5 Branding Tips for Your Launch

Branding is an essential part towards building a sustainable business. As an expert, I’ve seen a lot of companies succeed or fail based on their brand identity. People are willing to spend more money on companies that they’ve heard of before and those that have a strong reputation. If you fail to establish a strong brand identity, your competition will beat you and you will be forced to compete solely on price–which will stunt growth. Here are five ways to ensure that your brand is successful when you launch your company:
1. Logo and Website Design
We live in a culture that wants things to be aesthetically appealing. Having a firm understanding of what your business says in a visual sense can help you create a design and feel for your branding collateral.
The visual aspect of your logo and website should speak in both literal and figurative terms, about the character of your business. If you are a wholesale wine distributor, it make sense to have a bottle or a glass of wine in your logo, or perhaps you want something a little subtler. A bundle of grapes or a wine barrel could work just fine. Decide what characteristics you want your business to stand for about the industry you’re in, and try to visualize it. This will enable you to describe to developers what look you're going for. Your logo and website will define your business both online and offline, so make it something you’re proud of.
2.  Social Network Business Profiles
These sites are an important part of your online influence, and a great avenue to reach your customers. Once you’ve decided that a business profile is for you, I would recommend looking into other companies you look up to, and note what they’re doing well with their profiles. You want to generate content that your fans will find interesting, and want to share. Some of this information can be deals, or information on products or services you provide, but you might want to also post articles or videos you find helpful, useful, or entertaining.
3. SEO
As a small business owner, the hardest obstacle you’ll have to overcome is being “seen." The Internet is littered with small business websites all vying for the same small corners of the web. It’s imperative you focus on driving more traffic to your site, and drive up your search engine optimization. Social networks can help a lot, as well as having a blog as part of your site. Identify ways you can reach your customers (advertising, partnerships, etc.) and take the necessary steps to get your name out there. The more unique visitors you can drive to your site, the better your Google rank will become, which in turn makes you more visible online.
4. Publicity
PR is another great way to make yourself visible both online and offline. If you’re involved in any sort of charitable work, alert local media so they might want to cover it. Position yourself online as an expert in your field, and make yourself available for comments and opinions. Target smaller publications and blogs at first to build up your persona, and create working relationships with the media. PR can get very expensive very quickly if you pay for it, so as a small business it makes the most financial sense to take care of it in-house. I offered to write articles for various publications on and offline to build up my reputation, which has to led to many free PR opportunities for my company.
5. Testimonials
Once your business is up and running, make sure you connect with your customers so you understand what is working and what isn’t working. Don’t be afraid to tweak your product or service, and be receptive to feedback. It’s important to understand that no matter how much experience you have in business, you never cease learning how to do business better. When your clients are happy and vocal about your product or service, ask them for a testimonial. You can share these on your site, and it will prove your worth to other potential customers as well as instill trust in possible future clients.
Dan Schawbel is the managing partner of Millennial Branding, a Gen-Y research and management-consulting firm. Subscribe to his updates at Facebook.com/DanSchawbel.

12:01 by Robert dawne · 0

DIY SEO Startup BrandYourself Has Nearly 6,000 Sign-Ups

BrandYourself made the famous startup pivot earlier this month, and now it’s sharing some data about the initial results.
The company started out as a way for people to control the impression they made online, both through search results and on social networks. It even recommended articles that you could read and share in your chosen subject area. Co-founder and CEO Patrick Ambron says his team eventually realized that the approach was “too much,” and that “the one BIG thing people loved about us was helping them improve their search results.”
So the new version of BrandYourself pares away all the other features, focusing exclusively on your personal search results. In both cases, BrandYourself pitches itself as a more affordable, DIY alternative to a service like Reputation.com. Instead of hiring someone to improve your results and paying them thousands of dollars, you can just log in to the BrandYourself dashboard, submit the links that you want to show up more prominently in your results, and get recommendations on how to improve their placement (for example, it recommended that I connect my personal website to a BrandYourself profile page, and also include my name in the text of the website). BrandYourself also tracks whenever the rankings change. You can get free recommendations on three links — after that you have to pay for premium membership, with pricing that starts at $9.99 per month.
Ambron says the new version of BrandYourself launched on March 8, and that 5,870 people have signed up since then. And of those sign-ups, 154 of them became paying members.
Oh, and this isn’t a business win, but it’s nice recognition: BrandYourself won the Best Bootstrapped Startup award at the South by Southwest Startup Accelerator earlier this week.

11:30 by Robert dawne · 1

4 Ways to Boost Your SEO With Google+

If you use Google regularly — and who doesn’t? — you’ve probably noticed that the company has been using various ways to coerce you to join Google+, its incipient social network. The plugs have been pretty overt and include a call-to-action on Google’s homepage and automatic G+ registration for new Gmail accounts. For businesses, the sell has been more subtle. Since Google integrated Google+ results into search under its Google Plus Your World initiative in January, the word has gotten out that lack of a Google+ presence could affect organic search results. The upshot: If you don’t have a Google+ page, your placement for various search terms will suffer.
Companies that specialize in search engine optimization are used to rapid change, but this is something different. These days, if you want to get better search results, you have to know a thing or two about social media marketing. So, Google has, in effect, given you two headaches for the price of one. Another way to look at it is that Google has given you a free opportunity to boost your SEO and get a leg up on competitors who don’t know what Google+ is. “If you’re a first mover on this, you’re going to capture more visibility,” says Rob Garner, vice president of strategy for digital marketing agency iCrossing. “This is kind of a gift in a lot of ways.”

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1. Get a Google+ Page

 

Unwrapping Google’s gift is pretty easy: Just set up a Google+ account for your business. The company held off on letting brands onto Google+ for a few months, but at this point, the setup is fairly turnkey and even allows for multiple administrators. (You can actually start the process now, before you finish this article by clicking here.)

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2. Get In As Many People’s Circles as Possible

This part is a bit trickier. The quickest way to get the ball rolling is to put as many people inside your circles as possible. It also helps if those people are in the same industry, so you should include your rivals (you could even make a “competitors” circle), industry gadflies and, if you have a storefront or rely on local customers, people in your community.
There’s nothing you can do to make other people put your business in their circles, but making people in your segment aware that your page exists is a good idea. Erin Everhart, director of web and social media for 352 Media Group, a digital marketing agency, says you should put your Google+ page on your email signature, on your business card and above the fold on your homepage.
Don’t get desperate, though. Buying Google+ fans is a bad idea, Everhart says, because it might get picked up by Google’s search algorithm and result in a lower search profile.

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3. Stuff Your Page with As Many Keywords as Possible, But Do It Organically

 

As with step 2, there’s a tempting way to cheat — just fill your page with all your relevant keywords — but you should avoid it since you might run afoul of Google. So, instead of randomly or egregiously larding your page with such terms, do it organically. Write posts that include the keywords, but don’t write them specifically for SEO reasons.
Garner says it’s also a good idea to time your posts in the best possible way. In other words, think like a publisher. For instance, during the Super Bowl, if you wrote an interesting post about the halftime show just after it started, you might get traffic and attention from people searching the term. (Garner calls this effect “velocity.” )
Another trick is to use Sparks, a Google+ feature that automatically loads videos and articles found on the Internet to your stream. If you set keyword searches in Sparks, which is an option under the search window, you will be able to see who else is using the term and what they’re saying about it, which could help you craft more relevant posts.

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4. Use the +1 Button 

We haven’t heard much about the +1 button since Google introduced it last year as a competitor to the Facebook Like. Yet you may have noticed that you’re seeing more and more profiles of your Google+ friends coming up in searches. That’s because if you +1 a lot of things, particularly things that are relevant to your industry, your image or logo will increase its visibility as well.
Though common sense would dictate that there’s little downside to clicking on a free button, research has shown that there’s a lot of upside, too. A Dutch company called SEO Effect found that getting 72 people to +1 its page resulted in a 20% lift in click-through rates.
Will all this improve your SEO? While it seems likely, the experts just don’t know yet. After all, the integration between Google search and Google+ is still very new. Nevertheless, there’s a strong case to be made for making the most out of Google+. With 100 million users and the full support of Google, only a federal investigation (always a possibility) can stall Google+’s growth. As a business owner, you may not like the fact that Google seems to be offering you little choice but to join Google+, but just like you couldn’t create a credible SEO strategy without considering Google, you now have to also take Google+ into account.

16:30 by Robert dawne · 0