@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

Business Coach

How to be Proactive about Social Networking and protect your Brand

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Social networking is here to stay and if you want to stay in business you had better learn to proactively manage it.  It involves more than setting up a Facebook page or Twitter account, it involves searching, responding, and making sure there are positive things said about you on the web. It also involves employee training so rules are defined before a problem occurs.

  • Reserve Your Spot

The first step in getting involved in social networking should involve setting up accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and other pertinent groups. This will prevent someone else from setting up a page using the moniker that you would like to be known by. It also prevents fake pages that are set up as if they are your business or entity without proper permissions.

  • Monitor Your Social Networking Page

Once you have set up your page or account, you should post information that may be of interest to others and information that contributes to your brand image. Most importantly though, you should monitor your pages for links to porn sites and other unwanted attention. It reflects poorly on a brand if undesirable posting are posted on your Facebook account and it is left for everyone to see.

  • Search for Yourself or Brand

On a regular basis, you should perform a search for your name, business, etc. This will allow you to find out what is being said about you and yours on the web. If you discover untruths you should contact the source and ask for them to be removed. If the things that are written are undesirable but true, it is time to start damage control by responding or burying the unfavorable comments.

  • Plan a Response

If unfavorable information is recent and growing in number, you should carefully plan to respond to customer concerns. Customer trust is more important than privacy in today’s changing world. This can be a learning experience for all involved since you may see where you can improve your brand image by listening to what people are saying about it.

  • Read the Fine Print

Facebook is a great tool for social networking but all involved in posting to the social media page should be aware of a clause in Facebook’s TOS. “We take an…irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute….” This clause is in effect even after a Facebook membership has been terminated.

***This is important to the business user as well as the individual since many employers study social networking sites before making a hiring decision. A 2008 article on PC World stated that twenty percent of employers admitted checking an applicant’s social networking profile before making a decision to hire. In 2009, Careerbuilder.com reported that number had risen to forty-five percent. A March 2010 survey by Microsoft discovered that seventy percent of hiring managers had rejected an applicant due to information they found online***

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Social Brand Visibility: Gowalla, Mobile Web

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A relatively unknown as of yet, Gowalla is a mobile and web service that allows people to connect, communicate and win prizes for their effort. It helps people keep up with their friends, share and comment about favorite places and discover new ones.

Users can share their physical place with friends and family using GPS locator that lets people know where you are physically, so you can get together. Gowalla is geographically available in over 7,500 cities around the world and has categorized listings of businesses and location-based listing to search from. It has a social “to do” lists called Trips, and rewards users when accomplishing stuff, like checking in to an establishment or posting a good review of a place. The items can be picked up and dropped, and they are giving out a lot of prizes.

You can receive pings when your friends check in or ‘shout’, and you can meet other Gowalla users who happen to be in the same location as you.

Founded in 2007, and launched in 2009, this Austin Texas Company is the brain child of Josh Williams and Scott Raymond. It is a competitor to Foursquare and had a similar launch. Foursquare took off immediately and now Gowalla is catching up with them.

According to Williams, Gowalla has over 600,000 active users and sees about 20,000 check-ins a day. It is ranked 3,216 in US traffic.

Sources:

 

Brand Marketing, not Brand Advertising! Difference?

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Establishing a Brand is most successful when the marketing campaign is performed in a consistent manner that projects the image that the brand stands for. In the case of tangible goods this will affect the packaging, logo, advertisements, and quality of the product delivered to the public. The same principle is true for intangible goods there are just slight differences in the branding process.

Just as a brand is the sum of people’s perception of a name, a company logo, the products carrying the brand, and the packaging of the product. Marketing is the strategy with how the brand is utilized, this can be anything from placement to targeting. This is different from advertising, as advertising is part of marketing execution. While you can advertise something in the local paper, on the internet or even with radio, it is the marketing plan that decides what is going to be presented and how, for the specific purpose of accomplishing brand recognition and the long term call to action.

One Fraction of an Example:

  • Advertising – 3 Month Banner Ad on a website. The banner ad has the company name and offers 20% off with mention of this ad.
  • Marketing – A strategic placement of a 3 month banner ad to support the brand image that offers 20% OFF “product” with the donation of a nonperishable good for the local high schools food drive.

Advertising in this case is the action of getting the word out, marketing is the art of strategic placement of different advertising means to engage the general public and create additional sources beyond the first form of advertising. The marketing example here still offers a discount, but has engaged the consumer in the sense of “community support” and developed cross promotion from the would be customers in the school and it’s students. The consumer experience is presented as a great deal, helping out a good cause. When they leave the experience should have been consistent from entering the location (visiting the website) and leaving. When it comes time to make a purchase again, they will recall your brand as a positive experience with value and be drawn back.

Loyalty to Brands

People become loyal to brands and that loyalty may come from many different areas. They may be attracted by the packaging or a commercial they see. It can be as simple as a color scheme and of course the customer will expect quality. Quality is always important since you want someone to purchase your products or services more than one time.  Maintaining a brand is a major part of any marketing plan.

Customers are Fickle

Once a brand has become established, anything done to change the design of the packaging or the way the brand is advertised must be done with caution. Customers are fickle, and it is very easy for them to forget your unproven and time tested brand. It is also easy for a brand to become unrecognizable to a consumer who may decide to buy another product since they can’t find what they are looking for.

Challenges to Marketing a Brand

Brand recognition can be very tricky and many people will switch brands when a product becomes unfamiliar looking to them. They may even perceive that the quality of the product or service has changed even if it is exactly the same. This creates challenges to the marketers who are paid to advertise the brand.

Trial and Error

Discovering the right way to market a brand can be a game of trial and error. This may require a lot of research into the buying habits of those loyal to a brand. The important thing is that someone is paying attention when the marketing plan changes and stops the changes if they are not being embraced by buyers of the brand.

Marketing Must Meet Customer Expectations

The marketing of a brand must remain consistent with what people expect of the brand. Their perception of the brand has a lot to do with why they purchase it. If that perception is ever tarnished it is possible to lose a good customer over a failed marketing plan to increase market share.

The challenge to marketing a brand is to attract new customers while maintaining a consistent feel with the brand. Marketing must keep some life in the product or service offered without alienating loyal customers. This keeps the brand strong and vibrant and prevents customer sentiment from becoming stale.

Summary:

It is my opinion that the development of a brand is the first stage in any successful business.

  • What do you offer?
  • How do you offer it?
  • What will it look/feel like?
  • What will it be associated with?

Now build a perception of it around what you have discovered here and with what need this product or business is meeting. Decide how you are going to market it, then decide which advertising means will help you accomplish your marketing goals to build that brand recognition.

TIME!!! It takes time to build consistent brand recognition, if your budget it $10,000 then make sure you invest smaller portions of that 10,000 for a longer period of time. The big banner ad for $1,000 a month will not bring the same consistent value as two smaller banner ads at $500 a month, and $500 more a month in community outreach and support. Spread it around a little and make it consistently last. Before moving forward consider how  this “spend” will fit into the brand in the next year, five years and ten years.

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Picking the Right Social Network for your Brand

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As for internet visibility, or digital brand as it is being called now, 2010 proved, without a doubt, the power of the social network. Facebook just passed Google in the number of hits per day. People are using the internet to connect and be connected more than they use it to perform searches.

Aside from it being a sociological phenomenon that no doubt will be talked about and researched, it opened a world of advertising not used before. Facebook makes it extremely easy to connect with almost anything that is a digital brand, with one click of a button. Just type into your Facebook page that you liked a certain television show and immediately you will be connected to their site, to see more.

As a way to advertising your brand, it is a goose that can lay golden eggs. And why not? It is free, it is simple and everyone with a little understanding of how the system works can join in and be effective. Right?

Not so fast. The problem with social media is that it is multiplying. New sites, with new possibilities for connectivity between people are popping up like mushrooms after the rain. You can join all of them and spend most of your time updating and chatting while neglecting your core business. You can hire people to do it for you, believing that bigger is better and the more sites you join will yield better results, only to find out that the ROI (return on investment) is not worth the effort.

Before you embark on the social media voyage, you should know that not all sites were born equal and knowing which one to join is the most important aspect.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself:

–          What is the strength of the site?  You have to do a little research. What can Twitter do for you? What can Dailybooth? Evaluate the site to see if it fits you and the character of your business. Think of a strategy; what do you want to achieve, how can this or that site get you there?

–          How much time you are willing to invest? How much time you can afford to spend on social networking? An hour a day? A week? Social media is, after all, just that – social. Scott Stratten (1), a man with over 74,000 followers on Twitter says the amount of followers started to grow when he dedicated time and interacted with others. You have to maintain presence for social media to work.

–          Do your customers use social network at all? Most businesses have communities. Check them out. Are they talking about your kind of business? Maybe they do on a forum of another kind. It is a bit of a detective work, but you have to find out where your potential customers are.

–          If you had to pay for the service, would you still do it? How much are you willing to spend on this form of advertisement? Granted, joining is free, but maintaining it will cost you a lot of time.

–          Social media is a long term commitment. Having a page up then not updating it for months has a worse impact than not having one at all. It shows you don’t care, don’t follow through and maybe you are out of business. If it’s up there it should be maintained.

Thinking ahead about a strategy before embarking on this trip is important. Treating social media seriously, as part of an advertising campaign, is important as well. Those are the things that will yield results. Use the questions above to get organized and start thinking in the right direction.

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What is Advertising in comparison to Branding?

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Advertising tells the world how great, useful, or exciting that your product or service is. Branding is when people know how great, useful, and exciting your product is without the advertisement. Advertising is a very important part of branding since the human mind forgets things very quickly and advertising reminds them of the brand.

The Brand is an experience in “an emotional economy, success is judged by a profound and indelible connection with people through sensory experiences” (Gobé, 2007), if you build a brand around the product alone then you will have missed the opportunity to build a genuine brand. The intangibles are as important, and in some services more important than the tangibles in branding.

  • Consistency is Important

To fully benefit the creation of a brand name, advertising should be done in a consistent manner that exemplifies what the brand stands for. This is very important when a brand is being created or developed so that people will remember your product or service when they make a purchase or require services that you perform. It is essential that there is a consistent look and feel to everything that is associated with the brand.

Branding is the perception that people have of a brand name. It includes their perception of the logo, packaging, and the products or services represented by the brand. Branding makes people think of your brand when they need a product or service that you offer. Advertising keeps the brand fresh in their mind.

  • Branding is a Mind Game

Branding is not always a tangible thing; branding is a sum of what people feel, think, or know about a product or service. It is a very real thing but it occurs in the mind; it is how a brand is perceived to be. Brand awareness must be promoted and sustained through marketing communications such as advertising.

The importance of a product, the delivery of the brand as well as the uniqueness of a particular brand should be stressed within the advertisement of the product. Why you need it; what it does; and what it does better than similar products are important benefits to emphasize when marketing a product or service provider. This is especially important in a tough economy when people are trying to save money and sometimes straying from their favorite brands.

  • Advertising Keeps a Brand on Your Mind

Advertising is very important to the creation and sustenance of a brand name. It keeps your product fresh in their mind which may make your brand the brand they chose to buy. Advertising helps make a brand memorable which is very important to a marketing plan.

  • Advertising to the Young

Advertising can also bring awareness of the products to different groups of people who may need or want the products or services that you sell. Young people are very brand conscious and although they don’t usually have their own money, their desires influence purchases made by adults in their family. This is the reason why many advertisements are geared towards the young. If you plan to capture the attention of this group, I suggest you think mobile first, internet video second, then down the line.

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Apps and Sites to help Businesses Manage Social Media Branding

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If you are a small business owner active in the social media circuit, there are some free or inexpensive apps you should know about.

Apps are very popular. As of 2009, iPhone users downloaded more than 2 billion apps through iTunes which has more than 85,000 apps for sale. From apps that let you find your car in a crowded parking lot, or alert you when you are getting low on gas, to apps that help you maintain your digital brand from your smartphone.

Here are some Apps to help you should know about:

Twist – A free app which lets you search topics on Twitter that are related to your business. You can get that information in real time and see what people are talking about.

Tweetmic – Allows you to record your tweets and publish an audio file on Twitter stream. Can be used for personal invitations and announcement to tweets you can record quickly while you wait for the traffic light to change.

Qwitter – Lets you know via e mail when someone leaves your Twitter account. It is a paid service that costs $4.99 a month.

YouTube for pages – To stay connected and integrated, this app lets you connect your business channel on YouTube to your Facebook account. You can post your video only once and using this app, connect it to all your other social media sites you are involved with.

Networked Blogs – A promotional tool that lets you link you blog to Facebook. A free app.

Sites:

Mybrainshark.com – A free site that allows the creation, narration and sharing of multimedia presentations.

Icebucket.com – a search engine specializing in blogs. It helps narrow the results when you want to check what blogs are relevant to your business.

KnowEm.com – Allows you to check the availability of your brand name, and see who is using similar names. It can check this information in about 120 social network sites in a matter of a few seconds.

Blinxx.com – another free search engine that allows you to search videos from YouTube, Vimeo etc. Again, this search helps you narrow down the search results to videos only.

Those are but a few examples of how apps and sites can help the business owner save time and get organized. With the proliferation of social media sites it is important to be able to aggregate information relevant to the business. It is equally important to be able to create connections between the official website and social media sites, so they can feed and connect to each other.

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What is a Brand? How Does a Small Business use Branding?

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What is a brand? A brand is the sum of people’s perception of a name, a company logo, the products carrying the brand, and the packaging of the product. If you are in the business of selling, you are either selling your own brand, selling the brand of another or in most cases, doing both. Unfortunately, most businesses do understand the importance of brand. However, they fail to organize, or better yet capitalize behind it.

 How do we know that Small Business Owners are failing?

“In a recent report, it was discovered that 47 percent of Small Business Owners either aren’t sure or don’t think their customers spend time on social media sites. Further, 24 percent of Small Business Owners don’t think their customers do research online before finding them” (Barone, 2011)

Branding Makes You Stand Out in the Crowd

Branding is also important in the marketing of services such as the Painless Dentist or the Computer Geeks. Branding attracts certain types of people and makes a small business stand out in the crowd. Branding may not make you seem to be all things to all people but it will make you important to some people.

When developing a business, you should find a need then tailor to that need. If you create a product and then hope people need it, your success will likely be short. Your brand should be treated the same way. Target a need or concern and meet an expectation.

Kohl’s has done fairly well with this, while much credit has been given to the brand in being a great “price for value”, the Kohl’s brand has started to shift from general value to specific. When Kohl’s started excepting any item for return at any time, they shifted from value when you shop, to value for life. In response would be casual shoppers started spending at Kohl’s like it was an investment.

Over time a company normally develops a brand identity, through customer experiences and the perceptions of others who are outside the business. Creating a brand identity is different but it takes a lot of the chance out of the situation since creating a brand identity is carefully thought out and carried out consistently across the product lines and services that are offered. This ensures that the effects of branding have a positive impact on customers and also attracts potential customers to your brand.

How Does a Small Business Use Branding?

Major brands have strong corporate identities; these companies spend a lot of money making you remember their name, their look, and their products. This is branding, and it is a carefully thought out process that is important for large and small businesses alike. Branding makes people remember you and hopefully put you on the top of their list which can make or break the success of a small business.

To be successful a small business should:

  • Discover what they do best and then do it.
  • Do what you do best over and over again.
  • Quality customer service is also important when trying to establish a brand.
  • Consistency in packaging, advertising, and quality will make your brand and your small business stand out in people’s minds.

Developing a specific identity and then communicating your identity consistently is key to creating a brand identity. Social Media has created a great new tool for Small Business Owners to capitalize on strategies used by the big boys for centuries.

More than just being on social media, consumers want a Small Business Owner to establish a real presence there. (Barone, 2010)

For example:

  • 81 percent say it’s important for businesses to respond to a post.
  • 78 percent want to see promotions.
  • 74 percent want regular posts.
  • 66 percent want to see pictures.

Summary:

Brand or Branding, is a crucial part of any business in any field, while you may be successful with what you do, without a brand strategy you will never reach your full potential. This may feel fine to you, just realize that your capitalization will be limited by the “brand” investment you have put into your concept, product or business.

Sources:

Fan Page List, retrieved October 28, 2010

Kohls.com retrieved on December 28, 2010.

Las Vegas Business Press retrieved on December 30, 2010

Small Business Trends retrieved on Jan, 2 2011.

Wenatchee Business Journal retrieved on December 30, 2010

Google Aims to Save you Time

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Google Aims to Save you Time

The long tentacles of Google are everywhere these days – in a good way.

The company is thinking ahead and making life more comfortable, more connected, more immediate than ever before.

It is no longer just a search engine. Google Chrome is gaining in popularity among the web browsers. It had 10 million users at the end of 2008, 30 million at the end of 2009 and in mid-2010 already had 70 million active users. How is that for a growth spurt?

G-mail is popular, simple to use and basically works in a “cloud” – all your information is stored on servers, not on your home computer, accessible from anywhere at any time. It can store all your contacts, all your e mails; you don’t have to back up that information because it doesn’t matter if your computer crashes. The hardware became less important and the information is safe behind strong firewalls.

Google Docs  enables you to hare documents and collaborate with others on the same page, set appointments on Google calendar, and see what’s new with Google Reader and Google Reader Play.

Google Reader

Most of internet savvy people, and especially the young ones, have a few website they like to visit often to see what’s new. The sites can be blogs, professional sites, membership sites etc. Going to each website separately takes time, and then you might find that there was nothing of interest for you this day.

Google Reader comes to the rescue. A program which was launched in 2007, in now becoming very popular. Google reader is an aggregator of feeds and news from your favorite websites, all in one place. Once you go to the site and list your favorite websites, one click only will show you all the new stuff from all your favorite websites in one place, in a headline form.

If you are interested in the subject matter, another click will get you to the website for more in depth information. It saves time and effort and makes getting updates from the sites your anyway go to, much more concise.

Google Reader Play

Lately, Google introduced the Google Reader Play which presents the information in images with a big image at the top of the screen and the different items as thumb nails at the bottom. This is information aggregated from different web sources. You can click on the right and left arrows to scroll through the items or you can click on the thumbnail to enlarge them to the main screen.

The idea that the good stuff is mostly visual is behind this service. It adapts to your tastes as you click on the icons representing marked for later, like, and share. It is still in the experimental stage and can be accessed through Google Labs. This service doesn’t come to replace the Reader but to augment it. While the Reader gives you feeds from your chosen sites, Reader Play gives you information aggregated from sites all over the web.

This forwards thinking and development in many directions at once, is what make this company what it is today. A major player and developer. Where is Microsoft gone to? Google is overtaking them by leaps and bounds. Microsoft seems to be stuck in the browser and office arenas and coming up with new things that just complicate matters instead of making them simpler.

Visibility Marketing Trends for 2011

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As for Businesses and visibility, what can be predicted to be the trends for 2011?

Here are some thoughts:

Web Design – As the reliance on websites becomes widespread for small businesses, so does the competition. How to retain the visitors and make them go to other pages on your site has been a question may want an answer to. The trend for the upcoming year in websites, points to the fact that a basic page is not good enough anymore. Sites are expected to engage, entertain and interact with their visitors. The design process has become simpler and many sites are offering, for small amount of money, templates that and already set up, making them hipper, more fun to use and interactive.

Mobile Connectivity – Smart phones are gathering speed and offer possibilities that we never had before. Almost 50% of business owners already own smartphones. Mobile devices will change how we do business. They offer another platform for advertisement as well.

E Commerce – will continue to grow in popularity. A research done in the beginning of 2010 showed that only 30% of small business websites have e commerce capability.

Social Shopping – and interacting with customers is becoming increasingly important. More businesses will get into the social media plains. First hand recommendations in a saturated world are more important than ever.

Social Media – In the past year many business owners spread themselves thin over many social media platforms. The important thing is, and will remain to be, a consistent message and brand, with exposure to consumers.

Cloud Computing – In the beginning of 2010, a group of internet experts and mavens got together and announced that “we will all be leaving in the cloud by 2020”. It seems to be happening faster than they have predicated. Many business owners realized that cloud computing is very beneficial. It eliminates the need for an office and a desk. Everything can be accessed from mobile devices (laptops, tablets and smartphones). Having the ability to see everything that goes on, wherever you are anytime you choose to, is becoming a reality with cloud computing. It is the ultimate “virtual office”.

[slideshare id=7447762&doc=hubspotmarketingtransformationfinal-110330085430-phpapp02]

After Christmas Sales

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It looks like this year was a good year for Christmas business.

The estimated sales this Christmas season are projected to reach $451 billion. That number is much higher than what happened in 2008 and 2009 and is almost at par with 2007, one of the best years ever. In 2007 the sales were at $453 billion.

Because of that fact, experts expect after Christmas sales not to be as deep as they were in Christmas past, but retailers are still trying to keep the momentum going. If sales are going to be strong as they were before Christmas, this might turn out to be a very good Christmas indeed.

This year, internet sales reached $36 billion, driven by discounts and free shipping. Many of these offers will continue this week. Online sales in the United States rose 15.4% compared to last year.

Many chain stores are announcing big discounts that will continue up to the end of the year, and many stores are extending their operating hours to accommodate as many shoppers as they can.

Most of the after Christmas shopping has to do with returns, exchanges and especially gift cards. Combining a monetary gift card with deep sales is what causes customers to brave the bad weather and go to the store.

What is the best strategy for after Christmas shopping? Expert suggest to do an online search before you go to the mall to find out where the best sales are. Businesses are sending e mails to their customers to let them know where the good sales are. Some of them worked over the Christmas vacation to be able to reach their clients.

Where are the biggest sales? Jewelry, toys and TV’s before the Super bowl.

Spending on gift cards reached nearly $25 billion this season, an increase of 5% over last year, according to the National Retail Federation. Most of the gift card sales came in the last few days before Christmas.

The weather may play a role in after Christmas shopping this year, with 5-18 inches of new snow expected in Washington D.C, New York and New England. But bad weather plays a more important role before Christmas, than after. People can hold off on redeeming their gift cards for a while, since they are not bound by a firm date when they have to have their gifts ready. After Christmas sales are considered “the icing on the cake” for retailers. And indeed retailers feel the brunt of the storm with lower after Christmas sales. Now that the storm has passed retailers are waiting for increased sales with abated breath. They are hoping to turn a good year into a great one.