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How to Create A Visually Compelling Personal Brand (Even if You are Not a Designer) by @Zolotareva_N

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by Natasha Zolotareva

If you’re to stand out from the rest, distinct personal branding is crucial in this heavy statured market. Providing PR services to authors and thought leaders I know if your website looks like it was made in the 90s and your social accounts are “raw and authentic” but have no visual unity to them, the media is more likely to hesitate to feature you as an expert.

I was lucky enough to catch up with the Creative Director of SimplyBe. Agency, Aleksa Narbutaitis, and get her thoughts on the visual aspect of personal branding and its importance for both individuals and businesses.

For Aleksa, creativity is in her blood. Encouraged to embrace it throughout childhood, she played a major role in starting a successful business from the ground up. Then, joined forces with SimplyBe. founder Jessica Zweig, she’s helped shape the agency into the successful company it is today.

First get clarity on your story, only then on visuals.

Aleksa emphasizes the importance of regarding visual branding as one piece of a bigger whole and not a stand-alone process. This means when she starts working with an individual, her goal is to narrow down their preferences, tastes, characteristics, and experience, and clarify cohesive output that would be consistent though visuals,

If you are going though the same process, creating your own brand, here are some questions you can ask yourself:

  • What key pieces of your story do you want to tell?
  • What do you want to be known for?
  • What kind of people should this brand attract?

As humans, we’re all visual creatures. So, brands need to be tailored to specific people and their preferences to be most effective when targeting a specific audience.

Get intentional about your brand.

Though it can be hard to measure the success of visual branding as such, Aleksa believes it’s possible to look to tangible examples here. This means the areas that really matter.

This includes everything from your website and Instagram page to the business card you carry, and even what you wear during presentations! Visual branding infiltrates all of this and much more.

Clarity and intent are crucial in attracting opportunity and audience. So, once you get your intended message right, you can begin to grow, with people catching on to what you’re doing.

Now let’s get visual (even if you are not a designer).

Developing a visual brand is quite a fun process. It’s pretty much like digging into the core of your being to bring out the essence. Here are few questions that can help:

  • What are your tastes and preferences? Don’t stop at the first thing that comes to mind, dig deeper.
  • What are some things you like and don’t like. Aspects of culture, foods, music, etc.
  • Who are the thought leaders that you’re inspired by and want to take a page from?

This information is then transferred to a mood board exploration, put together as collages of fonts, textures, colors, and feelings. This allows you to figure out which one of these venues you want to follow.

 

 

These boards create the rest of the visual brand, so it’s an important exercise.

Summarized, it’s a process of exploration, content, and refinement – all until you arrive at your ideal visual brand message.

Aleksa’s Practical Advice

  • Decide what you do (and don’t) like
  • Train your brain to notice your surroundings. Take inspiration from what you see. Take actual notes and photographs if needed.
  • Become more aware of what you see on your way to work or on your night out, the photos you see when flicking through a magazine, the adverts on TV and any other means of visual branding.
  • Don’t glance, pay attention to visuals in outdoor advertising, online ads and ask yourself why you think they chose it
  • Always start by drafting your vision on paper. If lacking drawing and pinging skills opt for a collage. Only then transfer it online
  • Select the right platform for your specific needs. Instagram doesn’t make sense for every industry – play to your strengths and go where your audience consumes content.
  • Keep your website updated – it’s an essential online business card. As your brand evolves so should its visual representation.
  • Link all your online channels together – encourage those on one to follow the other, make sure there is a visual cohesion between all.

 

 

About the author Natasha Zolotareva: I’m a digital marketer, artist, and journalist and salsa enthusiast. For me all these career paths of mine boil down to one core interest: I love to meet people, discover stories that are worth sharing and help those people to be heard. I’ve helped many authors and entrepreneurs to score that Amazon bestseller title. Currently, I’m focused on building a PR agency for wellness thought leaders while dragging a slightly overweight suitcase around the globe.

Does Every Business Need A Brand? by @brandisnotalogo

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Does Every Business Need a Brand?

Photo by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels

Yes.

End of post.

Just kidding. But seriously, yes, every business needs a brand (and actually, already has a brand whether they focus on deliberately it or not).

A strong brand is essential for standing out from the crowd (i.e. your competitors) as well as connecting and engaging with your audience. It’s what will turn a casual observer into a buyer of your brand. Everyone from a solopreneur to a dog dentist (it’s a thing!) should consider what their branding says about them and how they can make it work harder.

Here are a few things to think about:

A brand isn’t just a logo.

It’s not a fancy die-cut business card, a perfectly curated Instagram feed or a sweet looking website. It’s so much more than that. Think about creating some super solid brand foundations, and don’t be afraid to test them out with your existing customers by just asking them whether they stand true for them when they think about your brand. You’ll get some useful feedback on how motivating and appealing they are and can then optimise before going out all out on a rebrand or new campaign.

🔥 Hot Tip: Perform an audit on your own brand and ask someone who isn’t close to your brand to do the same, so you get an objective view. Look for the following across your brand assets (e.g. website, social media, advertising, signage, packaging, etc.):

  • what personality and tone of voice is coming through?
  • is everything looking and feeling consistent (design, copy, messaging, etc.)?
  • does everything marry up to your current business objectives?

Finding the discrepancies can help you identify where to focus your efforts first.

Branding is what positions you against your competitors in your customers’ minds.

Always remember that it’s what the customer perceives to be true about you that is true. Their perception is reality. And they’ve created a perception about your competitors too. They instinctively categorise you all based on some key attributes, which helps them evaluate which of you to do business with. It’s up to you to help guide them to formulate their perception based on attributes you want them to see.

🔥 Hot Tip: You can help shape what they perceive you to be by determining for every stage of doing business with you:

  • what message they should take away (being concise and clear, ensuring it addresses what your audience need from a functional perspective)
  • how you want them to feel (informed, excited, content, safe, uplifted – be sure to link the feeling back to your audience’s core emotional need)

Consistent branding elevates your value.

When you create a consistent brand experience across every interaction and touch point with a customer, you’re creating a unique and well-thought out experience that elevates your value. This is the difference between a premium brand and a budget brand. It takes you from a commodity (generic and more likely to be judged on price alone) to ‘priceless’ and something to be treasured. This is how brand equity is built over time (that is, value in your brand beyond just the tangible).

🔥 Hot Tip: There are loads of ways to help increase your brand value in the minds of your audience. You can start by identifying:

  • what do they value? E.g. certification or formal credentials, years’ experience, personal story, lots of information, industry recognition?
  • what do you have that delivers to this value?
  • how can you demonstrate this credibly through everything you do?

So, no matter if you’re working with clients in a service-based business, or selling products in a store, branding is super important and worth lending a bit of thinking time to.

Why Creating a Personality For Your Brand Is A Must-Do And How To Use It by @brandisnotalogo

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by Melissa Packham | Featured Contributor

Why Creating a Personality For Your Brand Is A Must-Do And How To Use It - A Brand Is Not A Logo

Creating a brand personality is a fun but frivolous exercise that you might do once and then forget about to move onto more serious business, right?

Wrong. So wrong.

A brand personality is what makes the difference between a commodity and a product or service that is unique and worth paying more for. It moves your brand away from one seen as interchangeable with any other.

Seth Godin says it best (as he so often does) when he says:

A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.

A strong brand personality makes you memorable. It makes you stand out from your competitors. It helps to create a perception in your customer’s mind about value by shifting their decision-making from purely tangible elements (features and attributes) to intangible elements (feelings and emotional connections).

So exactly where, pray tell, does one actually start to build a brand personality? How can you build these memories, stories and relationships into a brand?

Well it helps to start with some fundamental elements like your brand purpose, values and beliefs laid out first. Then instead of plucking a personality out of thin air, you’ll have these to come back to which will help you in determining your brand archetype.

Once you’ve determined your brand archetype, describe your brand as if it were a person. Use personality traits that align with the feeling you want to leave with your customer once they’ve interacted with your brand. From there, consider every single touch point where a customer might interact with your brand and ask yourself, “how would this ‘person’ behave / speak / look at this particular moment?”.

You will use your brand personality everywhere – there’ll be personality for days!

When you begin to think about your brand as a person, you unlock so many possibilities for back stories, challenges and motivations which come with a set of symbols and meanings that will enrich your brand story.

And boy, don’t we humans just love a good story!

Being clear about your brand personality will help you craft a distinct tone of voice so that you can execute all of your brand communications in a strong and consistent way.

This all taps into psychology and the inherent human desire (and ability) to connect with other humans. By humanising your brand, you can build a much stronger connection with your audience, creating a bond that keeps them coming back to you again and again. It’s that cycle of customers coming back to you that pays back.

Now that’s some pretty serious business right there.

Tips to Hire the BEST Interns and Contractors for Business Growth. by @luckifit

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by LaKisha Greenwade | Featured Contributor  

Although solopreneurs rely heavily on technology to automate tasks and maintain a lean organization during the forming and growth phase, it’s inevitable that human help will be needed to add value to your business. It’s projected that employment will be highest from 2014-2024 amongst jobs that require higher social and analytical skills: 83 and 77% respectively.

Prevent overwhelm and enhance your productivity by hiring qualified contractors or interns to not only get the job done, but done well. Where do you start? Consider the role or job that if filled, would make your life much easier. Write a description of the duties then consider the qualifications and type of person you want to fill it.

When picturing your ideal candidate, consider soft skillsets that are hard to teach such as emotional intelligence, curiosity, adaptability, and critical thinking. Also, determine if you desire a team player or one who likes to win alone.

Keep in mind the following ten tips and helpful questions that lead towards a successful hire:

  1. Use behavioral interviewing techniques.
  2. Avoid bias- but listen to your gut, otherwise known as your intuition. Don’t dismiss facts presented by the employee during the interviewing process.
  3. Determine if the employee is a fit with your company brand- DO they uphold the same values and work ethic? Does their personality and energy ALIGN (not MATCH) your organization or the one you are trying to create?
  4. Are they self-aware? Do they consider the impact of their actions and words?
  5. Do they DO MORE than what is asked?
  6. Do they embody an entrepreneurial spirit? Do they enjoy partnering, learning, and experimenting?
  7. How well do they communicate? Assess this from the time they apply for a position with their resume or inquiry, ongoing email and phone communication pre and post interview, as well as how they treat all people (if you’re able to assess this in a public space).
  8. Determine YOUR management and communication style- Are you collaborative? A Micromanager? One who trusts employees to get the job done? Determine if your management and communication style is a fit for the respective candidate to achieve success for the project or mission.
  9. In many cases, interns will have limited working experience. Instead assess, their drive, passion, attention to detail, flexibility, and willingness to learn. These characteristics go a long way and will be essential foundational qualities that aid in the perfect employee molding process. Don’t be afraid to hire for a trial basis such as 30-90 days.
  10. Compensation matters when attracting the perfect candidate and managing your business cash flow. Research compensation norms and determine the level of supervision required for the task at hand. This will impact your offer.

Start small. Hire for a specific project and assess if the candidate is a good fit assume other roles in your business. For instance, hire for help with a PowerPoint project, small social media campaign, or event management assistance.  If you still feel uncomfortable with the hiring process, utilize resources and tools form SCORE.

To determine market rate, post a project on LinkedIn where contractors can submit bids for your job. Be mindful of how minimum wage impacts the position you are hiring for as well as the identification of a 1099. Peruse sites such Indeed, Internship posting sites, Craigslist, and local universities with internship opportunities to determine market rate.

Ultimately, the process of on-boarding the right help will enhance your business productivity and allow you to MANAGE your business versus WORKING IN your business. Your confidence as a leader will grow and hopefully you will be on a path to crush financial goals.

Creative Entrepreneurs and Premium Pricing by @mayachendke

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Hansen Equestrian lessons about premium pricing for creative entrepreneurs.

by Maya Chendke | Featured Contributor  

Setting the Scene for Premium Pricing

As an expensive hobby, the horse industry is particularly brand conscious. So when Sarah Hansen set out to build a fashion brand for it, she knew she had to create coveted products at a premium price.

Sarah’s company, Hansen Equestrian, has been taking tack rooms by storm with her stylish and durable equine blankets and rider accessories. Her products feature classic styles with bold prints and practical design that only a true rider would appreciate.

Let’s face it, you can’t ignore a Clydesdale wearing damask.

“The whole concept was to design something that is classy, high-quality and functional,” says the entrepreneur. “There are a lot of items that are one or two of those, but very few that are all three.”

Hansen’s aunt owns a pet bed manufacturing company, and it was excellent training to have that ‘in’ to the world of fashion and manufacturing for doted-upon pets. She recognized that her aunt’s strategy with dog beds could also be applied to equine fashion.

“These beautiful beds would fit into your home décor,” says Hansen, noting that the premium price would itself be part of the branding. She also wanted to manufacture locally in Canada, which meant she was looking at steep pricing battles against less-innovative competitors.

“[My product] would cost more than anything else you could find on the market, so I knew that if it was going to cost more, I needed to make the right choices.”

Armed with $5,000 from an inheritance, Hansen set out to build her brand, methodically and strategically. She measured dozens of horses, examined scores of horse blankets, and developed her keen eye for what she liked, but also, what did not work.

Pricing for Profit, Not Charity

Hansen credits her uncle for the firm advice of not pricing based on what you think a customer will pay, but rather to price based on what things actually cost – and then adding adequate margins. It seems logical, but it’s a hard concept for creative entrepreneurs as there is always a temptation to focus on volume, rather than holding strong to brand principles.

At the premium end of the spectrum, Hansen says the ‘sale’ sticker is suicide. No matter how cute or novel an object, selling anything at a low price or as a loss-leader will bring down the perceived value of everything else.

“As soon as you put something in the bargain bin, you can’t take it back out,” Hansen warns.

She began her business by tapping into customers with smaller, less expensive products like a helmet bag to help introduce people to her manufacturing and production promise. Along the way, also experimented with other products but chose to pull some of them when she realized they didn’t fit her goals (or produce the right results).

As much as creativity and design are critical to a brand, so is the need to be analytical and able to shelve products that aren’t performing.

Scaling

Finding retail partners willing to work with a firm branding principle is also tough, but Hansen is smart about building her direct-to-consumer reputation at trade shows and online.

“It is really exciting to see my products going places that I’d never been,” she says of her reach with ecommerce.

In building up retail partnerships, it’s important to consider alternative options that can protect premium status (such as offering different types of return policies in lieu of discounting). Hansen’s strict branding philosophy is working and her sales are growing in a competitive market.

While Hansen’s dedication to the hustle keeps her non-stop busy between product development, sales, marketing, and events (and a day job to boot), she also makes time to do what inspired this whole business journey in the first place.

“I just want to ride,” she says with a smile.

Sarah Hansen of Hansen Equestrian and her wares.

Stocked and loaded: A car full of supplies en route to a trade show

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Maya Chendke She Owns ItMarketing consultant, entrepreneur, writer and horse mom Maya Chendke is going through a powerful start-up year. Her company, mPath Creative Consulting, works on website, marketing, content and social media projects that flex her signature hybrid style of creative/analytical. She is also part of a virtual anti-agency, Horsefly Group, where she leads clients with clever ideas and her color-coded iCal.

Her entrepreneurship track record includes a couple of start-ups and a self-published novel (Awake but Dreaming). A rogue introvert, you’ll spot her at start-up meetings sporting riding breeches and a messy bun as the Woz to her Jobs-like partners (or the Sandberg to their Zuckerbergs).

Maya has an MBA from the Rotman School of Management where she was a standout presence in the male-dominated business school environment. She has a certificate from the Stanford Graduate School of Business Summer Institute for General Management and a Bachelor of Journalism from Ryerson University.

She loves to help people make the most of their marketing budget and has an addiction to analytics. She is always on the lookout for great talent and great projects and loves to facilitate introductions.

In her downtime, she’s diligently rehabilitating her rescue horse and reads ~20 books a year. Tweet her @mayachendke

The Branding of You : Learn the 5 Secrets of Successful Branding by @XLConsultingGro

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Brand You

by Elaine Slatter | Featured Contributor

Whether you are using a personal brand (think Mary Forleo) or corporate branding for your business is up to you, but here are the first three key questions to ask for establishing the framework for your brand messaging.

1)  Who are you and what do you do?

2)  Why do you matter?

3)  What makes you unique?

Once you have established these basics, you can then move on to establish your key messaging:

  1. Brand Promise

Can you describe what you do for your customers in ten words or less? This is your brand promise. We  often see a brand promise in the tagline associated with a logo. Ones that come quickly to mind are Nike – “Just Do It,” Subway – “Eat Fresh,” Walmart – “Save money, live better,” Adidas – “Impossible is nothing.” The tagline is your brand promise, but brand messaging is more than that.

  1. Brand Positioning

Your messaging should be customer-centric, meaning understand how your customers think.  From here you can then create messages that will solve their pain points, through the key features and benefits of your goods/services.

A great deal of time is spent understanding your customers. Where do they hang out, what motivates them, what do they care about? Knowing as much about the demographics of your customers as you can will help you with this messaging. When you put your business plan together, market research was a big part of the plan.  This initial market research will help you craft messages that are important to the prospects that will want to buy your products/services.

For example, if you are a “Marylou’s Fresh Food Market,” your audience includes people who want to eat healthy foods as a central part to their lifestyle. Your research may have indicated that the demographic profile of this type of customer is, say:

  • Between 20-40
  • 70% female/30% male
  • Earns $40K-$100+K annually
  • Exercises 3x per week
  • Eats a low carbohydrate diet
  • Has a dog
  • Wears casual clothes
  • Follows sports
  • Has 2 children under 10.

This research then helps you direct your sales and marketing messages around these buyer demographics. This applies to both your online messages through social media and your print messaging.

  1. Tone of Your Brand Messaging

Based on your customer demographics, what is the tone you want to use for your brand?  Are you aiming for nurturing, fun, sassy, or more serious? A tone development trick for copy writing is comparing your business to a celebrity: ”If my brand was a celebrity, it would be Taylor Swift,” or “If my brand was a celebrity, it would be Richard Branson.”

  1. Time to Establish the Pillars of Your Brand

Brand Pillars describe the key selling points of your product/service. Each of these brand pillars will be supported by a key benefit statement and supporting examples. These become the focal points of your marketing content.

  1. A branding framework

This is a great exercise for your business.   You can lay out your framework in a simple spreadsheet and refer to it as a reminder when branding you or your business.

Brand Framework for Marylous Fresh Food Market

Brand Promise:   Fresh food you and your family will love

Positioning Statement:  Marylous is the first fresh food company in your community

Tone of Voice:  Light, bouncy, empowering

Elevator Pitch:  Fresh food you and your family can easily prepare for a healthy lifestyle.  A selection of premade, fresh dishes for those on the run or the fussy members of your family who want something different than the rest of the family!

Marylous Three Brand Pillars:

EasyFreshVariety
Marylous store layout makes it easy to select your itemsStore restocked night with produce from local food terminalUnique items added, not the same boring items
Quick meal items at front of storeQuick meals made every day

 

Food from all over the world & we welcome suggestions
Deli has hot meals ready to goFresh fruits packaged dailyUse our website to give us feedback about new items
Fresh snack items at checkoutIn season variety not found in other supermarketsUse website or at checkout suggest new items

 

Now that your branding framework is complete, you have all the core details to develop successful marketing messaging.  This can be online through social engagement on Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram & Facebook or print advertisements.   Branding takes time. Remember Nike was just a swoosh logo at the beginning, until they developed their branding framework and key messaging.

Remember to switch up your messaging, commonly known as A/B testing.  Use video and images, a few key call to action messages and keep it low on the word count.   We only have a few seconds to engage our prospective clients, make every second count.

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Elaine SlatterElaine Slatter is a Small Business Expert, founder of  XL Consulting Group and author of the popular book, “Fabulous Fempreneurship”, a complete business guide for women.  XL Consulting Group helps entrepreneurs with market planning, strategy, branding, web design and social media. She has over 30 years of executive business and marketing experience and is ready to help you rocket your business to success.  Elaine is passionate about mentoring women to become successful women entrepreneurs.   To find out more, visit XL Consulting Group or join the Fabulous Fempreneurship mastermind.

You can connect with Elaine on social media at:  Facebook Group | Twitter | Facebook

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Are You Paralyzed By Your Personal Brand? by @AlmostPractical

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Are you paralyzed by your personal brand?

by Neena Nandagopal | Featured Contributor

A personal brand can set you free by allowing your creativity to soar. But it can also chain you down.

Be true to yourself and people will follow.

Bloggers and entrepreneurs often start out online tentatively.

You set up a blog, some social media profiles, and start writing – sometimes with focus, and sometimes randomly.

An audience begins to grow – and then doubt creeps in. “What if my writing is not what my audience wants?”

You get stuck.

The fear of not giving people what they want paralyzes you from doing anything at all.

Instead of helping you to create the life that you love, your personal brand begins to weigh you down.

It’s time to get out of the rut and let the world see who you really are.

Understand Who You Really Are

The first step to getting unstuck is to take a step back and understand who you really are.

What is it that you really want to do with your business? Who do you want to help and how will you do it?

Make sure that your answers are based on your true feelings and your strengths.

What do you love to do?

Don’t be afraid to be original. After all, this is your business and you need to set yourself apart from other people in your field. People want to work with you because you are different from the rest, it is what makes you unique.

Personally, I have found myself in this spot too many times. Instead of embracing what I have to offer, I compared myself to everyone else.
I kept looking for the “secrets” that all the other successful entrepreneurs must have.

The answer, of course, was right under my nose.

These people were successful because they were doing what they loved to do. Instead of wasting time comparing themselves to everyone else – they were working to spread their personal brand and share their knowledge.

Here are some other personal branding mistakes that entrepreneurs often make.

Don’t Be Afraid to Evolve

Sometimes we start out on one track and move to another.

Small business owners tend to think everything has to be black and white. Yet when we look at the bigger brands around us, we see evolution everywhere.

Rachael Ray started out with cooking. Now she sells cookware and has a non profit organization too.

Kathy Ireland started out as a model and turned entrepreneur. Her personal brand changed.

Many celebrities and sports stars now have beauty and clothing lines.

Dunkin’ Donuts® now sells sandwiches and oatmeal.

Evolution is a part of life. You can work it into your existing brand without having to reinvent the wheel.

Express Yourself

Having found your direction, it is time to let people know. You have to get out there and grow your personal brand.

There is a certain confidence that comes from owning your mission. When you have decided that “This is who I am, this is what I am doing.” – tell everyone you know.

Send emails to your current and past client or to your subscriber list.

Pick a few social media channels that make sense for what it is you do and work them hard.

You don’t want to market on the wrong channels because that can lead to paralysis.

Be where your clients hang out. If your audience is businesses – this might be LinkedIn, if you market to consumers – this could be Facebook or Pinterest.

Sometimes it is a bit of trial and error, but you will soon see a pattern of what sources sends you the most traffic and clients.

Focus on these.

Add Value

No matter where you hang out online – the most important thing is to add value. Thin content isn’t going to fly.

The more helpful you are, the bigger your following will be.

Communicate Authentically and Consistently

Finally, posting consistently on your blog and social media channels will serve two purposes.
First, your audience will get to know you and keep coming back for more.

But most importantly, you will start to gain confidence in your own voice and become more and more comfortable with your own personal brand.

Consistency is truly the key to success.

Be True To Yourself

Your personal brand is a reflection of your true personality. Let your authenticity shine through and represent who you really are – not who you think you should be.

People will appreciate you for it.

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Neena Nandagopal of AlmostPractical.comNeena Nandagopal is Almost Practical Small Business Coaching and Consulting. She lives and breathes her business – so they are one and the same.

She is passionate about giving creative and talented women concrete guidance on how to establish an online business that is in line with their lives.

Her services include everything from blog coaching packages to creating individualized policy and procedure manuals and business processes.

Neena believes that working more efficiently is the key to business success. However, her philosophy is that time management is outdated. Instead, she works with her clients to manage their focus and attention, because that is what brings maximum results – both online and offline.

When she is not working, Neena enjoys spending time with her husband, four teenage children, and her little shih-tzu.

Neena’s Website: AlmostPractical.com
Neena on Social: Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest | YouTube

Take These Three Steps to Grow Your Brand Right Now by @deborahsweeney

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Take These Three Steps to Grow Your Brand Right Now

by Deborah Sweeney | Featured Contributor

Whether you and your business are new to the game, or you’ve been in business for a while and feel as though you’ve hit a lull, every business can stand to learn a new trick or two. If you’ve been wanting to take your business to the next level, but you’re at a loss for what comes next, try implementing these three easy tips for growing your business right now!

Amp up your cross-blogging. 

Whether your company has a blog or not, writing guest posts for other blogs in your industry can be very beneficial to your business. You get to completely double your exposure by showcasing an article you wrote (that ideally links back to your website somewhere) to a new group of potential customers who haven’t previously heard about you, and might not have heard about you were you not being featured on a new outlet.

If you do have a blog, try and create cross-blogging relationships with other blogs in your industry. Most cross-blogging typically occurs once a month for each outlet, but if you find an outlet that really grooves with your company and vice versa, feel free to establish a more frequent cross-blogging rate. Conversely, if writing a lot of blogs isn’t something your team has the time to do, you can also arrange something that occurs once every couple months. Establishing a cross-blogging relationship with a company in your (or in a similar) industry can often times lead to a partnership down the road that goes beyond simply swapping blogs. 

Stay on top of your marketing.  

A large part of marketing these days is simply being a master of all things social media. The only way to know your way around social sites is to actively partake in them on a daily basis. Never leave your audience hanging during the work week- you should at least be posting once a day to let your followers know you are a serious business with a serious online presence. As social sites continue to change in a non-stop way, the best way to adapt is to keep up and be an active user every day. If you take a break from your social sites, not only will your customers be wondering where you went, but something major could change that you may not be accustomed to upon your return, setting your business behind its competitors.

Update your company culture.  

Typically, behind every strong brand is a strong team of employees. The most successful businesses have a group of employees who not only get along, but who work together for the betterment of the company. Achieve this ideal company culture by paying special attention to who you hire. On top of skill sets, really think about how these potential employees will mesh with the rest of your team.

Don’t be afraid to liven things up by keeping the office a fun, warm place to be. Celebrate birthdays, watch major sports games together in the break room, take office field trips to the nearest frozen yogurt establishment on the hotter days this summer- don’t be afraid to get creative!

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Deborah Sweeney – Legal Expert, CEO, MyCorporation.com

Deborah Sweeney HeadshotAs CEO of MyCorporation Business Services, Inc. (MyCorporation.com), Deborah Sweeney is an advocate for protecting personal and business assets for business owners and entrepreneurs. With her experience in the fields of corporate and intellectual property law, Deborah has evolved from lawyer to business owner. She has extensive experience in the start-up and entrepreneurial industry as she has been involved in the formation of hundreds of thousands of businesses for MyCorporation.com’s customers.

Ms. Sweeney received her JD & MBA degrees from Pepperdine University. She is active in the community and loves working with students and aspiring entrepreneurs. She serves on the Board of Regents at California Lutheran University and is a founding member of Partners of Pepperdine. Deborah has served as an adjunct professor at the University of West Los Angeles and San Fernando School of Law in the areas of corporate and intellectual property law. Ms. Sweeney is also well-recognized for her written work online as a contributing writer with top business and entrepreneurial blogging sites.  She is a regular contributor on Forbes, American Express, Social Media Today, and BlogHer among many others.

In her ‘free’ time, Deborah enjoys spending time with her husband and two sons, Benjamin (8) and Christopher (6). Deborah believes in the importance of family and credits the entrepreneurial business model for giving her the flexibility to enjoy both a career and motherhood. Follow her on Twitter @deborahsweeney and @mycorporation.