The New Celebrity Brand

May 20, 2009 | 1 Comment

Reading the interview of Queen Rania of Jordan at TechCrunch and could not help thinking about how this is the year that the celebrity brand is changing in a main steam way.  The celebrities that do not jump on the bandwagon and embrace social media really might end up forgotten.  Not overnight, nor all of them, but this really is a big deal.

It took me all of a few minutes to read that interview, scan the tweets she’d posted and feel like I know her and like her.  And think about this.  If she sent me an email every day about charitable work she is doing, or sent out a press release about it daily, she’d seem like a show off or it would just get old.  But twitter is the perfect medium to show your involvement with things without annoying people or getting boring.

It also shows the human side of everyone.  And all the media attention they are getting for using twitter is helping drive up the numbers really fast and helping more people connect to them in a big way.

Do you think a year from now the news media is going to cover a new celebrity that is Twittering?  Probably not unless it is a very slow day.  That means this is the year - all you famous people that read my blog had better get out there and start building your new celebrity brand before you are no longer a celebrity.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog, Branding 

Marketing Blog - 7 Reasons not to start one

January 15, 2009 | 1 Comment

If you enjoy marketing on the web, you might be tempted to start a blog about marketing, social media, twitter or some other passion you have.  Don’t!

Here are seven reasons you should not start a marketing blog.

  1. A broad marketing blog has no appeal except to other marketers (and probably not even them) - it is not specific enough.
  2. Too much competition for general marketing blogs
  3. Does not address people’s specific marketing needs.
  4. Marketing as a topic is constantly changing, to stay relevant is a full time job.
  5. Very difficult to not be a ME TOO marketing blog.
  6. Clients do not care about marketing - they are looking for people to solve their marketing issues, not wax poetically about them.
  7. Niche topics get great traffic - broad topics like marketing just do not perform well.

Of course, there are always exceptions to this rule.  Chris Brogan does a great job.  But most people that I know that write about marketing find it a good exercise but do not get big benefits.  Worth doing, yes.  But don’t get your hopes up.

Recently I set up a very specific niche blog for a client that targeted a good set of keywords.  It seemed very narrow to me, but he was not in a hurry to have readers.  Two weeks later and a brand new domain with 3 articles on it, he got 2,500 unique visitors.  The lesson of this story is that you should not write about what everyone needs and can already find, you should write about what a small group needs but cannot find.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog, Branding, Buzz with Blogs 

Free Wordpress Theme

January 10, 2009 | 2 Comments

Wordpress is an Open Source Blog Package.  I write about it occasionally, but really should more often.  I spend a lot of time playing with Wordpress, customizing it, setting it up, etc.

One challenge is always to find good Free Wordpress Themes.

Wordpress Themes are a package of templates, images and style sheets that you upload to a specific folder and unzip.  Then you can activate it and customize it via the admin interface of Wordpress.

So via Twitter I found this Free Wordpress Theme called Apollo today - please note that I have not installed it yet, but is looks very clean and nice.  I am looking forward to giving it a try.  Go look at all the great layouts and they even provide a bunch of generic logos.

I have paid for good themes in the past.  I do not mind doing that, but with more and more quality free themes coming out, the days of paying for a theme seem numbered.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog, Branding, Buzz with Blogs, Interesting Buzz, Internet Marketing, Networking, Word of Mouth Marketing 

Is Your Brand Costing You a Fortune?

January 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment

I really love my Buzzoodle Brand.  I doubt I have monitized it the best I could, but I do love my brand.

In some ways it is important to love your brand.  If you really love it, you will be excited and talk about it with passion.

But loving your brand (and maybe yourself) too much can also cost you a fortune.

With the closing of Woolworths, people are not sad about the closing of the best way to buy toasters.  They are sad because they have grown used to the brand name and the idea of something with a long history.  People that have long ago stopped shopping there are still probably sad to see it go.

Successful people know the importance of brand, and they also know that it is just a tool for making money.

The problems with branding come into play when you let your  love for your brand cloud your judgement.  A business exists to make you money.  A brand should contribute to that.  Business first, brand second.

- If you have a brand you love and you are still trying to figure out how to make money with it, your brand is costing you a fortune.

- If you are spending many months building the perfect website, best logo, etc to establish your brand, the brand is costing you a fortune. Launch earlier and test your ideas, then continue to perfect it.

- If you are loosing money but think it is going to turn around next year because of the strength of your brand, your brand is costing you a fortune.

- If you are spending time tweaking your brand instead of improving the business process, your brand is costing you a fortune.

Falling in love with your brand can blind you to the hard facts about business.  The only brand you should be in love with and committed to is your personal brand, because ditching it for another is rather difficult without some plastic surgery and moving to another city.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog, Branding 

Hungry Howies Pizza - Where is the coupon?

January 2, 2009 | 6 Comments

Last night my daughter had a friend over which means pizza for dinner.  (Don’t all of you try to be my daughter’s friend at once now.)

I have a routine.  I usually go online to compare several pizza places we like and buy the deal that fits best.  I start with Hungry Howies Pizza.

They used to have coupons that were very easy to find.  However, this time they wasted my time and I bought a pizza from a competitor after getting frustrated with their website.  This is why you need to really look at how people use your website.  I can imagine that their online marketer is pleased.  The site looks nice enough and now it has the feature all the franchisees probably were asking for.  Different coupons by store.

Here is the problem - and it is costing them money - and you may be doing a similar mistakes.

  1. They’d taught me where to go in the past for online coupons.  After I have done it once or twice, I have no need to read the text on the page, I just click and find them.  It is very unpleasant to need to figure things out after you already learned it once.
  2. They falsely promise coupons many times - leading me through a maze that never did produce a coupon.  I was told to “Click the coupon below” and it was blank.  They are time thieves!  I just want to save a dollar on a pizza and precious minutes of my life were slipping away.
  3. They present pretend coupons - things that look like they will lead to coupons but do not produce any.

I did some quick screen shots below so you can see what I mean.  I do not want to bash Hungry Howies Pizza, but I think writing something like this illustrates what you might be doing wrong on your website as well.  And maybe Hungry Howies Marketing Team will visit and get some free consulting as well.

Twice now I have gone to their site and not been able to find coupons.  The first time I gave up really fast and ordered somewhere else, the second time I hunted more, gave up and ordered from somewhere else.

I know that we can argue that if I loved their pizza I would not worry about it.  But pizza is a commodity and I do not order it frequently and I do not have a favorite.  If they have lost 2 orders from me in the last 3 months, how many are they loosing all together?  They may be blaming a bad economy for something that has more to do with a bad website.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Branding, Internet Marketing 

Brian Tracy

December 29, 2008 | 1 Comment

I am involved with Brian Tracy for the first time because I joined iLearning Global in his down line.

Before that, I’d never looked at much of what Brian Tracy did, but I knew who he was and I had heard about all the people that respect him.  And after seeing Brian Tracy’s Videos on iLearning Global I have grown to respect him as well.

The interesting thing for me on this blog is BRAND protection.  Brian Tracy does a good job of locking up his organic searches on google for his name.  I think all 10 are favorable for him and probably owned by him.  Many other long term word combinations with his name are not locked down well, but that is time consuming and hard to do.

What fascinated me more is the heavy attack on his personal brand with Google Adwords - just look at the image to the right of the ads that appear when you search on Brian Tracy.

Maybe that is a sign of when you have really made it.  When people feel compelled to try to steal your thunder by running ads for your name and trying to lure people that are clearly interested in your message away from you, it is really the ultimate sign of respect.

Personally I think it is kind of sad, but Brian Tracy probably gets the last laugh as people that are looking for his name most likely do not click much on the ads that are defaming Brian.

The image to the left does not click anyplace - it is there to illustrate the point.  If you want to see some of these ads live and clickable, go do your own lookup of Brian Tracy.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog, Branding, Networking 

How to make a Video Show

December 19, 2008 | 1 Comment

Lots of people out there are still asking themselves, Should I blog? Shut up and start blogging - then think about the next steps. If you are still thinking about blogs you are just falling further and further behind the people that are doing it.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog, Branding, Interesting Buzz 

Does your website say you care?

December 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment

I have been giving a lot of thought to traditional websites, social media, blogs and all those other things that make up someone’s online entity.  There is a huge disconnect between people that get social media and people that say that their business has a website.

If you boil down why someone should do more than a business website, it comes down to one simple thing.  By participating in the social web you show you care.

  • A blog demonstrates your commitment to educate your audience.
  • Twitter shows you are interested in other people.
  • Video helps people get to know you.
  • Podcast shows show you want to have a conversation.
  • Social Bookmarking shows you want to share resources with others.

These are just some examples.  It is not the individual pieces that you chose, so much as it is the commitment to care about what is going on online, care about what people are saying and thinking and showing you care enough to participate as best you can.  I cannot remember the last time I visited a static (old style) website.  I don’t care about them, just like they do not care about me.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Branding, Internet Marketing 

Brand Ambassador Program with Employees

November 22, 2008 | 2 Comments

How to form your Employee Brand Ambassador Program

This article is an inside look at some of the strategies we use in our Employee Ambassador Program.  The reason we are giving away our secrets is that our program is for those businesses that want an outside company with strong social media credentials to work in a collaborative environment with employees to strengthen the personal brand of key employees as well as the corporate brand.  It is not the activities that are important, but the collaborative environment and monthly assessment of progress that will make your Employee Brand Ambassador Program succeed.

Goal of an Employee Brand Ambassador Program

Your goal may vary, but generally speaking the goal of an Employee Brand Ambassador Program is to help employees become better evangelists for where they work. 

The outcome of the Brand Ambassador effort should include:

  • Employees connected with more people.
  • Positive information in many places on Internet, including search engine slots.
  • Increase in sales leads and income, as people feel more connected with your employees.
  • Much better search engine saturation for your brands
  • Increase in invitations for speaking and PR opportunities
  • Jump start online conversations about brand
  • Increased website traffic from links and search

The most important thing to keep in mind about your Employee Brand Ambassador Program is that it will compound over time.  The first month rarely results in a big, noticable outcome.  Instead, you have to think of each connection an employee ambassador makes as having value.  Each blog post adds to the content that shows up in search engines.  The Internet has a long life span and the things you do today will keep working for you in the future.

So what are the core things to do with a group of employees to launch your Employee Brand Embassador Program?

Employee Ambassador Profiles

Good employee ambassadors need to develop great online profiles that help people find them and understand what they do.

  • Register www.YourName.com
  • Add a blog to that domain
  • Set up a LinkedIn profile.  Connect with people and answer questions.
  • Set up a twitter account
  • Your Brand Ambassador consultant can review these and help you get the most from them by customizing them and optimizing them for better search engine results.
  • Facebook.com Account
  • Set up some free blogs - Even if you have a good Wordpress blog on your personal domain, it is also valuable to set up blogs one the free sites, such as wordpress.com and blogger.com.  These will just be lightly maintained with good occasional content and links to important articles, events, etc.

Keep in mind that all of these above items are developing a personal brand.  However, within that personal brand each person should mention where they work and link to the company website or blog.

Employee Ambassador Content Creation

You then need to put together a schedule and rules for using these tools.  I’d suggest that you make it very clear what employees can do during work hours and what needs done during off hours.  Some research I have seen suggests that twitter is a big way people waist time at work.  That is why your content creation strategy for employee brand ambassador’s must spell out the terms of participation. 

In addition to the above personal branding efforts, your organization should set up a corporate blog, corporate twitter account with news updates, post video and possibly do a podcast show about the industry your clients are in.  All of these things can also be developed by your most passionate employee brand ambassadors.

To build a successful brand ambassador program, you will need:

  • Set goals and milestones for your brand ambassadors.
  • Use a project management and collaborative community to keep the team energized and involved.
  • Reward top employee ambassador performers
  • Document successes and outcomes each month and share the report with the Employee Brand Embassadors.
  • Make sure your Employee Brand Embassador’s know all the great stories, testimonials and ways that your company helps clients.  Give them positive things to talk about.
  • Ditch Bad Seeds - Not popular, but someone has to say it.  If someone is not participating, saying negative things or being negative in the group, there is no room for them in your Employee Brand Ambassador Program.

You can do all of this yourself.  If you are looking for someone that can coordinate this effort for you and develop a lot of buzz on the web with your motivated Employee Brand Ambassadors, visit our Employee Brand Ambassador website.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog, Branding, Employee Advocates 

Demonstrate Your Knowledge

November 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Blogs are a great way to Demonstrate Your Knowledge.

In fact, outside of becoming a regular guest on big TV shows and writing columns in a newspaper, I would say that it is the next best way.  And the blog can certainly land you those kinds of opportunities in the future.

Many people think they have to come up with new, creative articles for their blog every day.  Instead, you have to remember that the people that are reading your blog probably know less than you and are looking for insight into your topic.  All you need to do is demonstrate your knowledge on the topic by writing good, informative posts about thing you already know.  You may even find it a bit boring, but your readers will not.

By demonstrating your knowledge in a clear, professional manner, you will be building your visibility and personal brand.  The result will eventually be:

  • Sales
  • Invitations to speak
  • Partnerships
  • Job Offers
  • Other writing opportunities
  • And many other things

There are a huge number of opportunities to build your personal brand online.  However, if you want to build expert status, a blog is the best way to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise, coupled with email integration. (You want to build your list as well as build blog traffic)

Don’t get hung up on writing.  Just look around at what you are currently doing and write about it for someone that has never done that before.  Your blog will be packed full of valuable information in no time.  To demonstrate your knowledge you only have to be consistent writing the things you already know.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog, Branding, Buzz with Blogs 

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