Brand Storytelling Archives - Page 6 of 11

November 1, 2016
Brand Storytelling

#BrandConsistency – People Do Business with Individuals, Not Brands

Your personal brand is different than your company’s brand, but it is just as important, if not more so. People do business with individuals, not brands. So how do you create a personable brand that potential clients and customers want to work with?

Your personal brand is the image you wish to project. Here are ten tips to get you started in #BrandConsistency:

Be clear about the image you wish to cloak yourself in. Keep it simple. Keep it authentic. How?
Be true to yourself.Spending days, weeks, and even years projecting an image you don’t like can be exhausting to maintain. If you seem to be faking it, the word will spread and your authenticity will suffer. Inconsistencies will cause a rift in trust. You don’t want that.
Become a public speaker. You must develop your communication skills. You can do this either live or through video sites like Vimeo or YouTube, but you want to project confidence and speak from a platform of power and control. Your videos don’t have to be long. Ten minutes or less is more than fine. Just find one topic and speak on it. Your speaking engagements, on the other hand, are as long as you’ve been slotted for. Prepare in advance. Double check your numbers. Provide value, and your brand will shine.
Be consistent in branding across all platforms. This includes synchronizing your LinkedIn profile with your resume.
Create leadership articles and participate in interviews. This goes to credibility. You want to be seen as a subject matter expert, and you gain that by providing proof of authority.
Show numbers, dates, etc. to back up your broad statements. You want to be seen as a subject matter expert so that your clients and customers can be confident in your ability to lead them through the darkness.
Build an online presence. This goes back to #4. Be consistent in who you are. An online forum or community is not the same as your private home. Remember that everything you put on there can be screenshot and used against you at a later date.
Be brief in your mission statement. You can’t do everything. Specialization is key to business success.
Never stop learning.You must remain relevant to your industry. Take courses in subjects outside your chosen field to widen your perspective. You don’t want to box yourself into your own world and lose touch with your customers and clients. Expand your knowledge as much as possible.
Finally, one of the most important tips: talk about what you’ve done, not what you plan to do.You need to build your brand on results, not ideas. It’s okay to admit your weaknesses and shortcomings. It’s okay to be vulnerable. That makes you more human and relatable. It’s not okay to spend all your time ramping up for ideas that may never solidify. Clients and customers want results-driven numbers. Keep that in mind.

Take some time to develop your personal brand and opportunities will come your way.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+,YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and the tools to manage them.

Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars

October 25, 2016
Social Media Marketing

#SocialIsntScary – Fear of Getting Started

With around 78% of people using at least one social mediaplatform, nearly 1/3 of the Earth is on social. This infographic from Uzu Media breaks down the number of users on the most popular social media websites to give you an idea of the possible impact of participating on these platforms.

While small business owners are aware of the need for social media marketing, as well as the potential it generates, many have yet to get started. Only 31% of small business owners have created and cultivated an effective social media strategy. These professionals are afraid of quite a few things when it comes to doing their own social media. Do any of these sound familiar to you?

Don’t know where to start
Afraid of failure
Not sure what to post
Not sure where to post or how often
Worried about negative engagement or reviews
Not comfortable putting myself out there
Concerned about the level of commitment necessary to be successful

I bet at least one of those resonated with where you are currently. That’s okay. With any new endeavor, sometimes you just need to make a plan and jump in!

Have a Strategy

The best way to eliminate your fear is to make a plan. Marketing and social media strategy is essential. Goal setting, analytics, decision making, ROI and impact will be difficult to incorporate and track without a plan. You need to know what you want to do ahead of time and then you need to be able to measure what worked and what didn’t so that you can adapt your strategy for success as you go.

Here are the elements that need to be included in your strategy:

Where to post content.
When to post content.
Who you are posting content for currently.
Who you’d like to reach with your content.
What to post
Why you are posting.

Monitoring

For those concerned about negative social engagement, the key to keeping the trolls at bay is having a plan in place to monitor your social accounts. You will need to understand the difference between engagement that offers opportunities to fix the problem versus engagement that is spammy, inappropriate or harassing in nature. The quicker you delete the spam, the inappropriate posts and harassment – the better. Understand how to delete, block and remove content from your social feeds.

On the other hand, don’t go around deleting every negative comment. Part of what makes social media work is that it gives your audience the opportunity to connect with you and be heard. If they have a genuine complaint or concern, simply deleting and ignoring them will not be viewed favorably by your audience. Once you see this type of negative engagement, immediately post so that they know you’ve seen their comment/post and want to have an off-line conversation to cover what can be done to resolve the issue. They are giving you an opportunity to turn it around. Just take the conversation offline so that it’s private.

Consistency

Once you get started, be sure you’ve come up with a way to remain consistent. This may mean starting small and working your way up. That way the audience doesn’t notice that you aren’t posting as often as you used to and then make the assumption that you are no longer invested in your social. Adding more is always better than cutting back. The old adage of don’t bite off more than you can chew is the key here. You can always add new platforms or more posts later if you discover you have the capacity to do so.

Be Authentic

Today, people are more likely to support brands that they know, like and trust. That means they aren’t investing in a logo, or a big office, or an online shop. They need the opportunity to get to know, like, and trust you. Purchasing anything has an emotional element to it as well. Provoking an emotional response from your audience will help them become more interested in you and what you do.

However, people are smart. They are assaulted on all sides by direct mail, spam, advertisements, commercials… they’ve learned how to spot a person who is being authentic from a used car salesman type.

You will need to truly understand your target audience and what they are seeking. The more authentic, genuine and real you come across, the more they will trust you. If you can combine that authenticity with a message that appeals to your followers – you’ve hit the social jackpot!

Team Up

It can be frustrating to create great content when you haven’t built a following yet. However, that content is what is going to grow your audience. If you want an organic way to fast track your exposure, find influencers that have a similar target audience and collaborate with them. Guest blogging is the easiest way to do this. This will expose you to their larger following and connect you with experts in your field or industry at the same time.

Once you create and implement a solid marketing strategy for your social media, you will only need to focus on maintaining it. Start small and work your way up – just one social platform to start is more than enough if you are worried. If the effort you are putting into social is too time consuming, contact our team. We specialize in helping small businesses #BeAwesome with their social media, branding, and marketing strategy online.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars

October 4, 2016
Brand Storytelling

#SocialIsntScary – Spooky Branding

While branding is essential, often it can also be overwhelming. Partially this is because many people don’t really understand what branding is. A brand is basically an idea, image or feeling that the general public gets when they think about you or your company. In fact, it’s the public who truly controls what your brand is by the way they perceive you and what you do. This makes it complicated for small businesses and people to wrap their heads around branding.

While we can’t control how others perceive us, we can certainly influence it. That is how we brand successfully. This means your images, your posts, your style, your voice are all fundamental aspects of your brand. In branding, it’s called touchpoints. Every aspect of your business that interacts with another person is a touchpoint. This could be your office space, your website, your invoices, your trade show booths. One way to tackle your touchpoints is to approach your business the way a potential customer, client, vendor or influencer would. What would you want their experience to be like? What would you want them to see? To hear? To read?

So, when developing your social media, thinking about your brand should be intentional. You have a brand whether you’ve invested time in developing it or not. The smart method would be to decide what you want your brand to say about you and then incorporate it into everything you do – including your social media strategy. Here are some ways to keep branding in mind while managing your social media.

Discriminators

First, what are your discriminators? A discriminator is basically what makes you stand out from your competition. What do you offer that you want to highlight or feature? What makes your company stand out? Why should people follow you? It’s ideal to have one to three specific discriminators to work with. Think about your level of expertise or your skill set. Consider the aspects of your business that you are super passionate about. What type of information draws you in while you are online? These will give you a good indication of what your strengths are.

You may have a lot of different interests. It’s important to narrow it down to just a few that tie into what you do. Focus is important in branding. An individual needs to be able to receive a clear idea of what you are about and not get lost in too much clutter.

Now find ways to incorporate these discriminators into your branding. Find a handful of popular keywords that closely relates to what you are doing and incorporate them into your content regularly. Do some research on hashtags for the same purpose. Sometimes being specific can be more successful than going with trends. Niche businesses have a market too and those specific keywords may not draw the most attention but are more likely to pull in just the right audience.

Consistency

Make sure that you develop some images that coincide with your brand’s look and feel. Then use them over and over again across various social platforms. Someone should be able to look at your website, your LinkedIn page, and your Twitter account and instantly recognize you and your company.

These graphics will help people find and connect with you. It will solidify the branding images in their minds that they retrieve whenever they think about you. Make your photos, colors, fonts and descriptions match across all sites. While it can be tempting to change things up and be creative occasionally, this can be confusing for your target audience. After all, they are the ones who determine what your brand is. Make certain what they are seeing is what you want them to be experiencing when they interact with you.

Post on a regular basis. The online world is fast paced. If you don’t regularly attempt to keep their attention, they will move on to the next big thing. If it looks like you have abandoned one of your channels, even for a short period of time, your viewers will stop checking in. It’s important to have downtime, and vacations, and people do get sick – use scheduling tools to make certain there are no gaps in your posting.

Interaction

Social media is all about engagement. Therefore, it’s important to at least keep your brand in mind when interacting with others online. Follow up on your comments, likes and mentions in a manner that is consistent with your personal style and voice. Join online groups that fit well with your brand and what you do. Surround yourself with influencers and experts in your field. Each time you respond to something that is a touchpoint for that person.

#SocialIsntScary and neither is branding. It just involves making deliberate choices that mesh well with your brand and keeping it in mind as you go. This will help you #BeAwesome and stand out!

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars

May 3, 2016
Social Media Strategy

#Develop Strategy – Why Strategy in Your Marketing is Important

When you are running a small business it can be difficult to maintain all the different facets of running a successful company. Owners need to manage the work, the clients, the numbers, the team, and the marketing. It can be both daunting and overwhelming. Many entrepreneurs and business owners simply overlook marketing due to a lack of time, energy or experience. However, business growth is dependent on your marketing strategy.

Business Plan

First, you need to have a plan. The more detailed your plan the easier it will be to set measurable and achievable goals. Your plan should incorporate what you intend to do during the year – the amount of work, the level of profit, staffing, expenses, purpose and messaging. Leave no rock uncovered when you sit down and develop your plan. This will include your marketing strategy for the year.

Branding & Storytelling

What a lot of business owners don’t understand about their brand is that it exists whether you develop it or not. How the public views you, and your company, makes up the elements of your branding. Owners that ignore this fact will find that the public has 100% control over how their work is perceived. Smart companies understand the power of creating a business message – a method of storytelling for work – that projects the image that business owners want their staff, clients, competition and the general public to associate with their work. Understanding your own brand and company story is the first step in developing a marketing strategy.

Target Audience

We no longer live in an age where we market our services to everyone. Traditional advertising is slowly becoming a marketing tool of the past. Why? Because it is ineffective to sell to a wide group of people without narrowing down the demographics. Want an effective marketing strategy? You need to hone down exactly the type of people that make your ideal client. The time and effort involved in sales and marketing should be utilized only in areas where your target audience works, plays and relaxes. If you don’t have a picture of your ideal client, then you need one right away.

Types of Marketing

Now that you know your message and where your clients hang out, you need to determine the types of marketing that will be most effective for what you do. This will be different for every business. The variety of marketing options feels endless. This list alone will have your head swimming.

In 2016, online marketing is the place to be. This means social media marketing and content marketing are huge right now. Building a mailing list (or funnel) is another area that many marketing experts say is essential for your business. Developing content and booking stages is a type of marketing as well, called influencer marketing, and can be quite effective for establishing expertise and presence. Relationship marketing is a great way to build a village of partners that are invested in you and what you do.

This article showcases a study that proves the younger generation does utilize social media when it’s time to make purchasing decisions. Another reason that demonstrates how knowing your audience is vital.

Marketing Plan

Having an editorial schedule with goals and focus for your content, messaging and social media is practically essential. If you are not certain which direction to take, do some initial experimentation. For instance, you can concentrate on one type of content or platform each month, while maintaining your other marketing channels. If you switch it up and continue focusing on different platforms over a 3-6 month period, you can see which platforms are doing the best for you and get a better understanding of each option.

If you know one choice will work well for your business, focus your energies on developing that area first and then slowly begin incorporating other channels. Often it’s better to do one thing well than to do a variety of marketing tactics on a sub-par level.

Networking

Networking is another way to grow your circle of connections. You can do this both on- and offline. Recommendations back and forth are extremely beneficial. You can also reach out to your network if you have questions about how to get the most out of your marketing, social media platforms, content and emails. You might have a connection who is masterful in a certain aspect of marketing you are you’re interested in. You and your connection might work in the same industry, but have different niches. If you both have blogs, you can refer to each other in your content. This is a great way to develop both referral and power partners for your business, not just new clients!

The best advice is to have fun! Think of your marketing strategy as an adventure. You will learn so much about how you want your business to look, feel and present itself to the world.

Having trouble creating your company’s story? Don’t have a clue how to put together an editorial calendar? Just don’t have time to deal with all the little tasks involved with staying on top of your marketing strategy? Give the team at The Social Media Advisor a call – we specialize in small business marketing strategy development!

~ Social Media is changing the way people do business. Don’t get left behind ~

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+,YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and the tools to manage them.

Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars.

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