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Posts Tagged ‘Branding’
Thursday, June 13th, 2013
There has been a pretty strong contingent on Facebook trying to avoid hashtags. Unfortunately, for them, Facebook started supporting them yesterday. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
You can actually do some pretty cool things with Facebook hashtags. Such as:
- Click on hashtags, even if they originate on other services, such as Twitter.
- Search for a specific hashtag from your search bar.
- Compose posts directly from the hashtag feed and search results.
It’s not really a big surprise to those of us who keep an eye on social media developments. Google+ started supporting hashtags just last month.
Probably, the most powerful feature of Facebook hashtags is being able to click the hashtag and see what people on other social media services are saying with that hashtag. You’ll also be able to click through to those services as well as to personal blogs and other websites that mention the hashtags. This makes social media a cross-platform communication tool, which can be very powerful for your business.
One way to use hashtags is as a branding element. Start your own hashtag around your company brand or a product brand that your company owns. Get people to using it and you can follow that hashtag to track how people are using your hashtag. You can start the conversation, follow the conversation, and track the conversation. There’s nothing more powerful than that.
Tags: Branding, facebook, hashtag, Social Media
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »
Monday, April 8th, 2013
Which is these three is most important: Authority, Branding, or Social Media?
I’m going to answer that question for you today, but before I do let’s discuss what each of these does for you.
Social Media
We’ll start with social media because, in my opinion, it doesn’t matter until you’ve established the other two.
Social media is a tool. It’s a means to an end, not an end to itself. If you have nothing to promote, then being on social media is just a presence. You can’t generate leads for a product that doesn’t exist. You can be an expert at building relationships through social media, but if you have no place to take those relationships once you’ve established them, then you’re doing all your work in vain.
Social media is an important marketing tool, but it follows from branding and authority. It doesn’t establish them.
Branding
Branding is the act of defining yourself, your company, or your product. Obviously, you have to have a product or business entity before you can brand it.
While branding is important for establishing your identity in the marketplace, there’s still got to be an element that precedes it. That element is what I’ll discuss next.
Authority
Authority is the voice behind your identity. In some ways, authority establishes your identity. In other ways, however, it communicates it.
You can use social media to present your authority, but your authority is the raw material of your company’s brand. Your identity in your niche derives from your authority. Before you can do anything else, you have to establish your authority. That is done by creating useful, valuable content that is consistent and earns respect among your peers.
Social media, branding, and authority are all important for online marketing, but the first two follow on the heels of your authority. Put first things first.
Tags: authority, Branding, Social Media
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013
One of the biggest mistakes YouTube marketers make is thinking they’ll get a rush of traffic from their uploaded videos. More often than not, the referrals from YouTube are pretty low. That’s because people go to YouTube to watch videos. They are not looking for websites to visit. They want to be entertained or informed.
That doesn’t mean, however, that marketing through YouTube has little or no value. It actually has a lot of value.
But what about rankings?
If you think that uploading vidoes to YouTube and then embedding them on your website is going to improve your website’s rankings, then you’ll be disappointed by that too. More than likely, those embeds will help YouTube rank better. If you own the channel those videos are uploaded to, then your YouTube channel could see a rise in rankings based on number of video embeds and social shares. That’s not a bad thing as it means your brand will have one more ranking than it did before. That’s great for reputation management.
The real benefit to marketing through YouTube, however, is in branding. YouTube is one of the top 5 most trafficked websites online and the second biggest search engine. That means you have a powerful marketing medium.
If you can get your YouTube videos in front of a lot of eyeballs, that’s powerful branding. And it’s the true value of marketing through YouTube. Forget about rankings and traffic.
Tags: Branding, online marketing, Reputation Management, search rankings, traffic, Video Marketing, website rankings, YouTube
Posted in Branding | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013
Hashtags are becoming ever more popular. But why?
Constant Contact says 40.7% of hashtag users use them to express their personal feelings about things. But another 34.1% use them to follow brands. 10.4% use hashtags to promote corporate or social events.
Let’s back up a little. 34.1% of hashtag users use them to follow brands. That should tell you something.
What it tells me is that hashtags are useful tools to promote brands on social media. Currently, Twitter, Instagram and Google+ are the only social media sites (that I know of) using hashtags. Facebook has plans to incorporate them some time in the near future.
If you’re on social media, then I highly recommend using hashtags to promote your brand. But you should figure out a way to do it creatively without annoying your followers.
Here are a few guidelines for using hashtags for brand promotion:
- Keep them short. Don’t create hashtags that take up more space than your message. 10 characters or less is best.
- Don’t use them on every post. Just use them when appropriate.
- Check to see if a hashtag exists before creating one. If a hashtag already exists that may be appropriate for your post, then use it. You may discover a whole new group of followers just by using an already existing hashtag.
- If no hashtag exists for your topic, create one.
- Use at least one branded hashtag, but don’t overdo it. Just use them for your overall brand, if appropriate, and for specific products or services if you think you can get a following.
Hashtags are not hard to use. They can enhance your social media branding experience and open you up to whole new markets.
Tags: Branding, hashtags, Social Media
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 13th, 2013
Website headers are a little bit misunderstood. Some small business owners think they can just find a great image, put their business name on it, and they have a website header. You really need to put a little more thought into it than that.
Your header has a very important job. It’s got to communicate something very important to your website visitors.
First, it should give a clear idea about what your business does. Putting your business name on the image isn’t enough. The graphic or image you use in the header should illustrate as well what your business’s specialty is. For instance, if you buy and sell houses, putting a turnip on your header might confuse people. If you are an auto mechanic and the image in your header is two kids playing kickball, that might confuse people.
A second thing your header should do is brand your business in a way that people will remember you and your website. You don’t want people leaving the site and forgetting about it.
Website branding is a difficult thing to achieve. It takes more than a powerful image and your business name to successfully create a brand. You have to think on a broader scale. What images do you want people to associate with your brand? Colors can also be used as branding elements. For Small Business Mavericks, we use brown and blue.
You also want your branding elements to be consistent company-wide. That means your website needs to look like your brochures and vice-versa. You are building an image. Your website is a part of that image. Treat it as a valuable member of your family.
Tags: Branding, header, small business branding, website branding, website design
Posted in website development | No Comments »
Monday, February 25th, 2013
An article in Wired Magazine’s online edition this morning discusses Amazon’s new rival – Google. You might ask, “Why does Amazon need a rival?” And that’s a good question. But the answer is just as good.
It’s not so much that Amazon needs a rival as it is that consumers and brands need Amazon to have a rival.
Here’s a quote from the article:
“Amazon can show they’re a friend to small and medium-sized businesses by offering them a platform that allows them to sell,” he says. “What they don’t do is allow you to control your own brand.”
That’s very important. You can sell a ton of your product through Amazon’s storefront, but how many people know they’re buying your product? Or do they care? All they really know is that they are buying what they need from Amazon.
If you really want to increase your repeat sales and have people coming back for more, telling their friends about you, and more, then you need to sell your brand. That’s a lot different than moving product, which Amazon is good at. But to sell your brand, you need your own storefront and your own fulfillment process. That’s the only true way to control your brand.
Of course, along with the online storefront, the fulfillment process, and everything else that comes with e-commerce, there also comes search engine optimization – being found in Google. So Google is the natural candidate for becoming Amazon’s next big rival. They have the financial clout and the motivation. Are you ready to pick sides? Or do you see taking sides even necessary?
Tags: Amazon, brand management, Branding, e-commerce
Posted in Branding | No Comments »
Thursday, January 31st, 2013
If you’ve built a solid online brand and find yourself having to rebrand your business online for one of various reasons, then you should count the cost before you start. Is rebranding really necessary?
If it is, there are some definite costs, and I mean beyond the dollars and cents.
For instance, if you have to get a new domain name to correspond with your new business domain, then when you redirect your old site to the new domain you’ll likely lose some search engine rankings. The bright side is you can regain those for the new site, but you might have to work extra hard to build up their authority. A new domain starts at line zero where age and authority are concerned.
You’ll also have to count the cost of rebranding your other assets. You might, for instance, have to establish a new Twitter account, or rename your old one.
With your Facebook, you can request a name change. That requires the approval of Facebook. It’s a relatively easy process, but it does require you taking some action. With Google+, you just go to your business page and change the name.
You’ll also have to rebrand your YouTube account, LinkedIn persona, newsletters, podcasts, and anything else online that carries your old brand name. That means more work. For each additional aspect of your business that you have to rebrand, there’s a cost – even if it’s minuscule.
Sometimes, rebranding is necessary. If you find that it’s unavoidable for your business, try to mitigate the costs as much as you can.
Tags: Branding, newsletter, online branding, online business, rebranding, web domain
Posted in Branding | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013
More and more, branding is becoming the important thing online. It’s not SEO. But I’d say that SEO is now becoming a part of the overall branding efforts of serious online marketers.
Rand Fishkin makes predictions every year about the direction of search marketing and social media. This year, he continues that tradition. Interestingly, he’s got some predictions for Google+, Google search criteria, and co-citations. If he’s right about any of this, and he’s usually at least partially correct, then that spells one thing – branding is the new content.
How Google+, AuthorRank, and Co-Citations Move Your Branding Forward
Google+ has not become an essential element of SEO – yet. But it is becoming important for branding purposes, just as most social media is. But I do believe that using Google+ long term could improve your search rankings. Especially in the local SEO space because you have to have a Google+ account to claim your Google Places listing.
On top of that, if you are an author (and online everyone is an author or publisher, or both), then implementing Google’s rich snippets for authorship is an essential element of SEO. Maybe not yet, but all the leaders in online marketing expect it to happen at some point in the future. I agree.
Thirdly, co-citation is something that requires a little explanation. Anchor text is diminishing in importance. More and more, search marketers are seeing evidence of brands being mentioned alongside specific keyword phrases and this is causing brand pages that do not include those search phrases to rank for the keywords anyway. That just proves my point that branding is the new SEO. Google+, AuthorRank, and Co-citations are all a part of that change.
Tags: AuthorRank, Branding, co-citations, google, online branding, search marketing, SEO
Posted in Branding | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, November 20th, 2012
Pinterest has announced that businesses are welcome. Being one of the fastest growing social networks for the past year, a lot of people flocked to Pinterest to set up an account. And a lot of those users have been businesses. Now there’s good news. You are no longer “just tolerated;” you are welcome.
If you don’t have a business presence at Pinterest currently and you are ready to add a visual branding element to your social networking, you can set up a business brand page. If you do have an account in a business name, then you can convert that account to a business brand page. The new direction also includes new features.
Here are a few new features that your business can take advantage of at Pinterest:
- Add a Pin It button to your business website
- Add a Follow button to your website
- Invite people to follow your Pinterest boards from your website
- Add Pinterest branding to your marketing brochures and other collateral
I encourage you to check out sample business pages and find out how you can use Pinterest brand pages to promote your business more effectively.
Social media marketers have a lot more options available to them today. You are not relegated to Facebook and Twitter any more, though you can incorporate them into your overall marketing plan alongside Pinterest and other services.
Tags: Branding, Pinterest, Social Media, social networking
Posted in Branding | 4 Comments »
Monday, October 22nd, 2012
Branding is the most effective and most rewarding type of marketing a small business can perform. Once you embed your brand into the consciousness of your customer, it tends to stick around. Blogging is one of the most effective and enduring tools available to assist the small business owner in achieving top-of-mind awareness, aka branding.
What makes blogging such a useful tool for branding? A number of things, so let’s talk about some of them.
- The Conversation – You can’t control the conversation in most venues online. Forums, social media, other off-site platforms are usually controlled by someone else. But your blog is yours. You can initiate the conversation and control the conversation. It’s the perfect branding tool.
- Customer Interaction – Besides being in control, you can interact with your customers and maintain a level of positive engagement. That is much harder to do in social media.
- Your Hub On The Web - Everyone needs a home base. I’m not saying don’t use social media or off-site platforms. You should use them, but you should use them to drive traffic back to your hub – the place of conversation that you can control, your blog.
- List Capture – As you direct traffic to your blog, get people to go deeper by joining your mailing list. This is where the money is and your blog is the gateway.
Branding begins with the conversation. Instead of throwing out bland marketing messages, interact with your customers and drive them to a deeper relationship with you through your blog.
Tags: blogging, Branding, conversational marketing, Social Media
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 4 Comments »
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