Posts Tagged branding
How to monetize your personal brand, Book Outline “Crush It!” part 10
Posted by eviator in Miscellaneous on January 7, 2010
Advertisers are always looking for ways to effectively market their products, and you have been building an enthusiastic community around your specific subject. You’re practically doing them a favor! Most people immediately flock to Google AdSense, which displays targeted advertisements on your webpage, rss feed, etc. You can certainly make some money using this, but it really doesn’t pay very well, and it can make your website look cheap. I think we can all agree that making your website look like a NASCAR driver is probably not in the best interest of your online community, so moving on…
One of the methods Vaynerchuk suggests is placing classy banner ads on your site. See this link?for an example of how to do this. You can also try cold calling companies to see if they are interested in buying adspace on your website. Sounds ridiculous? It’s not. Go to and search for your subject. See which advertisers are using Google AdSense for ads to be posted on these websites, and take note. Call these guys up, and see if they will spend money with you. Think about it, they’re already paying for Google AdSense, so they believe in advertising online. By sponsoring your page directly they will not get lost in the clutter like they would with AdSense, and you won’t look like a NASCAR driver.
One note about advertising, you should only advertise companies and products that you yourself endorse. Don’t put something on your site that you don’t believe in.
Speaking engagements
Come up with an interesting topic, then call a show or conference organizer and offer to give a free talk about your topic. This will give you a chance to discuss something you love, build some credibility, and to do so in front of an interested audience. This could eventually lead to money: You could be paid next time you offer to speak, or even better, your discussion could lead to new clients or opportunities.
Affiliate programs
Affiliate programs allow you to get a commission on products sold through links on your website. For example, if you are interested in purchasing the book I’m discussing, click this link… Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion?and I’ll get a small cut. Cool, huh? One way to go about doing this is to simply do a google search for affiliate programs; there are tons of them out there. Vaynerchuk suggests Commission Junction and Amazon. Also, don’t overlook local businesses, there could be some good money and opportunities for you there as well.
As with advertising, remember that all of the products that you link to should be relevant to your subject / topics, and should be something that you yourself endorse.
Retail
Vaynerchuk suggests that you can create a product or a service that is related to your business. One site that I’ve seen do this effectively is Open Source Marketer, which is also an excellent resource for you evil marketers out there. You could also design T-shirts promoting your site. If your community is big enough this could be profitable in the short term, and more importantly it can help promote your website to the masses.
Articles
You are an expert in your chosen subject, right? You can contribute articles to online and print magazines, and even other blogs. You’ll see some of my posts re-posted on vcplan – The Path?to Success?(you may even be reading the re-post) which is an excellent resource for entrepreneurs looking for venture capital investment. I don’t get paid for this, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t. At the worst, at least you are getting your name out there in your community.
Seminars
If your subject lends itself to how-to type of stuff, then put together an event, conference, webinar, etc.
Books and TV
Your blog and community building efforts could lead to book or television deals. Hey, it worked for Vaynerchuk. I wouldn’t?be reading his book if it didn’t.
Consulting
As my boys at Marvel Comics say, ‘Nuff said.
Notable quotes from this chapter:
- Be patient. In time, if you continue to hustle, you’ll grow your presence and improve your skills to the point where the fish – really, really big fish – will be jumping straight into your hands.
- Anything is better than zero.
If you know of any other opportunities, or have any other links, post in the comments, or email me at edwardviator [at] evil-marketer [dot] com
Putting it all together, Book Outline “Crush It!” part 9
Posted by eviator in For Job Seekers, Miscellaneous on January 5, 2010
- Buy your domain name, preferably firstnamelastname.com When you sign up for Twitter, Facebook, etc, use this domain name (ex: )www.facebook.com/edward.viator
- Start a Wordpress or Tumblr account and host your domain on it.
- Hire a web designer to make sure your user interface is excellent. If you can’t afford one, get started anyway, but know that you should hire a designer in the future (as you can see, I can’t afford one yet).
- If you’re doing video, buy a $150 Flip camera.
- Create a Facebook fan page.
- Open a Twitter account with your domain name.
- If you’re doing video open a Tube Mogul account; if written word, sign up for Ping.fm.
- Create content and lots of it. Use personal anecdotes and let your personality shine.
- Tweet or post your content using Ping or Tube Mogul.
- Go to search.twitter and start searching for subjects relevant to your blog. Start following many of these.
- Go to blogsearch.google.com and search for blogs similar to yours. Comment and leave your name which should be linked to your webpage.
- Search Facebook for pages that relate to your topic. Join the active ones. Do the same for groups.
- Repeat 5, 8-12.
If you want to be successful, you’re going to need to focus on step 13. In other words, constantly create new content and reach out to the community online. If you’re going to need to focus on step 13. In other words, constantly create new content and reach out to the community online. If you’re content is great, you will get results eventually. Just remember, you should try to wait as long as possible to monetize your brand. Once you monetize, Vaynerchuk suggests that it is difficult to focus on content, so early on you should focus on building the community.
Notable quotes from this chapter:
- Don’t forget to include a list of all of your social network links on your e-mail signature, letterhead, and business cards.
- Make sure you have a big fat button on your site that says Want to Do Business with Me? or something along those lines.
Creating a community, Book Outline “Crush It!” part 7
Posted by eviator in For Job Seekers, Miscellaneous on December 29, 2009
We’ve talked about why you should build your brand, about creating content, and some of the different platforms you can use to promote your brand. However, the majority of your effort online will be about building a community around your brand. Creating content may seem difficult if you’ve?never done it before, but if you’ve picked your topic successfully, it’s the easiest part of the entire venture. The most difficult aspect of building your brand online is creating an active community. In his seventh and eighth chapters, respectively titled Keep it real… Very real and Create community: Digging your internet trench, Vaynerchuk discusses how to go about building your online community.
In my opinion, alot of marketing I see is very phoney. I think that people today are more media savvy than ever before, and they are also aware of how fake marketing efforts by major brands has become. We live in an age where prepared PR statements are a way of life (see my blog for a list of some of my favorites). I’m not fooled by them, and I don’t think anyone else is either. People value authenticity. It’s why?we go online and seek out consumer opinions. By building a community around your brand (personal and as a business), you won’t have to sound your own horn, your community will do that for you.
So how can you build this magical community? Through alot of hard work and time. The basic idea is that you should create your content and distribute it (see previous post for details), then start looking at and commenting on other people’s content. You should make the most of every interaction, stay on topic, and be yourself. Resist the urge to post things for the sake of posting them, and instead only post when you have something of value to share. You should follow people on Twitter, or sign up for some pages on Facebook. Basically, you need to get involved. You can’t just post content and hope that people show up.
When people visit your site, they will be hooked on your outstanding content (you do have outstanding content right?). You also need to make the most out of those call to action buttons (subscribe, follow-me, share, etc).
Next we will discuss the best marketing strategy ever, and you won’t want to miss it.
Notable quotes from these chapters:
- Being authentic and being perceived as such by your audience relies on your ability to ensure that every decision you make when it comes to your business is rooted in being true to yourself.
- Creating community is about starting conversations.
Book Outline “Crush It!” part 3, build your personal brand
Posted by eviator in For Job Seekers on December 7, 2009
Sure you can make money on the internet, but it’s infinitely more important to build your brand. Think about it this way, you can have a customer spend $1000 today, or you can have that customer spend $100 today, next week,?the week after, etc, and then tell all their friends about how awesome your company is.?If you have a strong brand that people can believe in, then the money will come eventually. When you are first starting out, you should focus on building excellent content, and most importantly on delivering that content in a way that embraces your personality. In his third chapter, Build your personal brand, Vaynerchuk discusses this in detail using his website, tv.winelibrary.com as an example. He didn’t start the website to sell wine, but instead to build a brand. While he’s excelled at both, it’s important to remember the order in which this took place:
- Build a strong brand
- Monetize the brand
No matter what type of content you create (video, text, pictures, online radio), it should be something that you are passionate about and can communicate in an honest and authentic way. This means you should be yourself. Your website shouldn’t look like mine, it should look like yours. This is what will differentiate your brand from all the others out there doing the same thing. Once you have great content up on your site, you should begin using online social networks to build strong word of mouth and create a community.
How are you currently building your personal brand (both online and off)? Let me know at edwardviator [at] evil-marketer [dot] com
Notable quotes from this chapter:
- Developing you personal brand is key to monetizing your passion online.
- Consumers want you to tell them the truth.
- Leveraging social networking platforms into effective conduits for your personal brand is all about building word of mouth.
Book outline: Crush It! part 1
Posted by eviator in For Job Seekers on December 2, 2009
As a professional I always strive to be the best at what I do, which is why I am a big fan of sharpening my marketing tools. A big part of this is reading the latest business books and trying to learn as much as I can; only a fool thinks he/she knows everything. I recently read Crush It! Cash In On Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk, and have learned some very useful techniques for marketing / branding yourself online, as well as effective ways to use social networking websites to accomplish marketing goals; both of which are essential skills in today’s business world. I’m going to go through this book, chapter by chapter, describing the salient points as well as offering my own commentary. The chapter 1 discussion starts now.
In his first chapter, Passion is everything, Vaynerchuk offers his secret to success.
- Love your family
- Work superhard
- Live your passion
This formula may seem overly basic to some, but if you think about it, you know it’s true. At one of my previous jobs, I found myself dissatisfied even though the pay was good, and the job was challenging. At the time, I had no idea why, but after reading this book, I’ve realized what I was missing. I wasn’t living my passion. I’m betting that this is the point where most people have problems. With food to put on the table and bills to pay, it’s easy to think of success as something to be measured by money. We seldom realize that success should be measured by how happy we are. If you’re not living your passion, you are missing out on one of the most important elements of success.
Living your passion sounds great, but in the meantime you have bills to pay and so you won’t (and shouldn’t) quit your day job just yet. The good news is that with all of the opportunities available using free social networking websites (such as blogs like the one you are reading now), you can still live your passion, and may even be able to make some money off of it in the future. Vaynerchuk discusses these social networking websites as well as money making opportunities later in the book, which we will get to in a future post.
Notable quotes from this chapter:
- Money goes where people go.
- It’s never a bad time to start a business unless you’re starting a mediocre business.
- The person who can dominate in rough times is the person who can dominate, period.
- Social media = business, period.
Have you noticed something missing in your life? Are you living your passion? Email me EdwardViator [at] evil-marketer [dot] com
Keeping your branding package within budget
This should also be titled, when DIY (Do-it-yourself) comes in handy.
When it comes to creating the intial collateral package are seven things a typical business needs:
- Branding
- Color scheme for collateral
- Logo
- Presentation template (for PowerPoint, reports, and proposals)
- Web site (everyone needs one today)
- Business cards (everyone needs one today)
- Bio photo
From the investor point of view, if you look professional and very, very simple then you are probably spending your money wisely. There is one caveat: this only works if you are in the initial stages. If you say you have been around for a while, selling a lot of product, but your marketing looks like it was done on a low budget, the investor will still wonder about the credibility.
There is nothing wrong with telling the investor that part of the budget will go to improving the brand image.
In the meantime, how does one approach this?
Web site: look for a prepackaged site that you can fill in elements. These are called templates, and you can get one for under $100.00. You may be able to hire a small firm that can use one of these sites and fill in the elements for you. The prepackaged site should even suggest the typography. The colors used on this package will lead to…
Color scheme for collateral: Use the web site colors.
Business cards: You can use the web site colors, but the problem is to lay it out on a small piece of paper. Instead, use simple black and white and put it together on decent card stock. Definitely use a company like overnightprints.com or Vistaprint.com. They will also have templates for the business cards. Word of advice: two fonts. Use one for text and one fancy font for the company name or logo. Once again, if you are not a professional designer, keep it simple to keep it good.
Presentation template: use the website colors, and a very simple layout. For presentations you can use the templates in PowerPoint. They look good and get the point across without become the point.
Branding: One of the first elements of branding is to be consistent. By using the same color schemes, fonts, themes through the collateral you will develop a brand for your business. It is very basic but consistency works.
Bio photo: In the beginning, unless you are entertainment, this is not that important. You could go to one of those photo places and see if they can take a portrait photo and then provide you a color corrected web and print version. If all they do is provide a portrait photo then do that. A good portrait photo goes a long way. Avoid being too sexy like in a Glamour Shots photograph. You want to look professional.
Logo: Entrepreneurs love to play with this all the time and it can often really hurt them. The simplest logo is either a graphic of the letters of your business name, an image of the name of your business (if it is a noun), or an image that represents the activity that your business performs. Start with the letters as that is the simplest.
Cash considerations are important. When you cannot afford to hire a professional, do not try to be that professional. Instead, use common sense and keep things simple. Find simple solutions and they will work. These can be used to sell your products and services. Investors want to see that money and time is spent wisely and produces results. When you do this, you are much more credible to investors (and potential customers).
When DIY may be detrimental
Yesterday, I wrote about how sometimes do-it-yourself is detrimental. I referred to Seth Godin’s blog post that you should go out there and be your own graphic designer. He wrote about four common areas. I argued against it, and today, I am going to add three more areas that people often DIY and why it can be a problem. All three areas are related to the development of the brand:Branding: What is your brand and how do you present it? There are many self-help books out there that can make you very educated on brand; however, this is often painful trial and error. However, the essense of most businesses is their marketing, and the essence of marketing is developing a brand and selling that brand. If you are going to spend time learning something, then this would be it.
Hiring an expert for a couple of hours to give you a brand checkup would be ideal. Unfortunately, it is hard to get them to just stick to a couple of hours. Maybe I should address that in another post?
Look and feel: This is an element of the brand, but is specifically the physical aspects of the brand. What is the color scheme and layout that would best represent you? How can you have a consistent scheme between all your collateral that says you know what you are doing? What does the packaging look like? Good graphic designers and artists understand color theory: what colors work together and what emotions the colors represent. Every heard the saying, “I don’t know why I don’t like it, I just don’t?” That is what happens when someone looks at a bad color scheme.
Logo: Every business needs a decent logo design. Many people try these themselves and just miss the boat. If you can afford it, get a professional to help you. This can be really expensive, but worth it. Why is it hard? The best logos are often the simplest, and many times, someone from outside the business, thinking outside of the box can identify the simplest and coolest logo.
I do agree with him that some research is necessary to develop skills. For example, if presenting material on a website is going to be integral then you should learn a little bit about web design and typography.
Branding, Color scheme and logo are more advanced than presentations, web sites, business cards, and bio photos. However, if developed together, a designer could come up with a common theme that can be used on all collateral. This usually saves money and time; and often lends more credibility when getting customers. However, even the designer needs guidance. This is where research into branding comes in handy and where hiring an expert to guide you (tutor you) would be money well spent.
What about those that are very cash poor and are trying to attract investors? How do you avoid spending too much? That is for tomorrow…