Tag: brand

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23
Aug

Marketing 101: Crafting your key message

Written by Gavin Heaton

It seems that almost every second day I hear of a friend starting their own business. They give me a call, excited, to let me know about the new venture ... and to ask for advice. And it is funny, as a marketing professional, this is my stock in trade – turning ideas into words and pictures, but for entrepreneurs keen to kick start their business, this can be daunting. The thing is, we have all been sold and marketed to so we at least have a sense of what is required. We need to be able to tell people how to contact us, so we will need business cards. And we will have products or services to offer them, so we will need some sales collateral of some kind – flyers, brochures or maybe a catalogue. And website. We'll need a website. What about advertising? Should we get some of those Google AdWords, or perhaps be more focused with the classifieds in the local newspaper?

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21
Aug

Building a personal brand online

Written by Matthew Gain

The ten blue links displayed when you type your company name into a search engine, not your company’s homepage, is where most people first interact with your business. What they see on that search engine page, be it positive or negative, will have a lasting impact. However, for many small businesses it is the business owner the customer is buying into, not the business brand. If nothing comes up when you put your own name into Google, what does that say about you? Or even worse, if the only things that come up are personal photos you would rather keep private, then your search engine footprint needs some serious attention. Below are seven quick tips to help improve your personal brand online. 1. Blog. Having a good blog habit is one of the simplest ways to ensure you control your personal online brand. However, the act of creating a blog is not enough. You need to generate content, ideally lots of content. The more posts you write, the more content a search engine will have to index, and the more content others will be able to link to; both of which positively impact what appears when your name is searched. If you’re a business owner, place your blog on your business URL, but ensure you use your own name as the author.

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14
Aug

The importance of getting your brand story right

Written by Trevor Young

We live in a noisy, information-overloaded world. Research suggests we are exposed to something like 3,500 advertising messages every day, much of which washes over us and is ignored (actually, the figure is 99 per cent according to The Guardian in the UK which conducted the experiment back in 2005). Add to the fact our already-busy lives have been made even busier through hyper-connectivity. We listen as much to our friends and peers as we do traditional sources of media. We take in information from such a dizzying array of channels that if you stopped and thought about it for a moment, your head would spin. And your goal is to get your message through this insane vortex of noise, for it to be heard and understood by your target audience. Do you like a challenge? This post isn’t about how you go about cutting through the clutter per se –there are hundreds of marketing and PR textbooks devoted to that very subject and we’ve only got 600 or so words.

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07
Aug

Do you know what is being said about your business online?

Written by Matthew Gain

The Basics of Online Listening Knowing what people are saying about your business online and on social media can be incredibly powerful. Why? Because monitoring your online mentions, or as it is often called ‘online listening’, can help you understand what your customers like and dislike about your brand, can help you keep track of your competitors and also provide access to an always-on, free focus group. So how do you do it? Below I have broken down the practice into three sections: Tools for listening What to listen for Managing the data Tools for listening: Google Alerts – Setting up Google alerts is the easiest way to track what is being said about you online. The service is free, and you can adjust whether you get updates weekly, daily, or the moment it is detected. The results can be sent to your email, or you can set up an RSS feed so you can read it through a reader like Google Reader. As Gavin Heaton highlights in his excellent overview of social media listening, include common misspellings of brand names.

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22
Jun

Developing a Powerful PR Mindset

Written by Trevor Young

Let’s get this out of the way from the get-go: ‘PR’ does not stand for ‘press release’. While dealing with the media in a bid to generate editorial coverage for their clients is something a professional PR consultant does on a regular basis, it’s not all they do by a long shot. So what is PR? According to the Public Relations Society of America (which recently crowdsourced a definition more in line with today’s social age): “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” It’s clumsily written, and to anyone outside of the industry, it doesn’t make a whole lotta sense.

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06
Jan

Five things you need to know this week

Written by Emma Mulquiney

Friday 6th January 2012 Happy New Year! I do hope you all took some time out to enjoy the festivities of New Years Eve, and I don't know about you, but I really savour the moment that the clock ticks over to midnight. A brand new year full of possibilities is ahead. Time to make those resolutions! (and perhaps, check out Ms MadWoman, Melina Schamroth's top tips on making sure you reach them.)

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