Your Brand, Your Business. Be Serious About Both!
Written by: Landon
Posted on April 4, 2008
Filed Under Branding
Are you serious about your online business? If you are, do you realize how important your brand is to your business success?
Have you ever heard of RC Cola? If so, can you remember what the can looked like? Okay, how about Coca Cola? What does that can look like? Being able to recognize a name brand and associate the representing cola can is a great example of the difference between great branding and poor branding.
Not only is it important to have a great brand, it is even more important to be consistent with your brand. How many online profiles do you have? You need to use the same picture of yourself in all of them. When you get to be a super star in the online business world and everyone knows who you are, then you can start using different pictures of yourself.
Here are some things to keep in mind when creating your brand or re-creating it:
Be consistent with your online profiles:
- Picture
- Bio
- Links to other profiles
- List these profiles on your blog
Use your “about” page on your blog as a hub for these other profiles.
- Summarize your main “about” page in several slightly different ways, and then
- Use these in your online profiles. When read by themselves, they paint the same picture of you in different ways. When pulled together, they mirror your main “about” page. This keeps it interesting when people see you in different communities because they aren’t reading the exact same thing. You’re giving them variety– yet consistency.
Link these profiles together. This can be done in several ways, but the most effective way is…
- Some of the social networks out there will let you post articles for that specific network. Include a “follow me” in an article that lists your other social profiles. As long as you are professional in your delivery, this method is acceptable and not frowned upon.
Most important! Leverage your personality. This can seem more complicated than it really is.
- You need to really know who you are and love what makes you special.
- Be honest with yourself and about who you are deep down inside.
- Use a unique personality trait that separates you from the rest of your market.
This is paramount because your ability to connect with people on the first introduction or the fiftieth will rely on how well you relate to yourself and convey it to your readers. Do you identify with Mighty Mouse? Or a musician? Maybe you relate best in a certain role such as a that of a coach or as a professor. This is something that only you can determine.
Regardless of what that character is, you must see yourself as that character and be able to align yourself with it, and then build your entire brand around that.
Now, don’t come off as superman if your website is about cooking, and don’t use a stereotype yourself as an art professor if your site is about weight loss. See where I’m going with that? If I say, “Like A Rock,” what truck manufacturer am I talking about? That’s right, Chevrolet. The marketing folks at Chevrolet are using the psychological impression of strength and durability to represent their trucks.
In conclusion, be yourself, be honest, be unique and express that to the world through your site, your social profiles and your writing. Be who you are, not what you think you should be.
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Tags:, Branding, creating your brand, online profile, personal brand, social networks, your brand, Your Business
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Landon is back with another great post about branding and creating yourself an dyour busienss through branding. Great ideas here and a wake call for some , including me. “Not only is it important to have a great brand, it is even more important to be…
Hi Don,
I like the idea of linking all the profiles together. Separately all the choices can quickly get overwhelming. Have you checked out FriendFeed yet? I signed up for it yesterday, and so far it looks like it might be a handy way to bring together our “brands” under one easy to follow roof.
Todd
Landon strong post again, I love your enthusiasm for what you think buddy
Thanks Don, I appreciate that!
Todd, I have a series coming next week on some different ways to tie social network profiles together… including using feeds. Stay tuned.
Hey Landon,
Great post, like Todd said, linking profiles together is a great idea and one I have yet to implement.
I really like it. It’s funny, I also wrote about branding last week on a blog I write for.
As for the image, I have been doing that until I did a make over on my portfolio site. There I’m using a different pic because of the nature of the site (black&white).
I agree with you that this helps branding ourselves as an entity.
[...] you provide your samples on a custom built blog/site, or make them part of your about page on your self branded blog doesn’t [...]
Monika, I just finished your latest article on “collecting” and it fits, as an online entrepreneur, we collect samples of our “good stuff” in a very interesting way. Cataloged in the digital realm and if you link your stuff together the right way it is a constantly updated portfolio!
[...] can do on branding and marketing our success. I came across an article from Donald Miller, “Your brand, your business. Be serious about both!” The article particularly talks about writing and building home based business. The most [...]
Robert thanks for the track back, in fairness Landon Porter wrote that article and I agree its outstanding
[...] do you start when creating your brand? Unique personalities stand out from the [...]