Discover
and Communicate Your Passion
Branding has evolved from
nonsensical trademark names to descriptive words that tell people who you are
and what your passion is in life. Take, for instance, Xerox: this name had no
real meaning until the machines came out and people used them as a common meaning
for photocopying papers. While the brand is now known worldwide, the brand has
been completely diluted into a generic meaning that is hard to defend as being
unique and expressive of a company brand. In
order to create a brand name today, you want to give special attention
to the qualities that make this name unique and how it is descriptive of what
you do or who you are in business or life.
PERSONAL BRANDING
In a way, we all come into this
world with our own personal branding: Our names. This tells members of our
family and the people we meet who we are, but doesn’t really express our
personal qualities. Sometimes, people acquire nicknames or make up their own to
help express more of their own unique qualities, and this is used as a form of
group personal branding. If that personal branding also expresses what your
passion in life is, you can use it to help promote yourself to others. Personal
branding, as well as business branding, is all about conveying your self-image
to others in a way that what they perceive is identical to what you are
projecting to them.
BUSINESS BRANDING
If you have a domain name, that’s
a form of business branding, just like your business name is. These tend to be
more expressing of the products and services offered rather than of the
personal qualities of the owner. In the past, in conventional advertising, you
would know the business name before you learned the owner’s name. However, with
so many people using social networks these days, personal branding is becoming
as equally important in business and company branding.
PROJECTING PASSION
Whether you choose one, the other,
or both to promote, the idea is to project your passion to a bigger audience.
If your passion is connecting others to their soul mates, then you might use a
business or personal name with the word love in it. That’s your passion. It’s
not as hard as it seems to think up a few choice brand names to try out. What is
hard is reserving them online when so many have already been snapped up by
others.
Brainstorm
and Research Your Brand
That’s why in order to get a good
one, you have to start to brainstorm early. It’s going to take a while to come
up with a brand name that you love and that is also available as a domain name.
One thing is certain: most two- word-phrased domain names are already taken.
You will probably have to go with three words or more, or you might try
purchasing a smaller domain name from someone who is squatting on it and
waiting for a buyer to offer him/her some money.
DO RESERVE YOUR PERSONAL NAME
Even if you’re not going to use it
for business, you will want to reserve as many profiles and even a domain name
with your name in it. Celebrities with established careers already have lawyers
who do this on a regular basis for them. However, if you start your business
brand and then you suddenly
achieve fame in the middle of it
all, you’ll probably end up paying someone else to give back your personal
brand name on the Internet. There are many opportunists out there who go out
and try to reserve names like Paris
Hilton or other notables with large followings. If your following increases, so
will the number of fake spammers out
there, and you want to be ready by having already reserved your name on the
biggest sites like Facebook, Twitter, and a personal branded .com name.
RESEARCH AVAILABILITY
Hop online now and check to see
what’s available for your domain name possibilities using Whois.net. You can
check a variety of different extensions besides .com sites. If the domain is
already reserved or bought, you will see the owner of the domain name. It will
also tell you who you can contact should you want to try and buy the name.
Otherwise, you can get onto popular hosting sites of your choice and try to
register the domain name.
Whois.net will also tell you (when
it’s not available) what other names you might try to reserve instead that are
available. Typically, they are prefixed with the word my or something similar,
but are slightly different. You can even register the domain name right there
for a charge of $9.95/year.
Promote Your Brand
Online, if you want to be known as
an expert, all you have to do is to claim to be an expert and then help others
with your expertise. People learn who you are by interacting with you and can
make up their own opinions about you and your company. The interactivity and
the ability to reach people all around the world for very little money is what
levels the playing field between companies and individuals. Information isn't
as segregated as it once was, and it's also quite a bit more transparent. Now,
no matter how much a big company spends on promoting some defective product,
odds are that there will be numerous online complaints that are easily
accessible and that dissuade new customers from purchasing a defective product.
In the same vein, if you have a spectacular brand and some wonderful product or
service, you can promote the brand and the positive vibes by sharing that
information online to attract new customers.
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO ONLINE
There are a few places online that
you can leverage to get the most positive publicity with minimal effort. You
could spend a lot more time plastering the World Wide Web with your own press
release, but ultimately, as a business owner, you just don't have the time to
do too much promotion. Even if you can do the following list, you should
seriously think about hiring a company or an individual to help you publicize
your offerings online in a manner that will get you more exposure.
l Online
business cards
Replace your paper cards with a
digital version that allow you to share it much more easily online.
l Digital resumes
If your
personal experience is important to your business, be sure to update archives
with your personal digital resume.
l Portfolios
You might have a
freelance company or be a solopreneur who is interested in showing off some of
your work via your online portfolio.
l Website
This can be a
formal site or a blog, as long as it is a central place to show people who you
are and what you're up to with your business.
l Social networks
These include Facebook and
Twitter and are great for getting traffic back to your site.
l Email campaigns
Simple ways to directly market
to your audience.
Online Business Cards
In the past, you would do business
and help to create brand awareness through a paper business card. While there
is still a place for these quaint relics of the past, the more modern versions
use an online, interactive component to share your personal brand digitally so
that there is less chance that it will get lost or overlooked. Besides, when
was the last time you saw anyone pull out a rolodex of business cards to
contact anyone? With so many businesses promoting their brands online, which
costs far less and is more effective, it pays to step into the information age
with enthusiasm.
E-BUSINESS CARDS
A copy of the paper business card
in digital format is easy enough to create. Distributing it is far more
efficient than trying to hand someone a paper card. You can go to places like www.mydropcard.com or www.Businesscard2.com to use the service to create your own e-business
card. These types of cards have the advantage of being able to be transmitted
to other people’s electronic gadgets, like their cell phone, and will store
your email in their directories. With so many phones having messaging
capabilities, it puts your online email address right at their fingertips, with
little intervention on your part. In addition, you can add other types of links
to these business cards that can be viewed on phones with Internet capabilities.
You might want to add your Facebook and/or Twitter profiles or any other site
that you use for branding you or your business.
BRAND YOUR DIGITAL MEDIA
Your digital media can include
ebooks, CDs, and videos on YouTube. You alone know where all of your digital
media ends up residing. It can also be sales promotional tools like DVDs and
USB drives. Add your brand information there and make sure it comes up in
auto-run mode so that when people use your products or services, they are also
seeing your official e- business card that tells them where they can find more
of your products or services or learn more about your brand.
People love getting novel gifts
for sales promotions and having your brand printed on them and in digital
format is not going to bother them. If it is an item that they use frequently,
it’s like having a mini-commercial installed on their tool that will be a
little annoying, but will also be very valuable for when they want to know who
to contact for more of the same products and
services. Never
underestimate the power of a clever business card. It can lead to referrals and
more business with very little upfront work.
Digital Resumes
Paper resumes are good if you're
looking for a job, but they aren't very good if you're trying to promote your
business online. Putting up a list of your accomplishments and some of your
past achievements is a good way to let people know what circles you travel in
and what type of quality they can expect from you. Businesses that are in
consulting or freelancing can also benefit from digital resumes that list their
previous projects. You can write up several, differently formatted resumes that
highlight your strengths and promote your past experience. In some cases, you can
even add that to your business profiles.
BRANDING ON JOB BOARDS
When you're on a job board, you
are competing against hundreds, if not thousands, of other people who are
looking for work during this recession. It's a shame, but many human resource
people aren't even going to read your resume. They might grab a bunch of
electronic resumes and stick them through a resume reader looking for specific
keywords. That's why part of branding your resume is to use keywords that will
best describe your skills and experience, and that might also be searched by
offline companies.
It's important to be as detailed
as possible, like including the names of the equipment you work with, software
programs and versions, or languages that you speak or program in. Include keywords
for the type of experience you have, whether it's technical, management, or
retail. It's also important to include several different copies of your resume,
one in HTML format and one in text format, so that they can download the right
format and chug it through their resume readers.
LINKEDIN
In addition to using bulletin
boards like Monster.com, you are sometimes better off using a social network
like LinkedIn.com that allows you to post resume information for other
professionals to view. It's also a great place to post this type of information
because, unlike Monster.com, LinkedIn.com allows you to request recommendations
from people. This way, you not only have a viewable resume that is searchable
in search engines, but people viewing it can see how many other people have
nice things to say about you.
LinkedIn.com is a great place for
professionals who are out of work and for those who still have a job to
network. It's great for people who are business
owners who want to network with
their customers and who want to offer a professional look at who they are and
what they do. However, this isn't really enough to make up someone's mind. A
portfolio of past projects will give your profile life.
Portfolios
Portfolios provide a visual and
audio way to influence someone with your brand, not just with written text. A
good portfolio has samples of your best work for new customers to review before
making a buying decision. Artists have long used paper portfolios to get into
the best schools and to show new customers their work. Digital portfolios can
include anything from photography snapshots of offline work, music .jpgs, and
video content. It doesn't have to be just about your written work. The more you
wow and dazzle your viewer, the more likely they are to buy from you.
EXHIBIT YOUR NICHE
The sample within your portfolio
should be used to showcase your brand. What is your niche and what makes these
pieces representative of your expertise? If you're a musician with a specific
style, you might want to showcase that style to attract more work. If you're a
writer with a talent for specific niches or styles of writing, be sure to
include pieces that reflect that information in your portfolio. When trying to
project your brand online, don't mix it with too many other styles or niches
that aren't related to your own brand. This just dilutes the power of your
portfolio and leaves people confused about who you are and what you are
offering. Try to stay within your niche of expertise and try to send a strong
message that you excel in this area.
SITES WITH PORTFOLIOS
You can include your portfolio on
freelance sites, like GetAFreelancer.com and MySpace.com. Some sites do better
with different audiences, and it's not
unusual to have one portfolio in one area be different from another portfolio
to cater to different audiences. For instance, MySpace.com caters to a younger
audience, and their style is more bold than professional places like
GetAFreelancer.com. However, this is just the audience that buys music and
loves to experiment with musical styles and videos. You might put music on here
that appeals to this demographic and include different music in a different
portfolio elsewhere. Match the portfolio to the site you're posting on.
INCLUDE DIFFERENT
FORMATS
Include multiple formats so that
if one format isn't easily viewed, another one will be. That goes for Word
documents, images, and musical files. You don't know what people have on their
PCs, and when a file doesn't play, it can make you look bad, even if it's not
your fault. Including some helpful hints for playing files and opening them can
help people be aware that proper software needs to be on their systems in order
to view those files.
Blog Or Website
Owning your own website is
critical to branding online. Whether the site is a strict HTML site, an
e-commerce site, or a blog, it doesn't matter. The one thing you want to make
sure of is that you own the rights to the content of the site and that it
centralizes all of your activities for that niche on one site. If you have
multiple niches online, then you'll have multiple websites. It's important to
consider the type of website you want, how often you intend on updating the
content, and what sort of domain name best conveys your brand.
DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION
As mentioned earlier, be sure to
pick a good domain name. Don't include odd characters like hyphens, as they can
throw people off. A three-word domain name is a good choice, since most
two-word domains have already been taken. However, if you can get a smaller
domain name, that’s all the better, even if you have to pay for it. You want a
top-level domain name instead of a site that gives you a sub-domain on their
server. This gives your brand a more professional image and helps people to
remember you better.
WORDPRESS.ORG
After you've picked a hosting
company, you have to decide what type of website to create that will be used to
brand your presence on the Web. If you're a professional consultant or
freelancer, a blog is a great way to personally introduce yourself to others
online. Blogs have gotten so sophisticated over the years that many company
sites are also using blogs within their content.
You can easily have your hosting
company install a copy of Wordpress.org on your site. This can be customized
with multiple templates to give you a professional appearance in a very short
time. Just be sure that you aren't using the community called WordPress.com if
you want a top-level domain.
This site looks
the same, but it doesn't allow you to put your own advertising and to really
brand your site with a top-level domain.
OTHER TYPES OF SITES
In fact, blogs aren't the only
type of site that has gotten much easier to install via prepackaged modules on
hosting sites like DreamHost.com. You can get content management sites and even
membership sites in some cases. Think about what kind of brand you have and
what type of site would best help your visitors to better experience your
brand. Make it a very professional site to give you personal and business
credibility.
Branding With Social
Networks
Social networks are great for
personal and business branding. Each social network has its own strengths and
weaknesses. They all attract different demographics too. LinkedIn attracts
professionals in established careers, MySpace attracts a teen crowd, and Facebook
attracts young professionals just coming out of college and getting into the
workforce. Business owners can get online and brand themselves for different
audiences, depending on who is their core demographic of buyers.
HOW TO BRAND ON SOCIAL NETWORKS
Profiles are the first place that
you can brand on social networks. They are personal snapshots of your likes and
dislikes. They can include the groups you join on Facebook, books and movies
you've enjoyed, what types of relationships you are looking to make on
Facebook, and photos of yourself. Remember that photos are a particularly
powerful means to brand yourself, and they can help or hurt you. Don't include
photos where you are in an embarrassing position or that can change the image
someone has of you or your company.
Do include images of your business
logo. Do add your blog to the
NetworkedBlogs application so that others can see it on your profile. The more
friends you have in your niche brand, the more people will associate those
qualities with you. If you want to be
known as a savvy Internet marketer who can help others with social networking,
then you might want to link to
people who have that as their main topic of interest or who have joined groups
on that niche.
START TO INTERACT WITH OTHERS
Next, it's important to portray
the personality and qualities that you want to associate with your brand in
personal interactions on the site. One of the newest trends is to make an
introductory video thanking people for being your friend on Facebook and
telling them more about yourself. You can add this link to their profile as a
way of saying hello when they befriend you.
Use status updates wisely to
promote your brand and offerings. Don't just use it as an easy way to spam
people. In social networking, you have to seek to add value to be a brand with
integrity. Heavy-duty commercialism is frowned upon, and you don't want to be
known as someone who promotes himself/herself too much. Instead, you can offer
value and still generate brand awareness by offering helpful hints and links to
informational content, even if it's not your own. People will associate it with
your brand, and it will contribute to the community at the same time.
Differences
Between Facebook And Twitter Branding
At some point, you'll hear about
Facebook and Twitter, and after scratching your head for a minute, you will
join and try to use them to brand and attract a wider audience. There are
distinct differences with each of these social networking platforms. If you
know what those differences are, you can set up a strategy to brand on both
while not doing twice the amount of work. They are compatible, but they require
different strategies for different audiences.
TWITTER
Let's start with Twitter.com. This
unique social networking site is also referred to as a “microblogging” site.
The entire concept revolves around a status update that you can update all day
long, but it's limited to 140
characters each time you update,
which are known as “tweets.” Within those 140 characters, you can post links
back to other places online using a URL shortener. In general, it is far easier
to gain a massive audience with Twitter than it is with Facebook. You send out
tweets, and people who follow you will see them. If they “retweet” your
message, people on their list will see them, and you can gain more followers.
You can add several hundred followers a day on Twitter, and many of those will
automatically follow you back, increasing your audience. You can automate
tweets to go out all day, even when you're not online, and you can even send
them to Facebook with an application within Facebook.com called Selective
Twitter.
FACEBOOK
Facebook is a little harder to
gain a following. It also tends to be more complex in terms of the amount and
the quality of content you can add. While this means that you can brand far
more effectively, it's to a smaller audience. You can also set up a sales page
on Facebook for a company and advertise it to the entire Facebook audience based
on the demographics that you choose within the program, called SocialAds. This
allows you to brand outside your immediate circle of friends, although it does
cost to utilize this advertising format.
By using Selective Twitter or
Ping.fm, you can send some of your tweets to Facebook, but you need to take
care not to update Facebook as much as you update Twitter. People will want to
hear less from you if you spam their news feed with your Twitter updates, and
that's one of the main differences between branding on Twitter and on Facebook.
On Twitter, you can talk on and on and no one cares, but if you try that on
Facebook, people will drop you and many won't tell you why. It's a more
intimate setting, and no one likes a bore.
Email Campaigns
Once you have a large following
around the Internet, it's time to take your branding to a more personal level.
You will want to try to harvest as many email addresses as you can in your
activities and get permission to market to these people directly. Once you have
that, you will want to establish an email marketing campaign that starts to
show people on a one-to-one basis what your company or your products are all
about.
YOUR EMAIL SIGNATURE
The first place to brand within
email is by way of automatic signatures. If you don't have one set up to point
people to your website, to your offer of the week, or to a personal biography,
you are missing a great opportunity to brand. If someone contacts you for
anything, it's the perfect opportunity to sneak in some information on your
private brand via the automatic email signature.
YOUR INTRODUCTORY EMAIL
Twitter will allow you to automate
direct messages to people who follow you via direct messaging. You’re on your
own with Facebook. Either way, you can join SocialOomph and send out direct
messages for each person who follows you, giving them an introductory message
that shows more about you and your brand to them. Every introductory email
should seek to contribute value and to not sell anything. There will be plenty
of time to sell something later;
first, try to
establish a genuine connection with people, but make them aware of your brand.
A PLANNED EMAIL CAMPAIGN
Set up planned email campaigns
using a service like AWeber.com. You can offer the same type of casual,
informational style that is popular with social networks, but include links to
your products and offers. Include branding information like videos and
applications that can help people understand more about you and your company.
Always mix in free branding offers with sales offers. This way, when they open
an email, they don't expect that they'll be sold every time. People just don't
like that. It's like answering the door to a pushy salesman. However, if they
find that you give away free
information about 50% of the time
that might benefit them, they’ll be more likely to open that email.
Try different branding subject
headlines in different emails and run split testing to see what gets a better
reaction. AWeber.com will give you statistics on open rates and click-through
rates. Once you start to watch the results of your branding efforts, you have
to have direct feedback on what is working and what is not. It will tell you how
to tweak your marketing so that your message becomes more appealing every time
you send out a new email, increasing brand awareness and sales at the same
time.