All of these have one defining trait in common; they inform in a non-interactive sense. You can turn away or read as you wish, but that’s the extent of your control over the content of the advertisement. This has left the power of brand building largely in the hands of the originators. The company creates its advertising, and people respond to it.

Most people and businesses don’t have the money to create massive media blitzes or overarching TV-radio-print campaigns, which left this approach almost entirely to the big names or those small companies willing to take a chance.

This is all changing.

As we’ve discussed before, the landscape in branding has changed from the advertising model to the communicative one. Comments can be left, emails sent, blogs posted and disseminated in a matter of hours. We’ve established the increasing power the audience has over brands, and have learned how vital conversation is to the modern brand.

Brands can now be built quickly and on a shoestring budget. Webhosting is inexpensive, and in some cases completely free. A Facebook account and an eBay selling account can stand in for a webpage and a storefront, and are exponentially less expensive than a physical store and even a simple ad in the local newspaper.

Brand success is no longer the sole domain of those with the money to employ creative teams and retain advertising firms, but an open territory for any willing to seize the initiative and do the work.

Similarly, the direction of brand construction has changed. We’ve mentioned the conversation, the all-important dialog between brand and customer, and the power customers have in shaping the image of a brand. This has lead to the development of the inbound marketing technique. Rather than hurling information into the ether and hoping to find a target demographic, people are building ways for the audience to come to them, where a friendly chat can be had.

Consider the most important purchases you’ve made in the last five years. When is the last time a car advertisement on television spurred you to make a purchase, as opposed to the time you went into a dealership needing a car and sought one out on your own time? How often have your computer purchases been driven by an ad campaign as opposed to a personal desire to upgrade or seek one out?

This is the realm of in-bound marketing techniques. Yes, they still resort to the need to create an attraction in the customer’s mind, but the focus is different. It’s less a matter of ‘look at what we have to show you,’ and much more about ‘come tell me what you have to say.’

Consider the success of the SomethingAwful forums. Similar to 4chan and other casual social sites, SA has indisputably developed a brand of its own on the Internet. Ask about SA on just about any site, and you don’t need the full name, just the initials to get a response.

And yet at the heart SA is just a forum, a place for people to come and talk, and to read entertaining articles lampooning various facets of pop culture. The whole message, consciously or not, is simply, ‘come on in, and let’s have a chat.’

Not every site can use the exact approach of SA of course, but that isn’t the point. The point is that if you feel confident in your product, be it a physical item to sell or ideas you wish to promote, then you should focus less on throwing it out to the world at large and more on trying to find ways to get people to come in and have a closer look.

Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Dig, Reddit, Slashdot: There are social media networks and sites everywhere. People conveniently arrange themselves into groups based on interests and locations, and advertise these facts on profiles and group pages. A great deal of the research is already done for you, all you have to do is look for it. Put simply, these people WANT to talk about their interests. Don’t simply shout your message at them; instead, give them a place they can come and share what they have to say, and give them a product that relates.

Yes, digital branding requires even more hard work than big-time traditional advertising, especially on a budget. You may not be able to hire a bigwig designer to put out slick posters and compose outstanding music. What you can do is tap into peoples’ desire to talk, their wish to understand and be understood, and then give them both a place to visit and many roads to get to that place. Build the road and the inn, and travelers will find their way.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

© 2010, 1SocialMediaManager.com. All rights reserved. The format and presentations here are creations by this Website owner: ©1984 - Leanne C Boyd. All people and products reviewed here own their respective copyrights.

© 2012 1SocialMediaManager.com. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati Tags: 1) Social Media Platforms, advertising, branding, communication, conversation, Digital Branding, Facebook, interact, Internet, marketing, plugins, profile, research, tweet, Twitter

These are some of the most useful leverage points I had with my career development. These actions helped my career enormously. The first thing was to find an accountability partner of whom I can share ideas and resources with.

The second has to be outsourcing.

Sometimes you can get into the mind set where you try to convince yourself that you can’t afford to outsource the work that you have. There comes a point where you can’t bear without serious consequence or adverse effect not to. Just close your eyes and take the jump. I ended up with additional income doing it this way. When I hired my full time assistant, I said that I didn’t have the extra money to pay her. But after I hired her, more time was freed up so that I could do other productive things.

I went from not being able to afford her to earning more money as well. You just have to take the leap of faith because outsourcing can be huge. It was a lesson that I wish I would have learned a long time ago. You can’t create your business model with you doing everything because you’re going to outgrow what you’re doing and have horrible growing pains.

You can use a base camp system, where everyone checks into one place. This makes outsourcing easier. Just do a search for outsourcing tools and you’ll come up with a list of some good freebies. Your communication and reporting is all done from one place.

I don’t understand how some people can just sit about dreaming about success with no business coming in. There are two kinds of assistants you can get, ones that come to your office or virtual ones. I’ve had both. They mutually worked out ok, but depending on what you need will be determined on what you go with. The assistant I had that came to my office is gone because of my traveling.

I use virtual assistants. They have to come from the USA and who speak English. I do have a few people that I know that I can use and I prefer to use them because we know each other and they won’t have to ask me a bunch of questions.

It just depends on the business that you currently have. If you’re running a service based model, your going to have to hire someone to answer the phone for you. You need to prepare yourself for doing this even though you’re doing the work yourself right now. If you’re just selling other people’s products then hiring a virtual assistant to do some of the work for you is the way to go. Those are just some of the things I did with my career development.

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© 2010, 1SocialMediaManager.com. All rights reserved. The format and presentations here are creations by this Website owner: ©1984 - Leanne C Boyd. All people and products reviewed here own their respective copyrights.

© 2012 1SocialMediaManager.com. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati Tags: additional income, assistant, branding, build your brand, career, career development, extra money, outsourcing, share ideas, virtual assistant

The point of a brand is to create an instantaneous association in people’s minds. The Nike ’swoosh’ brings to mind footwear, athleticism, and Michael Jordan. The Toyota ‘bull’ logo evokes images of compact cars, foreign business competition, and new ways of doing things. The name Budweiser reminds us of everything from the actual beer to those clever talking frogs, and the ‘wassup!’ advertisements.

These are cases of successful, memorable branding. Michael Jordan is retired from professional sports, the frogs haven’t been on television in years, and wassup has almost faded from day to day use in the American pop culture vocabulary. However, every one of these elements remains identifiable, and mentioning them to most people will get the typical, ‘oh yeah!’ response to memories of clever marketing, cementing the image of the brand in the viewers’ minds.

Branding is the creation of these memories. However, recollections of a product being indisputably linked with a particular name, image, or slogan can be a double-edged sword.

MCI Communications was one of the most successful challengers to the AT&T ‘Bell Monopoly’ consortium between the late 1960s and early 1980s. MCI managed to push through the breakup of the Bell coalition and allow new players to enter into the field of telecommunications. MCI pioneered many telecommunications innovations, such as Single Mode Fiber Optic Cable, when other companies were content to rely on existing standards. They were one of the first companies to offer the now standard idea of ‘in-network’ calling, where MCI customers received discounts when calling other MCI customers. MCI was one of the big, significant players in the telecom world, so why isn’t their name still synonymous with innovation?

Because it is now synonymous with the words Worldcom, Enron, and scandal.

In 1998, MCI merged with another company to become MCI Worldcom, launching a widespread televised and online advertising campaign featuring notable actors such as Sam Neil of Jurassic Park fame. The MCI brand became inextricably linked with the Worldcom brand. Then, on June 26 2002, the Securities Exchange Commission launched a full inquiry into reported auditing and financial irregularities, resulting in allegations of fraud. By July 21st, less than one month later, it was revealed that Worldcom stock was inflated by $11 billion dollars, and the company entered into chapter 11 bankruptcy. MCI was ultimately bought out by Verizon, and the legacy of a once innovative telecom company was left in the same repository as Arthur Anderson, Enron, and the other big financial fraud stories of the early 21st century.

While this is an extreme example, it is a caution worth considering for anyone interested in making a brand name for his or her product in today’s market. The world is more connected, more informed, and more critical than ever, and while a legacy of good choices can create a strong brand, a reputation for poor or improper decisions can and will conspire to bury a once successful company forever.

Many times, no one can predict what will make a brand into a particular success or failure overnight. However, every company can take three common sense steps to protect their brand and the products it represents.

1. Promote a Quality Product

Quality talks – if a product works, then it has a certain degree of merit that puts it ahead of competition. If a company puts the time and effort to get a quality product onto the market and markets the brand in such a way that the actual qualities are stressed, people will remember.

As an example, Tylenol is an effective painkiller for post-surgical use. It is not a homeopathic remedy relying on word of mouth and supposed benefits, but has demonstrable, measurable effects on human pain and healing.

2. Be Informed About the Brand’s Use

Knowing not just what one is putting out, but what is being done with it in the market, is crucial to proper branding. To continue with the example of Tylenol, many advertisements stress that doctors frequently prescribe it, more than any other over the counter analgesic. Knowing what doctors were using their product allowed Tylenol to make a powerful claim and keep the information in people’s minds.

3. Be Prepared to Take Responsibility for the Brand

As seen in the MCI case, scandal led to the irrevocable decline of a once-powerful brand. Conversely, Tylenol managed to take what could have been a public relations nightmare and came out stronger than ever as a result. When Tylenol executives found out that tampering had led to poison getting into the product supply, poisons that killed Tylenol consumers, they pulled every current Tylenol product from the shelves of stores. They investigated each of their production facilities, solved the problem, and then launched an informative campaign letting people know when and why it was safe to come back to their product. This disaster could have led to the death of the company, but the executives’ willingness to take responsibility and act, rather than covering up and denying fault, saved-a brand that is still powerful to this day.

Again, these are examples of extreme events. Only a tiny fraction of companies ever take their investments down the path of fraud, and almost no one will have to deal with their product becoming a poisonous vector. However, they illustrate the case that a brand is a powerful association for people to make, and that like any part of a business, it requires information and action in the proper degrees.

What Does This Mean to Me and My Website

Normal advertising just informs the consumer about a product and a company’s brand identity. With digital advertising, the consumer can be more involved in the brand image. In this interactive domain, a company can listen to consumers who make comments on their website or blog and act on negative feedback before it becomes uncontrollable. They can try out different advertising strategies to learn which products they should continue to develop and which new features a product should have.

Effective digital branding allows you to identify a singular position and establish your own distinctive voice in the marketplace and incorporates all three of the above-mentioned branding points. You’ll be promoting a quality product. You’ll use social media strategies to keep informed about your brand’s image and you’ll take responsibility for your brand, to guide and shape it to its best advantage.

Branding takes time and thought. Digital branding takes time, thought and an interchange with your consumers. Engaging your customers in your brand in a relevant way is the key to successful online branding.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

© 2010, 1SocialMediaManager.com. All rights reserved. The format and presentations here are creations by this Website owner: ©1984 - Leanne C Boyd. All people and products reviewed here own their respective copyrights.

© 2012 1SocialMediaManager.com. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati Tags: brand marketing, branding, Digital Branding, Digital Marketing, Internet, internet marketing, marketing