Have you felt like quitting the process of branding your business online as you try to grow your presence? Do you feel like your efforts aren’t making a different and you want to quit? I want to encourage you to “Don’t quit, keep branding your business”.

Image: SXC.hu

What this means is that as you are sharing information online about your business, don’t quit because it seems like things aren’t working. You never know where your next new client may come from or how you will be able to develop a new strategic partnership.

There are different ways that you can brand your business online. Below is a starter list to help you determine what will work for you:

• Review your brand packaging to determine if you need to update it. If you need to make changes, get 360° feedback from your clients, business associates and others who may be connected with your business.
• Determine if your brand strategy needs to be revamped. You should check out where your competition is actively building their brand. Then see where you can incorporate similar things into your brand strategy.
• Assess the buzz marketing that may be affecting your business. See if there are ways to develop a buzz about your business so that others will spread the word about your business.

These are simple things that can help you get started with revamping your business. Keep in mind….don’t quit, keep branding your business. Success is just around the corner. Please feel free to share additional ways that you have been able to keep your branding alive.

In part two of the interview with Andy Beal, you will learn more about online reputation management by using Trackur. According to Trackur.com,

Trackur is an online reputation monitoring tool designed to assist you in tracking what is said about you on the internet. Trackur scans hundreds of millions of web pages–including news, blogs, video, images, and forums–and lets you know if it discovers anything that matches the keywords that interest you.

Remember that online reputation management is the process of managing your business and personal identity online. This includes monitor where you business name and personal name appears via the internet.

Question 3: Are there specific tools that business owners should use to monitor the success of their internet strategy plan?

I don’t think any internet marketing campaign should be launched until you have some kind of web site analytics in place. You need to know what’s bringing customers to your site and you need to know which marketing efforts are working and which are not. Google Analytics is completely free, so there is no excuse. You should also monitor external metrics such as blog posts, twitter replies, or mainstream media mentions. You can use free tools such as Google Alerts or Technorati, or you could grab a free trial of our Trackur service and use something a little more sophisticated.

Question 4: Are there things that business owners should avoid when developing their internet strategy plan? If so, please share specific details.

I’d avoid trying to focus on anything further out than 6 months. The web has proven that it can evolve quickly and what’s popular today may be different in six months from now. I’d also avoid jumping on a bandwagon, unless it makes sense for your business. If you target audience consists of 16-20 year olds, then building a marketing plan around Twitter wouldn’t make sense as it is under-represented by that age group. Instead focus on Facebook, which is where most 16-20 year olds hang out.

Question 5: Why is it important for business owners to monitor and manage their online reputation?

Well, the first reason is that we’re in a major recession so every dollar we spend on branding is a dollar we have to pull from some other budget. Building a positive brand helps to alleviate some of that spending–when you have a great reputation you’ll benefit more from free word-of-mouth marketing. Second, there’s a lot that can be learned by simply listening to your target audience. Even if you are not ready to participate, listening allows you to learn what customers like about your product, what they hate about your service, and how they feel about your competitors! If you listen to what’s said about your biggest rivals, you may learn that their customers long for a product feature that you can easily add to your offering.

The third reason why you should manage your online reputation is that, in the absence of your official involvement, the void can be filled by those looking to attack your company. Take your Google repuation for example. Have you entered your business name in Google recently? If you’re not managing the content that shows up in the first ten results on Google, a detractor could very easily write a negative blog post that shows up on the first page of results. One single negative result in Google and you could end up losing a lot of potential business–that’s why I call Google a “reputation engine.”

Hopefully you’ll never face a reputation attack, but you should absolutely take time to do an audit of what shows up in Google for your brand name. If you don’t like what you see, neither will your potential customers. You can learn more about this in my book, or I posted a free article on the subject and also a free whitepaper.

Question 6: Please share how you can be contacted.

The best way to reach me is to head to AndyBeal.com, where you’ll find all of my contact details.

In a recent interview with Andy Beal, the topic of conversation was online reputation management for your business and personal name. This is a two-part interview where I will share my questions and his responses to me.

Before I get to the interview questions and answers, I thought it would be good to explain the definition of online reputation management. It is the process of monitoring the internet for usage of your business name or personal name through different media such as social media, website or even forums. Now on to the interview.

Question 1: Please introduce yourself and tell us about your business. How long have you been in this industry and what is your area of expertise?

Hi, I’m Andy Beal and I’m an internet marketing consultant with a focus on helping companies and individuals with their online reputation management. I moved from England to the US about 9 years ago and during that time I’ve been involved with many facets of marketing, including SEO, blogging, and general online brand building. My current projects include my blog (Marketing Pilgrim), my book (Radically Transparent) and my social media monitoring service (Trackur).

Question 2: What are some specific things that a business owner would need to include in their internet marketing strategy plan?

The most important thing is to fully understand your goals. Don’t get caught up in the excitement of specific tactics and marketing channels, until you understand what it is you are trying to achieve with your business. OK, so it’s trendy to be on Twitter, but is being active on Twitter going to help you grow your business or just be another drain on your precious time? My advice would be to:

1. Understand your goals for your business.
2. Understand your target audience and where they are most likely to be found online.
3. Identify one or two channels that you know will reach your target audience and focus your initial efforts there. Spreading yourself too thin will result in limited success across all channels.
4. Spend time monitoring and analyzing your identified channels. If you plan to build a blog, watch other bloggers in the same space. Get a feel for what they are writing and how they are engaging their readers. If you’re focusing on search engine optimization, spend time researching what keywords people are searching for and how their intent matches up with your product or service.
5. Launch your campaign and give it the same focus and attention that you would the development of any product or service. Don’t just publish three blog posts then walk away–you have to be committed to the success of your efforts.
6. Only once you’ve exhausted your chosen channels should you move on to something new. Don’t be distracted by the shiney new toys until you’ve worn out the old toys you purchased!

Wow! Such great information has been shared by Andy. The rest of the interview will be posted tomorrow so look for part 2 on the Brand Curve column. I thought it would be good if I shared a video with you that demos Trackur online reputation management tool. Please feel free to share your comments.

What does an innovative business brand look like? How can you tell that you have an innovative business brand? What are the key components of an innovative business brand? All of these are good questions that I plan to answer in this article.

An innovative business brand should include cutting edge components that help your increase your marketshare for your industry. Some of the components that you can include would be:

• Incorporation of Web 2.0 into your website
• Integrating social media marketing into your business strategy
• Invigorating sales planning that include creative marketing strategies
• Investing in unique marketing tools such as mobile marketing

To create an innovative business brand, let’s review the video below to get your brain going on ways that you can bring innovation to your business brand.

With all of the popularity of the iPhone, have you wondered if it was possible to brand your business on it? Maybe you’ve had thoughts about how you could receive your part of the market share for your industry regarding the mobile business branding? Then let’s take a look at what it takes to be successful in the mobile branding market.

Image: SXC.hu

According to the article entitled “Pandora: Unleashing Mobile Phone Ads” which can be found on BusinessWeek.com and was written by Tom Lowry,

Since Pandora launched a mobile edition two years ago, it has signed up 6 million people (total users for mobile and Web versions is 27 million). That has prompted the likes of Best Buy (BBY), Dockers, Target (TGT), and Nike (NKE) to buy ads on Pandora and experiment with what remains a cheap advertising medium—one most companies have yet to figure out.

Image: Newscom.com

Seeing that Fortune 500 companies are experimenting with this ways of branding their business using Pandora, then it seems that mobile branding is becoming a mainstream way to brand your business. To help you develop your mobile branding plan, I felt I should share a starter list with you of things that you should include in your mobile branding plan.

• Research. Research what your competitors are doing, what the Fortune 500 companies are doing and then develop your mobile branding plan.
• Ever-ready. Be ever-ready to explore new ways that you can advertise within the mobile network.
• Adventureous. Don’t be afraid to make it an adventure as you search for ways to develop your mobile brand for you and your business.
• Daily. Keep your eye on your statistic so that you can see what’s working and not working for your mobile branding plan.
• You. Don’t forget to involve “You” in the plan which means look for opportunities that appeal to you  and your consumer so that you can make sure you are reaching your target market.

For those who want to brand their business on LinkedIn, understanding their system and how it can help business with their branding strategy is important. According to an article on CIO.com entitled, “LinkedIn Profiles: Avoid the Six Most Common Mistakes” and written by C.G. Lynch, below are 5 common things that you need to pay attention to when branding on LinkedIn:

• Don’t Get in Picture Trouble: Many people choose not to use a picture on their LinkedIn profiles. While some of you have your reasons, it’s a mistake for the typical user.
• Write a Descriptive Professional Headline: When people search for you, they will see this professional tagline, and it might decide whether or not they feel compelled to click on your name and see your profile.
• Properly Label Websites Displaying Your Work or Blog: LinkedIn offers you the ability to list the websites where your work might be displayed. This is a great option if you keep a personal website with a resume or a blog.
• Consider a Vanity URL: If you have to give your LinkedIn profile address over the phone, or you wish to print it on your business card, it should be as concise and self-explanatory as possible.
• Finish with a Strong, SEO-Friendly Summary: In reality, the ability for people to find you will depend on LinkedIn’s search engine linking your name to certain search keywords. So (staying with our repeated example), a project manager might want the term “project management” to appear a few times throughout the summary.

What does it take to brand your business on LinkedIn and be successful at it. Let’s take at a few more things that you can do to develop your brand strategy for LinkedIn.

• Join Groups so that you can connect with others in your industry or with potential customers.
• Add details to your summary section about you and your business. Help others learn how you can help fulfill their business needs.
• Complete your bio section with specifics such as employment and education history.
• Recommendation are always good to have as part of your profile. Be willing to share a recommendation for others. Also ask others to give you one for your profile, it is always good to have at least 5 of them on your profile.

What do you do if you lose a percentage of your customer base to a competitor? How do you handle bouncing back when your a government entity has cut funding for your key customers who purchase your products? Key to bouncing back from these thing is to have a strong mindset in developing your brand strategy.

Having a stick-to-it attitude can be the difference in you re-developing your brand strategy and failing in business. Be prepared for such situation as a strategy failure by having “what-if” scenarios in place along with solutions to bounce back quickly. By having these plans in place, you can be better prepared to deal with difficult situation as mentioned above.

According to an article entitled, “The Many Ways to Fail” that can be found on CIO.com and written by Maryfran Johnson, it states….

So how do we count the many ways to fail? There are failures of leadership and strategic thinking gone awry. There are failures of communication, leading people to bad decisions or mistaken assumptions. There are failures of business models that no one could foresee or forestall.

I have included the video below to help you learn about different business owners who bounced back and re-developed their brand strategy to become successful again after a major blow to their business.

Business branding is important to business owners if they want to grow the circle of influence for their business. Brand awareness is the process of making sure that consumers of your services or products knows about your business and what you provide.

In developing your brand awareness strategy, there are a few things that you should keep in mind. Below is a starter list to help you develop it:

• Determine your vision: as a business owner, you must first try truly understand your business direction and goals. You would do this by defining your brand positioning or the nuts-and-bolts plan which is the foundation of your brand strategy.
• Make it memorable: your brand should include graphics and wording that helps to keep your business brand in the mind of your consumer. For instance, when you hear “Just Do It” you know this refers to Nike. Or you see the following image and you know it refers to a soft drink. Even if the name of the company wasn’t on the graphic, it could easily be recognized.
  
• Define branding tools: determine what tools you will use to brand your business. You can use graphics, audio, video, website, newsletter and many many more. Create a living list that you can work from to develop your brand awareness.
• Incorporate feedback. poll your current customers and business associates to receive feedback from them about your current brand.

So how are you building your brand awareness? Please feel free to share your ideas and results regarding your brand awareness.

Many business owners are currently building Web 2.0 into their web presence to not only share their information with web visitors or brand their business but to also allow web visitors to interact with them. With the rise of Web 3.0, a new frontier for websites has arisen that will allow for a 3-way sharing of information when it come to branding your business.

The 3-way sharing would include the business owner sharing their information, the consumer receiving the information and then the third component that eDoorways brings to the table. As one of the companies leading the way for Web 3.0, eDoorways is about to launch a website that gives business owners the third component. According to their website, this is what you will experience….

What happens when you put Google, MySpace, and eBay in a blender and mix them on high power? You get eDOORWAYS, the ultimate gateway for businesses and consumers to exchange ideas, services and products in a social networking environment.

With this in mind, a business owner would be able to use this website to brand themselves as the expert in their particular industry as they connect with potential clients and business owners. Being able to connect, collaborate, and communicate using Web 3.0 is important in the near future because it will help your brand stand out in comparison to your competitors. Per eDoorways‘ website,

eDOORWAYS creates an immediate solutions network which connects local businesses with consumers in need of immediate answers, goods or services, with expert assistance. This network of people and small businesses offers immediate solutions on a level never before possible. Harnessing web resources in a whole new way, eDOORWAYS is a functional tool which enhances the market’s transparencies for real solutions, pricing and quality.

So one of the keys to having a successful online brand strategy in the near future is to build-in Web 3.0. To help you understand the different between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, I decided to share the following video. This video shares a short explains that can help you understand how to implement something like eDoorways within your business online branding.

Eric Schmidt, Web 2.0 vs. Web 3.0

If you haven’t heard about the Oprah Branding Effect then let me share with you what it means. Just as the Midas touch means that whatever he touched would turn to gold, the same could be said about Oprah. Many businesses, books and organization have seen tremendous growth once she either mentions it or is seen using it.

Image: Newscom.com

Although Oprah is a unique person and brand, other businesses can have a similar effect but it may happen in smaller quantities. On May 28, 2009, CNBC released a show that discussed the Oprah Branding Effect and shared how many businesses had experienced growth because of it.

One of the people mentioned shared how she had planned on “Living Oprah” which mean she would do everything that Oprah suggested. She decided to do this for a year and she started on January 1, 2009 and will end on December 31, 2009. Through the whole experience, she shared that although somethings didn’t truly apply in her situation, she felt that a lot of positive things have happened in her life.

One of which is that she was offered a book deal so does this mean that she is experiencing the Oprah Branding Effect? I would say that she has definitely experience because she shared that after writing for many years, she didn’t receive a book deal until after she started her blog, “Living Oprah“.

To bring this to a level where other sized businesses can have a similar effect as Oprah, I thought it would be helpful to share suggestions:

• Decide that you will mentor a business owner who is a startup or smaller in size to your business.
• Create a mastermind group where similar minded business owners help each other reach their goals of increasing their business’ reach.
• Identity business owners that you feel have obtained a level of success that you feel you want to accomplish and then try to connect with them through a mentoring program. Follow their advice to grow your business.

Now let’s all get started seeing how we can join in on spreading the Oprah Effect to others. You can find out more about the Oprah Branding Effect by visiting these websites: Informational website & Watch full video.