Getting the Most Out of Your Network(ing)

It's no secret that the more people you meet, the more people you know, right?  But when you're meeting people in the business world, what is your next step?

Anyone can go to a networking event, obtain a boatload of cards and file them away - hopefully to be seen again.  But, what is the right way to network?

Effective business networking is the linking together of individuals who, through trust and relationship building, become walking, talking advertisements for one another.

Keep in mind that networking is about being genuine and authentic, building trust and relationships, and seeing how you can help others.

Ask yourself what your goals are in participating in networking meetings so that you will pick groups that will help you get what you are looking for. Some meetings are based more on learning, making contacts, and/or volunteering rather than on strictly making business connections.

Visit as many groups as possible that spark your interest. Notice the tone and attitude of the group. Do the people sound supportive of one another? Does the leadership appear competent? Many groups will allow you to visit two times before joining.

Ask open-ended questions in networking conversations. This means questions that ask who, what, where, when, and how as opposed to those that can be answered with a simple yes or no. This form of questioning opens up the discussion and shows listeners that you are interested in them.

Become known as a powerful resource for others. When you are known as a strong resource, people remember to turn to you for suggestions, ideas, names of other people, etc. This keeps you visible to them.

Have a clear understanding of what you do and why, for whom, and what makes your doing it special or different from others doing the same thing. In order to get referrals, you must first have a clear understanding of what you do that you can easily articulate to others.

Be able to articulate what you are looking for and how others may help you. Too often people in conversations ask, "How may I help you?" and no immediate answer comes to mind.

Follow through quickly and efficiently on referrals you are given. When people give you referrals, your actions are a reflection on them. Respect and honor that and your referrals will grow.

Call those you meet who may benefit from what you do and vice versa. Express that you enjoyed meeting them, and ask if you could get together and share ideas. 

If you have questions about networking or have a topic you would like to see addressed in SK Consulting's blog, contact us!

There is a 'U' in Branding - It's YOU

Today, I had the privilege of speaking to a group of professionals about branding and what it means.  The group was made up of professionals from all industries, business owners and independent representatives of a variety of organizations.  The fact that nobody got up and left or screamed obscenities at me, tells me that they were actually interested in the topic.

I started the presentation (no formal PowerPoint for me) handing out scrap pieces of paper (recycling helps you reduce costs) and told the attendees to write three words that describe them.  Who are they? I then proceeded to give my presentation on the following:

What is your brand?

The inability to articulate what you do isn't a confidence problem - it's a branding problem.  You might have a hard time telling people what you do for a living if:

1. You are using vague words and trendy industry jargon to describe what you do.
2. Your expertise can't be summed up in one small title or job description.
3. You feel more like a Jac (or Jane) of all trades and a master of none.

Know what you do and what people want you to know you do.  In addition, know what sets you apart from your competition.  If you haven't done your research to figure out your competitive landscape, you have already put yourself way behind your competitors.

What is your positioning statement?

Your positioning statement is just a few sentences that describes what you do and for who.  Think of it as your elevator speech...you're 30 second commercial (without the music bed).

1.  Make is short and succinct.  Giving someone a lecture when all they wanted was an introduction can be a major turn off and will not help you get their business.
2. You should be able to incorporate your position statement into your website home page and in your social media profiles.
3. Your position statement is NOT your values or mission statement.

'Trial and error' is not an option.

You want your brand to reflect your true style and voice in a way that will attract your dream clients. Your overall brand should align your passion and talent with your career.  If you are not passionate about what you do or believe in your service, it will be very difficult to persuade others (and you should probably consider a different career).

What about the logo?
A major part of branding is the logo.  Your logo should match up with and reflect your brand.  it's not just a pretty picture.  It needs to serve a purpose and have an appropriate design:
1.  Simple
2.  Memorable
3.  Timeless
4.  Versatile
5.  Relevant

After I finished presenting I was asked what I thought the most important part of branding or marketing is.  To be clear, branding is just ONE element of marketing and the most important aspect of branding is to know who you are and why you do what you do.

I then asked each attendee to flip the piece of scrap paper over and write three words that describe what they do.  I applaud everyone who shared what they wrote - their three words that they used to describe themselves were in alignment with the three words they used to describe what they do.  hats off to a great group of knowledgeable and professional individuals!

If you or someone you know would like to learn more about the essentials of branding and strategic marketing, please feel free to reach out to us!  We pride ourselves on helping others succeed (how's that for a positioning statement?).  www.skconsulting911.com.

How do you define 'branding'?

The concept of branding is a confusing topic that many business owners may not clearly understand. What is a brand? What is branding? It seems like a simple question, but the answer is anything but simple. If you’re confused by your brand, your customers will be confused, too. The last thing you want to do is waste time and money on something unsuccessful.  If you need help, hire the experts.

First and foremost, branding involves consistent and constant messaging.  Many people believe those words are interchangeable...but they are not.  You shouldn't have constant messaging if it isn't consistent. (Consistent means unchanging, the same.  Constant means endless, ongoing.)  But, there are other key factors in branding your brand.

1. The Brand Promise

At its core, a brand is a promise to consumers. What will consumers get when they purchase a product or service under your brand umbrella? The brand promise incorporates more than just tangible products and services. It also includes the feelings that consumers get when they use your products and services.

Example: Think about your favorite brand and what that brand promises to you. If you’re a Nike fan, the brand might represent athleticism, performance, strength, good health, and fun. Your brand promises something to consumers. What is it?

2. The Brand Perceptions

Brands are built by consumers, not companies. Ultimately, it’s the way consumers perceive a brand that defines it. It doesn’t matter what you think your brand promises. The only thing that matters is how consumers perceive your brand. You need to work to develop consumer perceptions that accurately reflect your brand, or your brand is doomed to limited growth potential.

Example: What are consumers’ perceptions of Michael Jordan? You can bet everything he does is meant to create specific consumer perceptions.

3. The Brand Expectations

Based on your brand promise, consumers develop expectations for your brand. When they pull their hard-earned money out of their pockets and purchase your products or services, they assume their expectations for your brand will be met. If your brand doesn’t meet consumer expectations in every interaction, consumers will become confused by your brand and turn away from it in search of another brand that does meet their expectations in every interaction.

Example: Imagine if Lexus launched a $10,000 car. To say the least, consumers would be extremely confused because such a product doesn’t meet their expectations for a luxury brand.

4. The Brand Persona

Rather than asking, “What is a brand?” a better question might be, “Who is a brand?” Every brand has a persona. Think of your brand as a person. What is that person like? What can you expect when you interact with that person? From appearance to personality and everything in between, your brand persona is one that consumers will evaluate and judge before they do business with you.

Example: Think of it this way. Who would you rather spend time with — Apple or Microsoft? These two brands have very different brand personas. Your brand should have one, too.

5. The Brand Elements

Your brand is represented by intangible elements as well as tangible elements such as your brand logo, messaging, packaging, and so on. All of these elements must work together to consistently communicate your brand promise, shape brand perceptions, meet brand expectations, and define your brand persona. If one element is awry, your entire brand can suffer. 

Example: There is a reason why Coca-Cola, the Red Cross, Google and Facebook are successful.  Their brand means something to consumers.

Bottom-line, a brand is clear, reliable, and believable to both your consumers and your employees. However, brands aren’t built overnight. Before you can define and live your brand, you need to do some research so you don’t waste time taking your brand in a direction that won’t allow you to reach your goals. You must understand your competitors and audience, so you can develop a brand that promises the right things to the right people. Research should be first. Definition, strategy, and execution should follow.  Just like a garden, if you know what you've planted and you nurture accordingly, your brand will grow.  

Turning Talent into Profit

Everybody likes money.  Everybody likes to make money.  And hard-working individuals like to earn money.  How do you reach your monetary goal?  That is completely up to you.  However, if you don't have a plan - just waiting for the day that money starts growing on trees - your time for financial stability may be a little further into the future than you hope.

If you want to start your own business, you need to ask yourself, 'What am I good at?'  'What am I passionate about?'  And then realize you need to surround yourself with people who will help you succeed.

Think of yourself as an athlete.  You may have all the talent in the world, but without a good agent, your talent will go unseen.  But, if you hire the expert who knows how to land you a contract, you could be the Alex Rodriguez in your field.

If you don't have the talent, don't pretend that you do.  Consumers know a fake when they come across one.  They don't want to pay for a Gucci and end up with a cheap knock-off.  Take your talent, perfect it and then hire the right people to promote you and your business.  Develop a plan.

Ideas are good.  A strategic, comprehensive plan to implement those ideas is great.

The main argument that new and small business owners have when faced with hiring a marketing expert - on a full-time or consultant level - is their lack of budget.  This issue should be addressed when developing the business plan and budget proposal (whether for a loan or a guideline).  You can not rely on grassroots efforts or word-of-mouth alone.

Do not attempt to do it all yourself, or you will fail.  If you do not understand the intricacies of social media and how to best utilize it to advance your business, hire someone that does.  Facebook is more than pretty pictures.  Twitter is so much more than tweets and re-tweets.  LinkedIn is more than a networking site.

Invest in your business, your website, your promotional materials, your staff.  Surround yourself with smart people, experts in their field.  If your smart, you surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.

Don't sit back and let your talent go unnoticed.  Don't let your competition have a leg up on you because your pride says you can do it all yourself.  Let someone else be Cliff Lee (the second-highest paying baseball players for those of you non-baseball fans) while you channel Alex Rodriguez.

For more information on how to grow your talent and business on a limited budget, contact SK Consulting.  We pride ourselves on leading those with talent and a vision down the road to success!

www.skconsulting911.com
816-808-9101

DIY is Not Always a Great Choice

At a time when every person and every business is looking at their budget, the first thought might be to save monies by 'doing it themselves.'  But, sometimes this decision is the absolute worst one that could be made.

If you are not a doctor (or even if you are) and you need a procedure done, would you do it yourself?If you have absolutely no training in plumbing issues, would you attempt to fix a flooding toilet without asking for advice?

The Do-It-Yourself notion is great for home renovation shows, but even they have experts guiding you on next steps.  When it comes to your business, don't attempt to do it yourself.  You could cost your business a lot more to repair damages than to hire a professional.  Think of it as a dollar in prevention and planning is worth a thousand in profit.

At SK Consulting, we do what we do so that you can focus on doing what YOU do.  A big mistake small business owners make is trying to do all of their marketing by themselves.  Marketing isn't just pretty pictures on social media or developing a website via WIX.com or GoDaddy.com.  Marketing is about strategy.

Communications isn't just words on a document.  It entails a messaging plan, a media plan, a public relations plan.  A comprehensive marketing plan involves a detailed communications plan and an earned and paid media plan.

When an advertising representative contacts a small business owner with no marketing background, there is great room for inefficiency and wasted money.  Having an experienced marketing representative on hand to pore over proposals will save you money in the long run.

While we are not doctors (or plumbers), we are here to help prevent monetary and image harm to our clients.  We are here to minimize cost and maximize exposure.

A successful business plan incorporates comprehensive marketing and communications plans.  That's what we do  Let us help your small, growing or non-profit business.  Ask the experts.  Hire for help.

Ask before you act, because remember, a dollar spent in prevention and planning is worth a thousand dollars in profit.  For more information on SK Consulting, visit:  www.skconsulting911.com.

Don't Buy Into Cookie Cutter Marketing Plans

Whether you own a business, are starting a business, want to expand your business or work for a company that just needs to sustain its business, the biggest mistake your or your company can make is to 'do what everyone else is doing'.

The number one rule of marketing, in my opinion, is to identify what sets you apart from your competition.  You got into the business you are in for a reason.  You saw the need.  Research proved the need.  And for all intents and purposes, you are in business to accommodate the need.

But, your competition got into the business for a reason too.  They saw the need.  Research proved the need.  And for all intents and purposes, they are in the business to accommodate that need.

So, what sets you apart?

There are many seminars, classes and specialty courses business owners can take to teach them 'how to succeed in their field'.  The problem with those seminars is that everyone in attendance received the same tips, the same kit, the same talking points and plans.  That puts you in the same pool as your counterparts.  Let the others swim while you sail.

Every business should have a comprehensive business plan in place.  Within that business plan should be a comprehensive marketing plan that addresses many components.  A cookie-cutter plan will NOT answer the questions specific to your business, your region and your audience.

1.  What is your greatest need?
2.  Who is your target audience?
3.  What is your budget?
4.  Has a SWOT analysis been conducted on your business/industry in the region?
5. What has worked for you in the past?
6.  What are your plans for the future?  Expansion?  New product/service line?  New branding efforts?
7.  Are you in branding or recruitment phase?
8.  What is your internal situation?  High turnover?  Low morale?

There are many questions that should be asked AND answered before outlining a strategic plan.  Without a plan, there is no direction.  Without a direction, your business will get lost.  Save yourself time and money and don't get derailed.  Having to turn around after getting lost will cost you time, money...and customers.

If you feel you are in need of a customized, comprehensive marketing and communications plan, contact SK Consulting.  We pride ourselves in researching and mapping out the right directions from the start.  Leave the cookie cutters in the kitchen and your competitors in the pool.  Sail, don't swim.

What the heck is SEO and how does it work?

With experts and lay-people throwing big acronyms like SEM, SEO….LOL around, it’s hard for business owners to know what to know to get and keep a competitive advantage online.  So, let me start by giving you a crude example of how Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) works.

Google has automatic algorithms that rank your site. They send out what are called “spiders” (and while I have an immense phobia of spiders, these are the good kind) to “crawl” your site and check it for over 100 indicators that determine whether your site is valuable or useless. These indicators include things like backlinks, domain age, traffic, fresh content, etc.

SEO is the art of making sure those spiders are happy with what they find. It is an extremely complex field that is constantly changing but in all that chaos there are a few constants that have remained true since the beginning.

Understanding the basics of SEO

1. Purchase your own domain and hosting

If you are really serious about your website you should get your own name and host it yourself. And Google only wants to point to websites that are considered serious and trustworthy.

2. Solve problems with original content

Google’s whole purpose is to provide their customers with relevant and useful search results.

The most important thing you can do for your SEO is create massively useful content that solves people’s problems. If you are solving problems that people are searching for then it is likely that you are going to get shared on social media and ranked in Google.

The phrase “original content” means so much more than just written word. Some tips:

• Photography
  Get on Flickr or Photobucket and use original images on your blog or website. Even better if you take them yourself.
• Videos
  Make tutorials or do video posts with your webcam. This builds links and traffic from Youtube and does well on mobile devices.
• Podcasts
  iTunes is growing fast as people get better smart phones and spend more time plugged in.

The idea is to build a relationship with your readers by helping them out. This will mean more sharing and faster results on the SERPS (search engine rankings positions).

3. Build relevant backlinks in a natural way

If you are just getting started with SEO you might know a little about backlinks. A backlink is when another website links back to your site from their site.

• The source matters
  The blog that is giving you the backlinks makes a huge difference. If it is an old domain name with excellent rankings itself then the backlink counts for more. One good link from an authority domain name and your rankings change more than hundreds of little ones.
• The anchor text matters
  The anchor text are the words that are used as the link. For example, just then I used “anchor text” as the anchor text. You want this to be relevant to your targeted keywords.

As mentioned, the best way to build quality backlinks is to write amazing quality content and then guest post on the best blogs in your niche.

4. Make sure your theme is SEO optimized

Think of SEO as having two components: the off-site stuff like social media and backlinks and the on-site stuff like optimizing your theme.

Optimizing your theme is important because it helps give Google indicators that you are a trustworthy site. It also helps Google find your content. Some of the things you can do include:

Having a well-designed theme is also important for your brand. Separating yourself from the competition is a very important thing to do.

5. Comment on other blogs

Comment on other authority blogs. Not only does it get you more traffic, exposure and new relationships, it also counts as a backlink.

6. Build your social media profiles big time

Nowadays, you want to have a big focus on social media for SEO purposes as well as traffic building purposes.

Why? Because Google is now looking to social media as a signal of an article’s authority and relevance.

If thousands of people are tweeting about it then chances are you have written something pretty good. And the best way to get tweets is to build a loyal following and write killer content that they just love to promote for you.

Some things you need to start doing:

• Tweeting big players
  Get to know the big players in your niche by casually building a rapport with them on Twitter. Down the track you can hit them up for re-tweets.
• Add separate value
  Tweet and Facebook information and facts that don’t appear on your blog. Think of it as a separate resource for people to tap in to.
• Share others
  The more content you share from other bloggers the more likely they are to share your stuff. Give and then get later.

There are many companies that specialize in SEO optimization.  Before you agree to go with one, make sure they at least know the basics.  Be an informed buyer.  Often times companies or individuals promise huge results, but deliver rankings that you or one of your employees could have received yourself.

Websites are vital to all businesses, no matter the size or industry.  This is where people are getting their information.  To be competitive, you need to be relevant.  So be sure you have the content, the resources and the interaction with your potential and current customers.

Not everyone is a writer.  Just because you can write your name, doesn’t mean you should write your content.  Hire an expert in the field and your SEO rankings will be off to a good start.