Moving Vaihe branding from “we” to “me”
Since I started my company Vaihe in 2019, I have been using “we” for my brand messaging. It never felt quite right because I’ve been running the company solo from the start, but I went with it as I wanted to feel like a development studio and the “we” stood for me and the company – they are two different things after all.
Why I am now using “me” in my messaging
Things have changed since 2019, and one of those things is AI and how Google works. AI is changing not only how development workflows happen but also how talent is discovered. The way people find my work is getting different, more personal. AI now gives you recommendations in both Google searches and in the LLM of your taste. That’s where I want to appear, alongside the top Google results, of course.
A neat thing about AI is that its recommendations change based on how you interact with it and answer its follow-up questions. I want to be recommended to clients who I could actually be a good match for, and for that to happen I need to be clear with my brand messaging.
With more personal “me” messaging, I can highlight my unique expertise in modern development. That is my true value. I’m one person who can serve as your entire development team, and you get to communicate with just one person who understands your business. Handling development solo doesn't even mean that my clients don't have in-house engineers, they often do, they just handle the app or SaaS development and I handle the marketing site development.
One of my favorite SEO acronyms is “EEAT”, and that’s exactly how I would describe this change in my brand messaging. That’s what I want prospective clients to understand. I want them to know who I am, why I am an expert at what I do, and why they should choose me.
Here’s what “EEAT” stands for and how it applies to me:
- Experience. I’ve built more than 50 marketing sites over the past 7 years, so I have the experience you need.
- Expertise. I don't build just small marketing sites, I work closely with enterprise companies as well. I especially handle technical SEO and page speed optimization consulting for enterprises on an ongoing basis.
- Authoritativeness. I started doing modern web development much earlier than most developers. Seven years ago, I published a 43-page study about Gatsby, the framework that was popular before Astro and Next.js. I also started using Astro and Next.js almost immediately after they were released.
- Trustworthiness. I still got my first clients that I started with 7 years ago. My clients trust me and I trust them. I have even handled domain transfers worth tens of thousands of dollars for my clients using their logins.
Why did I originally go with “we”
A few more reasons I chose “we”:
- I can bring projects from start to finish with very little guidance from my clients, much like actual development studios
- I often work as the entire web development team for my clients, even if they have their in-house engineers. The engineers handle the app or SaaS development, I handle the marketing site development.
- Like I mentioned at the beginning of the post, “we” is me and my company, they are not the same thing and sometimes the benefits of one have to be put over the other one
- I felt like I needed to prove in my messaging that I can handle large projects
Yeah. I am now using “I” in my brand messaging. There's just one person on my team, after all.