Is your "brand garbage" piling up?

Statistics show most people land on home pages to get their questions answered, not to be inspired. That's a great reason to review your website and digital profiles in a disciplined manner to dump the brand garbage and be helpful.

"Brand garbage" refers to the accumulation of outdated, inconsistent, and irrelevant content across your digital presence. I'm not talking about visual brand identity issues – this is about content that's past its expiration date.

For companies, this shows up as outdated case studies, old blog posts with obsolete information, and inconsistent messaging across platforms. Your prospects notice when product pages show discontinued items, when employee information is outdated, or when testimonials might not hold up to a reference check.

For individuals, it's those outdated headshots, vanilla LinkedIn headlines that could describe thousands of other people, and previous career positions still featured prominently. It's portfolio pieces that don't reflect current skills and mixed messaging about professional focus areas.

At MBNA, I led a team tackling this exact challenge. With 250 sales and account executives in multiple locations, we needed consistent messaging while letting personalities shine through. Our solution? Regular deck reviews where everyone threw their presentations on a conference room table, plus scenario-based negotiations training to identify messaging gaps.

Want to clean up your brand garbage? Start with a quick ROT analysis:

• Redundant: Content existing in multiple places
• Outdated: Information that's stale or incorrect
• Trivial: Content no longer essential to your goals

​Read the full post on my website for a detailed cleanup strategy and more examples of brand garbage hiding in your digital presence. And yes, I can help you with this, particularly if you're brand positioning document could use a refresh.

LET'S GET GOING

1. Great advice from Ashley Dennison, the brain and heart of CommsConsultants.com: PSA: CEOs don't want strategic communications counsel. They want increased profitability. We communicators have to do a much, much better job of showcasing the link between the two.

2. Struggling with which AI tools are best for your situation (for me, it's Claude and Perplexity (which IMHO is much, much better than Google)? Ethan Mollick wrote a great post that he updates every six months, called Which AI to Use Now: An Updated Opinionated Guide. It's well worth a read. And if AI intrigues you, you should be subscribed to Ethan and Christopher Penn.

3. Quote of the Day from James Clear: "In theory, consistency is about being disciplined, determined, and unwavering. In practice, consistency is about being adaptable. Don't have much time? Scale it down. Don't have much energy? Do the easy version. Find different ways to show up depending on the circumstances. Let your habits change shape to meet the demands of the day." Adaptability is the way of consistency."

TWEETS THAT RULE

I love Katelyn Bourgoin. If you're not subscribing to her newsletter, you're missing out.

Katelyn Bourgoin 🧠 @KateBour If you want better outcomes you need to ask better questions Example: > Bad question: how do I get more followers? > Better question: what makes people stop scrolling and pay attention? 8:34 PM • Jan 12, 2025 8 Retweets 103 Likes Read 36 replies

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HOW CAN I HELP?

An excellent case study should not be confused with a testimonial. It should focus on the problems you solved for them. Here’s an ungated link to a template that will help you ask the right questions to write more compelling case studies. Or you could call someone like me with experience interviewing business leaders and asking the right questions.

PROMPTS ARE QUESTIONS TOO

I have a collection of AI prompts that include ones I've designed for clients to help them get more out of AI. Here's one of my favorites to help you avoid your worst tendencies, particularly on stuff that's outside your wheelhouse: "In the spirit of Occam's razor, what's the clearest, simplest way to explain [topic]?" You can modify it a bit to have it help you with writing you're struggling with, and you can add a request for a metaphor. Just be sure you've explained to the LLM who your target audience is and who you're writing for.

I welcome your comments or suggestions for future issues. Drop me a note here. If you found this on LinkedIn or had it forwarded to you, you can subscribe by clicking the button below.