Treat Your Customers Like Fools – Microsoft-itis

I have absolute proof that men and women are not the same species. This afternoon, we, and I'm using the corporate “we” here, had a major meltdown in our house. My wife's sister complimented my sixteen year old daughter, Shannon, on her new hair style. Shannon, who sometimes has the disposition of a rattlesnake with chronic diarrhea, ignored the compliment. Of course, ladies, this is bad social form, but it's not an occasion for fisticuffs. No, they didn't actually come to blows, but they spent a lot of time bitching at each other.

If two men had this social interaction, the snubbed compliment-er would have thought to himself, “What a douche bag.” That would have ended the interaction. Not you ladies. You have to have this thing called closure. Closure in man-speak means getting the last word and humiliating the other person. Closure, like string theory and female orgasms, is an unproven concept. The reason men don't engage in this behavior called closure is that we might actually get involved in a physical fight.

When no alcohol is involved, fighting is something most men avoid. My theory of fighting is as follows. If a bigger guy wants to fight me, I don't want to fight because he's bigger than I am. If a smaller guy wants to fight me, I don't want to fight because he probably knows something I don't, like karate. This is a form of the cold war nuclear war deterrent strategy called mutual assured destruction. Men don't fight, because there is too much to risk. Thus, social snubs don't escalate to fisticuffs very often. When alcohol is involved, however, we get in touch with our inner bitches and have at it.

This afternoon to get away from the world championship bout of closure (there's the segue), I retreated to the master bedroom to watch my wonderful fifty-two inch, high definition television. I hit the on button on the remote – and nothing. OK, no big deal, I'll just change the batteries and problem solved. Not quite – still nothing. Changing batteries is about the total extent of my handyman skills, but I am pretty good at electronic troubleshooting. After resetting all the audio visual equipment, I eventually narrowed the source of the problem to our Google TV set top box.

Our Google box is a cool little device that allows us to search pretty much the entire known universe for a program on any topic. For instance, if I search for “pedophile”, I will find every movie or TV show related to Jerry Sandusky whether the show is on our cable system or the internet. The problem with the device is that it requires cycling of the power every few days or it looses its mind. By the way if I search for “closure”, I get every PBS special ever shown on premenstrual syndrome and Midol. That I accept this constant resetting of the Google box is a symptom of a disease call Microsoft-itis.

Microsoft-itis is the lowering of our performance expectations. We no longer expect anything to work more than 80% of the time. I'm not up in arms that the Google box looses its mind. I pretty much expect that all of my electronic devices will screw up regularly. My piece of shit Sandisk MP3 player needs to be reformatted every week, and I have to recopy all of my music. This problem has been well documented on Sandisk's own web forum for more than a year, but they don't care enough about customers to fix it.

I call this mental illness Microsoft-itis, because they originated the disease. When MS-DOS, Microsoft's first operating system, became a standard, we all learned that rebooting our computers five or six times a day was normal. A day without a reboot was truly a wonderful day. Now with Windows, we get a dozen or more daily software updates. I could spend most of every work day doing nothing but installing bug fixes. Why blame Microsoft for that since there are a lot of publishers involved? Because they designed Windows to make this nonsense routine. How many times have you shouted at your computer, “Just give me my damn cursor!” as the machine does whatever it feels is more important than your desired task? This is why Microsoft gets the blame.

Since Microsoft products are part of our every waking minute in some regard, we have become numbed to the hours robbed from our lives by idiot programmers, who really don't give a damn. Fifteen years or so ago, the president of Peachtree accounting software, Bill Goodhew, made the mistake of being honest in answering a journalist's question. He said that he prioritized adding new features to his software products over fixing bugs. He was pilloried in the press and tried to retract his statement, but he was just being honest. He knew he could get away with treating users like fools.

A few years ago, Bill Gates made a snide remark about the auto industry not staying up with technology. The chairman of General Motors responded that if the auto industry made cars the way Microsoft made Windows, we would have to restart our engines at every intersection. To show that life is truly absurd, automakers are now seriously considering adding that as a gas saving feature. As if the assholes in front of me at an intersection aren't slow enough on the gas pedal.

I wish I had some truly good news to share about Microsoft-itis, but the disease will be with us for a long time. It has infected every area of technology. Our best hope is for computing in the cloud. Of course we all know Al Gore discovered the cloud right after he discovered the internet and the moon and stars. The cloud MAY get us away from relying on Microsoft. With cloud computing, the operating system on your computer really doesn't matter as long as you have a browser with access to the internet. In another weird twist of history repeating itself, this is a lot like the mainframe computing model of the seventies and eighties, a lot of mostly dumb terminals accessing a central brain machine called a mainframe.

Maybe we should organize “Races for the Cure” for Microsoft-itis. Maybe Lance Armstrong will sell cheap bracelets to fund cloud research. I'm graciously willing to accept your donations. I will organize a think tank that will meet at Lost Rhino brewery. You are invited. It will be the first Wednesday of every month. Bring your brainpower and your thirst. Leave your thirst for closure behind.

Thanks for reading. For real tax accounting and tax advice, please visit the main S&K web site at www.skcpas.com. Also, if you have some snarky (or God forbid, sincere) comments I can use in support of my book proposal, please send them to fstitely2@gmail.com. Until next time....

Native Versus Web Based Mobile Apps

Improve your personal branding by going mobile

It can’t be denied that mobile apps are here to stay. Practically everyone has an iPhone, an Android, or another smartphone that enables them to connect with their favorite brands whenever and wherever they are. They have changed the way people interact with brands. No need to have a laptop or a PC anymore – all you need is a mobile phone that allows you to connect to the World Wide Web and access apps.

As a personal brand or small business owner, you should definitely consider adding “mobile” to your marketing mix. It’s another “social” way to market your brand, since people access their smartphones all the time. But if you’re considering mobile apps to your promotional campaign, then you need to consider which is best for you: native or web based mobile apps.

Native Mobile Apps

A native mobile app is basically an app that’s designed to run on a specific device’s operating system. It needs to be developed for different systems. The two most popular systems or platforms are the Apple App and the Google Android, and the apps can be accessed through the iPhone/iPod and Android devices respectively. As a small business owner, you can develop your native mobile app and then offer it in the Apple App Store or the Google Android Market so that people can access it. You can also create your own system that the user will download and use.

Some of the advantages of native mobile apps include:

• Easier to monetize
• Easy to download and install the app
• Ability to access the app even without Internet
• Fast, reliable and powerful
• More ability to control the user’s experience
• Access to APIs not available to web apps

Disadvantages include:

• Expensive and more difficult to develop
• High upkeep
• Specific to the device it runs on, so one has to develop another app for it to run on another platform
• Less accessible to everyone

Web Based Mobile Apps

Web based mobile apps, on the other hand, run in the mobile phone’s browser. The data is downloaded while you’re on the web. So you have to be online to access them.

Some of the advantages of web based mobile apps are:

• Easier and cheaper to develop
• Works on all devices, since you only need to connect to the Internet
• No need to download anything to your device
• More accessible to everyone

And here are the disadvantages:

• Lesser flexibility in terms of developing the app
• Cannot use when offline
• Lesser user experience
• Can become slow and unreliable, depending on the person’s Internet connection

So which among the two are better and best for your brand? Well, if you’re a small business owner with a bigger-than-most budget, and you really think that mobile apps are an excellent way to connect with your customers, then go for native apps! On the other hand, if your budget isn’t really that big, and you’re still on the fence, if mobile apps can work for your brand, then perhaps you can start with more affordable, web based mobile apps first.

Truly, the more important question is, what do your audience and customers want? Do you think that mobile apps can provide them a better experience of your brand? And once you’ve answered those two questions, you can then proceed to choosing between native and mobile apps, and deciding which will work well with your personal and small business brand.

Social Media Lies

Yesterday afternoon I spent some time on the social media business site, focus.com.  I had just finished working on a private letter ruling request for the IRS.  Working on a PLR is somewhat less exciting than watching mold grow.  I was bored and needed some entertainment.  Focus.com has two types of members: people looking to establish their expertise so they can find paying clients and people looking for free advice who don't want to be paying clients.  These two groups come together on the site for the purpose of frustrating each other.  Social media makes for strange bedfellows.

One of the most recent questions on the site came from a person who wanted to know how to promote a psychological counseling service.  Every expert answer dealt with using social media to promote the business.  I weighed in with the opinion that she should consider good old fashioned networking with potential referral sources such as family practice attorneys and physicians.  Shortly after I posted my answer, another person opined that most of the social media promotion suggestions violated professional ethics for counseling anyway.  The experts were suggesting testimonials.  Here is how I see a sample testimonial.

“I used to be stark raving mad until I met Dr. Feelgood.  Now my wife can ignore the screams and the children sleep well at night.”  Signed Jerry Sandusky, Inmate Pedophile

The surprising part of the exchange was the number of postings that assumed social media marketing was  the only solution.

The world is now infected with social media marketing experts.  Yesterday, a woman ran over my foot with her grocery cart.  She apologized and then asked me to like her Facebook page. Our cleaning crew is coming to clean our house tomorrow morning.  I'm certain they're just moonlighting as cleaners until their social media consulting business takes off.

The problem with the vast overwhelming majority of this horde is that they really need to be marketing experts, and they are not.  Social media, despite all the hype, follows all the rules of old fashioned marketing.  The only difference is the medium.  Not understanding that last sentence means you will waste a whole lot of time and money chasing impossible results.

The first mistake that the experts on focus.com made was assuming social media was the best marketing solution.  They didn't even consider anything else.  They skipped marketing 101, step one, which is finding out where your potential customers hang out.  For a lot of businesses, like the counseling business, social media marketing is like fishing in your bathtub.  There ain't no fish there.  Even if you think a lot of potential counseling patients are on Facebook, how do you reach them?

Social media is largely opt in.  So unless you have a connection with someone, you are unlikely to reach him.  I'm reading an e-book on social media marketing.  To build a social media audience, the author suggests hiring a publicist, an internet marketing consultant, and an intellectual property attorney.  My guess is that if your business has the money to spend on a social media marketing team, you have already figured out how to make money, and it probably didn't involve an expensive social media marketing team.

Social media marketing may have a place in your overall marketing plan.  It can work very well in developing deeper connections with existing customers.  Restaurants are a great example.  Social media savvy restaurants give us a good reason to like their Facebook pages.  They give us something of value in exchange, coupons.

Social media is not very good, however, in prospecting for new clients.  Counseling practices, and CPA firms for that matter, get business primarily through referrals.  For professional service businesses, prospecting means networking, not advertising, social media or other media.  Recently, I read a blog entry from a female CPA firm partner who wrote that she was giving up in person networking for social media networking.  She was tired of bad chamber of commerce dinners. What she was really telling her readers is that she isn't comfortable meeting people out in the real world.  I won't make a crack about her picture on the blog, but I guess I just did.  I'm not surprised she isn't comfortable meeting new people.  She believes she will join the tax sections of sites like LinkedIn.com, answer a bunch of questions, and new clients will flock to her genius.  She'll be filthy rich by midnight.  I suspect maybe just filthy.

I've spent some time in the tax sections on these sites.  They are full of people seeking free advice.  Over the past year, I have seen a decline in the responses to tax questions on social media sites.  Maybe CPA's do learn after all.  Free advice starts out free and forever stays that way.

Social media, even for businesses like restaurants well suited for the medium, can at best be a part of a marketing plan.  It is not a marketing plan by itself.

I have a favor to ask of readers.  I am working with an agent on a proposal for the book based on this blog.  I am looking for testimonials I can use in the proposal.  If you have a few kind (or even unkind) words I can use, I will be forever (or at least until I'm famous) in your debt.  After I'm famous, I'm buying a whole new bunch of friends.  Please send your comments to fstitely2@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading!  I hope you like the new layout.  As always for real accounting and tax advice, please visit the main S&K web site at www.skcpas.com.

Your Picture and Your Brand

Pictures and your word of mouth marketing

Never has it been more important than it is today to be a social brand. More and more people are spending a lot of their time in social networking sites, connecting and interacting with other people and brands. If you want to engage and reach more consumers, then it’s essential for your brand to have social media presence.

As a small business owner, your personal brand as well as those of the people who work with you or for you can greatly affect your business. This is because people don’t just buy from brands anymore. They want to buy from real people, people they know and like. This is why word of mouth marketing continues to work so well, since it’s based on people’s relationships and referrals through mouth to mouth communication.

Word of mouth marketing still powerful

There are certainly a lot of advantages to having a social media presence for your brand. You can connect with hundreds or even thousands of people with just a click. You can send your message to people all over the world. Information can spread virally throughout social networking sites, so your message gets repeated over and over. It’s easy to offer promotions and discounts, and you can even gain insights and other information about the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Perhaps best of all, it’s easy to offer personalized customer service, since people really get to connect and interact with you in these platforms.

Of course, there are also disadvantages to having a social media presence. Being “social” basically means putting yourself out there, exposing yourself to the public. And this exposure could result in negative comments and feedback about your personal and small business brand.

Pictures and impressions

A picture says a thousand words, and even the pictures you post in your different social media accounts can affect your brand. Customers, hiring managers, job recruiters, and clients are now Googling you, checking out your social media profiles, in order to gain insights regarding your brand. Because of this, the pictures you post can definitely affect the way they view you and your small business.

Pictures of partying or drunken pictures, religious or political slogans, scantily clad images, photos of illegal activities… these may seem funny at the time you posted them, but once clients, customers or hiring managers see them, then you won’t be laughing anymore.

Does the tag spell doom?

This is why it’s essential for you and the people you work with to take the time to check the pictures you’ve uploaded and see if there are any that other people may view in a wrong way. Another even more important thing – you also need to check the pictures that people “tag” you in, especially in Facebook, since it can greatly affect your brand. Some of these pictures may be ones that you don’t want people to see – such as the one where you’re puking your guts out on the toilet – can be uploaded by your friends and then seen by other people when your friends “tag” you.

If you’ve been on Facebook for a long time now, it may be difficult for you to go through all the information and pictures you have in order to filter out the bad things while keeping the good things. If you don’t have the time, you might consider using the Esselte created Pendaflex Tag Tamer, a Facebook app that has been designed to help you find and remove all those unwanted pictures from your Facebook Timeline.

Tag tamer helps look for you

Pendaflex Tag Tamer uses an advanced search function that is easy to use and saves you time so you can quickly search and remove all those unwanted photos. Typically, you would have to manually scroll down your timeline and one by one remove the photos you don’t want as well as the tags you received. With this app, people who have hundreds or thousands of photos can quickly filter their Facebook Timeline so that no unwanted photos are revealed.

In today’s world, what is known about you can negatively affect you, even if it was just a silly picture taken on a crazy night. Make sure that your social media accounts are free and clear of anything that can ruin or put a negative light on your personal or small business brand. If you have people working with you or for you, you should also help them understand the importance of this.

With the Pendaflex Tag Tamer, quickly and easily remove all those unwanted photos from your Facebook Timeline, so you don’t have to worry about pics from the past clouding your future with clients, customers and hiring managers.

3 Signs You Need to Market Yourself More

Personal branding while you work

I was visiting with someone this weekend and we were talking about the fact that marketing isn't just for small business or people seeking a new career or job....

Often I write to and about small business owners since that’s where I spend most of my time and focus.  Yet, my readers who are employed have asked for some tips that would help them “market themselves on the job”. Ask and you shall receive….

The 3 signs you need to market yourself more

Most people need to maintain a job, some even two, for themselves and for their families. Sometimes, there are things that you encounter that make you feel incompetent. And that no matter what you do, you feel that you just wouldn’t be good enough for the job/position. So what are the signs that you need to market yourself more on the job?

1. You are continuously given no-brainer tasks. That would be understandable if you’ve been working at an entry-level position without any previous work experience for only a few months. However, if you think that you have been with the company for quite some time now and you still remain unchallenged with the workload that you’re given, you might want to show your skills and knowledge more to the bosses. It may be that they haven’t notice what you are able to do that’s why they tend to underestimate you.

2. You have not been given any chance at promotions after years of service to the company. Normally, people holding seniority in any company are most likely to be given the chance to be promoted than those who are only beginning their careers in the same firm. But if there are people who entered the company long after you started working there, and are being promoted ahead of you, then you might want to ask your bosses for the reason. To address this issue, you should make yourself more visible than before. You should have the initiative to do something good for the company.

3. Your performance rating was relatively lower than what you were expecting. It is needless to say that performance ratings are subjective. However, if you think that there is a big difference between your ratings and your actual work, you have to think of other ways to improve your craft. It may be that you worked extra hard on the project, but the outcome wasn’t really that good. Or you may have produced something excellent, but you appeared to be very relaxed to your boss. It will be more helpful if you take time to look at their comments and actually change how you work.

Business Coaches and Werewolves

My wife, Laura, passed her project management certification test yesterday. I am very proud of her. Now she can support me in the manner to which I would like to become accustomed. However, to me a project management certification is a lot like a certification in astrology. There is no factual body of knowledge in the project management world. The certification was put together by a bunch of people selling their opinions on best practices in project management. Their genius was in convincing the federal government that their alleged body of knowledge is essential to managing federal contracts. Of course we have all noticed their fine results.

Here is a hint for federal workers on completing projects in less time. Try working on Mondays and Fridays. Forty percent more time spent on a job can make an amazing difference in project completion time. I am always amazed at the schedules of federal workers. At some agencies, if you work six hours per day, as opposed to the normal four hours per day, you get every other Monday off.

Last week I got a notice of bankruptcy in the mail. A former client, who was featured in a previous blog about business consultants, had filed for chapter seven bankruptcy. If you aren't familiar with the federal bankruptcy code, and I sincerely hope you are not, there are two main types of business bankruptcies, chapter seven and chapter eleven. Companies file for a chapter eleven bankruptcy when they hope to survive. They attempt to negotiate a plan of reorganization with creditors.

A chapter seven bankruptcy results in the complete liquidation of a business. The business goes away. The company's assets are sold and the proceeds are distributed to creditors. To paraphrase Billy Crystal's character in “The Princess Bride”, all you can do in a chapter seven bankruptcy is go through their pants pockets and look for loose change. If you don't get that reference, you obviously don't have kids.

My former client was a construction contractor, who had fallen under the influence of a business consultant the way women fell under the influence of Dracula, at least in the movie. I would like to feel sorry for the owner, but he bought the consultant's bullshit eventually putting the douche bag and his wife on payroll. If you want more details, please read my June 2011 blog entry on “Hire a Consultant – Business Vampires.”

The bankruptcy notice reminded me just how much I dislike business consultants / coaches. What do good business coaches and werewolves have in common? Neither actually exists. The reason why there are no good business coaches centers on the qualifications of the average business coach. Business coaches tend to come from one of two backgrounds. Either they come from large businesses and mistakenly believe their experiences are relevant to small businesses. Or, they are small business failures. Why do I say they are small business failures? Because all the good small business owners I know are actually running businesses. There is more money in successfully running a business than coaching others. The people who wash out as business owners become consultants and coaches.

Here's an example from my career past that shows how large company experience is generally irrelevant to small business. My last job before starting the CPA firm with Paul was as controller for a $15 million company that sold and installed telephone systems. My boss, a senior vice president, had been a high ranking executive with Dyncorp before joining our company.

When I started at the company, it was located in some very expensive office space in Tysons Corner. My boss, Jack, rightly sought to move the administrative and operations staff to less expensive space. If Jack had still been working for Dyncorp and looking for office space, he would have assigned a group of three of four people to identify suitable alternatives. They would have done the grunt work, examining properties and doing mundane tasks like counting parking spaces. They would have come back to Jack with three or four alternatives, all likely good choices.

At our company, Jack had no staff to do the property screening. He did it all himself. In short order, he found inexpensive warehouse space in Vienna that could house the fifty or so employees who would be moved to the new space. There was one problem, however, the space for which Jack signed a multi-year lease had ten parking spaces. Our new space had ten parking spaces for fifty people – not to mention the company's fleet of field vehicles. Jack made a bad decision, because his previous big company experience wasn't relevant for a small company.

Recently, I talked to a business broker who is a buddy of mine. He attended a meeting of a group that was intended to be a business to business networking group for business owners. One third of the attendees were business coaches scouting out suckers for clients.

I am in the process of searching for an agent to represent me in my attempt to get my book published. In case you haven't noticed, this blog is my way of testing material for the book. In my agent search, I contacted a woman who held herself out as an expert in business as well as being a literary agent. What were her qualifications? She had owned five businesses previously. She supposed this was fine qualification. I looked at it as a lack of expertise. If she had been successful at one of the previous businesses, she would either still be running the business or be a member of the idle rich from selling it. My experience with literary agents tells me that it isn't a business you get into to pass the time once you get rich. It sounds like a lot of work.

I meet a lot of business coaches with this woman's qualifications. They believe failing at business makes one a fine consultant. Here's how I see this. If you are going to take golf lessons, would you rather the lessons come from Tiger Woods or me? If you need to know how to hit into water hazards, I'm your guy. Otherwise, Tiger is a better bet. You can also get bonus lessons on womanizing. I'm not so good at that either. It hurts my fragile male ego to write that.

Thanks for reading. For real business and tax advice, please visit our S&K web site at www.skcpas.com.

The boring-business guide to using Pinterest to drive traffic

If your business is as boring as watching paint dry on a painting depicting grass growing in a drought, then you need to read this article

Is your business as boring as paint drying?

I'm still not surprised that a business owner isn't yet familiar with Pinterest.  What is Pinterest?  It's the #3 social network in the world, that's what it is!  It's the underdog.  It's the Cinderella story.  It's the bronze medal winner at the Olympics.  It's the (something else that I can't think of right now).  Anyway, the thing that makes it different from the Facebook and Google+'s of the world is that Pinterest is a visual social network.  It is based completely off of images instead of just text-based posts.  So why should you read the rest of this article?  It's all about showing you how to get more customers.  Can Pinterest help you do that?  Well, that depends on whether or not your business is exciting and visual-based or boring and not visual-based.  If your business is not visual based, we'll show you how to use Pinterest anyway.

What is meant by a visual business?  
Well, are you a home builder, hairstylist, architect, photographer, wedding planner, or restaurateur?  If so, you have a visual business meaning you can use images from your business to promote your business.  However, if you are an accountant, software programmer, actuarial, ice maker, keypunch operator, lawyer, or cement manufacturer then you're business is not so visual (yawn).  However, that doesn't mean that you can't use Pinterest.  In fact, you can use it to a high degree. And don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking those businesses.  In fact, I've had to use them all in the past.  Well, except the actuarial.  No one needs one of those....

An example of a visual-based business using Pinterest 

Lets say you are a homebuilder or a contractor who does remodeling projects.  Since you create something, hopefully something beautiful, you can use images of your projects to showcase your business.  People will see your "board" and share your images with others.  The images on your board will also serve to link back to your website thus driving traffic to your site and elevating you as an expert in your field.  Here's what to do- create one Pinterest board that showcases the great work you've done.  Show the broken-down shacks, I mean the beautiful homes you've built, the remodeled kitchens you've created, the dusty attics you've transformed into beautiful master baths, and the mud pits you've turned into stunning outdoor patios.

Then create another Pinterest board to display great home remodeling ideas. These aren't things that you've done, these are beautiful images that showcase great ideas for homes that inspire people.  Beautiful kitchens, new types of countertops, great looking bamboo-wood floors, and funky bathroom sinks that don't seem to make functional sense. Anyway, these things are meant to inspire people.  To move them. 

How would a non-visual business benefit from Pinterest?

If you are one of those businesses that is as boring as watching paint dry on a painting depicting grass growing in a drought, then Pinterest can still help!  One thing businesses like this can do is to help give potential clients a sense of who you and your employees are.  What types of things do you like to do?  Who are you when you are on vacation? What are you passionate about? The idea here is to communicate a sense of relationship to people that don't yet know you or your business.  

Other ideas to boost your small business
Other ideas would be for you to showcase what social causes motivate you and your staff.  Are you involved in your community?  Do you help out with the annual community fund-raiser in which money is raised to purchase double-espresso machiato latte machines for all the homeless in your area? (And if you do, that's awesome). Use things like this to create a Pinterest board that shows images of these events, or that shows images that relate to the subject matter.  For example, as an email marketing software company (boring), we have a Pinterest board showcasing coffee!  Yes, coffee.  We love coffee, we love to relax a little bit, and we have a quirky attitude.  But, we are also very moved by the Fair Trade program that aims to protect coffee growers. We care that the coffee we buy hasn't contributed to someone else's poverty. Having a board like this shows people a little bit about who we are.  It shows that we are people that care (and we do). Just conveying that sentiment to our potential clients creates a sense of connection between us. Getting the picture now?  

The overall point of using Pinterest is to drive traffic to your website or to get people talking about your brand.  In a future post, I'll talk about the how-to of Pinterest.  How to create a board, what text to include with your pinned images, and how to not get busted for copyright infringement for using someone else's images thereby having to spend this year in prison : ).  

Want to read more ideas?

28 Creative Pinboard Ideas From Real Brands on Pinterest


What Pinterest board do you think conveys a sense of who the company behind it is?  Tell us in the comment section below.

Social is Brand Research and Brand Communication

Boost your personal branding with social media

Social media is definitely a way to pass time now.  In the past, people used to while away their time listening to the radio or watching TV. Now it seems that everything and everyone can be found on the web. And the word “social” has come to mean social networking sites and platforms where people and brands can engage and connect.

For brands, social has a different meaning, however. It’s about reaching out to consumers in the best way possible. It’s about engaging with them and connecting with them. It’s about understanding what consumers want and providing it.

Social media provides brands with two basic benefits: ability to do brand research and brand communication.

Brand Research

If you’re wondering where to start in your word of mouth marketing, then social media is the way to go. And one of the best things you can do within different social media platforms is to conduct brand research.

There are many insights to be gained from social media interactions. By researching your target audience in social media, you can understand their lifestyles, their behavioral patterns, and even what motivates them to buy and purchase products and services. You can gain a better picture of your target audience and how they engage and connect with brands online. This can really help you discover and learn the best way to connect with them and hopefully get sales in return.

Here are some ideas on conducting social brand research:

       • Monitor keyword “buzz” in the social world and see what products and services related to your brand are trending

       • Test out campaigns to see which ones are effective and which ones aren’t

       • Create polls and surveys for your target audience

       • Monitor your customers and see what compels them to interact and engage with a brand

       • Get on Google Alerts and Analytics, use Twitter search, check Facebook insights, and monitor opt in rates to see which social marketing campaigns are getting the most reactions and which ones are getting left in the dust

Social media can definitely help you learn more about your consumers and what they’re really after. By conducting brand research in different social media platforms, you can effectively create a social marketing campaign that will reach your audience and make them respond.

Brand Communication

Another thing that social media allows you to do is brand communication. In the past, advertising and marketing campaigns were all about the one-way broadcasting of their message (think TV and radio) in the hopes of convincing people to try their products or services. Social media has changed all of that by giving consumers a voice. Now the conversation is a two-way street, where consumers can react to what brands say and claim, and brands can respond. Social media has basically given the power to the consumers.

As a small business brand, you can’t expect to just blare out your message and hope that people will docilely agree and accept it willingly. Consumers are a lot smarter nowadays – they ask questions, they want answers, and they aren’t passively absorbing what you say anymore. They react, they respond, they complain, and they make suggestions. If you don’t satisfy them, you can be sure that you will hear about it in social media.

Through social media, brands can communicate with their audience effectively. They can engage with them through different types of content, respond to their questions, and offer customer support if there are problems that need to be addressed. Many people prefer interacting on a brand’s social media page, as this gets a lot faster response than a ticket submitted through the brand’s website. After all, in social media, it’s not just the two of you talking – the whole world can view your conversation.

Brand research and communication in social media

Social media has truly innovated the way people interact with brands. It’s not enough to provide a solution to a problem anymore. With the competition among brands today, you really have to offer your consumers something more valuable than that in order to be successful.

Utilize social media in brand research and communication so you’re able to understand what your audience wants and can communicate with them effectively. Don’t just be the brand who blends in with all the others. Make yourself stand out by really offering what the consumers want.

So always remember to do your research and regularly engage with your audience so that your brand isn’t far from their minds. Social media is here to stay, so make sure you utilize it wisely.

Author:

Maria Elena Duron, is managing editor of the Personal Branding Blog, CEO (chief engagement officer) of buzz2bucks.com – a word of mouth marketing firm.   She helps create conversation, connection, credibility, community and commerce around your brand.   Maria Duron is co-founder and moderator of #brandchat - a weekly Twitter chat focused on every aspect of branding that is recognized by Mashable as one the 15 Essential Twitter Chats for Social Media Marketers.

SCORE Volunteers Make Dreams Come True

Q: I’m at the age of retirement and have an opportunity to sell my business.  Although I’d like to slow down, I’m not ready to stop working entirely. Any advice?

A: Why not spend some of your time helping promising entrepreneurs start or run their own small businesses?  You could share your business expertise, give back to your community, gain satisfaction from seeing others succeed and connect with like-minded people by volunteering with SCORE.  Each year, SCORE counselors touch thousands of lives, generously sharing their knowledge and experience so that entrepreneurs can realize their dreams of business success.

Nationwide 13,000 men and women in 364 SCORE chapters donate their time and talent to assist America's small businesses.  At SCORE Houston, volunteers provide confidential one-to-one and team business counseling and low-cost training workshops and seminars. In addition, many counselors are virtual volunteers, providing email counseling directly from their homes or offices. SCORE members can not get paid for the services they provide to our small business clients.

Whether you have owned your own small business, come from a large company, are retired, are a college student, or just have a sincere commitment for helping small businesses or volunteering, there is a place for you at SCORE.

Whatever their background, SCORE counselors share a belief that small business owners are more likely to succeed if they have a business mentor to guide them.  We currently are seeking new members of diverse backgrounds and experiences to complement our current team of over 70 volunteers in the Houston area.

Our members choose from a variety of ways to contribute to our mission. Most of our counselors are focused primarily on helping aspiring entrepreneurs develop their business plans and launch their first business.  Many work with clients to find the financing needed to start or expand a small business.  Others are involved in organizing client educational sessions, carrying out our chapter outreach programs, or important administrative functions.

New members go through an orientation program to get familiar with SCORE and comfortable with the counseling process.  All members stay up-to-date by attending regular monthly training sessions.

In Houston, we share offices and work closely with the Small Business Administration.  We have several satellite locations throughout the city.  Check out our web site, www.scorehouston.org.

If you have any questions or would like to volunteer, please e-mail us at scorehouston@gmail.com, or, call our office at 713-773-6565 and request a call from our membership coordinator. 

Gaming and Couponing Your Brand

Gamification as part of your social marketing strategy

Companies and small businesses today have a lot of options when it comes to marketing and promoting their brand. It’s not just about going door to door, doing TV and radio advertising campaigns, or distributing fliers at your local grocery store. Now you have various other options such as creating a website, starting a blog, making a page in different social networking sites, and so on. It’s about visibility and the Internet is currently the place where most people spend a lot of their time.

There are so many ways you can promote your brand on the web. There’s Facebook and Twitter, and the fast growing site-  Pinterest. There’s LinkedIn, there’s Google+, and don’t forget SEO to ensure that you dominate the search engines. You can create websites, blogs, and join popular article sites such as EzineArticles. You can utilize well-placed online ads that will (hopefully) get clicked on. And you can use popular tools such as gaming and couponing in order to entice customers to buy from you or obtain the services you’re offering.

Games existed offline first

Though online gaming may sound a bit childish to you, many people continue to enjoy online games, even middle aged adults. Games are a great way to kick back, relax, and just let yourself forget about everything even for a little while. It’s also an excellent way to have fun, to challenge yourself, to compete against others, and even to bond with people. Games and contests are a great way to promote your brand. After all, who wouldn’t want to win in a contest?

Couponing – can be good and bad

Couponing has also become extremely popular among the public today. With the advent of Groupon and FourSquare, everyone now enjoys looking for the best deals when it comes to brands they love as well as the brands they want to try out. It’s a great way to gain exposure for your brand, as many people simply can’t resist a good deal. There’s just something irresistible about getting 50% off a new restaurant, or 30% off a nice dress.

As a small business owner, if you’re looking into using gaming and couponing in marketing your brand, then you should definitely consider using Fanplayr. Fanplayr.com gives you the ability to add coupons and offer gamification in your social marketing mix. It offers an excellent and innovative way to attract and engage your customers.

FanPlayr – A resource for you

Social marketing has quickly become the most popular way of promoting your brand. Everything has become “social” these days, as more and more people use social networking sites to with their friends, play games, use apps, connect with their favorite brands, and so on.

Fanplayr provides you the ability to engage with your audience through gamification and couponing across different platforms. And the best part is, you don’t have to be a programmer or developer to start creating your own gaming and couponing campaign. In less than 15 minutes, you can set up a coupon game that you could place on your website, include in your newsletter, share on Facebook, and offer on mobile. It’s that simple.

Fanplayr also recently announced that it has entered into partnership with Ifeelgoods so it can bring Facebook credits to “smart and targeted” social offers and coupons. This empowers Magenta merchants all over the world by being able to benefit from low-cost Facebook credits in order to get better returns on their offers and coupons.

Feeling rewarded and engaged

Your brand promotion and messaging can become boring if you don’t mix it up, which is why using gaming and couponing can definitely capture your customer’s attention. Both small businesses and large companies can utilize this feature in order to engage and connect with consumers better. Customers feel rewarded when they play the game and then win the prize of a coupon that they can redeem when they like.

When it comes to social marketing, it’s really about finding the best ways to enhance your brand and engage with your consumers. Since there are so many other brands that offer the same or similar products or services, it’s vital for you to stand out and differentiate yourself by offering fun and unique things to your customers.

Fanplayr in partnership with Ifeelgoods definitely offers some interesting options for small business owners who want to offer their customers something new. Don’t limit yourself to traditional marketing campaigns that may end up boring your customers. Add new and interesting offers, such as gaming and couponing to connect with them further.

Author:

Maria Elena Duron, is managing editor of the Personal Branding Blog, CEO (chief engagement officer) of buzz2bucks.com – a word of mouth marketing firm. She helps create conversation, connection, credibility, community and commerce around your brand. Maria Duron is co-founder  and moderator of #brandchat - a weekly Twitter chat focused on every aspect of branding that is recognized by Mashable as one the 15 Essential Twitter Chats for Social Media Marketers.

Your Culture and Consumers

Personal branding for professionals and small business owners

Personal branding has become essential for both professionals and small business owners today. It’s not just about providing the right service or selling the right products anymore. Because there’s so much competition out there, you really need to stand out, and one of the best ways to do this is through personal branding.

Developing your brand isn't something that can be done overnight. It takes thinking and planning and conceptualizing and most of all discovering what your personal brand is.  If there’s one thing that’s very important in the making of your brand, it’s your brand culture.

Interaction counts

Even if you’re just a small business brand, the culture within your company is important to your branding. Your company's culture is how you and the people you work with adapt and work together towards a common goal. It’s how you work together, interact with each other, communicate with customers, connect with them, and how you go about doing the daily tasks of your small business brand.

Your personal or small business brand isn’t just a brand anymore. It’s a culture, a lifestyle. The overall feel of your brand affects how consumers view you, and the consumers are affected by the culture of your brand. Even the people you work with are affected, and how they view your brand also affects the way they talk about it with other people.

Times have changed, and you can’t just be the best in your industry anymore. Maybe your coffee shop has the best coffee in town, but if your customers hate the ambiance in your place, then no one’s going to visit anymore. Maybe you’re the best doctor in your area, but if people hate your secretary's poor customer service, then no one’s going to be lining up at your door anymore.

Getting or losing customers is all about the culture in your small business brand and how it aligns with the interests of your consumers. You want your culture to be something that affects both the people you work with and the people who obtain your services or buy from you. It should be based on your values, and the best service that you want to provide to your clients and customers.

How exactly do you create a strong culture in your small business brand?

     1. Understanding yourself

As a personal brand, it’s important that you understand yourself first. What do you stand for? What are your values? How do you envision your brand?

Understanding yourself is the first step to creating a strong brand culture. By knowing what you stand for, as well as the things you can and cannot compromise with, you can really determine how you want to run your small business, and ensure that what you envision it to be can turn into reality.

     2. Understand the people you work with

Another important factor in creating a strong brand culture is understanding what motivates the people you work with. People don’t want to just do their jobs and exhale a sigh of relief when it’s time to go home. People want to love their jobs, love the people they work with, love their boss. Honestly, who would want to work in a place when you always feel as if you’re dragging your feet every morning when it’s time to go?

Communication is very important. Make an effort to know what the people around you think, and take their views into consideration. If you really want a successful brand, then it’s important that the people you work with love the brand as much as you do. So don’t ignore the people under you. Make sure that their voices are heard.

     3. Understand your customers

Who is your target audience? What do they want? What makes them tick? It’s all about getting into their minds and understanding what they truly want from your brand. Yes, you need to provide excellent products and services. But you should also give them excellent customer service as well as an excellent experience of your brand. Give them an experience that’s unique to your small business brand, something that no other brand can give them. This is how a culture is created.

Today, it’s not just about providing a product or service that the customer needs. It’s also about ensuring that you give your employees as well as your customers the best experience of your brand as possible so that they can talk about your brand in a positive light and share their experience with others.

Author:
Maria Elena Duron, is managing editor of the Personal Branding Blog, CEO (chief engagement officer) of buzz2bucks.com – a word of mouth marketing firm.   She helps create conversation, connection, credibility, community and commerce around your brand.   Maria Duron is co-founder  and moderator of #brandchat - a weekly Twitter chat focused on every aspect of branding that is recognized by Mashable as one the 15 Essential Twitter Chats for Social Media Marketers.

Your Personal Brand is Always On

Personal branding even while on vacation

Personal branding has become essential in our changing world. It’s because the competition today is incredibly fierce – you really have to ensure that you stand out from the crowd and that you are invaluable in the current market. You can’t let your knowledge and skills get stagnant, or else you’ll be left behind, forgotten and obsolete.

Wherever you are – whether you’re at work, on a meeting, eating out with friends, even on vacation – remember that your personal brand is always on. Everything you do says something about you, Don't forget that you’re always being assessed and evaluated by the people around you.

We all need some time off, some time for ourselves. We get exhausted from all our work and we get burned out. When this happens we really need some time to relax and build ourselves up again. This is why many people enjoy taking time off to have some vacation – it’s a way to clear our minds from all the problems and troubles at work, and to spend time with our family and friends.

Some people think that going on vacation is something private and does not affect our personal branding, but they are wrong. even what we do on our vacation tells something about us.

Vacations enhance personal brands

Though many may doubt this, our vacations actually enhance our personal brands at work. What you do during vacation says a lot about you, and affects the perceptions of your boss, colleagues, clients and customers.

People form opinions about you based on what you say and what you do. If you go on a family trip with your loved ones, people may see you as a family person – nice and dependable. Or if you like exploring new places and doing new things such as mountain climbing during vacation, people may view you as someone who’s adventurous and willing to take risks. Or maybe you enjoy giving back, helping out at charities and shelters during vacation – people will see you as an altruistic person, someone who really wants to give back to the world.

Truly, where you go and what you do during vacation offers an insight into who you really are. It is able to enhance your personal brand, so people don’t see you as just a one-dimensional person who only concentrates on work, work and more work. You’re now a multifaceted person with different layers, interesting and unique.

Vacations help your personal brand stand out

Your vacations also help you stand out in the sea of competitors, colleagues and similar professionals. It helps people remember and recall you – you’re not just another random working colleague or employee who works well but never stands out.

Typically, the question that people will typically ask you before you go is, “Where are you going on vacation?” Then when you return they will ask you, “How was your vacation?” How you answer really helps people remember you.

Of course, if you’re the type who goes to the same place every time you go on vacation, or simply stays at home and wiles away the time watching TV, then that isn’t going to help you stand out. It may even be detrimental to your brand since people may view you as someone who resists change, and who’ll probably remain in the same position until retirement. Your vacations can make you stand out not only in a good way, but also in a bad way.

Social marketing during vacation

As a personal brand, you can actually continue to update your followers and audience even when you’re on vacation by using social media. Wherever you are, you can just log onto your account, post a quick picture or status update in order to update everyone. Staying in touch with your audience has never been so easy.

Of course, some people would consider that social marketing during vacation is a bit too much work. After all, how can you enjoy the moment when you’re busy updating your Twitter, Facebook page or blog? But for others, keeping in touch regularly with their audience is essential. For them, it’s critical that they express their life through social media, updating regularly even when on vacation.

Personal branding even on vacation

The important thing to remember is that your personal brand never goes on vacation. Even when you’re relaxing and enjoying yourself in the Caribbean Islands, remember that your personal brand is always on. Balance in life is important, so make sure that you show your boss, colleagues, clients, customers and audience that your life is balanced – you enjoy your work as well as your vacation, and consider taking advantage of your vacations to enhance your personal brand.

How Amex Canada targets small business

I found an odd story at NationalPost.com on Amex Canada's plans for marketing to small business. I don't know why this story was commissioned or who would be interested in it – other than competing organizations interested in understanding how to sell to the same market.

Since that pretty much defines the readers of this blog, let’s find out what we can learn from this story.

Q: Why is Amex’s executive in charge of small business globally based in Canada?

A: Vice-president of international small business services Rob McClean says: Canada was selected as a testing ground for our small business growth strategy, really leveraging our investments in Canada to chart our blueprint for growth across the globe. There’s a strong entrepreneurial appetite that exists in Canada that makes it a real springboard to lead.

Q: What opportunities does Amex see in this market?

A: There’s plenty of evidence that suggests to us there is a real growth opportunity here and there’s a significant need for a company like American Express to tailor products to meet those growing needs. And when you look at the entrepreneurial spirit that exists in Canada, they’re focused on innovation and growth and are willing to take risks, and also very optimistic.

Q: What sets Canadian entrepreneurs apart?

A: In Canada, entrepreneurs are looking for advice, that additional component of servicing, and also the most attractive rewards they can find. For example they’ll leverage gift cards as incentives for employees, one way their spending translates to rewards which transforms into incentives they can reinvest in their business.

Q: What has Amex learned about Canadian entrepreneurs?

A: Small business owners are looking for personalized service, personalized account management, professionals that understand their unique needs, improved working capital and cash flow for their business, and we’ve developed products that allow them to do that.

Q: In the U.S., Amex has a very strong online business network, Amrican Express OPEN Forum. The Post didn't ask about plans to expand that in Canada, but they did ask about Amex Canada’s “networking initiative.”

A: We are constantly evolving and looking at various partnerships and rewards. At this point, I can’t give you specifics on what we have coming down the hopper. But we are starting to leverage social media as a tool. We’ve got a Facebook site we’re focused on growing, we link small business owners from time to time through special events or speaking engagements. And they’ll ask us for information too, for instance, how to leverage social media, what are the best practices for expense management, maximizing rewards and reinvesting rewards in the business. We’re looking to create those forums and platforms to disseminate information.

Q: Any industry-specific niche markets Amex is focusing on?

A: There’s a significant number of dentists in Canada who have specific needs for their practices, such as purchasing products and equipment from labs, and we have forged relationships with a number of dental suppliers and associations.

Want more? You can read the full story here.

Do You Need to Change Your Reputation?

Your online reputation can harm your personal branding strategy

If there’s one thing that personal brands want to protect, it’s their reputation both online and off. You can’t expect to land jobs or get hired if your reputation is mostly negative, especially in the online world. Google now remembers every page where your name has been mentioned, and any site with a negative review about your products or services can remain there forever.

The nature of the search engines allow people to see that site with a negative post about you over and over. Unless, of course, you do something about it. If you aren’t sure where to start on getting back your online reputation, then you should try out Reputation Changer.

Reputation Changer knows how essential for personal brands their reputation is. Whether you’re a politician, a doctor, an athlete, or a marketer, it’s important that you maintain a reputation that’s good and positive. Otherwise, who will want to hire you? If you’re a doctor, for example, who recently had a series of complaints and bad reviews about your medical services, do you think patients will continue lining up at your door?

A good online reputation is essential to ensuring that you continue to have customers and clients interested in obtaining your services and buying your products. Make sure that you protect your reputation, because if you don’t do anything about it, it may even get worse. The bad reviews, news, and feedback will continue to populate the top search engine results, and more and more people will read it, making the decision to turn away from your personal brand and to look to someone else to obtain the same products or services.

Sometimes there are valid reasons for your bad feedback. But many times, these complaints and poor reviews can be the cause of the envy of your competitors or a person out to get you. Do you want to risk having your reputation ruined simply because of someone’s unreasonable vendetta?

Also, the negative feedback could be about another person who shares your name – and now your personal brand is suffering even if you haven’t done anything wrong. People who Google your name read these poor reviews, and they don’t really look into it further to discover that it really isn’t about you. So what can you do?

If you need to change your personal brand’s reputation, then Reputation Changer can help you. What exactly can Reputation Changer do for you?

Clear your name in the search engines

A single negative review or feedback can ruin the wonderful reputation you’ve spent years building. Honestly, it always seems that bad news gets spread faster than good news, so in many cases, a negative review about your brand spreads like a virus while the good reviews just aren’t talked about as much.

Reputation Changer can help you clear the search engine results of any complaint or negative listing that’s posted about your personal brand. The negatives will be buried under websites, media reviews, high PR article sites, and other assets that will show you in a positive light.

Most people don’t go past page one of the search engine results, so once the negative reviews have been pushed back, they you can consider them as dead and buried. When people search for your name, all they will see are the sites that Reputation Changer has created that show you in the best light possible.

Monitor and protect your personal brand

As the owner of your personal brand, you want to protect it at all costs. You want to know right away if someone posts a bad or negative review about you so that you can address the problem immediately.

Reputation Changer can help you by monitoring keywords related to your personal brand in order to immediately inform you if there are mentions or comments about you. Quickly addressing the problem can help contain it, so that it doesn’t spread. If you remain ignorant of the bad reviews, then they can spread like wildfire over the Internet, and it’s a lot more difficult to control.

Manage your online reputation

In today’s world, a good online reputation has become essential for brands, both personal and business ones. It can mean the difference between getting hired, getting fired, getting customers, and getting clients. So make sure that your search engine results are positive and clean. Don’t let an unreasonable complaint or a bad review ruin your personal brand. If you can’t manage your reputation alone, there’s always Reputation Changer to turn to.

The Eyes Have It

LinkedIn to help establish your personal brand

If there’s one social networking site that’s essential for professionals, it’s LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world’s largest and most popular professional network, where people get to interact, connect, engage, obtain new information, find leads, hire and be hired, and more. If you’re a job seeker or a professional who isn’t on LinkedIn, then you really should consider signing up for an account now!

Having a LinkedIn profile can definitely help you land more jobs and get more clients and customers. It’s practically like having an online resume that the whole world can view – it definitely helps spread the word about your personal brand. Google even likes LinkedIn, and tends to rank it high in its search engine. With clients and hiring managers Googling you today before they hire you,  having a professional LinkedIn profile coming up in search can definitely be an advantage.

Once you’ve signed up on LinkedIn, it’s essential that you complete your profile. And one of the things you need to do in order to complete your profile is to upload a photo.

There continues to be a lot of debate whether to upload a photo or not on LinkedIn, but for many people involved in the hiring business, a professional looking photo is a must, if you want to be hired.

TheLadders recently conducted a study where they examined the eye movements of 30 professional recruiters over a 10-week period. They used an eye tracking heat map that showed the length of time that a recruiter focused on a part of your LinkedIn profile. In the study, it was discovered that recruiters spent 19% of their time looking at your profile. After devoting significant time to the profile, they then checked your current job position and your education, but very little time was spent on reading your specialties, skills, and past work experiences.

So what does this mean for you as a personal brand? Since recruiters focus a lot on your picture, it’s essential that you put up a professional looking photo on your LinkedIn profile, something that really helps you brand yourself and convince people to hire you or obtain your services.

Most people are visual creatures. When they look at a page, most people’s eyes tend to focus on the picture first before they move on to the text. Knowing this, it’s important that your LinkedIn photo shows you off to your best advantage.

You may think that putting a logo on your profile can help you with your personal branding campaign. Even though this might not be bad, most people would still prefer to interact with a real person rather than just a logo.

Having a blank profile photo is even worse than a less than best-quality photo. You may think that leaving the photo spot blank will help you to not get discriminated based on your looks, but most people really want to see what you look like before they even consider hiring you. If you have a blank profile, they may just skip looking it over and move on to the next one. They may also wonder what you’re trying to hide… Your profile may even appear suspicious to some/ After all, why is it hiding behind a blank image?

If you think about it, images are powerful when it comes to personal brand recognition. Consistently using the same image for different profiles really helps you brand and position yourself as an expert in your field.

Did you know that there are fake profiles in LinkedIn? Since it’s so easy to just sign up and create an account anyone could make an account in your name, and who would know better if it’s really you or not? This is why having a photo up can help show people that you are real. This gives your social media credibility. It really helps when it comes to the social marketing of your personal brand.

To summarize, remember that when it comes to your personal branding campaign, LinkedIn is one powerful tool. It helps show you to your best advantage, and it has Google juice so it ranks high in the search engines.

Make sure that you put up a professional looking photo that represents you well. People are highly visual – the recent study showed that people really tend to focus longer on a photo than the text that accompanies it. And having a photo really helps people recognize and remember your brand more.

Because it is so important that people recognize your personal brand on LinkedIn, take the steps that are required to keep others from thinking of you as just a random professional looking for work. Use your LinkedIn photo to show off the best you possible.

The Impact of Personal Branding Using Pixability

Professional videos as part of your social media marketing strategy

With the internet saturated with so many individuals and businesses trying to vie for attention and recognition, it is relevant for you to properly position yourself in terms of personal branding so that users can distinguish you from the others. There are many avenues individuals can use to brand themselves but one of the best mediums for personal branding which is currently not being properly utilized is videos. Unlike other means of branding, videos give you the chance to express yourself fully and allow people to see all your qualities. With videos, people get to experience you in picture, sound, text, and graphics. If you want your video to have a serious impact on your personal career, then you may want to make use of professional video-making services like Pixability. So what is Pixability and why should you use it?

Pixability is a company dedicated to helping businesses and individuals meet their branding goals with the use of videos. They help you organize your video presentations from the formulation of ideas to production and promotions. This is made possible by the company's collection of professionals and top level players such as videographers, internet specialists, film editors, web developers, and motion graphic artists with many years of experience in online video marketing. These highly skilled experts combine their expertise to ensure that your personal branding project is successful, effective and profitable.

For excellent personal branding and promotion, Pixability offers three unique products that are designed to help you market yourself effectively to your clients and the rest of the world. One of their products is the Caffeine package which can help you market and manage online portfolios and assets. The Caffeine package is also designed to manage full video analytics on websites and search engines, and provide dynamism to your video presentation. You'll also get video SEO tagging and descriptions, all this in addition to competitive analytics, search validation, and social media integration.

The Espresso package is the magic wand that is designed to help fix under-performing online videos. In addition to all the features in Caffeine, it also provides YouTube channel engineering that ensures channel setup, management, rebranding, and clean up. It also gives access to 1-year video marketing software, as well as access to video search maps and paid search campaigns.

The highest option for personal branding at Pixability comes in the form of the Mocha package. This package provides you with 1 personal overview video and 20 videos by experts within your very industry, making a total of 21 videos. The Mocha package is also all encompassing; providing scriptwriting, coaching, videographers, sound and light, voiceovers and editing for your personal branding video production. Mocha also provides studio-grade motion graphics and animation, as well as general video optimization, promotion, and social network integration.

Making a personal video on your own and putting it on social networking sites is probably not going to get you noticed by the people who require your skills and expertise most; it takes intricate work and planning such as the ones provided by professional services like Pixability to get noticed. Pixability will listen to your story and help you develop a video marketing strategy based on your budget. They provide a free trial, a learning center and have excellent customer service.

Imagine your small business if you had a blog that didn't suck - 8 tips to avoid oblivion

Elaine needs your help

You own a small business, and business is down, revenue is down, profit is down, cash bribes under the table are down..... And what's that I hear you saying?,  "Oh, it's the economy, that's the problem".  Yeah, yeah. Cry me a river. Listen, if  your business is off, then you need to write a blog.  And not a blog like your current blog, but a serious blog that actually elevates you into the position of being looked at as an expert in your field. A person that people turn to when they have questions. A person willing to help by providing expert advice in your field. And no one is more adept at providing that type of advice than you. This isn't something you just hire out for someone else to write. YOU write it. Otherwise it will come off as cold, off-point, and impersonal.

Now, picture yourself a year from today with this great blog that you've written. Lots of insightful, witty, advice-giving, smart blog articles. And instead of empty tables at your restaurant, or more employees than customers in your retail store, or less traffic to your e-commerce site than the Queen has to her Diamond Jubilee website (actually, her website is probably slammed, bad example), or less good looks than that jerk who stole your girlfriend in high school just because he had an awesome Nissan 240-Z and you had a stupid '78 Pinto.....  
Anyway, picture your business with a blog. What looks different just because you have a blog of awesome-ocity?  People are now talking about your business whereas previous to your blog, no one even knew about your business. Why are they talking about it? Because one of your potential customers read a blog article of yours and told one of their friends about it. Since it was really helpful to her, she really liked it and posted it on her Twitter feed believing it could help other people in her situation too. It was seen by 81 out of the 426 twits who follow her on Twitter. And one of them was that jerk that stole your girlfriend in high school.  BUT, now he writes articles for the Decatur Dispatch, that cute little neighborhood pub that distributes around 8,000 free copies per month (about 524 of which are actually picked up and read), so you forgive him (and his now rusted out 240-Z) because he wrote a short little bio of your business and actually called to get a quote from you for the article. That's social media man. That is what I'm talking about.  Your blog, if good enough, is the cornerstone of you finding your way to many many more customers than you have now. Don't revisit this concept of writing a blog a year from now, having done nothing. Read the rest of this article to help you get going, and don't whine about it.

If you need to build your business you need to go at this with all cylinders firing. I'm not telling you to stop the adds you are placing on Google, take down that roadside billboard you rented off of highway 41 in Hahira, Georgia, or even stop paying for that Yellow Pages ad. Well, actually, I am going to tell you to stop that one.  Anyway, those are all "outbound" forms of marketing and are valid methods that can and do work.  But you want to also use "inbound" forms of marketing. Inbound is marketing where customers come to you instead of you pushing ads to them. How do you do that? Well, the pillar of a good inbound marketing campaign is an exceptional blog. Let me be clear about this.  If your blog sucks, your inbound marketing efforts will be about as profitable as that investment I made in online grocer Webvan.com, right before it imploded in 2001. When it was all over-with, the only thing I was able to recoup was a couple of over-ripe papayas and a broken down '79 Pinto that was once used as a grocery delivery vehicle.  

Anyway, when you write an incredible blog, people want to read it, people want to share it, and your status is elevated to that of Supreme PooBah (or at least to the level of Grand Under-secretary to the assistant to the Grand PooBah). Writing a great blog just takes some thought.
Here are the things you want to consider when writing a blog that people will want to read:

• What problem do your potential customers have that you can solve?

• Do not sell.  Selling will turn readers off.  They want your expertise.  The selling will take care of itself.

• Write with a single person in mind.  Her name might be Elaine Benes or whatever.  Think of Elaine and what problem she has that you can solve.

• Write the blog in service to your customers

• Write to equip your customers to be successful

• A catchy title is a must

• If you have other content to offer, like an ebook or some other such nonsense, then have a call-to-action in your blog to download the additional content. Other calls to action might include: Follow the business on social media, Subscribe to the blog, or Join your newsletter

• Types of blog articles that go viral:  

• Controversial articles- stay away from politics or the really sensitive stuff, but if you have a specific opinion on how to solve a problem, then state it.

• Motivational articles- tell them your sappy story about triumph over adversity in a down economy when everyone said it couldn't be done, and how your high school guidance counselor said you'd never amount to anything. People love that crap.  

• Instructional articles- Although this has been beaten to death, people simply like articles with titles like "3 Steps to Newsjack your Restaurant that Would Make Gordon Ramsay Jealous"

I realize here that telling you how to write a blog makes me look like someone who thinks they are some kind of expert and all smarty-pants and all.  I'm likely to catch a rash of some sort from having written this.  But, I'm the writer, not you, so go write your own blog.....

Leave comments to tell me what other information you'd like to know about writing a blog.
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