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Archive for the ‘Branding’ Category
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011
The big talk of the day is the AOL acquisition of Huffington Post. Everyone is speculating about whether or not AOL made a good buy. They purchased Huffington Post for $315 million. And, the Huff-Post press release states that $300 million of that will be cash. Yummy!
Another thing AOL gets is Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington. She will head up the Huffington Post Media Group, which will consist of all Huffington Post and AOL content.
Arianna is the clear winner here. She gets a boatload of cash and still maintains control over the property she founded. What more could a person want? But did AOL make a wise decision?
If you look at AOLs goal, to develop a diverse group of news and content sources that cover the local, national, and international scenes, then it may very well be a good buy. They do, after all, already have their hands in some pretty impressive properties – Engadget, TechCrunch, Patch.com, Mapquest, MovieFone, Autoblog, just to name a few.
So the real question is, what is the nature of content marketing online? How does AOL win? I consider it a branding issue. If AOL can brand itself as a premium content provider, then AOLs reputation will extend far beyond its own imagination, or the imaginations of its executives.
Remember when AOL was just an ISP? Now, it’s a content publisher. And content publishers are the ones who are making money online. How can you take that knowledge and make it work for your small business? You don’t have to be AOL or Rupert Murdoch to make your mark online.
Tags: AOL, content, Huffington Post
Posted in Branding | 1 Comment »
Monday, December 27th, 2010
Megan Calhoun thought it would be cool to use Twitter to connect moms from around the world. It was. And she built a successful website and business around this niche at TwitterMoms.com. There’s just one problem. Twitter didn’t like it.
This is a particularly useful topic considering that so many businesses use Twitter in their name. Third-party applications, social bookmarking sites, and other social tools get their start using Twitter’s API. No problem. But then they go the extra step to put “Twitter” in their name. That’s a bad move.
Twitter has a right to protect its trademark. And so does every other company. If you think you can piggyback off a successful name brand to build your business and brand, think again. Not many companies will appreciate this. You can get an impression that you are connected to that more successful brand when you are in fact not connected at all. So is there a danger in piggybacking off another brand?
Twittermoms.com changed its name to socialmoms.com. A new website is in the works.
When TweetLater.com changed its name to SocialOomph in August 2009, they gave this explanation:
We decided to change our name to allow for future expansion into other social media solutions, and to ensure that our brand does not conflict with any current or future legal rights of the Twitter organization.
To allay any speculation, we want to make clear that this is an unsolicited, proactive and preemptive action on our side.
I guess they saw the writing on the wall. And you should too.
If you are planning to use a technology, API, or a tool that was developed by another company, make sure that you put some thought into your brand name. Don’t assume that you can use the name of the brand of the other company within your own. You will likely run into legal trouble. Consult an attorney when in doubt.
Tags: Branding, internet marketing, online reputation, Social Media
Posted in Branding | No Comments »
Thursday, October 28th, 2010
There is still some discussion in social media marketing arenas as to whether or not StumbleUpon is a useful marketing tool. The pros are that it delivers a lot of traffic. The cons are that traffic typically does not convert well and it bounces at a high rate.
So what’s the conclusion? Is StumbleUpon useful as a marketing tool or not?
Let’s discuss those negatives. If the traffic doesn’t convert well and bounces at a high rate does that mean StumbleUpon is not a very good marketing tool? Shouldn’t you spend your time doing something more productive? Not necessarily. You can benefit from these negatives in other ways.
For instance, the fact that you are getting traffic to your site in the first place means that you have eyeballs in front of your brand. Those eyeballs frequenting your blog and website over and over eventually may find something that catches their eye. It’s a type of top-of-mind awareness. The next time someone who saw your Stumble finds you in a search engine or through another channel they will remember who you were and what you do.
Let’s take that argument deeper with an example. Let’s say you’ve Stumbled every blog post you’ve written for the past year and shared it with your friends. You have a hundred friends or so who have seen at least a third of those Stumbles and may have even thumbed some of them up. Then one day a Stumbler searches for something through Google and finds your website. They recognize your site based on your Stumble relationship and you have instant credibility. Isn’t that a benefit?
You bet it is. And that’s why I say StumbleUpon is still a good marketing tool. Traffic or not, conversions or not, you can still make your brand recognizable and identifiable at a glance. That’s good marketing.
Tags: Branding, StumbleUpon
Posted in Branding | 1 Comment »
Friday, October 1st, 2010
eMarketer reports on a report by Burson-Marstellar about company message distortion in social media. I have some mixed feeling about this report.
I think, first off, marketers lie. Embellish. We go to great lengths to make ourselves look good. We’ve always done that. That’s nothing new and I wouldn’t exactly call it news.
I wouldn’t say that all marketers are unethical. It’s really that marketing is all about taking a truth and making it hyperbolic. Extend the benefits, if you will.
But I have a little bit of an issue with some of the conclusions drawn from this report. I’ll let eMarketer tell it in their own words:
According to the report, bloggers tended to include “opinions, personal experience, knowledge of competitors and products, and speculation.”
Seriously? Opinions, personal experience and knowledge of competitors? That’s distortion? Come on!
Marketing is all about opinions, personal experience and setting yourself apart from the competition. That’s what it’s always been. So I really don’t get what this is about. If this is the basis for the final conclusion that marketers are distorting their message then it’s a bogus report.
If you’re old enough then you likely remember the Pepsi Challenge commercials. They were obviously skewed in favor of Pepsi. Of course, I can’t help to think that some of the people who took those taste tests actually preferred Coke over Pepsi. But none of them ever made it to the public eye. Why not? Because it would have been self defeating for Pepsi, who bankrolled those commercials as an investment in its own product, to show that some people actually preferred Coke over Pepsi.
Now, I’m not saying the commercials were misleading. I have no doubt that many real people actually did prefer Pepsi over Coke. Their preferences were aired in the commercials that were so obviously self serving. Had they been Coke commercials then I’m sure we’d have been seeing real people show their preference for Coke instead of Pepsi.
That’s what marketing is all about. Showing how you differ from the competition and using opinions, personal experience and other types of subjective anecdotes is all a part of that. If bloggers do that more than anyone else then isn’t it because the medium encourages it?
Bottom line for me: Blog marketing is about positioning yourself in front of your audience in a positive light. You don’t have to be outright dishonest to do that, but do put your best foot forward.
Tags: blogging, Branding, Social Media
Posted in Branding | 1 Comment »
Friday, August 13th, 2010
If you listen Cynthia Boris, no one trusts you.
Actually, what she said was 15% of respondents in a particular survey said they don’t trust brand blogs (like this one). But the survey also says that only 12% of respondents trust their friends on Twitter. Hey, if you don’t trust your friends then who do you trust?
There’s the rub for us marketing folks. If the people we’re marketing to don’t even trust their friends then how are we going to get them to trust us? Should we stop Twittering?
I wouldn’t suggest that you stop Twittering. I think, for the most part, that the people we reach on Twitter have a completely different mindset than the audience we reach through our own blogs. But I also think that the mass popularity of brand blogs is leading to its own problems in trust. Audiences know that not everything said on most brand blogs is completely transparent. After all, they are being written by marketing types, right?
Or maybe it’s just that people online have a general lack of trust for other people online.
Whatever it is, it means that we’ve got to work harder to build trust. How do you do that? For starters, you’ve got to be totally honest about the way you represent yourself. Don’t pull any punches. Also, when you make a comment about your brand (or someone else’s), try your best not to misrepresent it in any way. If you don’t know something then say you don’t know it. Don’t make it up or pretend that you know something that you don’t.
I suspect that marketers will always have a problem with trust, but we don’t have to give people reasons for not trusting us. We should be giving them reasons that they should.
Tags: marketing, trust
Posted in Branding | No Comments »
Sunday, March 28th, 2010
The key to branding and establishing yourself as an authority in your niche is to speak with one voice across every medium in which you interact. That is more difficult than it sounds, particularly if you have other people working with you in your media campaigns.
First, the beginning. Establish your hub.
Your hub is your home on the Web. It is the place where you want all of your traffic to concentrate. It’s where you want everyone who wants to know more about you and your brand to go for the best information and a direct route to your sales team. Your branded company website is your hub.
Some companies establish a blog as their company website. Others have a static site with a blog attached. Either way is OK, but you’ve got to make that determination early on. Don’t change it midstream. Pick a path and stick to it.
Next, use your blog as a voice of authority. That is where you teach, lead and draw. You teach people what you want them to know about your expertise. You lead them to a place where they are ready to make a decision and buy from you. You draw them in with quality content. A blog is the perfect mouthpiece for anyone who wants to brand themselves as a voice of authority in their niche.
All of your social media should be centered on one thing – teaching, leading, drawing. You can teach through social media, but not to the extent you do on your blog. Go lighter. Give people a reason to go to your blog for more information.
By the same token, you want to lead people to a place where they are ready to ask for more information. They’ll find that information on your blog and your static website. Finally, draw them in with great social media content.
Branding online is about drawing people to you through great content that they want to read and interact with. That content serves to brand you and make you an authority in the mind of your audience. Draw them deeper and closer to your hub with great content delivered from a branded authority – you. If you do that well, you’ll succeed at online marketing.
Tags: authority, blogging, Branding, Social Media
Posted in Branding | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
Many small business owners, when they first learn about search engine optimization, are tempted to ditch their brand in order to pursue a textbook search engine marketing campaign. This might be a problem. While I certainly think that SEO is important, I also believe that branding is important. The question, which is more important?
Honestly, I think branding is more important. Your SEO efforts should work toward supporting your brand, not the other way around.
Let’s suppose you wanted to open up a retail shop that sells widgets. Your retail shop, a local over-the-counter dealer, will also have a website. Do you call your retail store “The Widget Shop” because you want people to be able to find your website and you’ve heard that using your keyword in the domain name an on your web pages will help you rank higher? Or do you come up with a creative name that tells the world who you are in a branded way?
The great thing about branding is you can use keywords, but you don’t have. “The Widget Shop” could be a great brand. Or you could go with something more creative, like “Thingamajigs”. Which of those two names is more memorable?
When it comes to e-commerce, SEO is a consideration that you should give serious thought to, but only after you’ve come up with a brand name that really catches people’s attention.
Tags: Branding, search engine optimization, SEO
Posted in Branding | 2 Comments »
Sunday, January 10th, 2010
Branding. Businesses have been doing it for centuries. But what’s so special about doing it online?
For starters, branding online is not done simply by putting your name in front of people. That’s a part of it, of course, but online branding is as much accomplished by how you approach your market as the image you present when you do so. By ‘how’ I mean the methods you employ.
Let’s spell it out clearly. You can brand yourself with search engine optimization and with social media marketing, or a combination of the two. Search engine marketing, or pay per click marketing, can also be used to brand your business. The branding begins with your keyword research, but it doesn’t end there.
Every time you interact with someone online in the name of your business you have an opportunity to brand yourself. Whether you choose to use your real name or the name of your business is itself a branding decision.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you sign up for a social network. Do you sign up in your personal name or your business name? Some social networks won’t allow you to sign up under a business name so you may not have a choice. But what if you do?
You can always have two accounts – one for your personal name and one for your business name. Whenever possible, you should use your business name as a branding element.
That may seem intuitive. But it’s not really. Online marketers like to hype and harp on the fact that people online prefer a personal touch, and they do. But that doesn’t mean you can’t approach them in the name of your business. You can still employ the personal touch. But you always want to get the brand in front of the eyes when it is prudent to do so. That’s what branding is all about.
Tags: Branding, online branding, online marketing
Posted in Branding | 6 Comments »
Friday, November 27th, 2009
Both Steve and I recently had our professional images updated, and we were so delighted with the results! I learned a great deal about the importance of your photographic image while working with our photographer, Wendy Blomseth from InBeaute Photography and wanted to pass that knowledge along to you. What better way to do that than to have you “hear it from the source” – so I asked Wendy to provide a guest post on the subject. Enjoy!
The Top 10 Reasons Your Photographic Image is Important to Your Business by Wendy Blomseth, InBeaute Photography
I’ve heard many people ask, “How Important Is My Photographic Image to My Business?” In today’s extremely competitive environment it is one of the most extraordinarily important components for you and your brand identity. Today, your photographs have to literally work for you 24/7 or they should be fired and replaced.
Your photographic images should be fired immediately if they are not working for you in the following ways:
- building relationships in every medium that they are displayed
- mirror and attract your best clients
- convey your unique, genuine personality
- reinforce trust and credibility by showing you with your business, associates, clients, audiences & products
- cause a reaction that is positive both physically and emotionally by viewers
- generate positive energy and big smiles with every photo email signature that you send
- provide easy identification so you are recognizable during face-to-face encounters
- grab the viewers attention long enough to create an attraction to you which can result over time in an attraction to your company and its mission, values and belief
- work to build a solid foundation upon which you and your target audience can do business
- visually support your bottom line activities.
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| Caroline – Before |
Steve and Caroline Melberg, owners of Small Business Mavericks, recently fired their old photographic images and collaborated with InBeaute Photography to create new ones that met the top ten criteria listed above. Now as they display their new images they are being overwhelmed with positive comments ranging from “Yes! That’s the person I want to do business with,” to “Wow! What a difference the new photo makes to your image.” Now their photos are working for them 24/7 and building relationships with people even before the first email, conversation or face-to-face contact.
To assure that the photographic images were optimized for the best display possible, InBeaute Photography formatted the photos for the web at approx. 200 pixels x 200 pixels with a resolution of 72pixels per inch and for print 4”x5” at 300 dots per inch (exact sizes may vary.)
Both Caroline and Steve purchased not one, but four different in-studio headshot portraits from their sessions. Why four different images? Because they strategically chose a minimum of four different top priority venues for display: Blog, LinkedIn & Facebook profiles, email signature photo and print materials as well as several secondary ones. Then they matched up four portraits that subtly convey different brand nuances to be appropriately displayed on each over two years time. Additionally, Caroline had several on-location photographs created in 2009 as well. So the overall visual strategy results in a plan with depth and breadth; photographic images with consistency, variety and quality; and a good ROI of time/money invested.
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| Caroline – Ater |
In conclusion, we recommend that you take notice of the photographic images being displayed by your associates and, most especially, by your competitors. Note which images are working for the brand and helping to strategically and positively reinforce their brand versus the images that are counterproductive and unfortunately, hurting the brand.
Attractive, well-produced photographic images are a priceless tool to help you build positive relationships with your target audience. Make a lasting impression with photographic images that convey the friendliness, warmth and professional trust you bring to your work, plus build brand awareness of your company and its mission, values and belief. Good business images are a necessity in today’s competitive marketplace, not a luxury !
Wendy Houser Blomseth
InBeaute Photography
Helping you create your best images that attract your best clients since 1998
NOTE: As a truly gifted photographer, not only did Wendy do a tremendous job for Steve and I, she’s created amazing portraits for hundreds of other smart and savvy business folks as well. Check out her work on her online portfolio here!
Tags: business portraits, personal branding, photographic images for business, small business branding
Posted in Branding, Small Business Internet Marketing, Tools for Small Business | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 20th, 2009
What’s it take to become a top brand online? According to a survey recently conducted by Forrester Research, trustworthiness, helpful, and relevance are the three attributes that made Google, Yahoo!, and Amazon the top three brands online.
This actually makes sense. When I think of Google I do think of trust and relevance. When I think of Amazon I also think of trust and relevance. After all, where else would you go for books and music online?
Google built its reputation as a search engine on trust and relevance. And searchers still trust them over every other source.
When it comes to online branding, trust and relevance are two of the most important attributes necessary regardless of your niche. No matter how large or small your audience is – and few of us have the audience the size of Google, Amazon, or Yahoo! – you’ll need to develop trustworthiness, be helpful to your audience, and be relevant. If you don’t possess those attributes in some measure then I doubt very seriously that your target audience will pay you much mind.
Are you developing trust, relevance, and helpfulness in your online brand?
Tags: helpfulness, online branding, relevance, trust
Posted in Branding | No Comments »
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