Brand Storytelling Archives - Page 8 of 11

February 2, 2016
Brand Storytelling

Love Your Brand: Why Should YOU Be a Part of Your Branding?

The marketing world has caught on to the importance of branding. Branding has become such an integral part of a company’s marketing strategy. This method’s value has increased to the point that branding is no longer just a corporate policy. Small businesses, speakers, authors, job seekers and entrepreneurs are now encouraged to integrate branding into their marketing as well. However, this type of branding looks a bit different than the traditional style.

Personal Branding

Personal branding is the online persona or image that an individual projects. This includes all the digital touchpoints from the website to the blog to all the social media platforms. It includes online collaborations, live streaming, videos, or any other content created and distributed. A personal brand is a real thing and exists, regardless of the person’s acknowledgement or knowledge.

YOU as the Face of Your Brand

Perhaps you already have a business entity and brand. Maybe you’ve even invested in a quality logo, brand colors and online touchpoints. However, as you interact with people online or network with people in person – it is YOUR face that people associate with what you do. It’s your voice and your mannerisms and the energy you bring to the conversation. As content gears more towards visual – including live streaming and videos – it will be you that the audience gets to know and trust. With so much noise competing for the same small places, a genuine, authentic connection with your audience is essential. Some of the top personal brands online naturally evolve into influencers and generate the type of viral attention that most companies strive for.

Touchpoints

As you transition to a more personal brand, it will be time to take an audit of all your online assets and tune them into the image you want to portray. This means spending some time with your good friend, Google, to make sure that your name online is directly associated and connected to your personal branding.

It will also mean investing in some decent professional headshots. Team up with an experienced photographer so that they understand your brand image when taking photographs. These brand photos are an integral part of all your online touchpoints and should weave together in a method that is consistent and on brand.

Personal Brand Enhancements

Once you have the foundation for your personal brand, look into ways to enhance what you have already created. This could be association or collaborations with other strong personal brands that make sense for your work. It could also mean developing a strong backstory or narrative and weaving it into the touchpoints. When producing any type of content, be certain to have the branding in mind during development so that whatever is created remains true to what you have built.

Developing a personal brand is also a great opportunity to reinvent you, your company or your branding strategy. Be cautious. A personal brand is not a mask or a fake persona. Your target audience will see right thought anything insincere. Be your authentic self and the right followers will automatically be drawn to you.

Understand the value of personal branding but not sure how to begin? Give us a call and we can help you brainstorm and build those touchpoints. The more you #LoveYourBrand, the more you can #BeAwesome while pursuing your purpose.

~ 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.

January 14, 2016
Social Media Strategy

Are you looking for Social Media Speakers in 2016 for your Groups or Teams?

Are you interested in hosting a Social Media Speaker for 2016? We would love to meet your group and discuss top online marketing trends of 2016!

Can you relate to any of the following questions?

? We want to know … what are the latest trends for social media marketing for 2016?

? How do we incorporate a relationship and retention building strategy with our clients in social media?

? What are tools we can incorporate today to help build the “Like, Know, Trust” with our customers TODAY?

This presentation is an ideal fit for your business and the people in our group!
Telling an effective story in your brand will make or break your online presence.

In our research, 9 out of 10 Corporate Profiles in social media are not enriched with anything relevant to their brand, their potential clients or their ideal target market.

Anyone can build a Social Media Profile Page, but do they know how to build them correctly?

This talk will discuss the importance of a story in your marketing, the key components social platforms utilize to make your brand searchable and tools to establish your true “voice” which will guide your brand on the journey of building a solid foundation for a successful social media relationship with your audience. Launching these principles into your business will immediately improve your credibility with your customers by building a long standing relationship with your clients so your competition isn’t claiming them from you.

Workshop Take-aways:

? Your Story Matters: Defining the social media algorithms and how they can help or hurt your brand Content is KING!

? Discussing the proper ways to integrate the power of native video, branded images and keyword rich storytelling into your online brand

? Tools of the Trade: Top tools for creating and scheduling content, monitoring engagement, and processes to keep you on top of your marketing funnel.

Let us know if this workshop would be of benefit to your business, networking group, mastermind, business development or sales teams.

#BeAwesome In Storytelling For Your Brand

Your Trainer: Hollie Clere at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clerecomm

Contact Information:

303-847-7070

Media Inquires: info@thesocialmediaadvisor.com

Event Inquires: hclere@thesocialmediadvisor.com

Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/clerecomm

Twitter: http://twitter.com/thesocialpro

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thesocialmediaadvisor

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December 28, 2015
Social Engagement

#GiftYourBusiness – The Gift of Engagement

The last entry in our #GiftYourBusiness series focuses on giving your business the gift of engagement. While social media engagement does not necessarily transcend into sales or profit, an engaged audience is much more likely to pay attention to what you are saying. They are more likely to share what you offer with others. It builds the Like, Know, Trust that is so imperative in social media and is really the standard to measure whether or not social media is having a positive impact on your business. We all know that engagement is the goal for our posts – regardless of platform. Here are some concepts to consider when it comes to increasing engagement online.

Branding

Each company needs an established brand presence, especially when it comes to their interactions online. Branding helps the audienceunderstand you, your business, and what you have to offer. Conflicting or undeveloped messages leave the audience confused and disengaged. If your branding has been neglected, the first step is to learn more about what branding is, what your brand should be, and how to best exude your brand on the web.

Those with an established brand concept should turn their attention to building brand advocates. A brand advocate knows nearly as much about your brand as you do and they are passionate about sharing it with others. A brand advocate is like having a #1 fan who does marketing for you simply because they desire to share your message with their world. Word of mouth, referrals, and free online promotion are the valuable side benefits of developing brand advocates.

About Me Page

What many businesses have discovered while paying attention to their Google Analytics, is that an overwhelming number of their website hits are due to their About Me page. This is the page potential followers and customers go to find out more about a brand, an individual, or a company. Way before they get to the point of deciding whether or not what you offer fits what they need, they want to find out more about YOU!

The scary reality about this is that most About Me pages are done as an afterthought. They are boring, un-inspiring and often don’t convey the proper message to people in order to get them interested.

Think about a novel. How important are those first two sentences? How many people open up a book to check out the hook before deciding whether or not to read it? Your About Mepage is your opening, and if it lacks the right hook – you are hemorrhaging attention.

Building a Tribe

While having brand advocates is fantastic, having a community built around them and other followers of your brand is THE way to create engagementthat lasts. Not only does it last longer, often it can work even in your absence. Seth Godin, The Marketing Guru, wrote a whole book on finding and building your own tribe.

“A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interested and a way to communicate.”

Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us

First, you have to find your tribe. This means understanding your target audience. It also means doing those ideal avatarexercises to discover who your ideal tribe member is.

Then you have to discover a way to not only communicate with them – you already do that with your newsletter, website, and social media channels – but a way they can interact with one another. This could mean a Facebook group, regular blab streaming, LinkedIn group, online forum, or some other avenue of communication. It might mean doing some investigation to understand where your avatars hang out online and then develop a communication channel to match where they already hang out.

Your Community as a Resource

Now that you have proper branding, your website is working for you, there are brand advocates and a tribe – it is important to realize what a wealth of information that is for your business. To keep engagement thriving and to continue developing products that maintain your tribe’s level of interest, regularly tuning in to what they want is essential. Assuming that what you are offering is what they want is the wrong way to go. Develop regular surveys, opportunities for commenting, and other ways to pick their brains. Don’t drop the ball here – track and analysis this information. You may find that it leads your business to places you would not have considered on your own. That, in turn, will keep your audience interested and engaged.

We all do it – we get so involved with the projects and the tasks that we lose the strategy. You know you need engagementbut have you considered how to increase it and really make it work for you? Developing an environment where followers can more easily become advocates and tribe members is such a valuable investment of time and energy. Paying for ads and other marketing opportunities will attract more attention, but it doesn’t keep it. Only the right type of engagement possibilities will ensure that people stick around and then become supporters of your message.

Have a wonderful New Year and #BeAwesome today and every other day!

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

July 21, 2015
Social Media Marketing

Why should you develop consistency in Social Media?

Social Media folk talk about consistency frequently. But realistically, what does that mean? We are tackling this question with 5 strategies to help you battle consistency in Social Media

Webster defines the term as: harmony of conduct or practice with profession

”

Consistency with your Brand

We talk often about your brand. We frequently see Profiles and Pages built with generic images and inconsistent wording. Usually Pages and Profiles are merely created with a non-specific purpose, without keyword or target focused branding. Images should be aligned with the mission, services and products, stories should be in alignment as well. Creating a Page without purpose or updates, leaves your visitors wanting and curious. Define your brand by understanding your niche and target market. You may quickly find that a general tagline or “name” of a service doesn’t clearly encompass the image of the brand as a whole. Leaving blank spaces and images that don’t really say much about your target audience, will leave you undesirable, unclear and your viewer will lose attention with your brand as a whole.

Consistency with your Message

What does your message say about you and your brand? Does it speak to your ideal audience? Can you read over your mission or message and know exactly who, how and what you are offering is a good fit for your viewer? In more cases than not, your BIG WHY probably doesn’t speak to the true gifts your company offers, the solutions you are offering or pains you are trying to solve. These are the things that your ideal client is wanting to learn. A properly crafted message to your niche will clearly tell an appropriate story to your target market and will draw the right audience to your brand.

Consistency with your Posts

We get the question, “How often should we post an update in Social Media?” Followed up by, “I only want to post once each week or once a month to not bother my clients.”

Due to the nature of information in the world of “Internet of Things”, this suggestion is far too small to build a consistent visibility for your brand. It will take planning, editorial calendars, offers and calendar alignment to maintain a successful consistent stream of activity for your audience. Every single platform has a variety of “suggested” post intervals. Example: You can post once or twice in Facebook each day vs seven to ten times each day in Twitter – both are appropriate, but you will also have to measure engagement, times of day and views to gauge the proper intervals based off your target market and type of content you are wanting to share.

A discovery session to understand your goals, time and reach is necessary for anyone to consult you on the best options for your brand. PET PEEVE: a SMM (Social Media Manager) who will suggest 5 times each day on Facebook blindly without understanding your budget and target reach – is doing you a disservice. It is better to post on a regular schedule than to not post at all.

Consistency with Communication and Responses

If you are posting in social media, you should expect responses and engagement. How and what you share will determine the frequency of opportunity you will have to respond and monitor engagement. Bottom line … if you share something in social media, expect to be prepare to respond in a timely manner. Timely means same day, in most cases within an hour. Outside of that time frame, apologize for the delay in response. If you don’t have a response plan in place and reply within a week, you have lost the opportunity in that engagement.

Consistency with Routine

Developing an editorial calendar is relevant in this response to routine.

A calendar will keep you in tune with themes, focus, events, relevance and will help you avoid randomly sharing or becoming too self promotional.

A routine will help you focus on the best times of day to post, highest engagement and will help you to not flood your audience with too much content at once.

Use tools to keep you organized (HootSuite, Buffer, Commun.it, HubSpot, Tweetdeck, etc) are great resources you should consider adding to your tool belt to maintain the routine you are trying to develop.

Build a solid brand by using the living, breathing circle of consistency and your audience will keep you top of mind as an expert, trusted vendor and key connection in their list of resources.

Are you needing a brand analysis or strategy consulting to build your editorial calendar and consistency? Give us a shout!

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

Hollie Clere, of The Social Media Advisor is a “Be Awesome” 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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Love Your Brand: Why Should YOU Be a Part of Your Branding?

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