Branding can be elusive for a lot of businesses. What is it? How do you capture the ethos that you want to represent your company?
When you’re a micropreneur, you are your own brand. So your job becomes establishing yourself as a thought leader through content, speaking, and networking. You could write a book about your expertise or simply start guest blogging for other publications.
If you run a larger business, branding should be about connecting to your audience in a meaningful way and putting the human element back into the equation. You do this through great customer service and by paying attention to what your customers want.
The key with branding is knowing how people see your brand. If the perception of your audience is a far cry from where you want to be, it’s time to realign so that you’re being seen the way you want to be seen.
Being known as a thought leader in your industry has many perks. First, it opens the door to new opportunities for you, whether that’s to speak at a well-known conference or get referrals for people you might want to work with. It can drive traffic to your website. And it’s also a fantastic way to attract new business.
For me as a business writer, my thought leadership efforts (specifically in guest blogging) are what attracts about 70% of my new clientele.
You have more knowledge of your subject matter than you probably realize. There are people out there who need your knowledge, and by sharing it, you instantly become a thought leader they trust and want to connect to.
Here are seven strategies for owning your experience.
Social media is the widely chosen medium today to engage and network within a targeted industry. Businesses are increasingly using social media because of the high engagement level and broader market reach. As per statistics, a higher number of consumers interact with brands on social media. Brands that are active and respond to customer queries on social media platforms create a positive influence on the audience and helps in building loyalty. In this infographic, get a detailed statistical overview of how social media encourages impacts brand experience.
In the rich digital world we inhabit today, there are few things that a dedicated and ambitious entrepreneur can’t achieve on their own — you can sell online without any support, network with anyone you can reach without any introductions, educate yourself however you like with no formal course, and (of course) establish a substantial following through their own initiative. In times gone past, PR was seen as a third-party service. Any business that wanted to improve its image would hire a PR firm to take charge of everything from sending out press releases to issuing formal responses to major queries. These days, things have changed — preferring to work as economically as possible, entrepreneurs like to keep things in-house when working on their personal brands. After all, a personal brand loses its impact the more people get involved.
It isn’t easy to run your own PR, though, no matter how business-savvy you happen to be. Personal brands are delicate and complicated things, and even the smallest tonal flub can lead to a radical change in how an entrepreneur is perceived. Being careful is absolutely vital.
Getting good results doing your own PR, then, is all about efficiency: achieving the greatest impact at the lowest cost with the most minimal level of risk. If you’re planning to do just that, consider working the following 5 easy tactics into your strategy to PR personal brands:
While I wouldn’t say that I’ve been anti-analog marketing, I have built Egg around the perks of reaching customers online…that is, until now.
I recently launched a creative workshop business that is hyper-local: I host creative classes at businesses in my neighborhood, so suffice it to say that 85%+ of my customers live within a few blocks of me.
Forgive me for being one of those die-hard resolution makers. I made my first New Year resolutions on this blog 10 years ago, and it’s a practice I plan to keep up. Taking time to slow down and think about what I want for my business in the coming year is an excellent exercise (okay, okay, it’s eggcellent. I’ll let you slide with one egg joke this year), and keeps me focused.
If you’ve read any of my posts, particularly those I write for Forbes, you know I write from experience.
Recently I visited a restaurant/entertainment complex in San Diego, and the experience left me less than satisfied. I’ve reflected on it, and come to the conclusion that the problem was this:
The owners invested money into the wrong aspects of the business.
Recently I spoke about influencer marketing at PR Bootcamp in New York City. Just before my presentation, a panel of editors and producers from television programs like Dr. Oz and The Today Show talked to an audience of public relations professionals about getting products and experts on their broadcast media programs.
While Egg doesn’t have many consumer product brands as clients, we do have a lot of industry experts, so I perked up when they talked about how experts could get booked on the show, even if they weren’t celebrities.