Greetings All!

If you’ve been following my social media this week, you know my conversations have been all about identifying YOU via your personal business branding.

Do you ever find yourself saying,

• “that looks like a _____  item!“
• ” that has _____ written all over it!“
• “you can tell that was done by _____”

Personal business brands give that association to your work and offers!  YOU become known along with your work. .And that attracts your buyers. And that creates a flow of the “three” all working together!   You’ve hear me refer to this trio as your Trifecta!!
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Here are 10 tips for creating and knowing your personal business brand: 

1. Be Authentic  –  Build your personal brand on your true personality. Reflect your values and your character.
2. Be Consistent –   What behaviors of yours are consistent?  Which behaviors do you wish to make consistent?  Are you doing relevant things again and again within your business?
3. Specialize –   Focus on one area of specialization.  Be precise with one unique skill.   It make you “special.”
4. Have Authority –  Be seen as a recognized expert in your field, talented, experienced and effective.
5. Distinguish Yourself –  Your brand must be unique in a way that is different from the competition and adds value to others.  It must be clearly defined  so that it can be quickly grasped and understood by your audience.
6. Be Relevant  –  What you stand for should connect to what your target audience deems important.
7. Be Visible —  Embed your brand into people’s minds via broadcasting it continuously and consistently.
8. Be Persistent –   Personal business brands need time to grow as it should be developed organically.  Stick with it and don’t give up on it. Icons appear after long period of dedicated work, sacrifice, courage, planning and the patience to be persistent.
9. Provide Goodwill – Be associated with values that are recognized as positive and worthwhile.
10. Performance –  After your brand is known, you must perform and improve yourself continuously.   Personal business brands can be translated into personal balanced scored actions!!Source: Technological University of the Americas & Authentic Governance Institute

Be thinking about “your” personal business brand and how you are using it.  Are you using it?  Ask others how they might “brand” youl    I’ll be sharing more on this in the coming weeks.
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Good Business is Good Communications …
Here’s to your success via online communications! 
margie

Happy New Year  …

It is day 3 of 365 days … what have you achieved so far?  Are you keeping track of what you actually do each day?  Are you still on a break, gearing up for a Monday beginning?   Have you given any thought to what you might do differently online?  Or have you decided that what you are doing is just fine?

In short where are you as you enter 2019?   And is this different than the beginning of your 2018? Do you remember?

In the world of online marketing there have been some realizations  for 2019 that warm my heart.  Content and messaging are taking much more of a front row seat.   And as many of you know… helping you know what to say, when, where, how and to who has always been one of my priorities.  It has always puzzled me how trainings tell you to post here, use this resource, show up so many times per day, etc.  BUT stop short when it comes to helping you know  what to say and how!   And as it turns out,  now in 2019 the conclusion is that what you say is KEY.   Finally they have caught up with me.

What has been discovered is that ads, and blindly throwing “content” out there just to be seen and hoping that it sticks has not worked all that well.   If activity was generated at all, it was not productive activity.

WHAT WILL HELP YOU AND WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW FOR 2019:
​​​​Your online communications are key.  Your success with online activity will be how you attract and connect,  serve and support, i.e. focus on your buyers … from pre-need to post purchase.  To know what those conversations are you must get to know your buyers beyond their immediate needs but also all the elements of the lifestyle they live in that seeds the needs for your solutions.   You must bring awareness to your business,  generate interest that builds trust and  a deeper interest that leads to an agreement that delivers full satisfaction , i.e. new, repeat and referral business!​​​​​​

Here is what is being shared as thoughts & advice for 2019 from some google searched sources:

• Too many marketers forget the importance of listening to audience members in the engagement equation. Social listening involves analyzing specific conversations, phrases, and other details on your brand’s and even competitors’ social-media pages, and it’s a growing component of competitive social strategies.
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• Rather than just glancing at posts and making your best guesses, social listening allows you to identify patterns and collect meaningful interpretations of their data. Using these interpretations to your advantage can greatly benefit your marketing campaigns in the future and give you an edge over other brands that are using social to blast their message instead of engaging followers.
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• Realize that consumers judge you, in part, on the basis of your content, and that they tend to stay more loyal to brands that are more consistently helpful and relevant in their content.
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• Your content needs to bridge the gulf between what you want to accomplish (brand identity and authority, increased visibility, sales!) and the hopes, dreams, wants, needs, desires, fears, etc. of your prospects.
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• Think sophisticated, multi-dimensional, organic storytelling.

And then what not to bring over from 2018  …

• 2018 was a year in which so much that has been proven to be successful was passed by as people moved to new ideas and tactics. We’re not talking about the tech led “spray and pray” rampage. We’re talking about lack of understanding of the customer’s business, willingness to let automated systems build rapport with prospects instead of a salesperson, micromanagement that hinders salespersons performance, dependence on activity metrics regardless of results, lack of real selling skills training, lack of understanding on how all communication channels work together, all that kind of stuff.
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• What doesn’t work –  advocating posting louder, more, every day, every minute. That leads to a situation where “time-spent” can easily overwhelm value received, and leads to burn-out and addiction.  Others have started using ghost writers to pound out content which is just generic enough to be plausible and uninteresting. Yuck.

 Are you doing any of the above?  Time to come up with some authentic content and messaging that is all about your buyers and In your delivery format, promotes and support YOU!   Time to know your buyers and everything about them and how you can match your business and your personal business brand to your content and your messaging.

Create “real life” value with your content and messaging.  Create it from thoughts that relate to why you are passionate about what your do, how you serve your clients, how you are being their hero and the joy and plus you bring to their lives.  Create all your content and messaging from that perspective!

​​Happy New Year!

Good Business is Good Communications …
Here’s to your success via online communications! 
margie