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20 Tips for Branding Yourself

October 24, 2010 By 6 Comments

Brand yourself

Whether you’re a fully established business, or a newly started online business it’s important to start branding your company right from the beginning in order to maximize the results that you and your business will start to see over time. I’m going to share some of my ideas and methods below that I use, as well as a few I’ve yet to implement.
1. Use the name you wish to brand in your domain name whenever possible, if you wish you brand yourself as an individual, don’t be afraid to register yourname.com, just be aware if you do build it up into a million dollar business and wish to sell, it will be harder to do if it’s branded to yourself.

2. Spend the money on getting yourself a decent logo; have you ever taken a look at some of the better logo’s that are around? There are some amazingly simple, yet astounding images that have been created for companies around the globe that embody the spirit and name of certain companies.

3. Create a Twitter account, and either design a custom background for it, or have one created for you, remember to incorporate your logo, or “brand” into all graphics that you put out whenever possible to achieve consistency, and promote brand awareness. Notice that my website, Twitter account, Facebook fan page, eBooks, banners, etc. are all branded to my company. This way over time people will start to associate these images with me, and my business or website.

4. Sponsor a WordPress theme, or plugin and make it available to people on the web, have you ever seen themes that included a footer that said “made possible by” or “Sponsored by”, not only is the name of the company or website on hundreds or thousands of these templates, but there is also a link back to their website which provides them with additional SEO benefit as well.

5. Build, or outsource a piece of software or productivity tool and have it branded with your company name then offer it to users. There are thousands of software sites that will carry your software and offer it to their visitors for download. Again, these software sites (which are usually very high traffic sites) will provide a link back to the website that produces the software which again will provide you with additional SEO benefits.

6. Create a signature in your email to promote your website or company. I have my name, company with a brief description as well as an invitation to follow us on Twitter. I’m not sure how many people have visited my site due to emails I’ve sent out, or how many followers I’ve gained by it, but I can tell you it’s more than if I didn’t utilize it.

7. If you’re an internet marketer you are most likely capturing email addresses and building a subscriber list in order to market to them. Rather than send out the generic text emails, try branding your emails. I’ve designed my emails to look like my website, complete with a header graphic, links and again, an invitation to follow me on Twitter. Are you starting to see a trend yet? Every form of communication media that I use is branded in such a way as to promote my companies assets.

8. Set yourself up as the expert in your field. This will keep people coming back time, and time again for your tips, and information and they will start to associate you and your brand with one of the industry leaders that they can turn to for advice on the different topics that you cover. Now being the expert in your market will require a dedicated consistency to learning as much about your topic as you possibly can, but if it’s something that you are passionate about then it shouldn’t be an issue.

9. Fill in applicable fields like your forum signature, or Skype, MSN, anything that will allow you to enter text to describe you to an audience. Don’t just limit yourself to your name (unless that is what you are branding).

10. Brand your YouTube account so that you maintain a consistent image on there also. YouTube is currently ranked the third highest traffic website on the internet, if you aren’t already on there, get over there and set up an account and make yourself available to the audience over there also. It’s all about placing yourself and your company or website in front of as many people as possible.

11. Article marketing, write articles on your topics and publish them on high traffic article directories with a resource box that points back to your website. This will also help set you up as an expert in your chosen niche.

12. Comment on related blogs, and make sure to add value to the discussion so that people will be encouraged to click through to your site, where you can then hopefully convert them into loyal readers.

13. Brand and release reports on topics in your industry, offer them for free on your website as well as availing them to other site owners to offer up to their readers. If I write a blog post about affiliate networks, and you’ve given me a report discussing the top 20 networks I’ll be more than happy to include it in my post. This gives your site a much wider reach than it might normally have because now my readers have the option of downloading and reading your branded report.

14. Take it a step further and write an eBook that solves a problem or teaches readers how to accomplish something. This will again set you up as an expert in your field, and will provide you with another branding opportunity. If you’ve downloaded my eBook E-Business; “The Insider’s Edge” you’ve noticed that the book is branded with both my header as well as links at the bottom of each page where the reader can visit my site directly. There are thousands of copies of my eBook out there promoting my business while helping people at the same time.

15. Create and brand your own products. This will provide you with more branding opportunities, and more importantly an income source for you and your site.

16. Use press releases to announce upcoming product launches, or other newsworthy events that your company experiences. This will help get your name out in front of a national audience in a very short time. It is not uncommon for thirty or forty thousand people or more to read your release in just a matter of a few days. That’s a pretty big audience by anyone’s standards.

17. Have banners created to promote your brand or website, and strategically place them on other sites in your industry. You can take part in banner exchange programs to maximize your exposure and open yourself up to new audiences and readers that frequent other blogs or websites in your niche.

18. Create an avatar to represent your brand so that when you comment or post on the internet you are again leaving behind something recognizable for people to see and associate with you and your brand.

19. Create a favicon for your website to set yourself apart from other websites. If you look through your bookmarks you’ll easily see sites that you recognize just from their favicon.

20. Brand yourself offline as well as online, have your business cards and stationary reflect the image that you are trying to build online. Make sure any collateral you send out has not only your contact information and website address, but also your logo as well.

These are just a few methods that you can use to start building brand recognition and setting yourself apart from others in your market. Building a brand is an ongoing process and will continue for as long as you own your business. Make sure you have a program in place that not only promotes your brand, but protects it also. Keep one ear to the ground so that you can deal with any issues or problems that occur as soon as they take place. There is nothing worse than stumbling over a post that slams your company because someone sent you an email addressing some issue they had with your product or service only to have it slip through the cracks and never be dealt with by you or your team.

Podcast version

 

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Social Media and Business

October 22, 2010 By 1 Comment

Social Media

In today’s world, businesses are realizing more and more the role that social media is playing in in the lives of people, and in the choices they make. It used to be that we were bombarded by advertising, and commercials telling us about brand x and why we should buy it, but in today’s society we can turn to a vast network of contacts and see what is being said about brand x, or any other brand for that matter. Are you more likely to consider a cell phone provider based on the fact that they spend seven million dollars each month to attract and retain customers? Or would the recommendation of several of your close friends or colleagues carry more weight regardless of whether it was positive or negative to the product?

Television, radio, and print ads once created are permanent and cannot be altered, however changes online can be seen and heard almost immediately and are more fluid in nature. If a product comes out, and is raved about by the company and others, but experiences issues with safety, the world will know almost immediately through editing, advisory warnings, or even just comments that are left on social networking sites or blogs related to that product.

Timing is another emerging trend that can be found in social media, where we relied on newspapers and television networks to “Break” current events, and news, it is now becoming more and more common for events to spread first through social media, and networks long before the newspapers have a chance to publish, or even television producers to air information about it. Any witness with an IPhone or mobile device can easily be the first to announce situations as they occur.

It’s important for businesses to recognize this paradigm shift, and to factor it into their business model in order to not be left behind wondering just what happened, and how. Social media is an important aspect of any business regardless of size, product, or geographic location.

Implementing a social media strategy can be as simple as launching a Facebook fan page, and responding to issues that customers post. Setting up a Twitter account, and Tweeting about your business, promotions as well as helpful advice related to your particular industry is another great way to stay connected to a global audience on a daily basis. Some companies go so far as to setup Google Alerts using their company name (I know I do), and whenever a topic comes up on a blog or website anywhere in the world, I can personally respond to both praise or criticism. This is also a powerful method of protecting and promoting your brand, and it shows the people who are interested in discussing your brand, that you actually care about what is said online about it.

YouTube marketing is not a new phenomenon by any means, yet how many of you actually have gone to the trouble to have a video or short commercial created in order to promote your brand, business or simply an individual product? The cost of a 60 second video is generally under $200.00 and is within most budgets, and provides you with just one more avenue of exposure.

Whichever route you decide on, or how in depth you decide to take your social media campaign I highly recommend you at least implement one, and start to develop and grow it over time. You won’t regret it!

Podcast version

 

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: advertising, brand, Business, businesses, Facebook, Google Alerts, marketing, social media, Social media campaign, social media strategy, twitter, youtube

Brand Marketing – How to Brand Yourself

August 27, 2010 By 1 Comment

Branding your Company

Before learning how to brand yourself (or your company), you have to know what branding is. Most people think branding is the name of the company. This is only part of branding. There is much more to it than that. And just as your name is your identity but not who you are, a company’s name is only part of their brand. Branding is actually establishing the personality of your company. If you look closely at any type of brand marketing, whether online or off, you’ll notice that every company has their own unique personality. They want to be known as something specific. Branding your e-business means that you have to establish your own unique personality among the countless numbers of internet marketing and affiliate marketing companies. How do you do this?

Branding isn’t easy. It takes time and effort to brand yourself. All major companies had to work their way to the point where they were successfully branded. It might have taken years. Therefore, before beginning to brand, you should have a realistic view of how long it will take to brand your company. Then you can begin brand marketing to establish your company’s presence and personality. Think about what sort of message you want to send to your customers. What do you want to be known for? Don’t generalize your answer by saying you just want to be the best or most successful. You have to make yourself unique.

Your next question is likely “How do I make myself unique?” The straightforward answer is to offer something competition doesn’t. But this can be very difficult to do, especially if you’re just starting out. Do a bit of investigating. Look around at the e-business world. Dig into the companies that are in your niche. What are they offering? What makes customers flock to them? Where are they successful? Where are they failing? After finding the answers to these questions, answer them for your own business. What do you have to offer people? What is going to make customers come to you? Can you offer things your competition doesn’t offer?

One important trick in brand marketing is to give away things for free. It might make you cringe, but in reality, free information or products is actually the best method of brand marketing. A lot of websites will offer you a free e-book for signing up on their mailing list or to their newsletter. This is a great way to brand yourself. It gives people a chance to see how much you know about your niche. It lets them judge for themselves whether they’ll be with you for a short while or the long haul.

PLR (private label rights) products also help to brand your company. There are several levels of PLR, but the important thing about it is you own the rights to the information. So even if you allow other people to sell it as products on their own websites, the information on the inside is still yours. This is a great way to increase customers. The wider you cast your net, the more fish you’ll catch.

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