Marketing
9 Simple Tips For Personal Branding
“Personal branding” is a bit of a buzzword these days. Many claim to be experts on it even though the subject isn’t really that complicated at all.
It is simply the art of creating a recognizable brand around yourself. The goals are:
- Be recognized whenever the brand is seen.
- Have that brand represent certain ideas in the minds of the viewer.
Here are 9 quick tips to help you build up your personal brand.
- Decide between using your name or a made-up name. If you build a brand around your name, then do so for the purpose of raising your reputation. On the flip side, any brand built around you is not sellable. When you decide to quit, the brand dies. If you build a brand which is separate from you, then you can sell it. For example, this blog is branded around myself. However, PCMech is a separate brand and could be operated completely independently of myself.
- Own your domain. Whatever brand you use, you need to own the dot-com. If your name is available as a dot-com, go buy it. I also specifically recommend the dot-com as opposed to other domain extensions like dot-net or dot-org because dot-com is assumed by all. It is easiest to remember.
- Invest in a professional blog design. One of the biggest mistakes bloggers make is trying to design their own blogs when they have no idea how to do it. Saying that you’re not going to invest in a professional design until you make some money is to put the cart before the horse. Realize that you need to treat your blog like a business if you want it to be a business, and sometimes that means investing in it at the beginning.
- Use professional photo of yourself. You are going to use a photo of yourself in various places on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. You want that photo to be professional and attractive. You also want it to convey the mood expressed by your brand. If your brand is about fun, then look happy and fun in your photo. You can pay somebody to take very professional photos of you. It isn’t necessary, but you’ll get better results.
- Go for visual consistency. Preferably, you want your Twitter background, your blog, your Youtube channel layout – all of it – to have the same overall design and color scheme. It maintains visual consistency for the brand. Also, I recommend you use the same photo of yourself in all online profiles.
- Get a logo. You need a professional logo for your brand. Don’t use your photo as the logo. Also, make sure the logo would work equally in color and black-and-white. In other words, it should translate well into print.
- Invest in swag. Ever thought about building out your brand into the offline world? Perhaps shirts, cups, hats, mousepads, USB sticks, business cards, etc. If you give away some swag at a conference, you’ll be easily remembered.
- Nail down your brand keywords. This was something that Ted Murphy talked about recently. In the same fashion you might add tags to your blog post, sit down and tag your brand. What words describe the brand you want to create? Then, see if you can further nail down the brand description to a single phrase.
- Be Everywhere. I know, easier said than done, right? But, this is part of being a pro blogger. You need to be out there on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, etc. And it all needs to lead into your blog where you are posting quality, helpful content designed to bolster your brand. You can build your brand visually all you want, but it isn’t a brand if it is not out there in front of people.
As with everything, the basics are easy. It just requires follow-through. It is one thing to read this post and ultimately do nothing different. Or you could come up with some steps to actually DO IT.
Now, go build your brand. And share in comments what you’re going to do next when it comes to building up your brand.
What a Vegas Pimp Can Teach You About Sales
So, you’re walking down the Strip in Vegas. You’re minding your own business. You’ve already dodged a couple sets of Mexicans handing out hooker business cards. Then, you find somebody with a more aggressive sales process.
Two women intercept you and ask you if you want a good time. No, you’re happily married and that would be a mistake of biblical proportions. You politely say no. You smile. You don’t want to be rude, but you most definitely don’t want those services.
Out of the darkness comes a guy. He says, “What are you, a f-g?”. I’m sure you know what he said. He wants you to say no. Of course, that opens up a communication with him which will inevitably lead to being asked to defend yourself. It is a classic play on the idea of commitment and consistency. Get a person to make a small commitment then just keep playing on his sense of needing to follow through.
His job is to make a sale. And, to do that, he is being very aggressive (he thinks). And the two women launched immediately into a sales pitch. The “sales letter” consisted of her body and the call to action was, “Buy this!”.
Another evening, I’m on my way to a club. A guy comes out of nowhere and shoves tickets in my hand. The tickets are for a reduced rate to the club. I tell him, “I don’t need this.”. He says, “Listen, stud, this will get you in at a reduced rate”. He is walking with me, almost yelling. I like getting called a stud and everything, but I’m not enjoying him trying to force crap I don’t need onto me. This is interruption marketing at it’s finest.
Don’t be that guy.
So, one day, you’re traveling the banks of the Twitter river. Minding your own business. All of a sudden, this dude tweets you and says, “Make 300 followers in a day! Get this now! [link]”.
You don’t like this. You don’t even know his name yet. Get the name before you jump in bed, right?
Don’t be that guy.
Another day, you’re browsing the halls of BlogWorld Expo. A bald man walks up, grabs the conference badge, and sticks his damn sticker logo onto it. Not cool. Later, in a session where they are taking questions, he never hesitates to promote his company, give his URL, and ask some dumb question related to his product. Yep, I call this conference spam. I’ll leave the company name out of this to protect the stupid, but plenty of people probably know who I’m talking about at Blogworld.
Don’t be that guy.
Don’t be the dude who runs up to you and spams you with their business card. A business card is not a sales lead. Just because you put a card in my hand doesn’t mean you have a chance to get my money some day. Unless I reached for the card, I didn’t want it. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.
Don’t be that guy.
Spam exists in the real world. Whether we’re talking about my email box, Twitter, or the Vegas Strip, it exists.
And that feeling of annoyance you get when people do that should be proof enough that it doesn’t work . It doesn’t make sales. It is a brute force approach to marketing. Any money you do make pales in proportion to the wake of bad vibes you leave behind you.
Get to know me before hitting on me. Kthxbye.
5 Important Tips For Your Blogger Business Card
Are you a blogger? Do you do any networking? Have a business card?
You should.
It is part of your personal branding. Even if you have business cards for your day-job, you should have one for the purpose of promoting yourself in your online market.
I just ordered new business cards because I have a few conferences coming up. I designed them myself (even though I am certainly no graphics artist). But, it brought to mind a few thoughts that I considered when designing my card. And I wanted to pass them on to you.
- Consistent Branding. If your blog has a logo, use it on your card.
- Use a photo. Some people may disagree with me on this one, but I like to include my photo on my card. Why? A lot of people are visual and might not remember my name when they get back home. By putting my photo on the card, they have a much higher likelihood of remembering me when they are going through a stack of business cards later on. You might also notice that I used the same exact photo that I use here on my blog, on my Twitter profile, Facebook, etc. Why? Consistent branding. Visual continuity.
- Move the old-school contact info to the back. My snail mail address and phone number are found on the BACK of my business card. Why clutter the front of the card with stuff most people won’t use? My target audience is primarily people who are also into blogging and social media. They are a lot more likely to email or tweet me than send me something in the mail.
- Social Media. Along those same lines, I highly recommend you include your Twitter URL, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. You want people to connect with you and interact with you after meeting you, and that is done with social media.
- Use the Back. Don’t forget all that real estate on the back of your business card. Why not use it? In my case, I used the logos and URLs to my major web sites. Some people also put in a benefit-oriented call to action on the back. Do something with it.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that blogging isn’t important enough to warrant a business card. As I’ve said a million times, if you want to make a business-level income with your blog, you have to treat your blog like a business. Well, a tiny little part of that is having something to offer when somebody asks “Do you have a card?”
5 Tips for Quickly Creating Your First PDF Report
It is pretty common knowledge that offering a free PDF report is a great way to build up an email list and enhance your overall authority in your market.
The prospect of creating such a report is, for some, daunting.
Bloggers are told they need to write quality posts and do it often. You’ve got to be in social media. Making videos. How are you supposed to have time to write an in-depth report, too?
The important thing to remember is that this is not a reason to avoid it. The very fact that most bloggers are too lazy to pull it off means that you’re going to stand out for the simple fact that you did it and had it to offer.
So, how can you speed it up? How can you take the significance off the idea of writing a free report, make it simple and get it done?
Here are some quick tips:
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10 Smartest Things You Can Do to Promote Your New Blog
This is a guest post by Christian Russell from Next Level Blogger.
The beginning phase of a new blog is the most fun, isn’t it? You’ve come up with a great idea. You’ve done your research, and you are confident that your new blog idea is going to rock. There’s a market, there are people spending money in that market, and you’ve found your niche. The possibilities are endless; the sky is the limit!
There is infinite appeal to the research phase of creating a new blog. Because as long as you’re laying the groundwork, as long as you’re researching and “finding your niche”, everything exists in a vacuum. But as soon as you launch this sucker, it’s going to get messy!
It’s like the old Chinese saying: “as long as you’re planning a journey, you own the journey. The minute you embark on that journey, the journey owns you.” Plan well, my friends! But don’t forget that in order to succeed, you have to get out there and work it! And that’s what this post is about.
The Importance of Doing it All
Some of us are great idea people. Some of us are great at executing. Some of us are great at design. Some of us are great writers, and some of us are more business-minded. If your ambition is to make your blog a success from a business perspective, it’s important to know that you’re going to have to wear all these hats at one time or another.
I say this because while I’m giving you a list of the 10 Smartest Things You Can Do to Promote Your New Blog, I know that most of you bloggers out there will do some of them…or most of them. But most of you will not do all of them. Reason being, you will find some of them fun and others plain drudgery. Still, I encourage you to do them all. Success comes out of hiding when you’re willing to do the things that others are NOT willing to do. The extra work is always what makes the difference!
Where Your Success has Been Hiding
We can complain about how success has eluded us, but of course complaining accomplishes nothing. It is simply a matter of digging it up, but to do so we simply have to be willing to roll our sleeves up and get our hands dirty. Basically what I’m saying is that if you want to make a lot of money from your blog, you’re going to have to work hard at it!
After 3 years of internet marketing full time and 9 years of sales experience and training over a thousand people to go out and increase their income, I can tell you one thing for sure. If you do the work, the results will come. I promise you! They may not come as quickly as you want, and there will be bumps in the road, and these are the reasons most of us fail. Not because we do not have what it takes. We just quit too soon, and it really is a shame.
Getting Started on the Right Foot
Here’s the deal: start off with an idea of what you want to achieve. Don’t go into your blogging endeavor blind, hoping to be “successful”. Because what the heck does that mean? Perhaps you want to simply share your ideas with the world. Perhaps you want 100k unique visitors every month to feel you’ve accomplished that. Perhaps you prefer to concentrate on income, and your main concern is making $100k next year. OK. This is doable. The point is to be specific. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Lessons From Billy Mays About Blog Monetization
Billy Mays was a TV marketing powerhouse. Like many, when I saw Billy Mays on TV, I got a little chuckle at how “over the top” he was. When the show Pitchmen came out, I got a new respect for the hard work and thought which goes into those commercials. And when I got news that Billy Mays had passed away, I was sad.
In looking back, however, there are lessons to be learned from Billy Mays. Lessons that anybody interested in marketing should pay attention to.
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The Key To Launching A Brand New Blog
Situation: You have a new blog. You want to get some traffic to the site. You’re frustrated that everything seems to be happening at a snail’s pace. Nobody seems to care about what you’re writing.
What do you do?
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Lessons From Blog Masters Club Launch
The first launch of Blog Masters Club went pretty well. It was quite a bit of work, and it is quite nice to have the dust settled and be able to just work on content and helping my new students.
All product launches are learning experiences, though. This one was no exception. And, since this blog is “confessions” of a six figure blogger, I thought it fitting to say what went right and what went wrong.
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Secret To Maximum Blog Income And Conversion [Tactic Video]
Confession: Blogs suck at converting visitors into money.
Say what?! In this video, I explain what I mean and what you can do to get maximum benefit from the visitors who come to your blog. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Action Comments Gets An Upgrade
Some news I wanted to pass on this morning…
The Action Comments plug-in for Wordpress has been updated with a bunch of new features.
In short, Action Comments allows you to capture the name and email address of people who post a comment on your blog and add them to your mailing list. This allows you to take advantage (with their permission) of information they are ALREADY giving you in order to post a comment.
Action Comments 1.2 boasts the following enhancements:
- Redirect people to any URL you want after they leave a comment for the first time.
- Have different redirect URLS per category or even PER POST
- Control exactly which list commenters subscribe to. This is POWERFUL because it allows you to create targeted sub-lists and use your blog to properly funnel people into the right list.
I’ve talked numerous times about how you should use your blog as a lead generator. Action Comments is a POWERFUL tool to do that, and this 1.2 update gives you laser precision in how it’s done.
I recommend this to you.
I'm David Risley. I've been making my living as a blogger for over a decade. Blogging is my business and how I support my family. With this blog, I'm just gettin' REAL and telling you how this business works. 
