An Easy Guide to Branding, The Business Model Canvas & More

The Hive Conference took place in Berlin this year and we were lucky enough not only to attend but to present. Creative Director Freya gave a presentation on How to Use the Business Model Canvas for your Creative Enterprise and Editorial Director Rebecca held a workshop on Branding Your Channels.

Here’s the information we shared with the attendees, plus a few things we learned along the way:

The Business Model Canvas

The Business Model Canvas is a way of laying out your business model in a more dynamic and visual way than a typical business plan document. Because of its visual nature, it’s easy to keep visible in your work space. It allows for ease of change when previous plans don’t seem to be working – this is known as “pivoting.”

We highly recommend it for those who want to launch or re-launch a digital business such as a blog, website or online magazine.

Branding Your Channels

This workshop covered what branding is, why it’s important to your digital channels and how to apply it to each channel. At the end, we included a template that allows you to consider the important questions behind branding such as your vision, mission and what makes your blog unique.

What We Learned

Community is important. Working in digital media means that we spend a lot of time online, in front of our computers and on our phones (lots of squinting). Meeting all of these amazing business-owners, bloggers and creatives made us feel less like we’re working in a vacuum. It was great to share the joys and obstacles of running a digital business with others who are doing the same: troubleshooting is never easier than with people who have had similar experiences!

Brands are beginning to understand how to work with blogs and digital media. The Hive hosted “brand hours” with various international businesses throughout the conferences; they were a great insight into how these organizations view blogger-collaboration.

We’ve gained a lot of knowledge in our 1.5 years of Scandinavia Standard and we enjoying sharing it with others. We still have so much to learn and are thrilled to continue this journey with all of you – our readers and community.

The Hive will take place in Dublin, Ireland, in 2016. If you’re interested in attending, check out their website and social media for updates.