Leveraged Promotion » online branding

Interesting Article on Branding

Tinu — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:09:16 +0000

Guy Kawasaki tells us about “The Art of Branding”

I found this once through MSNBC’s Clicked, and realized that I didn’t get a chance to re-share it. It’s from Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki called the Art of Branding.

In it he says:

“Focus on PR, not advertising. Many companies waste away millions of dollars trying to establish brands with advertising. When it comes to branding, too much money is worse than too little because when you have a lot of money, you spend a lot of money on stupid things like Super Bowl commercials. Brands are built on what people are saying about you, not what you’re saying about yourself. People say good things about you when (a) you have a great product and (b) you get people to spread the word about it.”

(Emphasis Mine.)

While I don’t necessarily think a Super Bowl Ad is a bad purchase (ask Bob Parsons), I agree wholeheartedly that you can’t buy a brand… or else every company with the moolah would have a successful one.

It fits so smoothly into the mission of a blog as well. Definitely worth a read.


	Link to Main Page of Guy’s Blog

	http://blog.guykawasaki.com/

	Drag this link into your reader to subscribe to Guy Kawasaki’s Blog

ebranding Techniques :: Is there too much Branding Hype?

Tinu — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:42:34 +0000

Fast company article takes a candid look at the amount of brand literature available offline today.

In a recent article called “Obessive Branding Disorder“, Lucas Conley writes about the common sense approach to branding, and speculates that there may be a bit too much chatter about branding and not enough actual common sense implementation.

“Smaller companies aren’t the only ones delivering high-quality products at good value that people love. Disney and Apple spend millions telling people who they are, but why? They’re strong brands because they offer distinct products and services. And they’ve done so for decades. When Disney and Apple have struggled, the root cause has always been that their products weren’t as good, service slipped, or they weren’t living up to customer expectations. Diverting attention away from business problems by calling any of it by a new name wasn’t going to fix it.

Remove the hype, and branding is just commonsense strategy, rebranded. To successfully build a brand, says INSEAD marketing professor Amitava Chattopadhyay, "is to communicate your key value proposition to the key customer segment, and do so in an integrated and consistent way." In other words, Business 101.”

While that message rings quite true, it seems that branding has not hit home the same way for entreprenuers and small to medium businesses as it has with large corporations. In bigger organizations the company identity is established long before the hip, young execs hit the door, where in smaller companies, the idea is being molded as the company grows and changes, often from a one-man entrepreneurial shop to a company with 25 – 2500 employees.

So just as in the self-improvement industry, which the author alludes to later in the article, the need exists to out-source the R & D on branding. And as long as that perceived need exists, common sense though it may be, people will reference those who have built their brands on business-know how in general, like Fast company, or those who have built brands specifically on the knowledge of branding, for answers.

Tinu Abayomi-Paul


	Fast Company :: Obsessive Branding DIsorder
	The simplest branding advice from an article that says there’s too many branding books being written.
	http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/99/open_essay.html?partner=rss

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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

And the “eBranding Oldie but Goodie” Blog Post Award goes to…

Tinu — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:09:07 +0000

In days to come, I’m compiling lists of branding resources. This series of posts on “self branding” has to be number one on the relatively-recent-and-relevant list.

Lea Alcantara’s blog often gives a light-hearted yet still serious view of many issues online businesses are concerned with, one of which is ebranding.

I am compelled to give her the “eBranding Oldie but Goodie” Blog Post Award for this post, called the Art of Self-Branding, Part III. Tongue-in-cheek but still true-to-life. Even comes with a free worksheet. Extra points for poetic license on the word “striven”.

See the link section below for a short quote.


	The Art of Self-Branding: Part Three
	“With the Art of Self-Branding series of posts, I?ve striven to shine some light onto how to evaluate your own brand.”

ebranding Tactics :: Is Reality Branding Ahead of the Curve?

Tinu — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:09:19 +0000

The 40 year Social Pendulum is swinging says Steve Jackson.

There’s an excellent article at the Internet Search Engine Database called Reality Branding that speaks very eloquently to the way online brands need to shift with the times.

Here’s a short quote:

We”re switching from an idealistic society where it is Ok to dream, to a social society where getting things done is more important. The shift in society will have profound effects on branding and advertising over the next 20 years at least.

You”re now in a generation that doesn’t respect individual achievements, rebellion or going it alone, mocks hype and doesn’t think James Bond is da man!

You”re now in a generation where people are tired of hype, tired of dreams and want to work together to get things done. Your peers want to do things that make the world a better place to live in rather than just dream about it. They recognize the problems around them and seek solutions to make things happen.

The author goes on to discuss how this relates to the way long-standing company brands must adjust to address the swinging social pendulum. Really intriguing material, give it a read.


	Reality Branding
	“Understanding this shift in social attitudes is the good news because now you can apply that to your own business.”
	http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1277/

	Business Blogging
	How will your company blog address the reality of the times? Is one channel of data really going to address your clients needs – or even reach them? Contact us for a 15 minute phone consultation, and find out more about what you need to know about web marketing 2.0.