Dear Readers,
How have you been doing this week, I’ll be honest here, it need not be good all the time. After all, life is not a bed of roses. Some of us are tired especially if you still have a day job. You have a desire to start and built your own online business (to replace or supplement) your income.
As I sit here in my living room on a Sunday morning overlooking a cloudy sky, I wonder what I should blog about this week? Some how I remember writing a blog post about branding some time back. I like to revisit this subject again to help you establish yourself to get your audience.
My Sundays are usually set aside to think and ponder what I should blog about. Once decided research will start and a title will be chosen.
Let’s begin!
What Is Branding?
Branding is simply the linkage between your business to yourself as well as your leads, and audience. Lets take ourselves as online marketers to link ourselves to the business we conduct, say affiliate marketing. The use of logo will be great as it gives visual impact to your leads. Ultimately, you want this linkage between your business (product or services or programme) and yourself to bring you more leads and grow your audience.
Some Tips About Branding
These are helpful to get you along with your branding process. Remember it’s not an overnight exercise to get your name and brand to your audience. It takes time but well worth the effort and sacrifice you put in.
Look around the big corporate names; it took them years and decades to brand their names. So it is obvious there is no overnight success!
Tip 1 – Your Own Logo And Motto
Keep your logo and motto simple. You may like to head over to Fivver.com to seek out logo designers and you come out with your own motto. Motto in branding should reflect you and your style. Simple motto will help your audience to remember and connect that with you. My blog post in September 2016 will help you to understand this better.
Tip 2 – Open Line of Communication
Surely you want to communicate with your leads and audience. How else could you do that in today’s technological driven-world? One way we can use is social media like Facebook Private Messaging. I learn from experience online marketers it usually starts from there and they progress to Skye calls. The big deals are usually done via Skype.
Tip 3 – Personalising Your Email
Would you believe if I told you your audience love seeing your logo and your picture? Do you want to know why they love that? Its simple as it simply show you are real and not some outsource company. So be yourself, write your emails like the way you speak. Please don’t imitate and speak like someone else. You are you and your audience love seeing you. This is one core value of branding.
Tip 4 – Deliver Real Value
I cannot help but to say you have to deliver valuable content or training. It goes beyond showcasing your good self. You are judge in a way by the content you deliver. This can only be achieve by getting oneself educated. Remember you have education from young before you started working. It’s the same here, educate, and apply knowledge gain. Finally, impart that knowledge to others.
Tip 5 – Honesty Is The Best Policy
Share with your audience and leads what you know. Be honest if you don’t know or have no knowledge about a certain training or product. Believe me they (audience) value your honesty, and that will go a long way. Never ever beat yourself around something you don’t know. The least you could do is help to find out through other sources.
Tip 6 – Body Language in Videos
It is inevitable in today’s context of branding the use of video is warranted. You are showcasing yourself in front of the camera, which will ultimately be view by your leads and audience.
Be natural in front of camera; guess it is easier said than done, especially first timers. Newbies I know where you are coming from, I have being there before. Read through your script several times. You need not remember word for word, as long as you can remember the points that’s good enough.
Maintain eye contact with the camera, I too at times is guilty of not doing that. Make yourself friendly and warm to have that approachable inclination. Its fine to gesture to emphasize your point, but keep it to the minimal. All I can say it takes time and you get better with every video shoot you make. You make like to take a look at my blog post of video marketing done two weeks back.
Tip 7 – Self Confidence And Consistent
If you don’t have that self-confidence in your branding, how could your leads and audience have confidence in you! You will learn a lot about yourself, both your strong and weak points. Stay positive in your outlook and if you are doing it right be consistent. Give yourself reasonable time and reassess yourself as to how far you have come.
Conclusion
If you want to succeed, branding is unavoidable and you need to pluck up courage and just do it. Ultimately, you want to be heard if not be seen out there in the web. Let me share with you my story.
I only became active in June 2016 as an Internet Profits consultant. This was because I now had time on my hands after leaving my day job. For five months I gave all I can even making small money. This convince me that I can do it, in fact I believe those five months efforts were worth more than say last five years of half-hearted or no efforts at all.
Since November 2016 I went back to a contract day-job till now. I have not abandon my online business or activities. I try my best after a tired day in the office to blog and cut videos. Today in a small way I see tiny or small improvements.
Firstly I notice there was small opt-ins to Internet Profits Dirty Affiliate Marketing Secrets (DAMS) quiz. Average ranges from five to eight a month. Come to think of it these are from free traffic, some from my very old blog post! I have stop paid traffic methods for like good half year to seven months.
Secondly, I have been putting summary videos on my Facebook wall about every blog post I do. The effect here is I notice a good number of friend request on Facebook. Where did these come from when I had none six months ago? Of course I don’t have to accept every request but I get the feeling something is working right.
Some even PM me and that’s where I guess we can start to get to know each other and see how we can help and maybe understand each other better.
Now do you call this Branding? Tell me about it in the comment box.
I Place The Ball In Your Court
- Are there any other aspect of branding you may know and like to share?
- Do you think sharing of one’s story constitute to branding?
- Do you have any issue in getting yourself educated?
Thank you all for taking time to go through my blog post on Branding.
Have a nice day, week ahead!
