It’s also likely that you might be finding it a longer lead time to closing the sale.

It’s at times like this that if you have a strategy of creating great content - in other words educational marketing - that provides real value for your clients and customers really starts to pay off.

Let’s take for example having as part of your marketing strategy a business blog with frequently published articles covering the subjects that your clients and potential clients want to know about.

If you write compelling content that is relevant to your readers and the search engine robots, then you increase the likelihood that people will find your articles when they search online for the kinds of products or services you offer.

And remember that the person reading your article may also know of friends who would find what you have to offer of relevance to them.

So how can you easily provide the opportunity for people to share the great articles on your blog to their social networking sites and spread the word about you and your company?

You might recall I wrote about one tool recently that you can add to your website or blog that allows people to save PDF’s of your articles and even email them to others.

Another tool that you might want to consider for your business blog or website that is becoming increasingly popular is ShareThis.

ShareThis is available to use across a host of blog platforms including WordPress.org and TypePad.com

You’ll usually see the ShareThis logo at the bottom of an article or blog post.

When you click on it you will see your readers have several options:

• to post the article and share it to their favourite social networking sites such as Digg and Ma.gnolia
• to share it with their friends at their social networks such as Facebook and Twitter
• to email themselves or others a copy.

Of course it’s not just making sure the readers of your articles understand what the ShareThis logo means - it does rely on us as content creators and educational marketers writing content that people want to pass on to their friends or keep as reference material.

So why not consider adding ShareThis to your business blog and implement the really low cost strategy of educational marketing?

I always think that we need to make it as easy as possible for people to access our content from our websites so one of the things I did some time ago on my main blog was to add some plugins so that people could then print a blog article or email articles to others.

However I recently came across a service that enables us to guide people to alternatives to print pages but still makes your content accessible to readers and enables you to virally market your blog to others with a tell a friend functon - and it’s free!

The ECO-SAFE Merit Badge can be added to your website and offers the opportunity to website and blog visitors to:

• send themselves or other an email of the article or page
• send themselves or others a PDF of the article or page
• download a PDF of the article or page.

Why not add the ECO-SAFE Merit Badge to your blog, website or ecommerce site.

Oh I almost forgot to let you know, you can also register for free iTunes music of your choice when you add the ECO-SAFE Merit Badge to you blog or website.

I know many of us turn to the web to find information perhaps about a potential client as we write proposals, about the industry sector a client is involved in so that we come well versed in their business and so we can identify where we can add value, or even checking out a competitor as part of the development of our brand strategy or marketing plan.

A free tool I have recently come across which I think has tremendous opportunities for research is Yahoo Pipes.

Yahoo Pipes provides you with the ability to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web creating a feed with relevant information. you can also publish your Yahoo Pipe so that others can access it or modify it for their own use.

Take a look at this video that shows you how to create your own pipe of research data.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

I use Google Alerts to support my research,and you can read an article here about 10 ways I use Google Alerts in my research.

By keeping up to date with the leading edge thinking in your area from books to research, or even events that you attend, your clients will soon come to realize that you know your area of expertise.

In addition, writing reviews of those books or reports with your perspective is also a valuable resource, and increasingly you can do this online at your website, business blog or even sites such as Amazon.com. This also reinforces your personal brand online and reviews you write will be found in the search engines

A relatively new service is available online called Loudervoice dedicated to reviews.

You can register for a free account at Loudervoice and you can post your reviews directly on the site or from your own business blog, from your mobile phone or from micro blogging sites such as Twitter.

So the next time you read a book or report, attend an event or programme related to your field of expertise, consider consolidating your views, add your perspective and then write up and post the review on the web for the benefit of your own clients and to attract more clients and customers.

One of the ways that we express our personal brand and our company brand is through our writing - whether that be through copy on the web, offline marketing materials or letters that we write.

If we are building our business online, providing a content rich newsletter is a great way to express our expertise and also provides us with the permission to promote our products and services.

However there are some things to watch out for which I was reminded of when I read a newsletter today from a training company in Ireland.

They made two fundamental flaws with their newsletter:

1. the first two sections of their news letter was promoting their new training courses
2. the next two sections of their newsletter had articles but neither of them written by themselves.

So why do I think these are flaws in brining their brand to life?

Well in the case of promoting our services and products a good rule of thumb to follow is that if we provide 80% of great useable content in our newsletters, that enables us to then promote our products and services. this was not the case in this newsletter. I would also recommend that you should lead with the valuable content and leave your promotion to later in the newsletter.

Secondly, if we are meant to be thought leaders in our field, why promote other people by including their articles? By taking the easy way out of creating our newsletters and ezines filling it with content that is in no way connected with our business i.e. we use articles from an article distribution site, we are promoting and building the brand of someone else.

Thirdly, if you are going to use articles from another person, then why not ask your business partners who you work with to provide the article - that way you can grow your business together through collaboration.

Fourthly, when using other peoples articles, make sure that you use articles of people who are experts in their field. In the example I saw this morning, the training company lost all credibility for me as they used articles from people who are not considered as experts in the areas they were writing about - as evidenced by a simple click to their websites.

I am sure the reason that the company took this approach was that they are a small business - in fact they are a sole trader - and they probably ran out of time to write their own newsletter this month.

But remember that finding an hour to create your own relevant and compelling content is worth the investment versus the negative impact of a poorly constructed newsletter over promoting your products, services and other peoples content and expertise will have on your business.

It takes time to nurture and develop your brand, so why waste all your hard work and put your brand in jeopardy all for a lack of time?

Getting clear about your brand is one of the first steps we need to take as we develop and grow our professional services practice. But without a focused marketing plan, we certainly will not be able to realise the benefit of investing in developing our business strategy nor will we build a distinctive brand.

Here are 3 steps you can use to evaluate how brand centric your marketing plan is:

1. Bring your vision to life

As you develop your marketing plan, do you have clarity about the vision and mission for your business? With an inspiring vision that is clear and compelling, you will have a road map against which you can chart your progress in building your brand.

Ensure that your vision for your business is documented and understood by your team members and business partners. Engage them in the part they can play to bring the vision to life so that you connect their roles and accountabilities to the overall direction of the business.

Evaluate your marketing plan against your vision – does your marketing plan support the delivery of your vision? What changes do you need to make to ensure that you are on-track and bringing your vision to life?

2. Build your brand from the inside out and the outside in

Your brand is not a logo, a tag line, your marketing materials or the colour or style of font that you use. Nor is it your advertising or marketing communications plan.

Yes these are ways to express your brand, however strong brands not only embrace how you the brand owner wants to position your brand; they also embrace what your customers, consumers and potential clients think and feel about doing business with you.

As you consider your marketing plan, consider if the actions you are proposing will support or detract from your brand essence. Does your marketing plan help you build your brand in the hearts and minds of your ideal clients? Or will it leave them bemused with the actions you are taking rather than building an aligned community around your brand?

3. Chart your success

We all know the power of goals and charting our progress towards them. So why is it that we find it a challenge to determine our goals for our business?

Very often we can get consumed with day to day activities and before we know it another quarter of the year has passed.

Determining key metrics for your business, ideally on one page, so that it is easy for your recall and review each month to track your success. As you determine the key measures, make sure that they support your brand strategy.

Then review your goals every 30, 90 and 180 days using a simple traffic light system so that you know what is on track (identify these areas green) and where priority action is required (identify these areas as red).

Evaluate your marketing plan against these three steps to ensure that it is going to support you in building your brand and delivering your business strategy.

Then consider what one action you could take in the next 30 days that you demonstrably enhance your current success.

However what are some of key mistakes you need to avoid if you want to build a credible business blog? I’m not talking about the mistakes usually referred to such as not posting regularly to your business blog or not engaging in the blogosphere by commenting and linking to other peoples business blogs.

Here are three mistakes I see business bloggers make:

1. Not branding your business blog – by branding I recommend you look at the following three areas
(a) Ensuring that the name of your business blog connects to your business and the services you offer
(b) Making sure that the design of your business blog follows through from your corporate identity. There are many low cost and no cost blogging tools available which one of the reasons why business blogging has become so popular. That is fantastic – but please do not scrimp on investing in the design of your business blog to reflect your corporate identity and also making it easy to navigate for the readers of your business blog.
(c) Creating content that meets the needs of your target market and niche – consider your blog as a way to represent your unique expertise in your field.

2. Not connecting your business blog to your corporate website – if you have a corporate website make sure that you have a link from your website to your business blog. I do recommend that this link is not just a hyperlink to your blog which is authored on a separate platform. To ensure that you benefit from traffic to your business blog, I recommend that you use a blogging platform such as Wordpress.org where you can host your business blog alongside your website.

3. Not adding an about page – you might not realise it but your about page on your business blog or website is the second most likely page that people will click through to. It is important to have details about you and the team authoring your business blog as people want to check out who you are – they are genuinely interested in the authors of your business blog and they are also interested in assessing your professional credibility in the areas you are writing about.

Why not assess your business blog against these common business blogging mistakes and then establish a plan to enhance your business blog so that truly does build your brand?

It’s becoming easier to add audio and video to the web with new low cost and even no cost tools.

I was researching on-line recently and one particular professional speaker whose site I visited had short audio and video previews of their information products available.

This was well executed although I didn’t much care for the streaming video every time I came back to a page on the site.

The addition of audio and video on the site impacted me as a potential consumer in three specific ways:

• Because the content of the previews was excellent, it made me stay on the site for a considerable period of time as I was learning something and being educated in something I was particularly interested in learning more about
• It raised my awareness of this consultant and I now consider them an expert in their field and would definitely refer them to others
• I actually got out my credit card and made a purchase of one of their lower priced downloadable products - yes while this person was unknown to me previously, yey on my first visit to their website I made a purchase - all because I was able to experience their expertise through audio and video.

If well executed adding audio and video to your website or business blog can make an impact to your on-line success, not only attracting more clients but also more profit.

However it is amazing how few people who sell information products are making use of the opportunity to engage their website visitors and potential clients and customers to purchase their ebook, CD, MP3 or DVD information products.

With a little extra time in editing, you can provide great value to visitors to your website and enhance your personal brand online.

What action could you take today with the power of audio or video to bring your personal brand to life on your website or business blog?

I often get asked how we automate our website so that we can take registrations and payments online for our products, services, events, workshops and teleseminars.

But what if you are in the situation where you do not yet have a website?

Or what if you do have a website but find it a challenge to get your webmaster to keep it up to date?

Well now I have found a solution where if you are organising an event - from a teleseminar to a live event - you can promote and sell your event online without a website or a webmaster.

And what is great is that if the event is free, you do not even have to pay for the service.

I have priced up event management software previously and have been quoted figures in excess of US$1000 to host an event online. So the option of the event management tool I’ve been researching taking just 2.5% for a paid event (minimum charge US$0.99 and maximum charge US$9.95) is excellent value for money.

I have not yet used all the functionality of the system as there are so many, but let me share a few things I found helpful:

• brand your event - the premium service allows you to brand your registration page with your corporate identitiy or an identity for the event
• post a survey - you can capture questions from people who register by adding an online survey
• invite attendees - you can invite attendees direct by uploading addresses from your data base
• create a dedicated URL - you can create a specific URL to take people direct to your event sign up page
• take payments online without a shopping cart - as long as you have a PayPal or Google Checkout account you can take orders for your event.

And as an attendee for the event it has some helpful features:

• pay online - you can register online with all major credit cards 
• update your calendar - if you register for the event, you have the option to update your calendar direct.

Here is an example of a page I set up today as a trial for my next “Biz Growth Live” teleseminar about “How To Create A Customer Centric Business“.

So just what is this amazing platform? Well it’s called Eventbrite.

Why not try it out for your next event and let me know what you think of it.

Personally I encourage my clients to build three distinctive but interconnected brands:

• their corporate brand
• their employer brand
• their personal brand

As you are thinking of naming your company, it is critical to consider the vision of success for the business. For example, is this a business that you will want to build and dispose of; or is this a business you want to create as a legacy company and see generations of your family leading in years to come? The answers to these questions can also guide you as to whether to name your company with a name that is connected to your own name.

Naming your business is almost as challenging as naming your children - especially if like me you are parents of multiples. (I have twins and we didn’t know what sex they were going to be before they were born so that was double headache for us to come up with both boys names and girls names and permutations of each!).

However as a leader of a business it is important to ensure that we too are able to be found online. You see over 35% of people will search for us by our own name online before they make contact with us or meet us.

When I am working with clients or speaking and presenting on branding, I always encourage people to invest in purchasing their own domain name and the domain names for their children.

You see, it is becoming increasingly popular for people to build their own career porfolio online, author their own business blog or as I have done, created a portal where people can find out more about my experience and expertise.

This is particularly relevant if you want to position yourself as a thought leader and expert in your field - especially as a speaker or author of a business book.

If you are not sure about building a portal site or authoring your own business blog, you can always point the domain name for your own name to the page on your corporate website that hosts your personal profile.

In fact being found by your own name online is becoming recognised as being so important to todays Internet generation, that some parents are now considering if their babies name will be searchable before they name their newborn as reported in the Wall Street Journal recently.

But what can you do if your name is relatively common? How can you guarantee that you can be found in the search engines even if you do not have a website or business blog?

Well in the Wall Street Journal, you will see I am quoted and refer to a tool called Ziggs. I first came across Ziggs when I started my own business and wanted to guarantee that my name came up at the top of the search engines.

It is a great professional website where you can create your own career portfolio. And unlike many other resources, Ziggs will guarantee that you are placed at the top of the search engines for your own name.

I recommend creating your own Ziggs professional account - it is simple to do and will only take you about 60 minutes to create and upload a professional profile to represent your personal brand online.

Even though you can now find me in the natural search results for my name through a number of strategies I have implemented to build my personal brand online, I still maintain my Ziggs profile as it serves me well and due to the way it is constructed, provides information about my experience and career history that is not so relevant to place on my websites or blogs. 

It is also especially relevant if you are in a large organisation and want to ensure that your own name comes up in the search engines - working in a large corporate, it’s not always so easy to have press releases and information about you on your corporate website.

So why not head on over to Ziggs today - for a very small investment you too can guarantee that you will be digitally distinctive when someone looks for you in the search engines.

What refinements do we need to make to ensure that we are consistent with our brand values and the clients we are looking to attract?

Last week I was speaking to a coaching colleague who has been working on re-defining her corporate brand. While my friend has, over the years, developed a large community and mailing list, unfortunately what she has come to understand is that her community are not prepared to invest in any of her products and services. They will attend the free events she offers, but are not prepared to pay a fee, which is clearly not a sustainable business proposition.

This has meant that she has had to radically re-think her brand, her target market and what products and services to offer.

I received a very excited email from her saying that she had come across a website that was exactly what she was looking to create as she moved forward.

As we develop our corporate identity for our business and then look to brief a designer, it is important to define how we want our brand to look visually and also the tone of voice of our brand.

It is always helpful to research our competition and associated business sectors offering similar solutions in this phase of development. But our personal views alone are not sufficient on which to develop a brief for a designer to work their magic and create a compelling and magnetic corporate identity. Yes we can take ideas and inspiration from many places, but we should take care never to infringe copyright and trademarks of another brand.

I was interested to see the website that my friend was so excited about. The website she liked and wanted to emulate was quirky and fun; the colours of the logo and website clashed on purpose; and the photographs of the business owner on the site were vibrant and far from the usual corporate photographs we usually associate with a corporate website.

My only concern for my coaching friend was that was not at all how she comes across. That is not my perception or experience of her brand.

Her subject is serious, her writing and teachings are very intellectually framed, and as for the fun and frivolity - well let’s say I have never experienced her like that in all the years I have known her.

While she might want to emulate a fun, lively brand, that is not my experience of her.

As we develop or refine our brand, yes it is helpful to take into account our competition and seek input from many sources.

However it is important to remember that our corporate identity needs to not only reflect our brand essence (how we are distinctive from others) but also whether our brand will connect for our ideal target audience.

It is not just what we say but the way in which we express what we stand for, be that visually on the web or when we meet someone in person, that will enable us to not only stand out from the crowd but help our target audience and ideal clients connect to our message.

A great way to ensure that you create a corporate identity that expresses who you are and what you stand for with your ideal clients is to get feedback about your corporate identity in the design phase from a small research and development team made up of your ideal clients and business partners.

It is easy to become personally enthused and energised about your corporate identity, but if it does not connect with those who you want to serve, you will make it harder to then communicate your message in a compelling way.

So if you are working on re-developing your corporate identity, or have not yet started creating the identity for your small business, do take time to research your target audience and niche so that you can provide a robust brief to your designer. And don’t forget to build into your project, time to connect to your clients and business partners and access their valuable feedback before you sign off on the design of your corporate identity.

I was talking through my top tips for what makes an effective business or corporate blog.

However when I mentioned that I recommended that as a business leader, we will enhance our personal brand and our corporate reputation by adding our photograph, a couple of people in the audience questioned that recommendation.

Now perhaps this was because the audience were technical companies and I’ve noticed that many technologists and researchers prefer to stay in the background and not always put them selves forward as they consider that as overt self promotion which they prefer not to do. I remember a meeting some months ago for a research institute I am on the board of, where one of the leading medical researchers point blank refused to have their photograph online of the new website that was being launched - although they were very happy to be quoted in research papers and speak to the national media.

One of the audience members replied to the person raising the question and affirmed that they believed that we should have our professional photograph on our business blog or website. For them it instilled trust.

You see, most often the second place that people will click to on your business blog or website is the “about us” page. We want to see who we are doing business with and are asking ourselves:

• Are they credible?
• Are they someone we can relate to?
• Are they in fact a real legitimate business?

In fact one business blogger advised me that when they added their photograph to their blog, their subscriptions actually doubled to their business blog feed. Now whether this is to do with any other factors, I cannot say - but that one change is what they attributed the increase in subscriptions to.

You may not wish to have your photograph in the banner of your business blog, particularly if it is a group blog, however I would encourage you adding your photograph to the “about page”.

If you do not have a recent professional photograph, here are five tips to ensuring you look great online:

1. Invest in hiring a professional photographer to take your photographs - choose a photographer who has experience in professional portraits
2. Make sure that your main photograph reflects what you stand for - I know of one person who wore glasses in the photos on their website but when they went to conferences, they left their glasses at home which meant no one recognised them
3. Take several changes of clothes to the photo-shoot - have different photographs taken - for example some might be casual and some formal
4. Make sure that you get a digital copy of the photographs - this will enable you to easily change their size to meet different needs over time
5. Once you have your photographs, create an online media room - making your photographs available on your business blog and website will make it easy for journalists and event organisers to access your photograph.

So as you continue to build your personal brand online, I would encourage you to express who you really are online, if for no other reason than it will mean that people know what you look like when you turn up for that next meeting in a crowded hotel lobby.

Get one hundred marketeers in a room and they will all have a slightly different definition of what a brand is. However most will refer to a brand as being the emotional connection our clients and prospects have with our business. They will often refer to a brand being a “promise”.

For me a brand is far more than a promise - it is what people come to expect that we deliver. Brands are tangible assets. Just take a look at the balance sheets of any large consumer products company.

Having been engaged in many disposals, mergers and acquisitions over the years, I remember one of the key elements of the negotiations was always what the financial advisors to the transaction valued not only in tangible assets such bricks and mortar. They also valued the brand or brands owned by the company being acquired or disposed of as an asset.

As Jonathan Schwartz refers to in a recent article, for him, delivering a service based business, the brand becomes the asset.

However, most often we consider the brand only in the context of the corporate brand or the product brand.

There are two other aspects that we need to consider when building a strong brand:

• our employer brand - clearly defined it will enable us to attract and retain the talent we need in today’s increasingly competitive market place to deliver our strategy and goals.
• our personal brand - what makes us stand out from other business leaders.

Our personal brand is particularly important in a small business. You see our personal brand can also be considered as our personal reputation. In other words why people would do business with us.

And often our personal reputation goes before us. People we meet often have a perception of what we will be like to work with even before they meet us - from what they have heard from others, what they read about us or heard about us in the media and what they have read about us online.

In fact, almost 50% of the measure of corporate reputation is based on the reputation of the CEO. And the CEO’s reputation is based on their credibility - in other words their personal brand.

Both our employer brand and personal brand as a business leader already exist. What is important is to understand whether our view and perspective is the same as our key stakeholders - be they investors, prospects, clients, customers, employees or business partners.

Remember our perception is our reality. And the perception of others is their reality - what they experience and believe about us.

So the next time you are reviewing the strength and equity in your brand, you just might want to consider the strength of your employer brand and personal brand not only in the context of what you believe it to be, but how it is perceived and valued by others.