The Ultimate Branding Strategy - How to Make Your Brand Famous Online

PLANNING FOR SUCCESS :  How Can I Make Money Online?

• Know what you want
• Know how to get there
• Know your limitations

Defining Your Goals

• Understand what you want to achieve
• Identify your goals
• Have realistic expectations
• Document and prioritize

Analyze Your Goals

• Identify tasks to achieve
• Identify required resources
• Identify obstacles and limitations
• Asses your goal

Develop Courses of Action

• Backward planning
• Prioritize tasks and completion
• More than one way to achieve your goals

Establish the Plan

• Pick the best course of action
• Create your checklist
• Execute the plan

Tools for Success

• Complete a reliable internet marketing course
• Understand how to use the tools
• Understand project management

Project Management

• Set your timeline and milestones
• Have a detailed plan for each milestone
• Assign tasks and subtasks from available resources

Stay Focused

• Keep to your plan
• Don’t be distracted by new things
• Finish what you start

Executing Your Plan

• Build in flexibility
• Define success in each goal
• Plan, execute and evaluate

Learn from Your Mistakes

• Everyone makes mistakes
• Evaluate and modify future goals
• Continue the process

RESOURCES

• PlanHQ
• Business Plans for Websites
• LivePlan
• Basecamp

BRANDING & YOUR IDENTITY

Branding is a marketing practice of creating name, symbol, or design that identifies and differentiates a product or service from other products. What does this mean?

• Create a name for yourself
• A known commodity in the marketplace
• Identified with quality and integrity

How to Brand Yourself

• Build a base
• Maintain your integrity
• Understand the impact of everything you do
• Be consistent

Why Your Identity Matters

• Determines your success
• Reliability 
• Credibility
• People will buy… or not

Getting Started

• Determine your identity
• Make changes / be flexible
• Be consistent
• Logo / Taglines / Mission?

Create Your Empire

• You determine success or failure
• Admit when you make mistakes
• Put your family on your shoulders
• Put your customers first

BECOME AN EXPERT – Establishing Authority

Expertise = Authority

• Establish credibility in the marketplace
• Creates recognition of your brand or identity
• Enables and increases your value

How do I Become an Expert?

• Education
• Research
• Conferences
• Networking

Do I Have to Know Everything?

• Know enough to have an opinion
• Need authority to position yourself
• Creates self-imposed limits
• More knowledge = more profits

Constant Requirement

• Continually read and update
• Follow top blogs and newsfeeds
• Emulate experts in your niche
• Never stop

NETWORKING

To Network effectively you must:

• Introduce Yourself.  Explain who you are and what you do.
• Give before you take.  Always offer something or simply ask a question when establishing contact with a new Network Partner.  By being forceful and asking for something you could end a relationship before it is ever created.  Ask to Promote a product or if the Individual could guest Post on Your Blog because you value their content.  The more basic the initial approach is, the better.  Sometimes if you are on a Mailing List of a potential Partner, a great ice breaker is to respond to one of their emails and slide in some information about you.
• Communicate effectively.  Separate ideas into paragraphs, do spell check, re-read your email before you send it.  Speak clearly in your text and have your ideas organized into complete thoughts, not fragments which will confuse the person reading them.
• Understand that you can’t Network before you have something to give.  Just because you have Established Your Base and have a little bit of content does not mean it is time to start Networking.  Make sure you have something to offer first.  This can be anything from a blog which is starting to take off and get rankings to asking for an honest look at your first product.
• Free creates Partners.  Don’t be afraid to give potential Partners content you have created for Free.  Nothing says I am confident in what I am doing like giving it away for Free.
• Learn what Partners are doing.  Communicate about things in your Business or even personally which do not have a Price Tag or potential profits attached.  Use Skype and or other Chat tools which will allow you to communicate in a more personal way than to just email.  Give out your Skype address to those who you feel you would like to talk to.
• Put learning your business first and making money second and you will make more money.  The more Network Partners you have, the more money you will make.

REQUIRED ACCOUNTS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS

REQUIRED SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS: 

• Facebook:  With over 750 Million Members and Counting, Facebook is the single most important account you need to have.  Most people should not mix their Personal Accounts with Business though and it is much better to Develop a Facebook Fan Page for your Marketing Account than to use your Personal one.  While Facebook has features which allow you to create custom lists of those who you want to display content to, it is much easier to simply use a Facebook Fan Page in this communication process. Everything you produce, post, or talk about must be posted to Facebook.
• Twitter:  Twitter is a very viable means of communicating for your business.  Most people do not understand its power though and generally do not use it effectively.  Everything you communicate should also be shortened up into the 140 Character world of Twitter and linked.
• Google Plus:  Google Plus is just getting started, but already has Millions upon Millions of users.  With Google being the biggest player in Search, we cannot begin to ignore their ability to break into the Social Media arena too.   This is a must have account.  Now, Google Search is indexing postings you make with your GPlus account.  This is a critical piece of your Social Media Marketing for the future.  More on this integration will be covered in the Social Media Module.
• LinkedIn:  Most novice Marketers do not realize the Power of LinkedIn and the Community of Businesses on this Social Network for Professionals.  With more Peer Groups, Forums, and other Connections inside this Social Media site, you will find that LinkedIn might be one of the fastest avenues to finding people who are just like you and ready to work with you towards success.  Success is built on Networking as much as it is Branding and LinkedIn is the King.
• Pinterest:  You can’t ignore one of the Largest Social Media Networks Online.  Pinterest is now an essential part of most Internet Marketing strategies on the Web and it should be a part of your’s as well.
• Mailing Lists:  While Mailing Lists are not Social Networks, they are your biggest communication tool for talking to your Subscribers, Members, Customers, etc.  Not having a mailing list management service to aid in this process is the biggest killer of new Internet Marketers who do not understand how to leverage this medium.

RECOMMENDED ACCOUNT OPTIONS:

• YouTube:  Creating a YouTube Account and Channel can bring in a wealth of Subscribers, Backlinks, Traffic, Branding, and more.  One of the most visited sites on the web, YouTube is a medium which is hard to ignore.  If you do not like video, find another way to use it to your benefit.  Ignoring YouTube’s power will cost you in multiple ways.  Video is the king of the internet right now.  By publishing content on YouTube and then posting it on Your site, you get valuable link backs and build credibility with Google at the same time.  This is one of the very small things it can do for you.  Highly recommended.
• Vimeo:  Very popular with Marketers, Vimeo isn’t the beast that YouTube is, but it is a nice place to place your Videos for added exposure as well.  Videos can’t be seen as duplicate content so by double publishing your Video content here, you can only help yourself.
• Flickr:  A great place to host all of your pictures and image content.  Why?  For SEO.  By hosting with Flickr, you can share your pictures easily and they can come up in Search as well due to Flickr’s high SEO Value.  Free image hosting and SEO?  Sounds like a winner right?
• Tumblr:  Tumblr is turning into what Blogger was years ago.  Currently there are over 4000 Businesses using Tumblr and with an estimated 29 Million Blogs under their belt, they can’t be ignored.
• StumbleUpon:  Instant and Continued Viral Traffic can be obtained by simply submitting your Posts and Pages to StumbleUpon. It is like a Bookmarking service, but with added Viral Traffic building benefits.  Ensure you use multiple Tags to describe your Posts when submitting.
• Digg:  Much like StumbleUpon, your site can receive a lot of Viral activity depending on the type of content you submit to Digg as a Recommendation.  The power of Digg goes beyond this Viral activity though as it is one of the sites Google uses as a value indicator in its Search Algorithm.
• Screenr:  Create your own screen recording Videos with Screenr for Free.  This fantastic service give you entry level capabilities at getting excellent video content on your blog as Reviews, Tutorials, and more.  Take Screenr (and as an alternative you can always use Jing)for a ride and then when you are ready for more enhanced screen recording capabilities, you can upgrade to Camtasia Studio from Techsmith.
• UStream:  If you are having problems getting started and don’t like to write content, Ustream is a place where you can create your own Channel and literally sit and talk to the screen if that is all you currently can do.  By linking UStream to your Social Media Accounts you can advertise your personal Live Channel where you can broadcast for Free and even record your “shows”.  There is so much more to it than this.  A very powerful site for Business.
• Quora:  A Question and Answer site for businesses.  A great place to get REAL Answers to your Questions or to provide a Solid and Value Added Voice of your own there to provide Answers to people’s questions in your Niche.  A lot of power players in a lot of Niches use Quora.  It is one of the web’s best kept secrets.
• Foursquare:  While not a major player in Social Media, Foursquare can help you maintain engagement with your Fans and Followers by simply updating your location.  If you integrate it with your other Social Media Accounts, you can post to it automatically with normal status updates and those who follow you on Foursquare will get your content.  It is easy to setup and a no brainer to maintain.  You can easily have fun with it on your Cell Phone when you are traveling and while it may seem dumb to most, when you create a following, keeping them engaged with you is half the battle.
• ClipBoard:  There is truly nothing special about Amplify other than one key element.  It has the ability to let you Post to Multiple Services simultaneously.  While we identified Ping.FM as a Required Account above, Amplify can Post to Ping.FM automatically.  Thus giving you a more sure handed approach to Content management.  Amplify also Auto Posts to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous, and more.  It also gives you the ability to Connect to friends from Facebook and Twitter right on site by giving you a dedicated Sub-domain for your Content and Musings.  It can definitely help you Amplify your Content’s ability to become Viral and be seen.

AUTHORITY OR HUB?

Authority Sites

• One niche
• Broad view with branding
• Establish value in constant content

Hub Sites

• Singular in focus
• All about the brand
• The focus in on you, not the content
• Links to sub-niche sites

Either or Combination

• Different approaches are fine
• Authority is easier
• Can be changed later
• Look at examples again

ESTABLISH YOUR BASE – The Starting Point

Establishing your base is creating the foundation for your business, its focus, and the primary medium for communicating your business’ message online.

Setting up Camp

• Create your identity / business
• Purchase a domain name / Hosting
• Create a Blog

Create Your Required Accounts

• Create all the accounts required
• Links your accounts to your blog
• Begin posting
• Build slowly and don’t rush

Examples:

• Johncow.com
• Johnchow.com
• Ryanlee.com
• Yaniksilver.com