How to Harness the Power of the Internet for Branding

How to Harness the Power of the Internet for Branding

Branding is essential to keep a sustainable business operation but very few business owners have the time to work on branding efforts. With clients to meet, calls to follow-up with, and deliverables to actually work on, business owners are spread too thin to promote themselves following their own branding guidelines. Harnessing the power of the Internet, you can improve your branding and allow your potential customers to find you more easily.

Take a look at the top ten from list of top 500 sites from Alexa and you will find that search engines, including Google (#1), Baidu (#4), Yahoo (#6), and Google India (#7), and social media sites, including YouTube (#2), Facebook (#3), Reddit (#8), and Twitter (#12), dominate this list most of the time around the world. By spending time in branding efforts that make your business more visible on the web, your business becomes available to a broader audience.

Self-promotion on the Internet is 90% preparation and 10% execution.

Business owners are like teenage boys: they are desperate to talk to girls (customers), but when they finally get a chance, they don’t know what to say. The first step in self-promotion can be found in the book Branding Yourself by Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy. You need to be ready to deliver your message according to the format of the situation. Therefore, you need to establish your personal brand bio in 3 stages: 1) the one sentence (100 word or less pitch), 2) the short paragraph (250 word pitch), and 3) the two-paragraph story (two paragraphs that provide your full story). Once you have developed a consistent story, you are ready to take your message online. Regardless whether it has to be in under 140 characters or in 500-word blog post, you’ll be ready to know how to keep your brand consistent.

Establish a central online presence that will become your main online portal.

This can be either a blog or a website, depending on your tech skills, available budget, and available time to work on it. Here you can present the full two-paragraph story and make sure that people looking for financial advisors in your area can find you. If you choose for a blog format, make sure to write at least once a week and to keep posts between the 350 – 450 word range. As your main portal, you need to start including the URL of your site into your business cards, your email signature, and any presentation material that potential clients will be exposed to.

According to Promo University, it’s important to select promotional products that are consistent with your online branding efforts. Promo products are great for making new connections at tradeshows, showing appreciation to your established customers, and generally building awareness of your company’s brand.

Focus on the social media channels that make sense for you and represent your self-brand consistently.

Even though every day an estimated 166 million individuals use Snapchat, 1,284 million use Facebook, and 100 million use Twitter, it doesn’t mean that you need to be present in every single social media outlet. Depending on your industry you may opt for a more formal social media channel, such as LinkedIn or Instagram, or a more informal one, such as Snapchat or Twitter.

Still, you should spend some time prospecting on LinkedIn. Out of all social media outlets Linkedin stands as the most professional one and appropriate one for spending your time connecting with people online. The key to LinkedIn is to spend time providing answers to questions from other users in your field of expertise. This way you can build your online stock as a reputable advisor and drive people to your main portal. Other two great social media sites for providing answers to queries from potential customers are Quora and Reddit. Through your online dialogue with potential clients, and when appropriate, you can start using your one sentence or one paragraph brand statement.

Through smart use of the Internet you can validate your brand, and create more potential client leads.

 Image Credit: EdgeThreeSixty

7 Warning Signs That Your Blog Needs Better Social Media Management

7 warning signs that your blog needs better social media management

There is no one way to do social media right, but there are a million ways to get it wrong. When it comes to promoting your blog, growing your audience and building relationships with readers in your niche, there are some things that will definitely put you in the black book.

Start with a good fresh strategy for 2016. If you’re guilty of any of the offences below, it’s time to step up your social media game and start getting the results your blog deserves.

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How to Use Twitter as a Professional Networking Tool

how to use twitter professional networking tool

Twitter is more than just a method to share your thoughts regarding any particular subject. It can be a powerful tool used to develop a vast professional network. As more than 300 million active users take to the site on a regular basis, there are a number of opportunities that could be waiting for you. By taking the time to learn what the system can offer, you can improve your reputation among many in a fairly short amount of time.

Here are five best practices on how to use Twitter as a professional networking tool.

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5 Things to Do in Facebook to Make Professional Connections

facebook for business

Facebook is one of the most popular social media sites on the Internet. It keeps families connected over long distances while helping businesses and professionals connect to potential clients or employers.

However, it takes more than handing out your personal profile to others in order to secure this professional network. As Facebook can help you develop strong ties, it can also be detrimental to your career if used incorrectly.

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How to Use Foursquare for Small Business

How to Use Foursquare for Small Business

There have never been so many people willing to talk about exactly where they are and what they’re doing in exchange for incentives. The location-based service Foursquare offers individual users the chance to share where they are and get recommendations on where to go next. At the same time, businesses can attract new visitors and build customer loyalty.

As a small business, you’re probably blown away by the figures: 20 million users worldwide are on Foursquare, and they have racked up 2.5 billion check-ins! If you can attract even a small percentage to your business, you’ll be doing well.

Here are 5 tips on using Foursquare to promote your small business.

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Win 1 of 20 Gift Cards for a FREE ONE Year of the iDcard

idcard-giveaway

For a chance to win 1 of 20 gift cards for a FREE ONE Year of the iDcard, just fill out the form below.

You can tweet every day until 10/26/2014 for additional entries for the giveaway.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TERMS AND CONDITIONS:

  • A total of 20 gift cards for a free year of the iDcard are available. Only one gift card per person.
  • You must provide me your mailing address via private message on Twitter (@idaconcpts) or Facebook (http://facebook.com/damiandavilarojas) so I can mail the gift card to you.
  • Each gift card holds no value and does not entitle the owner to any discounts. It is simply a gift certificate. Recipients of these cards will gently scratch off the black and grey material with a coin to reveal a unique promo code. Each code is good for one FREE iDcard that will expire 10/31/2014.
  • This means that you have until 10/31/2014 to redeem the code, however the actual card is valid for a full year from the date of redemption.
  • These gift cards can be redeemed at http://theidcard.com or at the offices of the iDcard at Ward Warehouse (Oahu). If done online, FREE shipping is provided. The gift cards allows everyone to choose the iDcard they want. There are seven great designs to choose from.

Are You Measuring Your Social Media Efforts?

social-media-efforts

Businesses that have jumped on the social media train will do well to make sure that they monitor their social media efforts. With social media monitoring you can see which of your marketing strategies are the most efficient so that you can refine them and have a more direct approach to social media marketing and advertising rather than potentially waste your time, energy, and money on approaches that aren’t effective.

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Is Your Local Business Doing These Three Things on Twitter?

twitter keyboard

You tweet regularly and are beginning to build a following for your local business. You’re ready to take it to the next level and truly grow your presence on Twitter and harness the social aspect of social media for your advantage.

So how do you do it?

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Managing Feedback

managing feedback 1

Community feedback–that is, when a customer actually uses your product and provides real feedback to improve it–is the dream that everyone’s chasing. You’d be hard pressed to find even small brands in your home town that don’t tuck Facebook or Twitter logos beside their company names. That dream is largely a fantasy when it comes down to the nuts and bolts. The reality is that finding the feedback you really need often uncovers things you might not want to know.

So the solution is to take more control over your brand. Build channels for users to discuss your brand, monitor that feedback, respond when necessary and most importantly build character for your business.

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A Review of Google Social Media Tools

google social media tools

Google has often been blasted for failing to understand social media and capitalize on the rise of this communication channel. Still, those same critics cannot blame the Mountain View-based search giant for not trying and, actually, may be shortchanging the company’s actual efforts. When asked about Google social media tools, the average person will immediately mention Google+. However, that is not the only venture from Google into social networks and, in some markets, not even close to its most successful one.

In this article, we will take a look at three of Google’s projects in the social arena.

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