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Let there be light… But Which Company?If you missed my earlier posts of the series, here they are: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6. And here goes part 7:

Do you use Social Median? Ok, what happens when you click on a link like “My Newsmakers” or “My Networks” or “Me”?

Jason pops up with the message

“Hi there. I’m Jason, one of the founders of socialmedian.”…. “We’d love to have you join in. To get started, please create an account.”

Did you ever see such a stunt in any website or social network where the owner is introducing you to the service? And what could be a better place to put the company face forward but such a network?

I don’t know if SM would be successful or not in future, but they have taken a different strategy to brand themselves. To add to this, I also liked Jason’s informal profile picture in that message. He did not put an extra large serious lawyer like image out there.

And I think this sets the basic character of the website - unofficial and “you” powered.

Once upon a time, websites were only used as sources of information. But today the information providers are also very important. As general people are getting more familiar with internet and web publications, they also want to know about the people who are running those information hubs. Especially if you are running a blog and that too on news or important information, your readers may want to know more about you to authenticate the information.

Did you read the post from Boston Globe titled “Study: Most Americans want to see companies on social sites” and published on September 25, 2008? The study was conducted by Cone that says, “93 percent of Americans believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media”.

You may doubt the figures (I doubt the questions they framed) but you can not deny the trend.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Let there be light… But Which Company?

If you missed my earlier posts of the series, here they are: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5. And here goes part 6:

What is a brand after all? A brand is actually an image that is constructed in the target audience’s mind. But what is an image?

In some cases, if the company has different physical outlets (where people actually buy your products or services), the brand image may get directly associated with the common look of the shops - color scheme, logo or even people.

Now, what happens with a blog or a website?

You get unique designs, logo, color scheme etc. so that people can easily remember you or associate you with something (do not forget that we think in terms of associations). For example, you will find that almost all the blogs and websites on finance have green as their base color (color of $$$ is green) and image based blogs are black in color (to focus on different shades of an image).

Do you need to follow such norms?

Some of you must be thinking that if you follow these norms, how would you develop your unique identity? You might be thinking that you have also become a part of the regular bloggers by following these common norms.

You are wrong. A seasoned brand strategist actually uses these common associations and crosses the first line of image development. The first line is actually the most crucial line as far as communication is concerned. If you cannot make the visitor understand who you are in the very first opportunity, you got troubles.

However, color scheme is only a part of the image development - you have so many other elements like logo or content to differentiate your brand from others in the same niche.

Another important point:

Do you know how people think? We think in terms of images. When I say cat, you start thinking about a cat (not a dog) but your cat and my cat is never the same. My cat may be black in color with short hair and yours may be white with long hair. But there is a common association (a cat) that carries our conversation further.

So what do you think? Do you need to follow some common norms?

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Let there be light… But Which Company?If you missed my earlier posts of the series, here they are: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. And here goes part 5:

The most important part of brand development is being present in every possible channel to communicate with your target visitors. You must identify the spots where you can easily access your target audience and be with them. The continuous hammering and brand pitching would actually create and sustain your brand identity in you target audience’s psyche.

As I wrote earlier, in this situation, you must understand one important thing. Say for example you have a, b, c and d as your target audience. You worked hard to find out the places where they usually come in like the pub, book store etc. Now, would you go ahead with your SEO brand in all those places? Will it serve your purpose?

I don’t think so. People visit different places for different purposes. Do they really want to listen to SEO when they are visiting a pub or a book store? Will that give you enough return on investment?

The same thing happens online - people use different social networks for different purposes. You must identify some specific networks where your target audience is looking for a brand like yours. And when you have identified such a place, go ahead and work hard to develop a brand.

As CoolProducts mentioned in a comment in my last post, they are “creating social communities on their sites”. This can be a good solution for a lot of websites. A lot of webmasters are also waiting for Google’s Friend Connect for a complete social networking solution on their own site.

I am yet to use that solution but I am sure that it would help a lot in branding. The new visitors would get more people looking for similar solutions. And more importantly, it would not require the visitors to leave your site.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

If you missed the earlier posts, here they are:How to develop a brand identity for your blog - part 1

How to develop a brand identity for your blog - part 2

A side note: If you start getting visitors from search engines, identify the landing pages and try to navigate the visitors to other pages.

And here is part 3: Using Social Media:

As far as using social media is concerned, you would need to be very selective about where you participate and where you keep silent. This is very important - what you say, where you react, how you deal with others, how you manage certain situations - everything counts.

For example, what would a corporate organization do when there is a dispute?

They won’t just say anything - they would take their time for a corporate meeting (and would declare that in public that they are having a meeting on the issue). You will not get some immediate reaction unless the situation is very demanding. Why don’t you apply the same method?

Another important note is that, they normally do not directly participate in the social media using their brand name. On the contrary, they use their people to talk about their company. I would recommend you to do the same - use your name rather than your brand name (e.g. NBB) to communicate in social networks. And try to develop a friend following (not fan following) around your brand. I am recommending you to carry your brand rather than the brand carrying you in different social networks.

Don’t just talk about your brand in the social networks. Communicate like an individual and help other members in the social networks. Try to develop your own brand rather than working to develop your blog’s brand - go for indirect promotion. Trust me; it would help you a lot to brand your blog. Don’t be the only one to talk about your blog - take more people into your confidence and let them talk about you.

AND, do not try any visibly cheap way to promote your blog (think about some cheap forum signature links). Even if you need to do something like this at some point of time, do not leave any footprint. People are too smart to understand your intention.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

Did you read the first post of the series? If you missed it, please scan through it - “How to develop a brand identity for your blog - part 1“And here goes the part 2 of the series:

And which companies in any category attracts you?

This is perhaps one of the big reasons why companies spend millions of dollars - to be in your mind - always (or at least when you need that product most). This is what they call overall brand presence. You will find them everywhere - newspaper ads, TV commercials, billboards, posters, cutouts, POPs etc. - they would explore every possible opportunity to be in and around you. However, that does not mean that the companies are mindlessly following you and spending so much of money to hook you. They pay people to strategically put the company or the product in front, whenever you need them and that too in the most cost effective way.

However, what about the online market? The rules are not same for online market.

The first and foremost thing is to reach your target audience at their doorstep. In online industry things are a bit easier as more than 90% people use Google or other search engines to reach the related shops or websites. So, go ahead and try all legitimate seo tactics to be on the top for all related keywords in major search engines.

If you ask my opinion, getting high ranking on the SERPs helps not just in getting targeted visitors - it also helps a lot in branding. General people take you as a recommendation from Google or Yahoo. What happens when the shop owner says that a certain product is the best and it is selling like hot cake! Doesn’t that product get a trust vote and enjoy more chances to be bought by you? I believe that the same thing happens when you top the SERPs. This is undoubtedly the cheapest way to brand your website and get targeted visitors.

However, I would recommend you to put the company name at the first place in the title of the page rather than stuffing it with keywords. This helps in branding.

What else?

Wait for the next post.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Let there be light… But which company?

Jokes apart; but can you really think of any product without a name?

Similarly, the branding process starts from naming the product or the organization manufacturing that product. (A blog itself is a product or a company that is producing information based product.) So, as a web based company, your naming should start when you are selecting a domain name.

At this point, I must say that a lot of people use different words in domain name and blog title. For example, what if the domain name for “Net Business Blog” had been www.mydomain1452xyz.com!

What is wrong with this? The owner of the blog is actually asking the visitor to remember two different names - the blog name and the domain name. To add to this, in such a situation, it is tough to concentrate on a single name. I would always recommend using same blog name and domain name for effective branding.

Another important part of blog name and domain name is to make it catchy. The word Google may not have any meaning and some people may not find it interesting too - but they have already developed a brand name - perhaps the biggest and most popular online business name. (Time is a big factor here - we would come to this point later on.)

So, start thinking about the domain name as soon as you have identified the blog model (BTW, do you have a clear idea about your blog’s topic!) - let it reflect the character that you want to portray in your blog. Otherwise, select a name like Google and start developing a character for that name.

As, web is somewhat different from offline industry, it is better to get a primary keyword into the domain name. It would not only help you in on-page SEO but also a lot of natural links would be having keyword rich anchor text (your blog name). And it would also help the visitors to understand what the blog is all about.

And, keep it simple, short and se*y.

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Popularity: 5% [?]

Think about your favorite actor. How many roles did he or she play in different films? How he or she managed to carry an identity throughout the film?

This can be one way of developing a brand. You start from a scratch like an artist and then continuously develop on it. Carefully put more scratches to develop a complete image – that’s how you build a brand.

And now, think about that actor in different films. All the character that he or she played in different films together develops his or her own identity – a brand. Sometimes his personal life also gets involved in the brand development…lol… but that’s part of the business.

Think about the director of the film. What does he do? He develops the character (protagonist) in reference to other characters and incidents to reach the culmination. He makes the characters believable in terms of the plot – tells a comprehensive story.

The same thing happens with a brand. Sometimes, as a blogger you bring in your actual identity and sometimes you just play with a pseudo name and an avatar to represent you in the virtual world. You take part in different communities, blogs etc. And all these presence develop your identity – your brand around that name.

Sometimes, you are conscious about what you are doing in different spaces and sometimes you just unconsciously doing whatever you want.

To get the maximum value from whatever you are doing online, you need to play the role of the director of a film. You must pre-plan some guidelines for you, scratch a character that you would like to play and then try to develop yourself around that.
It is just a habit that you need to develop. Put some conscious efforts in every channel you are using to communicate with the target audience - a consistent character that people can easily remember - a game where people can easily relate your actions.
Do these sound critical? In my next post I will highlight some simple steps to start working.

BTW, you must find your own way to become a brand. I will just show you some ways to develop that.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Let’s talk about brand.

What is a brand?

Do you think a company logo represents a brand? Do you think color scheme represents a brand? Do you think the expensive CEO of the company represents the company brand? Do you think the website of a company represents the brand?

There may be thousands of similar questions. But what is a brand?

All those things we marked in the earlier questions are not brand – they are some elements that you can use to represent a brand. But what is a brand?

A brand is an engaging story that represents the company as a whole. A brand is a critical mass of ideas that develops in recipient’s mind. The recipient (luckily your target audience) constructs some images about your company (consider your blog or mini site or even yourself as the company) in his or her mind and this is what we call brands.
Unless, you give them some guidelines to perceive you, they would simply collect whatever they want or whatever they can to brand you or your company – do you want that to happen?

A lot of bloggers and webmasters do not think about branding. They think that they are too small to construct a brand. Some of them also think that it would cost l-o-t-s of m-o-n-e-y and only big companies can invest on it.

If brand is about telling a comprehensive, consistent and engaging story about you or your company, why can’t you think about developing one?

Worried about the advertisement expenditure?

Come on, those big companies have bigger target audience to represent their brand. You have a smaller niche – the visitors of your website. You don’t need to spend so much money on brand advertisement – in fact, if you are a bit more careful and strategic, you do not need to spend a single Dollar extra. In my next post I would discuss about brand development for small website owners and bloggers.

Stay tuned.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

In my last post, I touched upon one important point - story telling element in the content - in relation to Google’s use of comic strip to introduce chrome to the target audience. Take a look at the last paragraph of the post.Now, here, I would like to define what is “content”!To me - content is everything that exists in the page plus all other associated materials that is not present in the page.For example, whenever we think about Google, we think about so many things associated with Google like Gmail, Google Reader etc. (even Yahoo or MSN may fall under the category of associated material). And thus, to a high extent, it depends on the reader, how he or she perceives it. For example, think about Chrome. So many things are written on this browser - but did it remain just as a product by Google! Certainly not - people started comparing it and associating it with other browsers, started tracing its history, started guessing the future of web etc. And this cloud of thoughts and associations create the actual content.You cannot think about something in isolation. And this brings us to another bigger problem. You cannot control how a reader perceives your content.And here comes the “story” element of content.What is a story? Starting a paragraph with “once upon a time…” does not make something a story. It is actually a frame where you posit your product. It has got a beginning, a problem, a search for solution, reaching the solution and a definite ending.Think about your favorite audio visual advertisement. They just don’t talk about the product alone - they actually posit the product within a frame called story.How does it help?The target audience can easily identify himself as a character within the story (did it remind your childhood?) and this helps to transport the message. However, that is not all. The best part of a story is that it determines a boundary for the audience to think. It tries to guide the audience’s thinking pattern (tries to eliminate Gmail or Google Reader when you are thinking about Chrome). What else do you want?How does it help the bloggers or webmasters who want to earn some money?It is easy to get visitors in your website or blog but it is tough to convert them into business. The “Story” can actually do the magic.Think about it…

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Branding pays in the long run – there is no doubt about that. And that is why, big companies spend huge amount in brand development and promotion. Even in FMCG sectors, people try to promote their brand rather than the product alone.
As I always say, people do not need your product - they need a solution to their problem. In this respect, you may say that why people are buying an iPhone though their old phones are just enough for the purpose!
In this situation too, they are succumbing to their need. The iPhone is not just another phone that makes a call – it is something more than that. And often you can not or do not want to identify what is “the more” with iPhone! Now add the brand name of Apple with this phone and you get the huge response from the market. Do you really think iPhone would have got such response in the market if it was not produced by Apple? There are many phones which can perform almost similar task – so why buy an iPhone?

Brand names are important not simply for early adopters, who actually set the market on fire. Even if you take a look at the long tail, you will find that the brand name works havoc when the buyer is just at the verge of taking the final decision. Bigger brand names enjoy more trust among end users.
The same thing happens with your online brand. Who would get the maximum exposure for publishing the same story on SEO – SEO Moz or just another SEO blog? Who has the maximum trust rank?
There is a saying that if you pour some honey on the wall, it would attract bees. Does that mean you would need to pour more honey to attract more bees in the same progression? My experience says that, in case of good branding, the existing bees actually attract more bees. And it eventually increases your brand value.
Any doubt about that?

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Popularity: 3% [?]