Leveraged Promotion » ebrands

eBranding Techniques :: Bob Baker on Branding

Tinu — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 03:42:44 +0000

Superb branding article I discovered through our briefing channels.

Bob Baker, author of Branding Yourself Online, has an excellent article posted to his site, entitled “9 Ways to Create a Rock-Solid Brand Identity Online“.

He leads in with a short summary of effective branding:

Effective branding is all about telling customers who you are, what you do and how you do it. Despite a sluggish economy and uncertainty throughout the world, more people are spending time and money online than ever before. That’s why it’s vitally important for small businesses and solo entrepreneurs alike to use the Internet to make an impact.

The strongest point he makes later in the article is bullet number four, in which he states ” Develop a fan-club mentality.”

That seems like it would not apply to an online brand, or only to consumer-focused items at first. However, with a little extra thought, you can probably remember purchases in your business and personal life that you made due to an emotional connection and later justified with logic.

Taking that strategy a little further leads right into the fan mentality.

It’s human nature. We buy books on self-advancement, for example, spending hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars a year improving ourselves or our businesses. And why do we want to go to their conferences, buy all of the author’s books, follow their “work”?

Because we’re fans.

And yet, we don’t think of them as a business, we think of them as people who fill the need for an area of our business, or a want for improvement, better than anyone else.

So why can’t we create fans in our businesses? Better yet, how can we?

We’ll revisit this question in the next segment.

Tinu Abayomi-Paul
www.leveragedpromotion.com




	Bob Baker’s Branding Site
	From the home page: “Big companies understand the importance of brands — if the product is recognizable, customers are more likely to embrace the idea behind the product and buy it. The same holds true for individuals. People not only listen more intently to a familiar voice, they become raving fans for life.”

Effective eBranding :: An Introduction

Tinu — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:43:20 +0000

We’ll start with a definition of a brand, and expand into a few ways you can use the web to help establish yours.

What is a brand? Why do I want to establish and expand my company brand? How can I do this in an streamlined, effective fashion?

Many of these questions will be answered in this weblog. Today, let’s start with what a brand is.

Here’s one accepted definition:

A brand is a product from a known source (organization).

The emphasis is mine. It’s an important part of the equation, becoming known. Which brings us to blogging.

To become known, you want to be referenced, indeed, to become the default reference in a consumer’s mind. You want to share information that helps your prospects make a buying decision. You want to become synoymous with your niche.

When someone says “chocolate”, many of us immediately think Nestle or Hershey. Not necessarily because we like chocolate bars. It’s because in a sense they “own” the brand.

Let’s summarize then we’ll get into some specifics another day.

To have a successful blog, you want one of its purposes to be building your brand. Building your brand means becoming known. To be known you want to become referenced.

So how do you use your brand to get referenced? What can you write about in your blog and in other online content that will engage readers in “an accessible voice”?

These questions and more will be answered in subsequent posts to this blog. Stay tuned to learn ways to use your blog and other web content to brand yourself across the internet.

Here, we’ll share methods, examples, ideas and case studies that will help you go from one of the experts on your industry, to THE expert in your niche.

Rodney Rumford
Tinu Abayomi-Paul
Co-founders: Leveraged Promotion


	Branding Definition aquired from Learn That
	Source of the eferenced definition of branding from LearnThat.com

Is Your Blog Consistent with Your Brand?

Tinu — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:08:58 +0000

Seven questions to ask before your choose your blog platform.

In this age where the bype of business blogging is plateauing, and people are starting to realize that blogging has real, permanent benefits, it’s time to ask yourself one of two questions.

Does my planned blogging vision suit my company?, or,
Is my current blog strategy both cost-effective and brand-effective?

So here are seven quesitons to ask yourself.

Does my blog have a style consistent with the rest of my site?If most of your site is professional and your blog looks like a third-grader put it up, it won’t be taken seriously.
Can my blog get wide exposure?One blog with one feed won’t do it unless you were already at the top of your industry when you started.
If my blog gets popular, will I be affected by outages as my traffic increases?On some systems, it won’t even take a traffic increase for your blog to be offline for half a day. Not. Professional.
Will my blog give me a break?If you wanted to go on a six week vacation could you go without leaving someone to mind your blog? Would your audience be there when you got back?
Is your blog search-friendly?Some blogs can help solve your SEO problem. Some won’t help you no mater what you do to them. One can keep you consistently ranked if you know how to configure it, as long as you keep content in it. (Call us and we’ll tell you which one. No charge, honest).
Your blog message and your site message – are they congruent?As important as your logo is what your site “says” at a glance. This means just as much when it comes to your blog.
Who is going to buy this cow?You don’t want to give the milk away by the gallon. You just want to give free taste samples. So it’s not just about what you’re blogging with, the blog topic, or your blog template. It’s about learning the finer points of blogging, in a way that is specific to your company and brand as possible.

Your blog has got to match or enhance your brand, in appearance, message, utility and reach. A blog that brings your brand down is worse than no blog at all.