Some New & Good Changes for Small Business Branding
There’s some pretty neat changes happening around here and I’m very excited about this decision. You see I’ve been wanting to pursue a road in life that is helping more people than just myself, and thankfully I’m now able to do this.
This is a bittersweet post.
Small Business Branding (SBB) has been a part of my life and my passion for a while now. I’ve ‘fallen in love’ with this community so making the decision to sell it wasn’t easy.
If you’ve known me for long you probably know that I’ve been a small business owner since back in 1996 when I owned and operated 5 retail stores. I made a huge decision to sell those retail stores so that I could create a life I wanted and so that I would have the freedom to spend more time with my husband and three kids.
I believe that there’s a time and a season for everything in our life. I ran those retail stores and SBB for a season and then it was time to move on. While I’ve made the decision to sell SBB I will still be a regular contributor around there.
This recent decision to sell SBB is going to help me move onto a new venture, one that will bring me closer to my genuine personality, my desire and passion to share my faith and do more for Mercy Ministries.
I’m excited to be able to start using my skills to help my church, my family and ministries. I currently go into a local children’s hospital on a weekly basis to deliver care packages, visit the children and just be there to be a voice of hope for them. I’m looking forward to doing even more and stepping out with boldness, doing things I’ve never done before and helping more people.
This is a new and exciting venture for me and I’m looking forward to being able to be truly genuine and share my faith on a regular basis. I’ve left Small Business Branding in the capable hands of Ken Chandler and I’m sure he won’t disappoint you. He’s got great ideas and I’m looking forward to still contributing.
Feel free to follow my journey into this huge leap of Faith! 
You can see what I’m up to over at www.DestinedUnity.com and like I said before, I fully plan on being a regular contributor still here at Small Business Branding.
Please give Ken a warm welcome, he already has some wonderful ideas in taking this site to another new level and I truly look forward to see what he does in the future.
Create Loyalty & Confidence With Your Website
Customer confidence is imperative for small business owners. The more confidence your customer has in you and your business, the more loyal they become. Confident customers make repeat purchases and repeat visits.
Confident customers also tell others about your website products or services.
They spread the word.
Here’s how to generate customer confidence into your website.
Quality Content
One of the best ways to communicate your strength in your industry and give your customers confidence is to write quality content. Quality content positions you as a credible and trusted source of information.
It won’t come up until your customer is ready to make a purchase however a secure transaction with an SSL certificate is important. It shows customers you value their business and respect their privacy and security.
Testimonials
Customer testimonials are social proof. They tell your visitors that you have followed through on your claims and promises. Post testimonials on your landing page and where appropriate throughout your website.
Certifications and Associations
Any certifications or associations you belong to will also ad credibility to you and your website. They help increase customer confidence when they know you belong to other business organizations. For example, a BBB, Better Business Bureau, certification can be the difference between a purchase and a click away.
Contact Information
Including your name, address, email and phone number helps people feel reassured that you’re not only a real business, they can get a hold of you if they need to. Place the information on your home page, in the footer is fine. And consider including a “contact” button or page to make your information easy to find.
Use your About page to tell people who you are and help your visitors get to know you. As a small business owner, who you are is often your strongest asset. Tell them your story.
How long have you been in this business?
What made you get into it?
Why do you enjoy it?
People like to buy from real people.
What is your experience?
FAQ/Customer Service
Make sure you have an easy to use customer service system including a FAQ page. When people have questions, they tend to trust those who present the answers up front or make it really easy to find the answers.
Policies and procedures. In this day and age transparency is essential. Make sure all of your policies and procedures are 100% communicated and up front. This can be communicated with autoresponders when people sign up for your list or buy your product. However, you can also make sure to communicate on your website itself.
For example, if you have a subscription form, you can have a link in that form to your privacy policy.
Establishing customer confidence on your website is an important strategy.
Take a look at your website from your visitor’s perspective.
Are you doing everything you can to ensure they have confidence and trust in you?
Tishia Lee Discusses Working From Home
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Tishia Lee took the plunge of working from home in 2006 and has never looked back. Tishia is the exact person I go to when I want transcription work done and boy is she fast!
If you’re looking to work from home and start your own small business you will find this interview to be very inspirational as Tishia is a single Mom and not only runs her business but she does it completely from home.
Tishia is able to live the lifestyle she wants and enjoys it.
Here’s More About Tishia:
Tishia is owner of Tishia Saves Time and takes pride in providing excellent customer service. Tishia knows that as a Virtual Assistant it’s about not just working with you as a VA but partnering with you to help you succeed in your business.
She offers several years experience in administrative support, transcription services, as well as other services. She is dedicated to meeting deadlines which she strives to meet ahead of time and pays close attention to detail.
Before starting her VA business in January 2006, Tishia worked as an Optometrist Assistant. While she enjoyed doing what she did, running a home business and working with small business owners to help make their businesses successful is what Tishia felt led to do. With dedication, determination, and perseverance, Tishia has built a successful VA business and continues to grow as time goes on.
To stay up to date and on top of technology changes and trends, Tishia is a member at Mom Masterminds, as well as several other forums and message boards.
Tishia is the proud mom to one child, a boy who is 10. They reside in Southern Michigan.
5 Tips To Magnetize Your Brand
Do you have a magnetic brand — what efforts are you doing to develop a brand that truly draws people to you and your company?
A magnetic brand is a brand that attracts people. Think about the brand’s you’re familiar with and attracted to.
What makes them magnetic?
Chances are they portray a certain image that you like to associate with. As a small business, you can take this theory and run with it to develop a magnetic brand for your business.
Here’s How to Develop a Magnetic Brand
#1 What is your personality?
Most small businesses would do well to brand their business to their personality. For example, if you’re a straight shooter then brand your business that way. If you’re fun loving, then develop a brand around that. And if you’re a serious sort, then use that. Branding your business around your personality makes it much easier to send a consistent and solid brand message. And you’ll be working with people you can easily communicate with and relate to. It’s much easier than trying to build a brand that isn’t you.
#2 Build your brand around your customer’s needs and wants too.
For example, if your business is about cancer insurance and you’re a sarcastic individual, the two many not go hand in hand. Consider the feeling and brand image your customers need to trust you and connect with you.
#3 Embrace colors and images that support your personality and the brand voice your customer’s need and be consistent when presenting them.
Use your logo, colors and graphics consistently throughout your web content, marketing materials and communications. Create a theme and an image you want to portray and stick to it so prospects and customers can begin to recognize you.
#4 Interact.
Get out online and participate in the world wide web. The more your audience sees you the more powerful your brand becomes. Experts say that people need at least three exposures to a brand before they remember it, which means you need to be out interacting online with your prospects and customers to make sure they know you. Use social media to facilitate the process.
This is what makes social media such a powerful tool. Three positive interactions with a prospect create brand recognition and social media opens you and your company up to thousands of potential prospects.
#5 Focus on what your brand does best.
If you try to be all things to all people, you’ll end up being nothing to everyone. Be unique and focus on your USP, Unique Selling Proposition. Differentiate your brand around your strengths and your personality. Determine what your brand stands for, and deliver on your promise.
Building a magnetic brand takes time, focus and consistency. Decide what your message and your brand is going to be. Make sure it fits with your personality and your target audience and cultivate your brand in everything you do. Be active online, participate in social networking and media, communicate your brand in your messages and activities and focus on giving your audience what they need and want.
Ed Roach Chats About Branding
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I invited Ed Roach to be a guest here at the podcast to discuss all things branding. I had some very specific questions that I thought would really help you if with your branding efforts.
We discussed many things and to start I wanted to know what was the ONE thing we needed to remember about branding — plus we talk about branding mistakes people make and you get to listen in when Ed answers my question about what he thinks is the “brand” here at Small Business Branding.
I think it will surprise you to know that branding is all about perception, what people think of YOU and your company.
Questions Asked On The Call:
1) What are the biggest mistakes you see people making with their branding efforts?
2) What is ONE thing we all should remember about branding?
3) What are the key aspects of branding?
4) How would you explain your brand at The Branding Experts? how would you explain my brand at Small Business Branding?
5) Truly what is the importance of a brand?
6) Why do you think people have a hard getting the fact that they need to brand?
7) any last thoughts?
Here is Ed’s Bio:
For 25 years or so I have developed positioning strategies for small businesses that helps to differentiate them. I appreciate working with companies who see the value of going beyond mere slogans and have a desire to sell from compelling positions. Opportunities come to light in every discussion. I consult predominantly with small business and and implement the solutions developed. I’ve had the pleasure of being interviewed in all media regarding branding small business, most recently in “America’s Best” magazine and the “Christian Radio & Music Industry” trade magazine. I am available for speaking engagements and I have authored “The Reluctant Salesperson“, an Introvert’s Guide to Selling. Contact me if you are looking for practical advice on bringing your corporate brand to the next level. You can also reach me at my blog here. I also have international speaking experience including a recent event in Prague, Czech Republic. I am currently working on a branding conference in Mumbai, India for next year.
Virtual Event Help: Case Study Review
I’ve been thinking a lot lately of hosting my very own virtual event so when I saw that Angela Wills had a product on how to do this, I defintitely wanted to check it out.
I love easy to read reports and this was one of those that I read from start to finish. She describes in full detail what she did to host her event, how she got the speakers to participate and promote the event, how she set it up, what tools she used to set up her affiliate program plus more…. and a summary of each step (which makes it nice and easy to refer back to). Nice!
Here’s What It’s About:
How to host your own virtual event and grow your income by building your expert status. Included is a case study of her own event and an action plan for you to print out and check off for your own event.
This report is for you if you are ready to get going with your own virtual event easily without spending loads of time setting up, Angela said she only took 3 weeks to get it done and ready to go.
Just 2 small Drawbacks:
As I was going through the report Angela was sharing basically step by step what she did to host her event.
1. Templates
Templates would have been super cool to have…
I was thinking to myself that it would be handy to have the template emails she sent out to event speakers, emails for her subscribers, and a sales page template.
2. How She Plans to Double of even Triple Her Success
She also mentioned that with this first event under her belt that her plan was to double or triple that success… I would have loved to know WHAT she was doing now to achieve this.
I love the “ordered checklist” Angela included which shows you at a glance exactly what you need to do to create your own virtual event. It’s literally every single step she took to get the event ready.
She then went onto explain what to do for the following:
- Prior to the event
- The day of the event
- Shortly after the event
These points above are all listed as checklists so you can see exactly what to do.
In the end she built great relationships with the speakers, made some cool cash and had a really great info product at the end of it that she could sell.
Personally I enjoyed this report and would love to see if Angela increases the product by adding those handy templates that I could just copy and paste for my own events. If not, it was still worthwhile and made me feel like it was easier than I was thinking.
Ready for your own event? Click here to grab your own copy.
Blog Mastermind Review: Plus 10 Blog Traffic Tips
Here we are at dinner in Vancouver, BC
After finding Yaro Starak on the internet I quickly came to realize that he was providing some pretty awesome materials on his website — then he launched Blog Mastermind.
Yaro Starak put together this program for bloggers to help them take a blog from start to profit, which I joined back in 2007 and knew right away that this would definitely help me. Yaro makes his full income online so why wouldn’t I learn from that?
(You can download Yaro’s Blog Profits Blueprint here for free)
Here is an Outline Of The Program
Lesson 1 – Let’s Get Blogging!
Lesson 2 – Blog Foundations
Lesson 3 – RSS, Social Proof and Plug-ins
Lesson 4 – Finalizing Your Blog Structure
Lesson 5 – Set Up Key Content Pages
Lesson 6 - Content Focus and Structure
Lesson 7 – Authentic Content
Lesson 8 – Personal Branding and Sourcing Content
Lesson 9 – Hiring Bloggers
Lesson 10 – Copywriting For Blogs
Lesson 11 – Marketing Through Conversations
Lesson 12 – Leveraging Content For Traffic Part 1 – Forums
Lesson 13 – Leveraging Content For Traffic Part 2 – Article Marketing & Blog Carnivals
Lesson 14 – Leveraging Content For Traffic Part 3 – Guest Writing
Lesson 15 – Search Engine Optimization For Blogs
Lesson 16 – Impact Marketing
Lesson 17 – Podcasting
Lesson 18 – Publicity
Lesson 19 – The Traffic Secret Every Blogger Knows
Lesson 20 -The Monetization Process
Lesson 21 – Contextual Advertising
Lesson 22 – Affiliate Marketing
Lesson 23 – Direct Advertisers
Lesson 24 – Five Powerful Ways To Make Money With Your Blog
Lesson 25 – Email List Profits
Lesson 26 – Buying and Selling Blogs
Lesson 27 – Blogging As A Business
Sadly right when I decided I wanted to review and apply everything inside the program I was dealing with going back and forth to the hospital on top of running my online business. I did manage to put together a checklist one night at the hospital and did manage to implement things here on my blog but not enough to have me feel that I did everything I could to put this program to the true test.
When I say I didn’t do everything, well I’m pretty picky with myself and probably go overboard on all programs I review but I always want to make sure I applied everything possible. So, I’ve probably done a lot more than most for that reason.
Just One Little Problem
This program is so massive that it can be a little overwhelming — that’s why I will outsource the entire process and focus on the checklist that I created at the same time, I totally plan to update my checklist too.
How I Personally Learned The Program
Inside the program it is very easy to follow – you can listen to the program which is what I did because I got a bonus from Yaro — it was an IRiver that was loaded with every lesson. Plus I absolutely prefer to learn this way. But if you prefer to print out the lessons and read everything that’s easy to do as well.
What I loved too is that Yaro put out a lot of free tutorials, videos & proof so that if you couldn’t afford the membership price tag you could still learn and apply lots to your own blog. One video in particular that I enjoyed was the conversion blogging video.
Yaro talks in the beginning on how internet marketers and bloggers are somewhat separate. He says that he wanted to show bloggers how to use internet marketing to their advantage and work on converting people who come to your blog.
He also stresses the importance of creating a real business and not just a blog – there’s really no point to having tons of traffic either if you are not converting it into income. The best part is that Yaro is teaching from experience and I respect that far more than someone who has just learned the techniques. He actually applied everything himself and could even travel the world (from my memory I think he was on the road for a year or so) while he made money from his blog. I even got to meet him during his travels here to Vancouver, BC Canada.
I personally increased my income at this blog so quickly that there was a serious problem — it was far too fast! I even had to slow down the growth because I was falling into doing things and working on projects that I wasn’t enjoying. I guess you could say it’s a nicer problem to have than being stuck in a 9-5 job or business like I was.
I will continue to work on all aspects of the Blog Mastermind Program but I do plan to outsource 100% of the work, there is just so much to do for it. This will be my second round covering the program but I will be more diligent to grab screen shots and provide a true case study for you.
I would like to leave you with an article written by Yaro so you can start applying the program to your blog even if you don’t purchase it — I challenge you to dedicate yourself completely to all of these top 10 tips. Just get it done and see what kind of results it can bring.
(You can download Yaro’s Blog Profits Blueprint here for free)
Here is Yaro’s Article …
10 Blog Traffic Tips
In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.
Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.
It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.
Top 10 Tips
10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.
9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.
You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.
8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).
7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.
Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.
6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.
This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.
5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.
4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.
To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.
3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!
2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.
How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.
1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.
I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.
This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.
To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:
www.BlogMastermind.com
Don’t forget – You can download Yaro’s Blog Profits Blueprint here for free
