A big part of online promotion is creating content that can be shared.  This includes email newsletters, article submissions, press release distribution, and blog post writing.  Social media is a great place to share this high quality content once it has been created.  Social media is important for numerous reasons.  It helps to build a brand and improves SEO.  Businesses are realizing that it’s not just a fad and that it’s time to get involved, if they haven’t already.  One of the most important decisions that needs to be made is who will be the social media voice that represents the company and brand.

The first thing that needs to be decided is whether the voice should be a brand or a person.  Should the Twitter profile that’s promoted for business use be “CompanyX” or “JaneDoe” (President and Founder of Company X).  This usually depends on the company.  If it’s a product based company, it might be easier and more acceptable to use the brand name.  If it’s a service based company, it’s more about forming relationships and establishing trust with an actual person.  Certain situations, especially in the service industry, need that personality.  People like to put a face with the company name.

Once you’ve decided that the voice should be represented by a person at the company, the next step is to determine who that person should be.  Depending on the company, the right person differs, but it could be anyone including the owner, President, CEO, or VP of Marketing.  This decision is extremely important because the brand will be built in this person’s name.  You need to think about whether or not this person will still be working at the company in 2 years, 5 years, or 10 years.  If the brand is built in their name, and then they leave, they take all of that brand equity along with them and it’s like starting all over again.  The name needs to be consistent across all marketing channels including all business and social profiles.  One of the possible dangers of using a person is that the personal and professional sometimes blend together.  If an account is being used for business reasons, the content needs to remain professional at all times.

It’s also important to consider if more than one person should represent the brand.  For a small business, only one person should be the voice of the company.  If there are too many people it’s not consistent and could lead to confusion.  Seeing one name promotes brand recognition.  People see the name over and over and get who that person is representing.  The brand behind the name is less recognizable as more names are used.  For a large corporation that has numerous divisions, it is more appropriate to have multiple people representing the brand because they can represent the various divisions or products lines.  In this case, using only one name will cause too much clutter since the information isn’t relevant to everyone.

Determining the social media voice is the first step in establishing and building a presence in the social media space.  This is a decision that will affect major online marketing initiatives, so it needs to be made wisely.

Sure, we know effective branding is crucial for a company’s viable success, but that doesn’t get us any closer to knowing how to implement a realistic branding strategy. Branding can be even more challenging for small business owners who might not have the funds needed for extensive marketing platforms. Fortunately, small businesses owners still have a number of inexpensive avenues they can explore when looking to brand a new enterprise — they might just have to think outside the box a bit.

When branding a new business, you should really take the time to explore all of the options thoroughly because the decisions you make now will define your company’s image for years to come. The following are five questions you should ask yourself before you begin developing potential branding elements.

1. What are you trying to say?
   Your first priority should be to develop a communicable message that accurately represents your business and what it offers consumers, whether it be a product or service. Take the time to think about every aspect of your business. Writing a mission statement for your enterprise is a great way to solidify what your company is all about.
   You need to have a well-thought-out message from the get-go so your branding practices can be implemented consistently in the future.  The overall design concept, individual logo and expressive colors should flow seamlessly to deliver one comprehensive message about your business.
2. How much money can you afford to spend?
   Some small businesses might have the start-up capital necessary to hire a freelance designer or marketing specialist to help them brand their company. Others might not have funds to allocate toward developing a marketing strategy, which makes the initial branding process that much more important. If the latter is true for your business, contact the marketing or graphic design departments of colleges/universities in your area. Higher education programs often offer opportunities for their students to get real-world experience by working with local businesses. You’ll get free marketing and branding development, and they’ll get college credit and professional clips for their portfolios.
3. How do you want customers to perceive your business?
   The first branding component potential customers will see and remember is your company logo. People should be able to recognize your business by its logo, and color choice plays a big role in your decision. Choose something that will draw attention but still look professional. Get feedback from as many people as you can before you settle on a logo. Ask your friends, family members and professional colleagues what their opinions are, because, as consumers, their opinions are all relevant.
4. What should your online presence be?
   Today’s consumers expect to find the companies they do business with online. As such, every business should have some sort of online presence. The extent to which you promote your brand online will depend on your staff and its financial capacity, but there’s certainly no reason you can’t establish a profile on social media sites for free. If you choose to set up a unique website, make it easy to navigate with contact information that’s readily available. Websites should always be eye-catching yet informative to best meet the needs of potential customers.
5. How will you maintain your brand?
   Once you’ve established what you want your brand to be, consider the various marketing strategies that will help you promote it in the future. Carefully consider who your potential clients are and how to best reach them. Take advantage of every viable opportunity to get your brand out into the public. The more familiar the public is with your brand, the more likely they will be to work with you in the future.

Considering these questions from the get-go will put you on the right track to building a brand that will give you positive results. When developing a brand for your new small business, the takeaway point is to keep it simple and keep it consistent.

This article was written by Kristen Bradley SuretyBonds.com, a nationwide surety bond producer. SuretyBonds.com helps new small business owners meet licensing requirements every day. The agency provides professional advice to entrepreneurs to help them open for business as soon as possible.

I’ve recently learned that moving digital property is almost as emotional as moving physical property.

Over the last few days, I’ve been moving my web sites to a new server and this has been more of an emotional process than I had anticipated.   In some ways, leaving one web host was like breaking up and moving out. It included all the feigned politeness that was required.  And then moving to the new web host had all the hopeful emotion attached to any new relationship.

What do relationships have to do with servers?

I didn’t think relationships had anything at all to do with servers.  What’s the big deal?  You click a few buttons, identify a new server to point to, then sit back, cross your fingers and hope for the best.  But what happens when it doesn’t go perfectly?  Can a kind word and attitude really keep customers loyal?

I’m not sure if a kind word can overcome poor quality product or performance, but a kind word can certainly earn you the benefit of the doubt.  And depending on the promise of your brand, it  can make all the difference.

HostGator‘s Customer Service Boosts Their Brand

A lot of business bloggers have been recommending HostGator to host their blogs.  I don’t recall the actual reasons and I don’t even know what HostGator’s official positioning is.  But based on my experience in searching for a new web host, visiting sites and getting recommendations from people who are just like me — I got this impression that HostGator was going to be a good choice for me.  It seemed to me that they were targeting people who had enough technical know-how to host their own blog or web site — but that’s sort of where it ended.  (Yup – sounds like me).

Their site spoke my language – they used standard terms that I understood and they didn’t give brand names to things that obscured what they were.  Hey — just being able to say that I needed a “dedicated IP address” was enough new language for me.

They had FRIENDLY and helpful online chat people no matter how many times I needed their help.  They didn’t even get snippy when I contacted them two or three times within a fifteen minute period (and got the same guy!)  to ask the same question.  In fact, their customer service has been everything that I need; patient with my lack of technical knowledge and information, informative, responsive and generally helpful.

But what happens when something goes wrong?

Well, something is going wrong.  Something is up with a couple of my sites and I’m not getting email on my main email account.  Yup.  This is a problem.  And it’s making me nervous.  But HostGator’s customer service training, policy or whatever it is that they are doing over there is keeping my anxiety at bay.  When I contacted them this morning — they rep’s response was “I see that our admins are actually working on this right now.”  Maybe they were and maybe they weren’t but his next sentence was along the lines of “We’ll handle it from here.”  And I went on about my day.

How to Create a Brand Building Customer Service Strategy

1. Build it around your ideal customer. Focus your customer service on your target ideal customer — not everyone.  The whole point of competition is that there is a choice for every type of customer.  Pick the one you serve best.
2. Ask yourself – what’s important to my target customer when they are dealing with what I’m selling. If your ideal customer is a technical dolt who sees themselves capable of managing several blogs without understanding how the technology works, then the customer conversation is COMPLETELY different from the IT professional or company who is in the web site management business.  Identify the circumstances and events that your ideal customers will most likely find themselves in and then create a service conversation around those in a language they can understand.
3. Be who your customer expects you to be. It’s amazing how much simpler customer service training is when you simply focus on BEING who your customer expects you to be based on the brand you’ve put out there.  In my HostGator experience, I expected to be walked through the process and to have certain things explained because I’m not a technical person.  So if your brand were a person — who would they be?  Would they be helpful, patient, super technical?  Once you choose that – having a customer service conversation from that point of view should be easy.

So can great customer service overcome technical difficulty — absolutely.  It can certainly buy you time, patience and loyalty.  If you focus on BEING your brand as you practice your customer service, you’ll find happier customers, happier employees and a bigger bottom line.

Are we really still talking about a picture of Anthony Weiner’s weiner?  Of course we are because we are all ten-year-olds at heart.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

If you’re reading this on your smart phone, click over to http://surveyswipe.com/download and download either the iPhone or the Android application.  After the download, open the app and you’ll see a poll called “Weiner’s weiner” that you can take.  It’s a relatively new technology that will allow you to give your feedback and see how others have voted as well.

You Have a Personal Brand to Manage Whether You Want to or Not

Some of us who have strange names that drew puns and jeers are remembering what those days were like in school and are secretly glad it isn’t us.  Then there are the rest of us who just can’t help but have the Bevis and Butthead reaction of “uuuuuugh, uuuuuugh, uuuuuugh this guy’s name is Weiner we’re all talking about a picture of a weiner!”  It’s just irresistible on so many levels.

It’s these core reactions to an event that show us that it’s actually our primitive brain that runs the show and not that frontal lobe we’re so fond of.  Not only that, but that our name and the brand we’ve established for that name can have a life of it’s own, if we’re not conscious of the fact that we have to manage it.

Primitive Brains are Branding Machines

What happened to Anthony Weiner happens every day on playgrounds everywhere.  Kids are given nicknames based on how they “occur” to those around them.  It’s really a magic combination between the person’s natural way of being combined with an external element that somehow connects with their name and BAM!  a brand is born.  When all these elements are in sync; the outside appears to match the inside and the name just fits — it becomes virtually impossible to shed the name.  And a lot of times, it just doesn’t happen.

Sometimes it’s a good fit and doesn’t do any harm.  But sometimes this “Playground Branding” doesn’t bode well for future ambitions or careers and so the person works extremely hard to re-create themselves so that whatever element drives the brand is minimized and other, more desirable elements are enhanced.

How to Protect Your Personal Brand

The beauty of stories, videos and all things that go viral is that it’s really unpredictable.  We can only analyze it and see why it has gone viral.  But at the same time, from a personal branding level, we can also know our own brands and protect them from the branding trifecta that hit Anthony Weiner.

1. Be realistic with how you OCCUR to people. This can be rather difficult and unpleasant to do, but it’s critical for understanding how your personal brand appears out in the world.  How do people perceive you?  Be especially wary about the potentially negative ways that you can occur to people.   Can you be perceived as squirlly, flighty, overbearing?  Being open to the negative ways in which you can occur to people is critical to managing and controlling your personal brand.
2. Control the use of your name. Does your name have “play”?  This can go either way.  If you have an unusual name like “Oprah” you get to control how it’s perceived in the world.  Likewise, if you have a name like “Weiner” you have to accept the reality that in the US, you’re wide open for flack.  Regardless of which end of the spectrum you’re on.  The fact is that your name is a crucial element of your brand and it’s the verbal representation of the package.  So control and protect it.
3. Your brand owns your behavior. The first two elements coupled with your ambitions will ultimately guide your behavior.  This is the step that most public figures forget.  Your behavior initially drives your brand and then once your brand is  established, your brand will drive your behavior.

If we’re going to be talking about this kind of silliness in the news, then the least we can do is learn from it.  What lessons did you get from this event?

Creative marketing can do one of two things for you. Either you can dig yourself into debt and go full force ahead while crossing your fingers, hoping that the return will pay that loan or you can stop worrying and stick to your guns with a low budget. Often times, we have big dreams and think that big dreams means big money. Stop worrying! I will let you in on my secret to powerful brand building on a skimpy budget.

Create a High Impact Brand Using a Marketing Theme

At the end of the day what you want to do is literally drive your customer to the store. Catchy phrases or jingles that we all recognize on television ads or simply a picture that is engraved into your market audience’s mind are all avenues to the store. Aligning your market theme with the vision of your company is a sure way to create a high impact brand. Depending on what type of business your theme could be for an entire year, each quarter, monthly or even from week to week.

• Step One: Design your theme

Your theme should be both specific and flexible. Your company’s vision will help you define what you are trying to portray to the audience. Keeping your theme flexible will allow you to move with the ever changing marketplace without giving the appearance that you are changing but rather a solid company with a solid product and/or service. As an example, when I see a Stagecoach I immediately think of Wells Fargo Bank. This stagecoach is a flexible brand and it can be driven in any direction that the bank would need to take to keep up with the financial industry. Now the stagecoach is only one part of the branding for Wells Fargo Bank. Wells Fargo Bank has had different themes throughout the years.  Currently, their theme is “Together we’ll go far.” The theme is specific – they want to work with the customer to gain a purpose (that purpose would be defined individually by each customer). The theme is flexible – it allows each customer to determine where they are going together with Wells Fargo Bank.

• Step Two: Build you message

Take your theme and convey your message. What is it exactly that you are trying to convey to your market audience? You want them to know exactly how you can help them or why your product is the best product in the marketplace. “Together we’ll go far.” This conveys a very important principle in any kind of business transactions. Togetherness, you cannot create a service or a sale without both parties involved. This theme defines a customer service like no other – they want to work together with you. Again, you have to stay focused on your vision and portray that vision through your theme and that theme is part of building your brand.

• Step Three: Deliver your message

Now that you have defined and built a theme that will ensure to grab the attention of your audience you need to deliver that message. You don’t have to use the expensive television ads, newspaper ads or radio commercials. You can deliver your message through multiple inexpensive channels. The first place to start is your web site. Deck the halls of your web site to influence your browsers and leave an impression. Start a blog and add articles describing your product and/or service to ensure that you are getting your message through. You can use a specific type of writing called SEO which will force your article/blog to come up on search engines such as Google or Yahoo.  Your sales presentations should always evolve around your theme. Have you seen or heard of the power of social media? Take advantage of all trends with the public. Currently, social media is a big hit so utilize places like Twitter and Facebook. Create videos that could be uploaded to YouTube. The delivery of your message can be sent instantly to the whole world. Drive your message across multiple channels and you will see the difference on your bottom line.

Take these steps and flourish your brand recognition and influence the bottom line. You can stick to a healthy budget for your marketing campaign and see tremendous success. With the right theme and multiple delivery channels you will showcase your vision to the customer. Next thing you know they are picking up their keys driving to the store.

Just because you’re in the manufacturing business, doesn’t mean that your web site has to look like your shop floor.  I’m not sure who decided that people who purchase industrial products suddenly stop caring about what a site looks like or how easy it is to navigate.

When you stop and think about it — industrial, technical and manufactured products actually require MORE design and content attention on the web BECAUSE they are so highly technical.

There is NO Difference Between Your Products and Consumer Brands

Let’s get one thing clear.  All people are consumers.  The engineer who buys from you also buys toothpaste and clothing in addition to widgets or machines.  In fact, the emotional triggers that influence the toothpaste buying decision are very similar to the triggers that influence the widget purchase.  It’s just that industrial purchases include more people in the process (rarely does one individual get to say “yes” to a hundred-thousand dollar purchase).  So the purchasing process is more defined and contains processes and checks and balances.  But, in the end, it’s the prospects experience with your organization and how easy you make it for them to buy from you that will seal the deal.

Your Web Site is Your First Impression

Google is now the “referral” source to your organization.  Face it.  Accept it.  You will still get word-of-mouth referrals, but as your buying audience includes younger generations, you will find that your web site will play a more important role in your sales and marketing process.

Your Website is a Lead Generating Machine – Is it “Down”

You wouldn’t purchase a machine to put on your shop floor and just let people walk buy it, look at it and pass by — so why do you have a boring web site that just “sits” out on the web while customers and prospects just pass by?  YOU WOULDN’T! In the same way that you measure throughput on a machine, you should measure conversion rates on your web site.  Your web site is a lead generating machine.  It’s there to attract your ideal customer and get them to choose you.

Your Website Makeover

1. Set objectives for your site.  Don’t default to “provide information”.  That’s lame and ineffective.  Focus your website goals on attracting new prospects and getting existing customers to buy more stuff from you.
2. Gather analytics BEFORE the change. If you haven’t already, open up a Google Analytics account and insert the code throughout your web site.  This is the ideal time to learn a little about web analytics.  You don’t have to become an expert, just focus on the basics; how many people visit, keywords they use, length of time on the site, bounce rate.  Learn enough so that when you make changes to your site, you will know how they are impacting your results (remember we’re after throughput of leads).
3. Explore your favorite consumer sites. What web sites do you visit frequently.  Which sites do you like and why?  It’s a good idea to document the sites you visit over the course of a week and take notes on which ones you like and why, which ones you register for and why.  Also note the sites that you don’t like and why.
4. Profile your visitor(s). Picture your audience very clearly.  Now imagine them sitting at their computer or mobile device and going through their day.  What might they search on?  What’s important to them at the time they are searching?  What questions will they have that you can answer?  Write all these things down.
5. What do you want your visitor to do? This is the “call to action” .  In a way, it’s the finished product of the web site machine.  Do you want people to leave their email address so that you can send them more educational information?  Do you want them to call you?  Schedule a demonstration?  Focus on what you want your visitor to do.  This is a good time to go and visit your notes about the sites where you registered and what worked for you.
6. How will you keep them coming back and engaged? Now that you have them on the site and they’ve taken the action, what would you like to happen next in your process?  Do you want them to receive information, do you want them to see and explore different products.  All of this is up to you.  But make a plan and implement it.
7. Measure. Don’t get hung up on whether things are perfect or not.  One of the super things about websites is that they are MEANT to be changed.  So measure and test and make changes frequently.  That is a good thing.

Words of Warning

While writing this article, I searched Google on the term “Industrial Web Sites” and saw that there were millions of really ugly templates out there.  Please do NOT use those.  There are many options out there that you can use.

• ALL DIY:  WordPress.com/WordPress.org - WordPress is a terrific and free platform that you can use to build a website.  It’s not JUST a blogging software. In fact dozens of big brands use the WordPress platform for all kinds of terrific looking sites.  Wordpress experts are everywhere and you can easily find someone to help you for an affordable fee.
• ALL OUTSOURCED: Total Site Support - This is a BRAND spanking new web site service that I really, really like, especially if you are NOT in the web business.  A web design firm has finally figured out that EVERYONE deserves a super looking web site.
• A LITTLE OF BOTH: HubSpot - If you’ve really made a commitment to inbound marketing – then you can’t do much better than HubSpot.  They provide loads of education and information and can also help you turn your website into a lead generating machine.  All you have to do is do what they say.  It’s that simple.

Don’t let another day go buy with your web site living stagnant on the internet.  For every day you leave it as it is — you are losing customers.

When you’re running around trying to generate sales and build your business, you may not be thinking about some basics that you may not think are important, but may actually be hurting your brand.  Go through this list and if you’re doing any of these – quickly and quietly make the change, you will notice a difference.

1. Using a generic email.  This might have been OK 20 years ago.  It’s not really OK now.  When people hear or see your name or company, the first place they go is to the web to see who you are and what your company does.  If you still have a yahoo, aol or hotmail email address, this doesn’t really help sell your brand.  Even solo entrepreneurs should have a branded email address.    It takes a couple of minutes to go over to GoDaddy.com and grab a custom URL.  While you’re at it, grab your name as a URL as well.  If you sell or leave your company, at least you’ll have a branded email for yourself.
2. Not recording a personal voice mail.  If your cell phone or company phone goes to the default voice mail,  take the 3 minutes to actually record a nice voice mail for the people who will get it.  This says a lot about who you are as a business person.  If you don’t take 3 minutes to record a voice mail, will you take 3 minutes to call me as your customer?  If you actually have your voice mail message recorded by someone else or a secretary (I hear these a lot), this is becoming highly inappropriate and says to the caller that you don’t know how to use a phone or voice mail.  It DOESN’T say that you are too busy.  And if you are too busy to record your own message, then you don’t care about the caller.
3. Ignoring LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. If you look at it from the context of celebrities tweeting and sharing what they had for breakfast, then you are missing the big picture. Social media been around for over 5 years now.  People choose to do business with people they know and like.  And the way we find this out today is by looking for them on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.  If you don’t have a presence there, then it’s like you don’t have a phone or business card.  It says something about you and the business that you run — and what it says has nothing to do with wasting time and has everything to do with whether you are up to speed with how your customers communicate.  Use LinkedIn, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter as a company and employee directory or an address book at the very least.  Create a complete profile that includes a picture.  Participate at least a couple times a week.
4. Your company voice doesn’t match your customer’s voice. There is no such thing as a controlled marketing message.  You can’t afford (literally and figuratively) to have marketing materials and communication not sound like you or your employees.  The tone, the words, the messages and the attitude should match.  If you’re a serious company, then everything should be serious.  If you’re a casual company, then everything should be casual.  It’s even better if your company’s voice matches your customer’s voice.  So if you’re company is serious and your customers are casual — find a tone that is a little of both.
5. Talking like a company and not a person.  There is a universal law out there that pulls at opposites.  For example, when technology creates the opportunity for less face-to-face interaction, people want more human-friendly interaction.  With automated phone messages, email, social media, etc.  your company absolutely has to sound more like a human than some faceless organization.  Best Buy has done a great job with this and their blue team that answers questions.  Sears has followed suit as have many, many consumer big-box stores.  Your small business isn’t really looking big by acting like a faceless corporation — it’s looking fake.  Don’t be afraid to be yourself and let your human side shine through.  Customers love this and appreciate it.
6. Not having a signature in your emails.  For heaven’s sake, put your contact information in your email.  It’s ridiculously unprofessional.   Most people get emails on their cell phones and will want to call you back – make it easy for them to do this.  Also include a cell phone number because you are never at your desk.  Customers can’t call and ask questions if you’re not at your desk or answering the phone.
7. No blog – no connection to a person to contact.  A recent study showed that over 60% of all businesses now have a blog.  AND they are seeing the benefit from a blog.  Don’t over think this.  Start a blog.  A CEO starting a blog and blogging about challenges solved, obstacles overcome and what they are thinking and committed to for their company is like a customer catnip.  People literally can’t resist reading it, getting to know you and your company.  This allows them connect, comment and start a conversation and relationship.

Maybe you think these items are trivial, but like tiny home repairs that quickly make your house look shabby when ignored, these seemingly unimportant details are making you look bad and rather foolish in the eye of your customers.

Don’t make the mistake of looking at your business differently if you’re a manufacturer or industrial B2B company.  The line between consumer and industrial is blurring every day.

Pay attention to your own opinions about companies as you go about your business and notice what judgement you make along the way.  Your customers are doing the same with you.