Brand Yourself Better Using The Net

Here are some ideas specific to your use of social media as part of your personal branding strategy.

Stick With One Name

If you’re one name on your blog and another name on Twitter, and forced into a semi-real seeming name on Facebook, and using something different for Skype, how will I know it’s you? I’ve got a new friend here that fits that description. When she added me in Facebook, I didn’t know who she was. It took a little bit of dissection to get it, but that’s okay. Stick with one name if you want folks remembering you easily.

Make a Good About Page

I owe someone credit, and I forget who. They linked to my About page as an example of something telling about who you are. (When I look at it, I see that I’m going to add even more to my about page).

Simply, put your name (at least your first name), and some reason for why we’re participating in your media (your blog, your podcast, whatever). Don’t make your about page about the company, at least not first. Make it about a human that we can get to know. If you have a multi-author blog, all the better. Make a page for ALL of you. Make it human.

Email Signatures

Add a link to your personal media on your email signature. Don’t make it super huge and complex, because then no one reads them. Here’s how much I’ve compressed mine:


Bob Garlick
bob@GarlickMarketing.com
Marketing and Design Mentor
Cel: 604 961 0842

The Marketing Mentor Blog: http://marketingstrategymentor.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Bob_Garlick/604881401
Website: http://www.GarlickMarketing.com/
Work Samples: http://picasaweb.google.com/bob.garlick
Art Samples: http://bob.garlick.googlepages.com/

DB Communications: Helping you out-market your competition for less

In my case, I list the two most likely ways you know me because I’m often sending emails to folks who might have met me once or twice, but might need their memory jogged. Note that I have many website URL in there. That’s because I want to drive more people to visit my site and know me through my media. Also I put my Company tag-line in to reminder people of what I can help them with.

What! Friday again

Here are some really fun Japanese internal communication subway signs. How come we can't have cool graphics like this in our transport system? I'm sick of the TransLink slick corporate graphics. I think we should have something more West Coast and laid back.

Have a great weekend.

Making Twitter More Manageable

Tweetburner is a twitter mashup that allows you to create tiny URLs and also allow you to track how many times they where clicked on it.

Just ran into this great blog regarding Twitter mashups. Also you will find several more links at the bottom of this post that are from the comments section of the blog.

So please enjoy these 19 mashups for twitter, that enable you to combine internet resources like Google Maps with your Twitter data. There are also some great ways to make Twitter a bit more visual regarding data but also some nice ideas regarding how to manage your Twitter overload situations. Thanks to Thomson Chemmanoor blog post for this great info.

More great Links to Twitter tools:
Twitter History Add your Twitter backlog feed to your favorite calendar application and browse through your personal Twitter diary, making your Twitter history both fun and useful!

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air desktop application that is currently in public beta. It aims to evolve the existing functionality of Twitter by taking an abundance of information i.e twitter feeds, and breaking it down into more manageable bite sized pieces.

fb2Twitter Get your Facebook status automatically copied to your Twitter account whenever you update it.

Why do branded "Catazines" help sales

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One of the great ways to introduce products and services is through a catazine which is basically a catalogue that has a magazine formate and editorial look to it.

Giving a catalogue an editorial theme and designing can make it possible to feature many of the products a store has available. Though websites can also do this, most people use the internet information as research for price and specifications specific to a product they are interested in.

People tend to be more comfortable with a magazine that features articles related to spastic product groups. There are still thousands of magazines out on the market and people still use catazines to discover new products. So even though the internet is a must for any marketing these days the catazine is still a powerful tool that should not be dismissed lightly.

This "catazine" approach is still very effective for getting specific markets to react and make buying decisions. Editorial strategy usually places feature information on a specific products, at the beginning of the catazine. In the latter part of the catazine elements specific to the stores social and marketing events, like trade-shows or special events at the store can be rolled out. More than anything else if the catazine is properly branded it has a tremendous effect oh how people perceive that brand. If the articles are written by staff with specific background, like interior design for a furniture store or mechanical engineering for an auto parts store, the magazines enables that person to be featured as an expert and can influence peoples buying decisions.

Producing a magazine of 60 or more pages can be expensive, and the production time can be daunting, but time and time again these communication devises have proven that people are till attracted to browsing pages of a well designed magazine in the comfort of there home.

Friday

It's Friday and I have been trying to get down to writing a blog.
So as I was busily procrastinating I found this cartoon and thought it was fun yet quite accurate.

Enjoy your weekend even if it's raining.

Viral ads get some rules

Do you remember the YouTube video showing 4 cell phones popping corn. I sure do. In fact a told some friends about it and they got all bent out of shape because they thought their cell-phones where frying there brains (popcorn pops at 300f).


Well it turns out is was just a viral ad and had nothing to do with the truth. Because of it's popularity it has come to the attention of the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus. Today they released a statement that said this (PDF auto download page).

The statements basically states the following:
"In non-traditional media, to the extent that advertising claims are communicated, advertisers are required to substantiate those claims with competent and reliable scientific evidence," said the statement.


So now if you plan on creating a viral ad please be aware that your content must not make crazy false claims. Of course you can still do cool things, but now you will have to vet the content a bit more.

Direct Encounter Marketing

This in probably the most effective direct mail approach I have come up with. It only works with small lists but it is very effective. If you can get your list of people that you want to communicate with down to 500 or lower this is probably the best way to get a response or grab there attention. It's not a way to save money, it's just a more effective way to communicate to a very specific target group.

The case study I am using is from a series of Direct Encounter Boxes we created for the Hotel Pan Pacific (Bangkok). They wanted to say "Hi and thanks for using us" campaign. Their target group where the top 500 corporate clients that booked about 80% of there meeting rooms and had many business clients stay at the hotel.

The boxes where all themed, we ended up doing a series of 6 over the nest 3 years). This one was themed as a James Bond Box. In the box you found a bottle of Perrier water (cross marketing opportunity, which we will talk about later), a water-pistol, gift card for 1 martini (shaken not stirred) every day at their executive lounge and an assignment sheet.

The assignment sheet told the recipient to came to the hotel during the Songcran Festival (Thai festival or water where everyone get wet). They where to enter the hotel and squirt any staff member wearing a yellow armband. After getting a staff member wet you where awarded a weekend stay at the hotel so you could enjoy your victory in style. The campaign had a 60% activity response.

Now lets look at what the campaign communicated.
- The hotel has a sense oh hummer
- The hotel was aware of cultural events in the country that it did business in
- It introduced or reintroduced people to the executive lounge/bar
- It get the attention of 300+ executives on a 500 person mailing list
- It produced an opportunity to create a press release around the event
- It invited people to experience the hotel in a new way (they where people who only used the hotel as a business tool)

Now if you have a well researched list of people you would like to expose to your business of product, this could be a great way to do it. If you would like to see some more examples please contact me through my website and I will send you those cases-studies.

Mind Mapping

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I was introduced to Mind Mapping at a seminar and want to share the concept with you. I am using it as a communication tool to help people understand the complexities of a full blown marketing plan. I am now also using it to show people what they had accomplish at one of my marketing mini strategy meetings.

The concept is pretty simple, (like all get ideas) instead of writing down something in a linear form you write whatever coming into your head firsts relating to the core subject. You categorize new subjects as connected balloons to the main subject and continue on till you think you have everything jotted down. It works great for me because now I don't have to try and force my brain to think of a project from start to finish while trying to organize it.

Start by putting your core subject into the center of a piece of paper and then collect your thoughts or data in satellite areas around your core idea. Here are links for some more in-depth mid mapping insight.
wikipedia
The inventor of Mind Mapping

Also if you are a Macintosh user this is free software I used to create the sample mind map.

Hers a funny mind map of how ideas can get messed up by too many people inputing there opionions.

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What makes an ad great?

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Think of all the ads you have seen over the years. Think of the cool images and the cool headlines. Now think... did you go out and buy that product or just feel good about the experience.

The difference between a good and and a timely ad is probably the most profound thing in the marketing game. Hitting your target with exactly the right message at exactly the right time is so rare it's laughable. So how do great ads work if they don't actually get people to buy your product immediately.

Brand awareness comes into play. If someone is aware of "your brand" or the "concept of your service" you stand a higher chance of getting a response when that person or business is ready to buy.

So if you plan to make an ad start by thinking about the emotional message, something that will hit home. Don't think that if you put all the "facts" into the ad people will suddenly have to buy your product. The human brain does not work that way. The human brain likes to be entertained, so get a message that will poke a section of the brain that will entertain or stimulate. Love, family, wealth, fear, piece of mind, hunger, etc... these are all emotional responses.

If you are consistent in your communication eventually the emotion associated with your service will attached to your message. Your target market will associate that emotion with your message and remember it. Wendy's tag-line used hummer, "Wheres the beef" (First airing on January 10, 1984) Do you still remember the little old ladies?

If every time that you are exposed to an ad it makes your "feel" a certain way than that is a memorable ad, and in the world of marketing that's a great ad.

If your ad has something people can recall, refer to or use later that day to entertain your friends you have a great message and a great ad.

Next time lets talk about how to get a great message out there in front of people without killing your cash flow.

Don't drain you marketing cashflow

Lets talk about barter for a bit. I have been using it as a way to save money, for about 10 years now, and I still think it's a great cash-flow strategy.

I cut my bartering chops in Asia, which happens to be very into the concept of barter. I worked with Barter Card International on their branding and marketing for several years. They do about 2.5 Billion dollars in barter each year to put them in perspective and the pressure was on to build a sold presence in South East Asia.

With all companies that are in the midst of expansion they where very concerned with their cash-flow. The concept we came up with was to create ads that not only repositioned them as a business-to-business tool but to also raise their overall brand image to equal American Express or Visa, plus do it using barter.

This approach helped create an actual example of how the new barter systems outperformed the older one-on-one style of barter everyone has tried at least once in there life.

For the initial campaign we created 6 stunning images (in the Annie Liebowitz style). Using the actual owners of six businesses that where using barter to build up their businesses. The media buy was all print and covered many forms including full color and full page newspaper ads and glassy business magazines spreads. (The second year we expanded to radio as as well.)

We then used a Barter Card member PR firm to tell the story of how we created the ad series using 98% barter. A typical production and media buy breakdown (click on image for full size view) looked like this:

Photography - 100% Barter
Whisky for fire chief and men - Cash
Woman's wardrobe - 100% Barter
Location scouting and preproduction - 100% Barter
Design, production and art direction - 100% Barter
Media buy for magazines and newspapers - 100% Barter
Food for crew - 50% Barter and 50% Cash
Wrap party - 100% Barter

This way we where able to maximize our exposure with editorial content in followup issues of the papers and magazines. The Barter Card budget for the series of 6 ads including placement was just under $300,000 so that came to around $294,000 in Barter and the rest cash.

Think about how you could make barter work for your business by moving unwanted stock or filling downtime at your business to create barter credits that you can use to create marketing tools to inherence your cash-flow by your communicating barter and non-barter customers.

If you would be interested in checking out how the new barter systems can help your business just google "barter + your cities name" to find your local barter business. I use www.barterfirst.com because of the great customer service they have provided for my business over the years.

Next time lets lets learn about great ads.

The Classic Barter Situation

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Ok lets see how many of these things I can crank out without blowing too many brain cells.

Here a couple of old ads I did for my company in Hong Kong. We got them for free on a barter deal. We helped come up with strategic marketing ideas for the publishing of there "Marketing Directory" for the whole of "South East Asia". This is a great example of working with people (publishers) that need advice or services and can help get the word out for you.

The next entry will be about modern bartering techniques and how you can save a bunch of cash and lock in new clients.