What is Your Branding Story? Part 2

Tell Your Story

Buyers love to connect with brands they trust via social media and video. They love to hear stories about not only your company but the other buyers who are using your products and services successfully. They’ll share the stories with their friends and family, thus helping expand your brand through story telling.

To tell a good story you’ll need to delve deeply into your why. Why does your business exist? Why are you passionate about your product or service? If you’re not sure how to develop your story, you can use social media to distribute surveys to the customers you have that already exist if you’re collecting (and you should be) their information. In addition you can brainstorm with employees and contractors, ask them why they’re here. Ask them why they come to work each day. Also, never overlook searching the web for what people are saying about your business.

Fill out your profiles on the “About Us” area of your websites, blogs and social media. If you guest post for others ensure that your author’s bio is succinct in telling your story. Create videos or ask your clients to create videos that tell your story. Even your contractors and employers can help tell your story via their LinkedIn.com profiles, or social media profiles that mention your company and what they do for your company.

Place photos of your products or important components of customer testimonials that showcase all the positives of your services on your website and social media sites in a prominent location. People want to know what is behind the products and services in a way that shows them that you care, and that you are dedicated to solving their problems. That’s right, all successful products and services solve a problem. If you’re not sure what problem you solve, it’s time to research and figure it out.

Your blog is a terrific place to start talking about your why for being. Create posts, and ask for guests posts from service providers, contractors, employees, customers and clients that show in their words how important your why is to the world. Be open and transparent in your discussion of why you exist. If you’ve done your home work, your story will resonate with your clients and potential clients and make them proud to do business with you.

Spreading the Word on Social Media

Social media offers a tremendous opportunity to brand your business. In the old days we only had TV, Radio, Newspapers, Billboards and the cocktail party. Today, the world is truly open for businesses who see the value in using technology to expand their reach.

The best way to enjoy the advantages of what social media can offer is to realize exactly what you can do with social media. Yes, still go to local events, and live events, but never underestimate the importance of being part of the online conversation about your industry.

You can use social media to:

• Study your market

• Network

• Share important information

• Announce new products and services

• Tell people about sales

• Expand your brand

Some ways to do the above are:

Facebook — Use Facebook to build a community and participate daily. Answer questions professionally, and interact with others in your community. It’s important to give your customers a reason to talk about you. Ask them to create a videos or showcase them on a live video describing how they used your product or service and what kind of success they enjoyed due to it.

Twitter — Share new content with followers, comment on their shares, and participate in the conversation your followers are having. Share coupons, sales, brand news, answer questions, share how-to’s and interviews that you’ve done. Consumers love getting coupons and freebies, so ensure that you offer them.

Google and YouTube — While other social networks remain at the top, Google+ remains a place to engage in collections and communities, share your posts, and gather the latest news from influencers in your industry. Images and video work well here — especially with YouTube’s integration where you can grow your brand audience through pre-recorded video or live video.

LinkedIn — This is a more serious business networking social network in which you can join professional groups, share your latest blog posts, and network with influencers in your niche. With the simple publishing features it is a great place to attract more visitors to your website for free.

Instagram and Pinterest — Create compelling image or video that showcase the inner workings of your brand including your products and services, and customer testimonials. This type of visual social media will expand your brand in many ways and could even go viral. Pinterest is especially important to retail businesses as well as bloggers who would like to grow their readership.

On any of the popular social media avenues today it’s possible to search keywords that describe your audience, product or service including competitors to keep up with what is happening in your industry. It doesn’t matter if you have an online business or offline business. Using social media to further your brand is an essential component of any branding effort today.

Before you get started take a look at your mission statement, and remind yourself of who your target audience is. Keep the same visual brand throughout all your social media networks. In fact, your online visual brand, the logos, the graphics, colors, tag lines — they should remain the same across all marketing channels.

Before joining the conversation, create full and compelling social media profiles using your other marketing collateral as a start. Don’t reinvent the wheel. You’ve already developed a brand offline, and that brand should stay the same. The idea is to expand your brand, not replace it. While your brand is more than just your photo, there is no point in confusing your audience. You want current customers who find you on social media to share you with others and they will if they recognize you immediately.

All businesses need to use social media to promote their business today. But, many business owners don’t realize that their actions on social media comprise an extension of their brand. To expand your brand it’s important to use social media in a strategic way that aligns with your core business values. How you promote your business with social media depends on what kind of business you have.

If you’re a speaker, author, life coach or your business is completely about you, you will handle your branding through social media differently than if your business is about a product or service. If you have products and services it’s important that you develop a brand for those in addition to your personal brand by creating accounts for each business component. Your @JaneSmith Twitter account should be used differently from your @ProductorServices business account.

On your personal social media accounts it’s important to be yourself and be transparent. Admitting mistakes, showing your personality, engaging with others, sharing information is important in branding yourself. On your business account you should also be a real person, share, engage your audience, and try to be compelling and interesting. However you slice it, social media is an excellent way to increase your brand.

Using social media can increase brand awareness quickly. Whether you like it or not, people will be talking about your business via social media. If you’re not invested in social media the conversation goes on without you. Not only do you want to be part of that conversation, you also want to be in control of the conversation.

In order to be in control of the conversation regardless of which social media you use, start the conversation. Create excellent content on your websites. Write excellent guest posts for other people’s websites. Share compelling information that other people have shared. Comment in a meaningful way on content that you enjoy, or even content that you disagree with. Always be respectful, but showing each audience your expertise will increase your authority, even if it’s controversial.

Never, ever delete critical information that you find, whether it’s a comment on your blog, or a complaint you discovered on Facebook. Instead, publicly deal with the comment in a professional way. Of course, delete offensive comments riddled with swear words, but don’t delete genuine critical comments or complaints. How you deal with these issues will speak volumes to your target audience who sees them.

Use social media to promote the things that your company does and is involved in. Every blog post you make, every new product you create, every new service you offer should be worthy of the same promotion as the next.

Remember, branding is more than a logo or pretty picture. It’s really about the perception your target audience has about your business’ culture. It’s a compilation of your name, logos, tagline, mission statement and the messaging that leaves your office. Without knowing your story and conveying a compelling story to the marketplace, many people will miss out on enjoying your products and services.

If you need help developing or telling your story, contact SK Consulting today!

Want to Be a Subject Matter Expert? Start with YOUR Brand!

Personal branding is commanding a lot of attention these days, especially from job seekers and people trying to get ahead in the workplace. The reason is simple. It’s your identity.  If what you do or what you sell doesn’t match up to your identity – if you’re not passionate about it – people take notice.

But, others also take notice when you own your personal brand, when you present yourself as and prove yourself as the subject matter expert in your field.

Branding the individual is especially relevant in the professional services, where developing thought leadership is a critical tool in an expert’s rise to prominence. I’m not talking about the self-described, “empty-suit” expert. Instead, these are serious professionals who want to increase their visibility and become recognized industry experts.

To become a true subject matter expert, you need to focus your attention in the right areas.

Top Personal Branding Tips

1. Focus your expertise

Don’t try to be an expert in too many things.  Why? Because people are not very good at associating an expert with more than one thing. Not to mention, it’s very difficult to master multiple disciplines. A few exceptionally gifted people have become experts in more than one field, but most are remembered for only one of them.

Whether or not you consider yourself the leading expert yet is unimportant. “Leading expert” is in the mind of the beholder. If you can state your expertise in clear, simple language, you’ve already taken a huge step forward.

Let’s say you’re an accountant and you say your expertise is in taxes. “Taxes” is just too broad a concept. A focus on “state and local taxes” would be better, but you may need to go even narrower to find an expertise platform you can “own.” How about “state and local taxes for online purchases”? It’s very specific, but still applies to a lot of businesses out there.

Once you get their business based on your narrow focus, you can always up-sell your other services.

2. Pick your issues carefully

One more advantage of a narrow focus is that it limits what you will write and speak about. No longer faced with a wide world of possibilities, you can work within a clearly defined range of issues.

When you zoom in on an area of specialty you’ll discover a whole new ecosystem of problems, challenges and ideas just waiting to be answered, explained and debated. In fact, it’s possible to become overwhelmed by the complexities of practically any niche.

The key is to focus on issues where you can shine. Ask yourself:

• Where do your interests lie?
• Where do your clients struggle most?
• Where can you deliver the greatest value?

At first, focus on just two or three issues. These will be issues that you write and/or speak about on a regular basis, so you should either understand them in depth already or be prepared to put in the research to get up to speed. Your goal is to become closely identified with these issues, so make sure they align well with the services you sell.

Choose issues that have legs. That means that they 1) don’t have an easy solution, and 2) aren’t likely to go away soon. 

3. Shape your personal profiles to be consistent with your expertise

Take a look at your bio on your website and the personal profiles on your social media pages. Do they present you as a highly credible professional? Do they convey a consistent message? And do they connect you to the issues you’ve chosen to write and speak about?

In addition, professional head shot is essential if you want to convey a high-end personal brand. That doesn’t mean it has to lack personality — you can take your shot in any setting. But it needs to look great. A web cam portrait or cropped dinner party shot isn’t going to put your best foot forward.

4. Write regularly on your area of expertise

Writing on the issues you care about in small, steady increments is one of the best ways to build a loyal following. And writing on a regular schedule comes with significant added benefits, too: it helps you master new material — deepening your expertise — and it forces you to think through and refine your arguments.

Where do you publish your writing? Your company’s blog or e-newsletter are cheap to produce and flexible enough for a busy schedule. You should also look outside your firm for new opportunities to share your ideas. Seek out publications and blogs that speak to your target audience. 

Many of your readers will be new or unfamiliar with the issues you cover, so it’s okay to return periodically to your most important points and apply them to different situations. Even long-time readers may appreciate looking at a familiar topic from a new angle.

The important thing is to set a schedule and stick to it. Even when you are busy. Try reserving a time on your calendar every week for writing. If you can’t find the time, or just don’t like to write, hire someone to write in your voice.  Then, all you have to do is approve the piece!

5. Embrace speaking events and webinars

Public speaking is one of the most popular — and effective — ways to become a visual expert. It’s a terrific way to demonstrate your expertise and strengthen your personal brand. If you choose your speaking events carefully, you can reach groups of people who not only are in your target audience but are very receptive to your ideas. And if you can meet members of the audience face to face after the event, you can make personal connections that are just not possible online.

Webinars are another great way to expand your visibility to new audiences and build your personal brand. Like speaking events, webinars allow you to share your knowledge and express your personality. You can even field their questions at the end. And once you’ve been doing them for a while, webinars can attract hundreds of qualified and engaged prospects at a time.

Whether you choose to speak publicly or conduct webinars (or both), live events provide a unique opportunity to give your audience a taste of your personality. They can also expose you to a new set of people outside your local area who haven’t yet discovered you through your writing.

6. Network with peers and prospects

Networking can be a powerful tool with two important dimensions:

• Who you network with: You obviously should rub elbows with people who can use and buy your professional services. That’s a no brainer. But, there’s another group that might not be so obvious — experts. Network with other experts, especially those who serve an audience similar to yours but don’t directly compete with you. Their recommendations can hold a lot of clout. Associating yourself with respected authorities can place you in their league. It’s not necessarily a bad idea to network with your direct competitors, either. They can’t always handle all the work that comes their way, so they can be valuable referral sources. If you take a different angle to solving problems, it might complement their own approach.

• How you do it: The “how” is easy. While face-to-face networking has some real advantages, its reach is limited by the time you can spend on it. Social media, on the other hand, can be a faster and easier way to build your brand. To the uninitiated, social media — with its plethora of platforms and tools — can be intimidating. But most industries favor just a few. LinkedIn is the most common social platform across the professional services, and many firms use it exclusively. In higher education, Facebook is very popular. A quick review of competitors’ websites should point you to the one or two essential social media tools in your industry.

If in-person networking is working for you, by all means keep doing it. But if you haven’t yet utilized social media, it offers a lot of possibilities to increase your exposure, meet prospects and other experts, debate relevant issues and share your expertise. This is exactly how personal brands are built.

It’s Your Brand!

Establishing a true-to-you, effective personal brand will not only help you discover your true talents and passions, it will enable others to see that passion, knowledge and performance as the leader in your field. Don’t try to tackle all of the above at once.  But, the more time you can devote to building your personal brand, the faster your stock will rise.  If you are struggling with developing and promoting your brand, we can help!  www.stonekingconsulting.com