November, 2007

Social Media — 8 Comments
29
Nov 07

Networking with MyBlogLog “Recent Readers” Widget

MyBlogLog is a popular social networking site for bloggers, owned by Yahoo!. MyBlogLog’s success is based on its “Recent Readers” widget, a blog sidebar widget that shows the pictures or avatars of other MyBlogLog members that have visited your site.

The widget can be personalized to blend with your site (you can choose colors and number of pictures to display), and can be added to your blog by pasting a snippet of javascript code to your sidebar template. Here’ how the widget looks:

widget.jpg

You can also see it live on our right side bar.

The success of this widget lies in the fact that it shows you who your readers are, beyond cold statistics like the number of visitors and where they came from. The actual pictures let you connect to your readers on a more personal basis.

When you click on a picture you are transported to that person’s MyBlogLog profile (see our profile here), where you can:

  • Read how they describe themselves and what tags do they use
  • See what blogs do they author
  • Find out who belongs to the communities around their blogs
  • Learn who their friends and contacts are
  • Find links to their profiles in other popular social networking sites.

You can also click to their blogs’ page and see a list of recent readers and members of that blog’s community, as well as links to the most recent blog posts (see our blog’s page).

Since the pictures in the “Recent Readers” widget have been prooved to significantly draw readers’ attention, the more blogs of other members that have installed the widget you visit, the more your picture will be displayed, and the more clicks to your profile page you will get.

Through MyBlogLog, you can also personally contact your readers (or other people with similar interests) to start building your network. As you add people to your contact list and join their blog communities, they may feel more inclined to add you as a friend and join your blog’s community.

You can always email members directly, and ask them to add you to their contact list or join your community, although I prefer a softer approach: just join as many relevant communities you can an hope for reciprocity. Once somebody joins your community or adds you as a contact, I suggest to send them a quick message thanking them for doing so.

I just started using MyBlogLog a few days ago so I still can’t really tell how effective it is in generating significant traffic. However, I still recommend it to new bloggers (as oppossed to, for example, using that space to slap on Adsense ads), since developing a network is a new site’s number one priority.

By clicking to my readers’ profiles, I’ve also found many interesting sites that complement nicely with my blog’s niche, where it may be worth it to invest some time visiting and leaving relevant comments.

As I develop more feedback on MyBlogLog and the “Recent Readers” widget I will be appending this information or writing follow up posts, so come back often or, even better, subscribe to our feed. In the meantime, you can read this interesting post about MyBlogLog in Lee Odden’s Toprank blog.

Join My Community at MyBloglog!

Technorati Tags:

Personal Branding / Profiles — No Comments
27
Nov 07

Profiles in Branding: G. Kofi Annan

G. Kofi Annan is a man on a mission. As a marketer and entrepreneur he is attempting the ultimate challenge: to change his target market’s perceptions through an elaborate exercise of re-branding. But wait, there’s more: what Kofi is trying to re-brand is not just a product but a continent: he is trying to change the negative stereotypes about Africa.

Battling the Stereotypes

An African himself (he was born in Ghana), Mr. Annan knows that there is more to Africa than the stories of hunger, war, disease and corruption that we see and hear in the mainstream media every day. By helping people and companies bridge the gap between cultures, he is leading the way in uncovering new experiences and business opportunities.

How Is He Doing It

Kofi believes that he can use pop culture to spread a different, positive message about Africa, and his vehicle of choice is his own upscale, African-themed line of street wear: Annansi Clothing Co. He also publishes a blog: Annansi Chronicles, where he reports on the fashion, style, and business trends ushering a new image of Africa.

Unlike other companies that use blogs as just a way to attract buyers for their main product lines, the goal of Kofi’s blog is not only to generate sales of his clothing products. Both the blog and his clothing line are vehicles working together for a higher purpose: changing the market’s perception of Africa and reinforcing Kofi’s position as a thought leader on the subject.

Using Social Media for Branding

The way Kofi uses social media to build his brand is almost as fascinating as his story. Using social media to build brands is something that we talk about a lot in this blog, and Kofi’s case is probably one of the best examples of how to do it right.

His blog has hundreds of thoughtful and well researched posts. He embeds You Tube videos, encourages comments, includes links to bookmark his posts and offers a list of related posts at the end of each entry.

His subscription options (both RSS and Email) are clearly visible at the top of the sidebar. His About page show a prominent link to his LinkedIn profile where you can find more information about his endevours. There is also a link to his Facebook page and a Flickr widget where you can see pictures of events where he has participated. His blog is also highly rated in Technorati, the popular search engine for blogs.

As far as social media is concerned, Kofi is pulling all the stops.

Plans for the Future

Re-branding Africa is a full time job, and one that Kofi seems to enjoy very much. The experience that he is acquiring, though, may bring with it many other opportunities. It wouldn’t be a stretch for Mr. Annan to brand-extend himself as an expert adviser for companies that are tackling difficult branding problems. After all, if you can re-brand a continent anything else should be a walk in the park…

Technorati Tags:

Social Media — 2 Comments
24
Nov 07

Optimizing Above The Fold Content: Five Tips to Increase Your Blog Subscribers

Web Surfing and Short Attention Spans

When visitors come to your site you have only a few seconds to engage them or lose them. This is especially true when they come from a search engine or from sites that encourage channel surfing, like Stumbleupon. This is why optimizing the above the fold portion of your blog is so important.

How People Read Online

Jakob Nielsen shows us that web users follow an “F” pattern when they read through a page. They read across the first couple of lines (or short paragraphs) of content, and then they just scan down the left side of the page (hence, the “F” pattern):

fpattern.jpg

Google’s depiction of the page sections that generate higher Adsense click-through rates seems to validate these findings.

Both studies imply that the above the fold section of a page receives the highest attention.

Our Top 5 Above-the-Fold Blog Optimization Tips:

  1. Minimize distractions: use a two column layout instead of three columns, with your content to the left and the sidebar to the right.
  2. Make your post headlines powerful and relevant (the headline of your most current post is the first thing your visitors will notice). If most of your visitors come from search engines, make your headlines descriptive and keyword focused. If, on the other hand, most of your traffic comes from social media sites, make the headline intriguing and catchy (try using these very effective headline templates).
  3. Make your paragraphs short, and separate them with descriptive sub-headings. Since users will be scanning down the page, you want your sub-headings to catch their attention.
  4. Use the top of the right sidebar to place your most important call to action. For most blogs this means to get visitors to subscribe. Give your visitors at least these three options:
  5. Immediately above the place where your content starts, include a prominent link saying something like: “New to our site? Read this first” and hyperlink it to a welcome page where you:
    • Briefly introduce yourself.
    • Offer links to your most popular or most relevant posts by category (this will be easier once your site has a decent amount of content).
    • An invitation to subscribe (again, include all the options: email, RSS, and bookmarks).
    • A way to contact you: you can use a short contact form or offer your email address. Optionally you can also display your IM ID or skype number, and include links to your different social media profile pages (digg, technorati, delicious, etc.)

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Branding — 4 Comments
21
Nov 07

When Bad Things Happen to Good Brands: Jeep’s Brand Dilemma

Jeep® is one of America’s iconic brands, synonymous with adventure, ruggedness and the outdoors. Unfortunately, in the last few years, marketing fads and operational priorities have taken precedence over sound brand strategy and the brand seems to have lost its way.

Strike One: The Cherokee Goes Away

In 2001, Jeep discontinued the legendary Cherokee, after an unprecedented 17 year run without major styling changes. With its distinctive boxy shape, the Cherokee thumbed its nose at the styling trends of the day, and people loved it. Furthermore, it was inexpensive, reliable and easy to modify.

In its place came the Jeep Liberty, a “cute-ute” with softer lines and round headlights. The move was supposed to answer the global market’s demands for more creature comforts than those afforded by the rather spartan Cherokee. To Jeep enthusiasts, though, the move was a slap in the face. The Liberty was immediately dismissed as a “girl’s Jeep” and, to this day, Jeep die-hards are still claiming for the the return of the beloved Cherokee.

Strike Two: The Jeep Commander

Things got worse in 2005 when the Jeep Commander was launched. The new Jeep targeted a popular market niche: SUVs with three rows of seats. The move, however, came too late: competitors had been selling seven-seater SUVs for years. Furthermore, with gas prices now pushing $3 a gallon, consumers were staying away from large, gas guzzling SUVs.

To make matters worse, due to “operational efficiencies” the Commander shared the same platform as the Grand Cherokee (Jeep’s mid-size luxo-wagon). This made the Commander too small to comfortably accommodate seven passengers compared to the larger trucks it was supposed to compete with. Instead, the Commander ended up cannibalizing Grand Cherokee sales.

Strike Three: The Jeep Compass

Jeep’s third and worse move was the launch of the lame Jeep Compass, an unattractive, underpowered and not suitable for off-roading cross-over vehicle that didn’t share any of the Jeep brand’s attributes, and was a radical departure from the promising concept that inspired it.

Jeep’s marketing exec’s argued that the Compass would catapult the Jeep brand into new markets. Reality turned out differently: sales have been sluggish and Jeep’s brand equity has been diluted. Again, “operational efficiencies” may have had a role to play, since the Compass shares the same platform as the mechanically-identical Dodge Caliber.

The Compass recently earned the infamous #1 spot in the list of Top 10 Worse Automobiles of 2007 by a popular car review site.

The Tale of the Tape

Year to date sales figures are down double-digits for the Liberty, the Commander and the Grand Cherokee (the Compass is up only because it was launched late last year, so no relevant comparison can be made).

The bright star in the Jeep lineup is the Jeep Wrangler (the only Jeep 100% true to Jeep’s brand identity). Dealers can’t keep the four-door Wrangler Unlimited in stock, and sales were up 62% vs. 2006.

Conclusions

The objective of this article is not to beat up the Jeep brand, of which I am a vocal fan, but to underscore how important it is to nurture and protect our brands, even when that means going against the latest fads or the management flavor of the month.

Finally I would like to share my recommendations to Jeep’s brand management team (just in case they’re listening…):

  • Get rid of the Compass and the Commander.
  • Develop a true 7-seater and call it the Wagoneer (another iconic Jeep model of the past).
  • Bring back the Jeep Cherokee and make it lean, fuel-efficient, practical and inexpensive.

In the meantime, I will happily keep on driving my faithful 11 year old red Cherokee Sport.

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Personal Branding — 4 Comments
17
Nov 07

Your Elevator Pitch and How to Leverage It

Creating your brand starts by defining the one thing you stand for in very few words. You need to create an elevator pitch that is shorthand for your brand’s value proposition. Your elevator pitch is your promise to deliver.

Coming up with an elevator pitch is not easy. It takes discipline and focus, and it involves answering four basic questions:

  • Who you are?
  • What you do?
  • Why are you the best?
  • What is your call to action?

Once you answer these questions clearly and confidently you’ll have a blueprint that will guide all your branding efforts.

To create your elevator pitch go to 15SecondPitch.com and follow the wizard that will take you through the process.

Once you’ve created your elevator pitch, you can leverage it in your Internet and social media marketing programs. Your elevator pitch can easily double up as:

a) Your resource box in articles you write for free syndication (don’t forget to add your website address).
b) Your profile in social media sites and social bookmarking services.
c) The text in the About Us page in your site or blog.
d) Your email signature file tagline.
e) The meta-description tag of your home page

An elevator pitch is also a great way to introduce yourself in networking events.

Marketing / Social Media — 1 Comment
13
Nov 07

Content Generation Ideas: Writing Book Reviews

If you are an entrepreneur, freelancer or small business owner, you are probably an avid reader of books related to your field. You should start writing personal reviews of the books you read.

Writing book reviews has many advantages:

  • It forces you to take notes and articulate the most important takeaways.
  • It conditions you to think of how the content relates to your business and your customers.
  • The knowledge you acquire will build up and make you a better professional.

You can also leverage your book reviews in your social media marketing. For example:

  • Book reviews can easily double up as content for your blog or website.
  • You can post your book reviews in amazon.com, bn.com or other online booksellers.
  • You can post your reviews as comments on the authors’ blog or book companion site.
  • You can submit your book reviews to social bookmarking sites.

All this can benefit you in several ways:

  • By posting your reviews on your blog you will add to your blog’s content. Once your review pages are picked up by the search engines you will benefit from the book’s brand equity, since your review will show up in search engine results pages for queries that mention the book.
  • By posting your reviews on amazon.com and other online booksellers you will build a reputation as an expert, and receive qualified visitors to your site when readers click on your profile page link.
  • By linking to the amazon.com book page from your blog post using your affiliate link, you are creating a back end revenue stream for your site.

Writing book reviews will get easier with time and practice. Here’s a good tip: try to follow the same basic book review template all the time, so that you can get to your main points quickly and keep your reviewing style consistent. Finally, don’t forget to follow the basic guidelines for writing on the web.

Social Media — 13 Comments
9
Nov 07

Three Blog Posting Tips for Brand Exposure

Adding a blog to your site will allow you to publish plenty of valuable, relevant content that attracts links and gives you search engine visibility. Blogs are also a great tool to engage your customers and build your reputation as an expert.

Following are three useful posting tips to maximize your readers’ exposure to your brand:

1. Link to older posts:

As you write new blog posts, you will notice that you often have to reference topics that you have already covered in other blog posts. This is a great opportunity to link to those posts to add context to your new content, and at the same time encourage your readers to click and visit other parts of your blog.

These links will generate additional page views per visitor, increasing your readers’ exposure to your brand. More exposure means better conversion rates (more subscriptions, more sales, etc.). I always make it a point to link to at least three older posts, if possible.

2. Link to other blogs:

When you link to other blogs, the trackback feature supported by most blog platforms will generate a link to your site in the ‘comments’ section of the page that you have linked to.

This is a great opportunity to get the attention of readers from other blogs, who may see your trackback and click to your site.

Try to find quality (high authority) blogs related to your topic that you can link to to emphasize your points, and make sure that the other blog is accepting trackbacks (some bloggers deactivate the trackback feature).

3. Always end your posts with a clear call to action:

Ask your readers to bookmark your post or subscribe to your feed. In good old fashion selling this is called “asking for the order”.

If you look at the end of this post (and other posts in this blog) you will see those two calls to action in a way that comes across as friendly and firm, but not pushy.

Normally, if somebody has read all the way through the end of your post, it’s because they found your post interesting. These readers will be in a very receptive frame of mind and will follow your calls to action most of the time: just give them a gentle nudge… ;) .

Branding / Social Media — 6 Comments
6
Nov 07

Customer Touch Points Online: How to Manage them for Brand Consistency

Customer touch points are the points of interaction between your customers and your brand. A sales call, a voice mail greeting, your business card, your website, your packaging, your in-store service, are all examples of touchpoints.

You can manage your customer touch points so that they are consistent with your brand. A properly managed customer touch point builds brand equity.

Since we are interested in Internet branding, we will review some of the most important online customer touch points:

Domain Name:

After your positioning and your competitive advantage, you need to chose a domain name. An online presence is so important that you should chose your domain even before your company or brand name to make sure it is not taken.

Your domain must include your brand name and if possible a keyword. For example, if you have a web design company called Praxis, a good domain name would be praxiswebdesign.com (your brand name provides brand recognition while the generic keyword tells your visitors and search engines what you do).

Since search engines rely on keywords to classify and rank pages, you should not underestimate the importance of including your main keyword(s) in your domain name.

Aside from that, try to make your domain name short rather than long, and .com rather than .net, .org or .biz (although you should register all those extensions to prevent unscrupulous competitors from stealing your brand equity).

Logo:

A logo can be a name, a symbol or a combination of both, and is a visual reminder of your brand. Logos provide instant brand recognition and visual appeal to any website, and they are a shorthand for what your brand is all about.

Since other people may want to use your logo to link to you, you must control how your logo is displayed. You can have a “Link to Us” section on your site, where you provide the exact HTML code people can use to link to you. This snippet of code must include the URL of your logo (which should be hosted on your site, so that others don’t duplicate it and/or modify it in any way).

For example, if you want to link to this site using our logo, just cut and paste the following code on your site:

<a href=http://www.shoestringbranding.com><img src=”http://www.shoestringbranding.com/images/sbredyellowtrans.gif”></a>

Trade Dress:

Trade dress is the look and feel of your website, your packaging, your collateral material, etc. The most important elements of your trade dress are your logo, colors and typeface. They are important because both colors and fonts project emotional connotations that must be in tune with your brand’s personality.

Website:

Once you have defined your logo and trade dress, you must incorporate them in your website’s design and use them consistently across all pages.

If your site is a blog, you can use an existing template. WordPress, the popular blogging platform, has hundreds of free themes that you can chose from. I recommend using a minimalist template paired with a professionally designed logo.

I also recommend using a two column layout instead of three since it looks less cluttered, and it is easier to highlight your most important calls to action. More is not always better: less choices lead to better click through and conversion rates.

Website Content:

Your website content offers many different customer touch points, each with its own objectives. For example, you can have the following pages or sections:

  • FAQ: are you answering all your customers’ doubts? Are your answers clear? Do you have a searchable FAQ database?
  • About Us: this is where you “sell” your brand and where you can create trust.
  • Online Customer Support: is it easy for your customers to ask questions? Are you answering them quickly? Can your customers perform the needed tasks easily?
  • Contact Us: Do you have a 1-800 number prominently displayed? Do you have a short and easy contact form? Have you included your physical address, driving directions, hours of operation, etc.? Have you set up different email addresses for different “departments” (even if all of them forward to your own email address)?

404 Error page:

Instead of the generic “Page not found” white screen, you need to create a branded 404 Error page. Your 404 Error page should have your website’s look and feel and offer links to the main sections of your site. It should also have a site search box so that your readers can easily find what they’re looking for.

Favicon:

A favicon is a small 16×16 pixel graphics file (.ico format) that you can place at the root level of your site. Every time somebody bookmarks your site, or types your site’s URL in the address bar, the favicon will display to the left of your page title or URL.

A favicon can be a small version of your logo, or a small element of it. For example, Yahoo!’s favicon is the letter “Y” followed by the exclamation point. Goggle uses the letter G. CNN uses a tiny version of it’s name. (look at your address bar now to see our favicon).

To create a favicon you can use this favicon generator. Just upload the picture you want to use and the program will create a favicon based on that picture. To install your favicon, upload it to the root level of your site and include the following HTML code :

<link REL=”SHORTCUT ICON” href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/favicon.ico”>

on your index page, after the <HEAD> tag, or in the header.php page if you’re using a WordPress blog theme.

Email:

Every email you send is a branding opportunity. End your email messages with a branded signature file that includes your name, company logo, tagline, address, phone number, mobile phone number, fax, website and email address.

You should not use the email address of your web service provider or web mail program. Instead, use an email address that has your domain name to the right of the “@” symbol. For example, use yourname@yourbrand.com instead of yourname@yahoo.com .

A low cost way of having your own branded email address is to use the free email forwarding feature offered by most domain registrars. It will let you receive emails to yourname@yourbrand.com and forward them to yourname@yahoo.com.

Email Newsletter:

An email newsletter helps you build brand equity by giving useful, free advice. You should use an HTML template with the same look and feel of your website.

You should also archive your email newsletters on your site, so that search engines can index that content. The more relevant content you give the search engines, the more authority your site will earn and it will rank better.

Article Resource Box:

An author resource box is a small paragraph that you are allowed to include at the end of the articles you give away for free reprint on other sites. Your resource box is where you market yourself and link to your site. It must include:

  • Your name
  • Your website’s address
  • Your elevator pitch (one to three sentences explaining what makes your brand/company unique)
  • Your call to action (a link to download a free bonus or special report is always very effective)

Search Engine Results:

The results of a search engine query can be a powerful branding signal. 36% of search engine users believe that companies that appear at the top of the search results are the top companies in their field. Therefore, the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) to your overall Internet branding strategy should not be underestimated.

Ranking high for competitive keyphrases is extremely difficult and time consuming, and showing you how to do it is beyond the scope of this article. You can, however, rank well for many long, highly targeted keyphrases (the long tail) by posting content related to your brand frequently.

The first objective of your SEO campaign is to rank #1 for your brand name. This is fairly easy to do If your domain is a combination of your brand name and keyword (for example, this site was already in the #1 spot in Google for “Shoestring Branding” after its first week online, by just including those words in the homepage title).

Granted, the search volume for your brand name will be very small, but it’s a branding issue: nobody should be ahead of you in the SERPs for your brand name.

SEO is an fairly tricky and ever changing subject so you may want to start by reading a basic SEO tutorial followed by a good ebook on the subject.

Shopping Carts:

When you use a third party shopping cart program or payment processing service, the default look and feel is that of the third party. Visitors may think that they have left your site and become reluctant to give away any information.Take advantage of all the customization features offered by the third party service, so that the user interface looks as close to your site as possible. Depending on the service, you may be allowed to use just your logo or your full website’s template.

Text and Banner Advertising

If you’re running your own affiliate program or advertise on other sites provide the exact copy you want used in the link text. Also, provide your affiliates with a wide array of brand-correct buttons and banners, so that your affiliates are not tempted to create their own.

Social Media Profiles:

Social media sites like Stumbleupon, Technorati or Facebook let you to upload a picture and a small paragraph about you. You may levarage these profiles for branding by uploading a logo of your company instead of your picture, and writing your brand’s elevator pitch with a link to your site in the profile text.

This isn’t by any means a comprehensive list. There are other important touchpoints: your RSS feed, the special reports and ebooks you may give away or sell, your network and the partnerships you develop (you are known by the company you keep), and even your writing style are powerful branding signals.

We will be developing these and other topics in the future so come back often, or, even better, subscribe to our feed or email list.