Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Defining Your Internet Brand as a Small Business Owner

Branding is the the ability for a company to be associated with marketing images, such as logos, labels, taglines, key messages, etc.

Personal Branding, however, is the ability for a person and/or their careers, professions, etc. to be packaged into a “brand”. Successfully “branding” yourself personally or as a business entity allows one to become more noticed, attracted and hired; often referred to one’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP).

Internet branding, most often associated with “corporate Internet branding” is when a company takes their brand (logos, labels, tag-lines, images, key messages, etc.) and utilizes the Internet to deepen their customer relationships. By creating a real-time consumer/user-generated community, a company can interact directly with their customers. This helps establish a more personal experience for their customers thereby creating greater loyalty, respect and trust as a thought-leader in their specific industry. The more approachable and personable a company is by servicing your customer’s needs and desires, the higher a return on their marketing investment. Assuring the best online experience includes but is not limited to a company’s ability to have a website/blog that download quickly, the ability to offer excellent real-time customer service, having easy navigation (site map) and a clean design; while promoting your USP and offering protection of customer’s privacy.

Therefore, Internet Branding for a Small Business Owner is the ability to take one’s Personal Brand online and strategically create a user-generated community around you (the small business owner) and your company.

Key words = You (the small business owner) and Your company.

Having a Strong Personal/Small Business Owner Internet Brand translates to your ability to be recognized and noticed widely throughout the Internet. Therefore, Internet Branding includes but is not limited to your ability to capitalize on link-popularity, Google PageRank, having high search engine, alexa and/or technorati (blog) rankings, so your internet branding/marketing efforts attract your most ideal customer.

Internet Branding simply means any and all the internet marketing techniques you utilize to harness the power of your Personal Brand, while creating a following (readers, subscribers, customers) who are actively involved in the growth, development and success of you and your business.

Since many of the Internet branding techniques are easy to use, implement and are highly-economical, I feel small business owners are well-positioned to develop their Internet Brand comparable to any other company/corporation coming online for the very first time.

You are one single small business owner, and you have the ability to create an online user-friendly experience that your own customers may not even know they are contributing to your user-generated community because they are simply having fun and ease to communicate directly with you and your Internet brand.
For example, when a customer comments on your blog, their sole interest may be in sharing their own thoughts based on your well-informed and articulate article prompted them to start a dialogue with you. Meanwhile, their comments, recommendations, suggestions can be used for your market research and product development purposes.
Another example may be when one of your friends in any of the social bookmarking sites you are a member of, may simply “bookmark” your webpage/blogpost simply because she/her felt its worth sharing with other friends. By sharing your article/blogpost, they in turn are creating a “viral campaign” that brings traffic to you, your excellent article, and your business as a whole.


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