SlideShare Helps to Brand Your Business

Have you struggled with company branding and securing business leads? A great way to do this is by using SlideShare. Most people think it’s used just to share business presentations, but you can also use it as a branding tool – to share information about your business, services and products.

With the rapidly growing use of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, more people are becoming bored with text-based content. People are visual. Hence, “a picture is worth a thousand words…”
One way to avoid the boredom is to create and share visual content. Similar to a Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentation, SlideShare allows you to develop and share creative visual content across the Web.

SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. With 60 million monthly visitors and 130 million page views, it is among the most visited 200 websites in the world. Besides presentations, SlideShare also supports documents, PDFs, videos and webinars.

With that amount of visitors and page views, and the free and paid features offered, using SlideShare as a branding tool could be the right answer for your business.

Just think… your SlideShare presentation can be viewed, shared, and embedded by thousands of people.

Take a look at this example of how you can use SlideShare.

Try it out…and let me know what you think.

How to Build Your LinkedIn Company Page

There are a lot of people with businesses on LinkedIn. Building your company’s page will allow you to showcase your brand and connect to your business’ target audience.

The following video is part of a Webcast provided by LinkedIn and HubSpot. Who better to learn from than the pros themselves on, “How to Build Your LinkedIn Company Page for Business Success?”

http://youtu.be/6jbnZfVZb2M

I hope this video will help you get your business page built on LinkedIn. Try it and let me know what you think.

Spending Your Marketing Dollars on Branding

Have you ever gone to a website to look up a product and the website was just awful? The company may have a great product or provide excellent service, but their website is not reflective of either.

Marketing expert Karen Leland, contributor on Entrepreneur Online, shares tips on why you should hire the best people to do the job.

She gives the example about websites. Skimping on your website can cost you more in the long run, so spend your marketing dollars wisely. Price is important – but don’t sacrifice quality for the sake of the dollar. If Designer One is more expensive but provides a better deliverable – then hire them. Don’t select Designer Two because he’s cheaper, but you know his/her work isn’t as great as Designer One. Do not short change yourself.

Your website should be a reflection of you. Everything you would say to a prospective client should be on your website.

Click here to view a short video. You will save money by not having to make up for what the company messed up.

This Just In! All New Twitter for Businesses

Twitter re-launched Twitter for Business. This new site gives businesses more information on how to grow their business, even if it is only just 140 characters at a time.

The revamped Twitter website provides information on mastering the Twitter basics – building your community and marketing to the masses. The site shares success stories – by industry and business size – and provides a self-service area for placing ads and using web-marketing tools.

Twitter 101 provides information on how Twitter can help your business. With the Glossary, you can also stay up-to-date with frequently used jargon.

The site also allows you to learn how to engage your customers by establishing your brand personality, writing good tweets and sharing photos, videos and content.

To learn more about the new Twitter for Business – visit https://business.twitter.com.

After that, watch, “What can your business do…in just 140 characters?”

http://youtu.be/BGirUZq1WtQ

Once you’re finished, let me know what you think.

 

Three Tips for Branding Your Growing Business

Branding…the new buzz word for business.

What does it really mean to “brand” your business?

There are a lot of ways to brand your business. In this video from Entrepreneur Online, Branding Specialist Erika Napoletano offers advice on how to get your customers to see you and your business as the solution to their problems.

Her three branding tips don’t talk about logos, taglines or colors. She says,

  1. Know why you do what you do
  2. Know who you would never work with
  3. Stay true to yourself and be you…everyone else is already taken

These are all easy for me. I started Visibility Marketing Inc. because I enjoyed doing exactly what the tagline says, “making you more visible.” It may sound like a cliché, but it’s true. It began simple enough, with writing positive feature articles. The feedback I received let me know that there was a hunger, a market out there where people wanted a reprieve from the negative stories they often hear and read about. They wanted to read about the positive people and the positive things there were doing to make this world better.

Early in my career, one of my first customers was the epitome of number two. I learned a lot from him. Most importantly, I can now easily identify the people I will never work.

Lastly, before I signed the papers for VMI, I read about, paid attention and listened to many entrepreneurs. I still do. I am a lifelong student of business and will always be. However, I know that though I’ve learned a lot from others, I can never be like them. I can only be me. It’s the only me I can be. I’ve learned to be dynamic, with the ability to change when necessary, make critical decisions and a lot of mistakes. As in life, business is cyclical, it has its ups and downs. Hang in there long enough and you will experience more ups in your entrepreneurial journey.

Big “ups” to you as you continue to forge your way to branding you.

 

Give yourself a branding overhaul

Do you need a branding overhaul? Does your branding really showcase who you are and what you offer? Now is the time to sit back and see how “visible” you are to yourself – you are the customer.

A lot of people think branding is just creating a logo, having business cards and a website. But what do these things really say about you.

Branding is a big package and in it should be all the things representative of you, your style, your products and services. So… if you are the customer, how do you feel about these things?

Business documents

How do you look on paper? If you are the customer, can you appreciate the materials you hand out? Is your logo and artwork aesthetically pleasing and visible on your business cards, stationery, envelopes, brochures, and other business documents? Are they well written and clearly defines who you are and the services you provide.

Will you communicate electronically? Do you have electronic versions of your paper products?

Your Email

Do you have an electronic business card you can place in your footer? If not, have you set up your Automatic Signature that appears after your email (i.e., your name, company name, address, telephone numbers, website and email address)?

Your Website

Review your website. Is your logo and artwork appropriately placed and visually pleasing? Other things to look for:

  • Do you have a tagline, slogan or catch-phrase that helps to reinforce your message?
  • Does it say who you are, what you do, what products and services you provide?
  • What about client testimonials…ones that can provide credibility to you and your business.
  • Do you have a way to share news, tips and other relevant information such as a blog?
  • Do you have a way for your visitors to share your information such as Share Buttons?
  • Do you have photos of past events, workshops, client projects?

Your Social Media Accounts

All of your social media accounts should have your logo, tagline and other relevant artwork, and color scheme. Different accounts give you different ways to customize your information.

  • Facebook Business Page – allows you to add a Logo and Cover Image.
  • Google+ – allows you to add a Logo and Cover Image
  • Twitter Business Account – allows you to add your logo, a header image, a custom background and use custom colors.
  • LinkedIn – allows you to add your company profile and use your logo.

Be consistent. Use the same images cross all social media accounts.

You should also be sure to create an account with a similar name as your business or tagline.

These are just a few of the important things to review during your branding overhaul. Make a weekend of it. Who knows… you may look one way on Friday and look a better way on Monday!

Seven Ways You Can Stand Out from Your Competition

Hopefully, you have figured out your business niche. If you haven’t, please take some time to do so. You may sell widgets, but do you sell educational widgets, children’s widgets or healthcare widgets?

Now is the time to find your competitors with the same or similar niche so you can determine how “you” will stand out and apart from them. What will you bring to the table that they don’t? What can you do better?

I’ve chosen seven ways you can stand out from your competition:

  1. Identify your competitors. Do they provide the same services/products?
  2. Identify what makes you unique…then identify what your competitors say makes them unique.
  3. Compare strengths and weaknesses. What do you do better? What do you think they do better? Be honest in your observations, then make any necessary adjustments that will set you apart and make you stand out.
  4. Who is your intended buyer…your target audience? Do you target a specific age, gender, business type or geographic location? Are your competitors targeting the same audiences? Also, look for reviews. Are their reviews backing up there “greatness?”
  5. How do your competitors use social media? Are they actively and consistently engaged on social media? Are their followers interactive and responsive to them and… if so, is that activity “real” activity. Do they receive a lot of complaints, praise or compliments?
  6. Do your competitors advertise online? Have you seen advertising for your competitors on other websites? Do you see others advertising your competitor?
  7. Have you visited your competitors’ website? Do you think it’s better than yours? Are there positive things about their site that you should incorporate into your website? Does your website have positive things missing from their website? Is their website easy to use and navigate? Does it have all the informational elements about your business you think your “niche” market should know?

The above are questions you should ask yourself. There are certainly more ways to differentiate yourself when building and branding your business.

Now that you’ve gotten started, can you think of others?

SBA: Developing a Marketing Plan

The SBA is a useful resource for small businesses. If there is an office in your area, please take advantage of their services. If meeting face-to-face is difficult, peruse the information they have available online.

Developing a Marketing Plan

Marketing takes time, money, and lots of preparation. One of the best ways to prepare yourself is to develop a solid marketing plan. A strong marketing plan will ensure you’re not only sticking to your schedule, but that you’re spending your marketing funds wisely and appropriately.

What can a Marketing Plan do for Your Small Business?

A marketing plan includes everything from understanding your target market and your competitive position in that market, to how you intend to reach that market (your tactics) and differentiate yourself from your competition in order to make a sale.

Your small business marketing budget should be a component of your marketing plan. Essentially, it will outline the costs of how you are going to achieve your marketing goals within a certain timeframe.

If you don’t have the funds to hire a marketing firm or even staff a position in-house, there are resources available to guide you through the process of writing a marketing plan and developing a market budget.

Bend Your Budget When Necessary and Keep an Eye on ROI

Once you have developed your marketing budget, it doesn’t mean that it’s set in stone. There may be times when you need to throw in another unplanned marketing tactic — such as hosting an event or creating a newspaper ad — to help you reach your market more effectively.

Ultimately, it’s more important to determine whether sticking to your budget is helping you achieve your marketing goals and bringing you a return on investment (ROI) than to adhere to a rigid and fixed budget.

That’s why it’s important to include a plan for measuring your spend. Consider what impact certain marketing activities have had on your revenues during a fixed period, such as a business quarter, compared to another time period when you focused your efforts on other tactics. Consider the tactics that worked as well as those that didn’t work. You don’t have to cut the tactics that didn’t work, but you should assess whether you need to give them more time to work or whether the funds are best redirected elsewhere.

Granted, some tactics are hard to measure — such as the efficacy of print collateral (brochures, sales sheets, etc.), but you need to consider the impact of not having these branding staples in your market tool kit before you reign in your graphic design and print funds.

Marketing plans should be maintained on an annual basis, at a minimum. But if you launch a new product or service, take time to revisit your original plan or develop a separate campaign plan that you can add to your main plan as an addendum.

At the end of the day, the time spent developing your marketing plan, is time well spent because it defines how you connect with your customers. And that’s an investment worth making.

Additional Resources

Provides information to help you develop your marketing and plan and review sample marketing plans.

Offers tips to help you research, plan, develop and price marketing campaigns.

SBA: Promoting & Growing Your Business

The SBA is a useful resource for small businesses. If there is an office in your area, please take advantage of their services. If meeting face-to-face is difficult, peruse the information they have available online.

Here’s a video about promoting your business. It’s information we all can use.

http://youtu.be/__xJRbSf8mA

Use Twitter to Build a Personal Brand

Sit. Read. Follow. Participate.

Many entrepreneurs are finding that Twitter has helped them tremendously as they begin to increase their visibility – namely their name, business products and services and logo.

After the Twitter account is created, customize the page with a background, header and profile images and logo. The logo can be included in the header image along with the tagline and Hashtags (#). You may also want to include several hashtags so that you will show up in the hashtag searches. A few we have used are:  #bemorevisible, #pr, #cleveland, #sustainability. When someone searches one of the hashtags, my account i+s listed. Another tip is to use the same color scheme for your profile. This ensures that everything consistent.

Finding and following others in the same profession or business industry is very important in building your brand. For example, my profession is – public relations, communications, and branding. To get started, follow similar professionals. Twitter helps you locate them by offering several links that can be found on the left of the page – “Who to Follow” or “Similar to You.” Using these can quickly assist you in finding people who are very active on Twitter, who offer discussions and other dialogue in which you can participate. Following others and reading their strategies can also help you build or add to your own strategies – what seems to be working for them may also work for you.

Watch what’s trending. Check out trends that fall in line with your business or profession. Click the hashtag and you will see all the others who are talking about the same subject matter and follow people from there.

You will find that as you follow them, most will follow you. Read, read, read. Stay active and read what they are sharing. Re-tweet what you find interesting. Reply. Be active. The more active you are, the more people will begin to follow you. Share your own pages and blogs. Your followers will begin to share your tweets.

Use Follow Friday (#FF) by giving a “shoutout” to some of your new followers. They will appreciate you advertising their Twitter accounts and others who may not have followed you, who follow them – will start to follow you also.

Lastly, outsourcing your social media can relieve some pressure. However, when you set out to build a personal brand, you need to be active. Share your personal feelings, stories, tips… Outsourcing this to someone else can do more harm than good, as they are not and cannot be you.

“You need to be You.” Make “your” voice heard. Take time to sit, read, follow and participate.

The Celebrity Endorser: Can It Work For You?

“I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV,” is one of my favorite, most memorable line from a celebrity endorser. It was the mid-‘80s and Vicks 44 used Peter Bergman, who played Dr. Cliff Warner from my beloved soap opera, All My Children to endorse Vicks 44.

Celebrity faces have  represented products and services for over 100 years.  In the early years, one celebrity would characterize one product. From print material to billboards to television commercials – that one celebrity was the “face” of that brand.

Back in 2002, Oprah Winfrey aired her first “Favorite Things” show where she shared products that she felt were noteworthy to her audience . Plus, they would make great gift items. The show typically aired around the beginning of the holiday season in early November. The best part for the audience was that they were given some of those products to take home. Product categories included food favorites, beauty and body care, books, music and home and high-tech discoveries.

Several years later, the segment began to spotlight specific groups. For example, the 2004 audience members were teachers. In 2005, the audience was volunteers from Hurricane Katrina. In 2008, the show aired in May instead of November due to the nation’s economic hardships. In 2009, instead of a massive audience giveaway, Oprah held a sweepstakes where there was only one favorite things grand prize winner.

Oprah Winfrey’s product endorsement can take a business with virtually no website traffic to crashing its hosting services. It means that those businesses can count on making lots of money – just by her mentioning it – and, especially if that product is listed on her Favorite Things.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have access to Oprah, but if you look closely around you, in your circle of influence, you are bound to find someone Oprah-like that has a certain amount of clout.

Do your research. Ask family, friends and even other business associates if they know the “who’s who” in your area. As a matter of fact, see if there’s a “Who’s Who” local directory in your business community. These people could be corporate big wigs or they could be well-known bloggers who write product reviews. Find those people and get your product to them. For starters, ask if they would not mind reviewing your product and writing a testimonial. If you are creating an ad or commercial, ask if they would endorse your product or service.

Check out some of the products that made it to Oprah’s 2012 Favorite Things List. Who knows, one day you may be one of them (wink wink).