Successful Blog

Blog Branding versus Blog Marketing

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Blogging is all about being personal.

It may sound too simple that anyone will understand it not more than a personal online diary. Hence, let me just explain a little bit for you to understand from another perspective.

I may not be the expert to give you an educational answer about branding and marketing. But in my opinion, if anyone can understand the difference between branding and marketing, that person will definitely understand the true meaning of being personal.

Both marketing and branding have different goals. Let me just explain to you in my own understanding after working for a while in the society.

What is blog marketing?

Marketing aims to effect an eventual sales transaction. Hence, it gives the person an instant gratification as he/she tries to tell the world who he or she is. It is very similar to a person who is devoting himself/herself to be extremely sales-driven. He or she will go out there to tell the world through Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, LinkedIn or any other social media that he/she can reach.

What is blog branding?

Branding aims to communicate by means of “impressing” what this blogger stands for. It is not so much about looking out for maximum exposure. But rather, it leaves an impression to anyone who notices him/her.

This blogger will usually focus a lot on building quality contents, beautifying his or her blog design, and making sure that everybody perceives him/her as who he or she really “is.” Isn’t blog branding about “being personal”?

Marketing versus branding

Some experts believe that perception is everything. Branding — which shapes perception — leads everything!

Some believe that marketing is the key to business viability, especially when it involves product development, market development, channel development, sales force management, etc. Thus, it is more directly impacting revenue.

Both marketing and branding aim to affect higher profitability. In general, marketing has a wider effect but lesser depth (volume, sales, etc). Branding on the other hand usually tries to enable clients to pay a “premium.”

Mix and match your marketing and branding

Both are really important in its own way. While marketing is pretty straight-forward and is more like a how-to strategy, I wish to emphasize on this phrase “blogging is all about being personal.”

Author’s Bio: This post was written by Charles. He has been an Internet reviewer since June 2007. He pours his passion for Internet marketing and Internet branding into his Twitter account actively at @charleslau.

5 Ways to Connect with People Who Grow Your Business

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Engage People at a Social Site, at an Event, on the Telephone

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It’s true of every big and small business that not one can succeed alone. We all need the help of the community who supports us to keep growing. Yet as I work with corporations who hire me and people ask for my help, I find the greatest commonality is that we seem to work on the premise that we have to do everything ourselves.

We’re better at surveying, studying, measuring, questioning, observing, and even psychoanalyzing the people who build, buy, sell, use, and tell others about our products and services than we are at letting them participate as much as they might in helping us thrive. But we’re not very good at connecting with natural advocates when they step up and let us know they’re interested in us.

Here are 5 ways to find and connect with people who grow your business online and off.

  1. Be a learner, not a hunter. Attracting the people who’ll help starts with a mindset that invites people to share. At your next networking event, instead of looking for leads or hot contacts, look for people who can teach you about the people in the room. Ask, “What do the people in this group have in common? What sort of opportunity does this event offer you?” Look for a mentor not a sales lead and you might find someone who not only introduces you, but also wants to know more about what you do.
  2. Talk to everyone about your quest. Don’t wait until you’re ready to release the “big deal” before you let folks know about it. Invite people who share similar goals to hear a little about where you’re going. People are naturally generous and love to share in a dream. They’ll immediately start connecting your quest to what they’re doing and to people doing similar things. You might find a killer idea, an unconsidered channel of distribution, or a whole network of future customers from conversations like that.
  3. Ask for their experience. Experience is hard won and valued by those who’ve earned it. It’s hard to top the feeling of being asked to offer what we’ve learned. Great leaders soon figure out that the people who’ve already traveled down a road know things that can make the trip faster, easier, and more meaningful. Seek out those who’ve already done what you’ve done.
  4. Turn interest into investment. When someone shows an interest — comments on your blog, remarks on your presentation, sends an email about something your company is doing — respond. Engage in the conversation. Listen actively.When people show interest, they already like what you do. You’re ahead. Start thinking about what else those people might do. Could they write a review for your blog? Could they run a Twitter chat? Invite them to think of how they add a small bit of their own to what caught their attention.
  5. Value every contribution. A brilliant tweet or an outstanding comment usually gets a thank you and then the conversation ends. A sincere and curious response from you can be a day changer when it’s offered to someone who didn’t expect you’d have time for them.Value every generosity and get to know who offered it. Those first acts of kindness are great ways to find people who will really invest in your business. When you find a good one, encourage the person who took the initiative to write that comment or make that Tweet to do something slightly larger next — maybe invite a brief blog post or offer a short phone chat. Moving to a higher level of engagement and trust is how relationships grow and businesses grow with them.

The aim of social business is to connect with people around what we’re doing, then to connect them with each other and keep those connections going. If we listen actively when folks tentatively step up, we’ll find we’re surrounded by people who want to participate in deeper ways than just watching us and buying our products.

The first step is recognize the folks who already love us and make a deeper connection with them.

How do you connect the people who help your business grow?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Is Social Noise Unraveling Your Quest?

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Social Noise Steals the Fuel to Do Extraordinary Stuff

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When I was a kid, I wasn’t looking for my direction. No one said to follow my passion. I was a kid. I was on a quest to be extraordinary.

When I was a kid, I wasn’t bombarded with information from every dimension. My social circle was small. Now I have more social network passwords than the number of connections I had when I was kid.

Everyone seems to doing more than I am. Everything seems to be growing faster than anyone could manage to follow. Conversations bifurcate, trifurcate, and splinter off in bit and pieces. Sorting value from spam isn’t always a case of checking whether it came from a friend.

Ideas get kicked around like a soccer ball on the field where I hang out. I’m following echoes down trap of social media noise and deafening conversation straining to hear what my friends are saying.

In the process, I’m losing my own voice.
And the social noise is unraveling my passion one thread at time.
Sheer exhaustion steals the inspiration and the direction that I had when the day began.

Is Social Noise Unraveling Your Quest?

It’s a challenge to stay calm when the screen is always updating and we’re always chasing the next link or headline that shows up. Curiosity takes fuel to run. And every generous spirit who does a good turn or sends a good wish seems to be calling us to return a good one now then. Do you find that after some time on Twitter or Facebook, your head needs a long, cool transition? It only makes sense that all of that fragmented data makes a brain want some time to sort.

The social interaction can undermine the strongest determination we have to move forward by using it all just to keep up with what’s going on. Is social noise unraveling your quest?

Do you lose track of the kid in you who wants to do extraordinary stuff?

Here’s my recipe for getting past the noise and distraction and back to doing extraordinary stuff.

I turn it off.

In a minute of silence, I remember my quest.
When I look out the window or stand and stretch, it gets easier to tune into my resolve.
Knowing where you’re going is irresistibly attractive.
It also fuels the noble cause.

Passion needs direction, or it gets lost.

How do you keep the social noise from unraveling your quest?

Be irresistible.
–Me “Liz” Strauss

Thanks to Week 348 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

5 Ways to Bring More Customers in the Door

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Jake Oates

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Getting more customers is not just worthy, it is necessary to keep your business alive. In order to enjoy success you have to continually build upon what you have. There are a number of things that you can do to grow your business. With a bit of planning and investing just a little time, you can begin enjoying a steady stream of new customers. Here are a few tips to get you started:

  1. Ask for referrals – Getting new customers in the door could be as simple as asking for them. Ask your current customers to refer you to new customers. Note that you have to be providing satisfactory services to your existing customers before you can begin to expect referrals from them. After every sale or job that you do, ask your satisfied customer if he or she knows of someone else who would benefit from your business.
  2. Penetrate your market – Your existing market can be a great way to increase your business revenue. Getting new customers is great but you have to remember the customers that you already have. Take care of them and they will continue to use you for their needs.
  3. Innovate your products – Find new ways of using your products or services in order to entice new customers. There could be many ways that you could use your products or services. Find these new ways and begin promoting them.
  4. Reach out – Extending your market reach is a great way to find new customers. Opening stores in new places or building a website with an online store could really help you to add to your customer base. Once you have tapped into this new market, choose advertising methods that will reach your target audience.
  5. Think trade shows – Trade shows are an excellent way to promote your products and services and reach new customers. Trade shows draw in people who already have an interest in your market so participating can help you to reach new people. Choose trade show displays that highlight your product or service and work well with your business needs. A good trade show display can have them lined up around the corner just waiting to see what you have to offer.

What ways do you use to engage customers and keep them coming back for more?

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Author’s Bio: This post was written by Jake Oates on behalf of Display Wizard, UK – specialists in design, printing and distribution of display stands for exhibitions, trade shows and events. You can find him at displaywizard.co.uk.

Be Your Own Digital Secret Shopper – 5 Ideas

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Rosemary O’Neill

When’s the last time you called yourself?

Go ahead, pick up your phone right now and call your business line. What happens? Is it a friendly greeting, or is it the third ring of voicemail hell?

On a roughly quarterly basis, it’s great to do a little secret shopping on yourself. It can be very revealing to step into the shoes of someone trying to get in touch with you. And you do want people to be able to reach out to you, right?

Here are 5 quick ideas for your secret shopping project:

  1. Check out your business cards. Do the URLs, email, and phone numbers work? If you have something fancy on there like a QR code, does it work correctly? Has your title changed?
  2. Log out and look at your websites. Go to a friend’s computer and look up your website, your Facebook page, other social accounts…how do they look from the “outside?” Sometimes it’s different than when you’re the account owner.
  3. Call your voicemails. If you’re still using the robot voice that came with your account, change it to something warm and professional. Unless you sell robots.
  4. Try to buy something. Go through the whole buying process for whatever you sell, as if you are a new customer. If it’s an online ordering process, take screenshots at each step, so that you can go back and update things if you need to.
  5. Put in a support ticket. If you offer customer support, put in a ticket using whatever mechanism is appropriate. Post in your own ticket system, send an email from an outside account, and/or ask a friend to Tweet for help (including an @mention of your company).

I gave this list a quick trial run, and noticed that I hadn’t ever changed my personal greeting in the company phone system!

What did you uncover?

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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss