Building Your Personal Brand Online

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Our next event will be at Indigo Blue on 9th November. The topic will be 'Having established demand and support for our product what else should we do to ensure commercial viability?" We hope to see you there!

According to an AVG study, 92% of children under the age of 2 already have some kind of digital footprint. We all have personal brands these days – with the advent of social media, we don’t have much of a choice if we want to stay online and connected – what do you want yours to say about you and your business?

The first step is to start thinking about yourself as a brand. Understand yourself and what you’re trying to achieve; be strategic about it. Big name brands such as Google and Coca Cola don’t just leap straight into creating their personal brand; they plan and test before implementing changes.

Think about how you want to be perceived. Are you serious and professional? Creative and quirky? Or all of the above? Focus on how you want to be seen by others and allow that to govern your decisions. What is your unique selling point? Take time to consider your target market; what will their best respond to? What will they trust? What will interest them?

The second step is to audit your current online presence. What do you post and how do you talk about it? Are you comfortable with the ways in which you respond to other people’s posts? Check out what other people say about you: do their opinions match the way you think about yourself? If not, how can you change that?

Make sure that your brand is instantly recognisable. Use the same fonts, colour schemes and images everywhere. Develop a writing style and tone that’s your own, and keep your messaging consistent. Create business cards and get professional headshots taken.

When it comes down to it, this is all about getting yourself known. Let people know who you are and what you can do but keep that image consistent and never make promises that you won’t be able to live up to. Make sure that when you do make promises, you keep your word.

Ask Yourself These Questions

- Who am I and who am I not?

- How am I unique?

- What do I want to be known for?

- What will make me and my business stand out?

- How do I communicate best with others?

Top Tips

1. Authenticity is key. Be yourself and be truthful.

2. Be nice or be quiet. It sounds harsh but it’s a good motto for life, not just social media.

3. Regular speaking engagements are a good way to develop your person to person communication skills. They offer good opportunities to be seen and to be heard.

4. Purchase your own domain name. It’s a small thing but it can make all the difference.

5. Build a narrative, tell stories and be clear about what separates you from the crowd.

6. Network.

7. Create a visual brand that represents you.

8. Join online groups and interact with others. At the end of the day, it’s how we treat other people that defines us.

9. Learn to use social media effectively.

10. Ask questions.

Please comment below with your own thoughts about building personal brands online. What has and hasn't worked for you? We always love to hear from you!

Ten Tips for Small Business Owners

Click here to see our membership packages or here to subscribe to our mailing list. Book for our next event here.

Our next event will be at Indigo Blue on 9^th November. The topic will be “having established demand and support for our product, what else should we do to ensure commercial viability”? This should be a familiar question to most small business owners. Once you have an idea, how do you put it into practice? What sets your product apart from others? What makes it unique? How are you going to communicate with your target market?

Take a look below at our ten tips for keeping your small business on-track, innovative and customer-focused.

1. Have specific goals. Break your big goals into small, measurable ones that are easier to obtain. Kn0w what you want, how you’re going to get it and how you’re going to measure success. This will keep you and your employees on-track and focused.

2. Be personal and tell stories.

3. Think carefully about layout, design and photography. Unfortunately, appearance does matter.

4. Do your own PR. People want to hear from you. Make it personal. Tell your story in the way you want it to be told. No PR firm is going to be as passionate about your product as you will.

5. Logistics are key. Customer expectations today have been heavily influenced by companies like Amazon, Netflix and Uber providing products and experiences almost on-demand, smoothly and intuitively. It’s no longer merely about offering the right product, you need to offer the right delivery service too.

6. Free shipping. Customers would rather that the price of the product include the extra cost.

7. Stay networked.

8. Bloggers are your friends. Working with influencers, bloggers, reviewers and journalists is important. This maintains a steady stream of referral traffic from your site, and establishes your product as unique and different. Each influencer will provide a different perspective on your product but also ensures that you target markets in which your product will be well received – they’re not going to promo something they don’t like, unless you’re paying them a lot of money.

9. Listen to your customers. Honest customer reviews provide the best feedback. Make sure you know what your customers like and dislike – respond to those comments and make changes. This will develop brand loyalty because your customers will feel valued. Your customers are the ones who will use the product so let them be your guide.

10. Use social media. It’s free! Everything you need to promote your product can already be found on your laptop, phone and/or tablet from video editing software to apps for managing your social media presence.

Find Out More

10 Things Your Employees Expect You to Know How to Do to Lead Them and Run a Successful Business - http://www.inc.com/thehartford/ten-things-your-employees-expect-you-to-know.html

Olympian Sally Gunnell’s exclusive tips for small business owners - http://businessadvice.co.uk/from-the-top/olympian-sally-gunnell-provides-some-exclusive-tips-for-small-business-owners/

6 Smart Budgeting Tips for Small Business Owners - http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/8323-small-business-budget.html

50 Tips for New Small Business Owners - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140617140953-7089637-50-tips-for-new-small-business-owners

Please comment below with your thoughts on running a successful small business. What would your top tips be? We always love hearing from you!

How to Generate New Business for Your Start-Up

Click here to see our membership packages or here to subscribe to our mailing list. 

Our next event will be at Indigo Blue on 9th November. The topic will be 'Having established demand and support for our product what else should we do to ensure commercial viability?" We hope to see you there!

People won’t buy something that they don’t know that they want yet. So don’t start by selling your product; start by marketing it.

Most successful brands, from Apple to Nike, aren’t selling a product, they’re selling a lifestyle. One pair of trainers doesn’t really differ that greatly from the next and yet Nike manage to convince their customers that a new pair of kicks will change their lives. The same goes for the latest iPhone. It’s not that different from the one that came before but everybody wants it, just the same.

People need to want to live the kind of lifestyle that your product offers. And when they do, you don’t need to directly sell to them anymore. Start as you mean to go on and create an effective communications campaign to drive sales without direct marketing.

Start with Your Customers

Communications is all about storytelling and there’s no point in telling stories that your audience can’t relate to. Make sure you know who your target market is. Think about age, gender, location, etc. What music are they into? Where do they socialise? What are their favourite brands? Look at on demographic at a time – never try to be something to everyone all at once.

Now You Know Who You Want to Talk to, Decide Where to Talk to Them

The next step is to decide which channels you want to use to connect with your prospective customers. Will your target demographic respond best to social media or more traditional channels? Do you want to talk to them directly or via journalists? Or is it your existing customers who will introduce new business?

There are more channels open to you than ever before so be smart about making choices. Don’t try to use as many as possible; decide which ones will be most effective when communicating with your customers and focus on those.

For example, platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram Stories are very effective for energy drink brands, like Rockstar or Relentless, who market to young, active customers who enjoy high-energy and easy access content. However, older, more experienced customers might prefer platform such as LinkedIn or advertorials in magazines and newspapers.

Think About Your Content

With the advent of the internet and smart phones, you have all you need to create quality content in your pocket. All Macbooks have free video editing software as standard and your phone provides a decent quality video camera. There are hundreds of apps offering free photo editing software and we all have word processors coming out of our ears, on our phones, laptops and tablets.

People love to have things and knowledge that they can share and pass on. Ask yourself whether the content you’re putting out has value to others? Does it tell them something that they don’t already know? Why should they share it with their friends?

It’s also worth thinking about what makes your content unique but balancing that with making sure that you stay topical. No one wants to read about Christmas in July but equally, no one wants to read the same information over and over again in different words. Choose something relevant that no one else is talking about – what makes your product unique and why?

Don’t Be Afraid of Change

If what you’re doing isn’t working, then change it up. Another advantage of the internet age is that we all have instant access to metrics telling us exactly what works and what doesn’t. Identify what your customers engage with and interact with the most and do more of that. Then look at what they don’t like and either scrap it completely or change it. There’s no shame in being wrong about something as long as you are able to move on and find the right thing for both you and your customers.

Please comment below with your thoughts on generating custom for small business and effective communications campaigns. We always love hearing from you!

10 Innovative Apps for Business People

In the modern world, being able to conduct business on-the-go, from your mobile phone or tablet can save valuable time. Take a look at our top picks for innovative apps that will help revitalise and transform the way in which you conduct business.

1. Wolfram Alpha. For easy access to data and data analysis – learn about almost anything, quickly and efficiently. The app is a mobile version of the computational knowledge engine and can be used to look at anything from mathematics to chemistry to data input.

2. TheStreet. Great for financial news. The Street began as an online informational website but has since rolled out apps for Android and iPhone users. The app provides users with access to up-to-date market/financial news, analysis and stock-picking insights from analysts. Aggregating information to provide a multimedia experience with data, articles and videos, the app also gives detailed quotes and analyses of stock.

3. ItSeez3d. For artists, architects and engineers looking to making a great impression with a dynamic, innovative presentation to a client. This app turns your iPad into a mobile 3D scanner. Users can view scans as rotatable 3D figures, upload them to a website which supports 3D model sharing or email them to an organisation which converts them to 3D printable format.

4. Expensify. For creating and distributing expense reports easily and quickly. The app’s intelligent automation helps users to handle their expenses in real time with one click. SmartScan a receipt, and Expensify will code and report the expense for you, before auto-submitting it for approval. The app’s rapid reimbursement system delivers the money back to the employee’s bank account by the end of the day.

5. Square Register. For those with small businesses who want to be able to manage transactions from anywhere. Launched in 2010, Square Register allows you to accept credit cards with a free card reader and free point of sale tools. The funds from swiped payments are deposited into your bank account within 1-2 business days. The app takes a 2.75% cut for all major credit cards with no merchant accounts or hidden fees.

6. Sign Easy. To save time and sign documents on-the-go, safely and legally. Users can import documents from email or the cloud, then sign and fill them in minutes. Then simply email the completed documents or save them back to the cloud. The app works with a multitude of file formats, including PDF, Word, Excel and JPEG.

7. Proven Hiring. For small business owners who want a quick and easy way to find suitable candidates. This is the first app to support job post distribution to all major job boards. You can import existing job descriptions from the Proven website, your email or Dropbox. The app also provides job description templates to get you started.

8. Card Munch. A useful tool for networking, saving space and decluttering. This free app, owned by LinkedIn, turns your business cards into LinkedIn Connections simply by taking a photo. The app has seen well over 1.8 million business cards scanned so far.

9. Own It. For small business owners looking to grow their networks. Own It is a trusted network of small business owners and self-employed entrepreneurs with the goal of supporting each other in growing their businesses.

10. MarketWatch. Provides access to the latest business news, financial data and market information. Users can receive breaking news coverage, market data and market alerts. Recent updates include broader market coverage with interactive graphs that allow you to filter across a variety of date ranges.

Click here to see our membership packages or here to subscribe to our mailing list. Leave a comment below to let us know your favourite apps for business, marketing and finance.

Our next event is today at TateHindle. We hope to see you there!

6 Top Tips to Up Your Company's Social Media Game

1. Try to insert a call to action into the bottom of every post. This won't always be possible – the character limit on Twitter is often a barrier to this and you can't put links on Instagram posts – but the more, the better. Link to your blog or website, ask questions and invite comments. This allows you to generate further interest without coming across as a constant salesperson who's more interested in profit than customers.

2. Schedule your updates to post just before or after the hour. This targets business people like marketers, office workers and managers who check their social media just before or after a meeting. Sometimes it's all about the timing.

3. YouTube users should check out this post on the Gleam Marketing Blog explaining how to add a small light-box pop-up to your page, encouraging visitors to subscribe to your channel. All you need to do is add the following text to the end of your YouTube URL whenever you share it:

?sub_confirmation=1

4. Use aggregator apps like Tweetdeck to streamline your social media experience, viewing multiple accounts simultaneously without having to log in to each one separately. This saves time and helps to keep your content consistent.

5. Visuals are important. This might seem obvious but posts on social media that include some kind of visual element, either a photograph or video, tend to have a wider reach and invite active engagement with content. Make sure your visuals are relevant, consistent and prolific.

Think about optimizing your visual content with links – an image or video can act as a 'gateway' to more valuable content, such as your main website or blog. For example, place a link to your website in the description of a YouTube video or the profile section of your Instagram account.

6. Post with empathy. Be kind, polite and acknowledge others. Make sure to interact with your followers and other businesses – your social media accounts do not exist in a vacuum. Social networking is by nature designed to be interactive and it's most effective when you use it as a networking tool, rather than a broadcasting platform. This means letting them know that you're reading their posts by hitting the link button, sending them direct messages or retweeting/reblogging their relevant content.

More Information

20 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros – http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-marketing-tips-pros/

5 Ways To Cross Promote Social Media Posts – https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/tips-tricks/5-ways-to-cross-promote-social-media-posts

3 Ways to Use Google Analytics to Evaluate Your Audience – http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-ways-to-use-google-analytics-to-evaluate-your-audience/

11 Creative Ways to Use Live Streaming on Snapchat, Facebook Live & More - http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/live-streaming-ideas#sm.001nxq8xi1ccgcowrmv1pdizwmz22

Click here to see our membership packages or here to subscribe to our mailing list. Leave a comment below to let us know your top tips for a successful social media presence.

Our next event will be next week at TateHindle on 12th October. We hope to see you there!