyer in an email or in a web post, so people using screenreaders can access the information.

• Check out these websites to help expand the accessibility of your content:

  • WebAIM Color Contrast Checker: A contrast color checker that gives you results in real time for regular and large text.

  • Color Oracle: A free color blindness simulator for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It shows you in real time what people with common color vision impairments see.

  • The a11y project: A community-driven effort to make digital accessibility easier, with many posts and resources to expand your organization's accessibility.