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Using social media to build your brand

June 3, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I have done a lot of teaching recently on social media and more specifically, Internet marketing. Social media websites like Facebook and Twitter are fantastic for building a brand for yourself. Despite all the white noise that appears from people talking about their last bathroom trip or their cat, you can still stand out from the crowd if you take the time to craft your messages.

In a recent event that I did, the $1 weekend, I found that I built such a strong brand for the event that I couldn’t tell people about it anymore. They all already knew everything about it because they had been following me on social media websites! How cool is that?

All I did to make this happen was consistently update my status on social media websites with relevent information for the people on these sites.

So what defines relevant?

There is a fantastic video I watched a while back which I’m going to share with you called The Relevant Truth.

This video discusses finding that piece of your business that will really resonate with your clients.

Here is the link.

Now if you haven’t already, go register for facebook.com, Twitter.com, and linkedin.com.

Getting registered on these social media websites is the first step. Next you will want to flesh out your profile in as much detail as they will allow you to do. Take a day and really work hard on this, you won’t regret it.

After that, go register with ping.fm and tie that site together with all your social media profiles.

Then you’ll have the ULTIMATE brand management machine!

Go get started, and then let us know how this works for you :).

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How do you move from being a generalist in your field to being a specialist?

June 3, 2009 by Leave a Comment

What a painful concept!

I know… not what you were expecting me to say based on the topic at hand, eh? ~_^.

Well, think about it. The real key to becoming a specialist means that you need to tell people no.

If you tell people you can do everything then you’ll never specialize. So based on my own personal experience, the best way to become a specalist (which I have been starting to do) is to tell people that you can’t help them when they have jobs which are outside of the range of your specialities.

What has been your experience on this topic? Have you been trying to become a specialist in any particular field? Have you found what I said above to be true, or have you had another experience?

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How do you market multiple businesses at the same time?

June 3, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Marketing more than one business is much more difficult than it first appears. I don’t know how many of you have tried this, but I’ll tell you right now, if you are into networking and you have more than one thing going on, you are going to have issues.

The funny thing about it is that it seems easy at first. You see a need. So you start to offer a product to fill that need, but then you slowly begin to realize that you are having more difficulty selling on the whole.

This has been my experience at least. I have found that I just need to slim down, sometimes, and stick to what I’m good at. What has been your experience in this area?

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What do you do when a competitor has tainted your entire industry?

May 28, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I deal with this one on a daily basis. I don’t know about all of you, but people have computer techs squared away in a box. And because of these large franchises (not to name any names) I end up taking flack for things other companies have done.

Things like, keeping someone’s computer in their shop for 8 months!! Or taking someone’s hard drive (with all of their family photos) and then disapearing off of the planet. How crazy is that? But I end up taking some of the blame because these companies are giving my industry a bad name.

So I am forced to really push through some resistence when it comes to selling my own services to my target audience (who has lost faith in my industry.)

I have been going through the book Tribes by Seth Godin recently, and he has a pretty interesting method for dealing with resistence in a market. That is quite simply summed up as “change”. When you present yourself as opposed to the status quo, you tend to shield yourself somewhat from what people think of your industry.

What do you think? Are you in an industry that has made a bad name for itself and you find that you are battling against that all the time?

If you are, what are some things that you have done to overcome that? Hit us up in the comments below :).

“Keeping your success in focus”
-Coach Kolansky

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Managing your brand when you are already known in a market

May 26, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Here we go, with a strong start, here is the first of the second half of the 30 days of Coffee Tea You and Me.

The community question for today is: “How do you manage your brand when you are already known in a market?”

This has actually been something which I have been working very hard on. I made the personal mistake of becoming part of too many things and so I confused my audience as to what I actually do. Big mistake. So now I am faced with the monsterous effort of trying to revamp the public’s expectations of who I am. I am just now starting to see things turn around as I slowly put out consistent messages as to what I can do for people. My brand is starting to get a shape again! :).

Brand management is a slow and tedious process which requires quite a bit of dedication.

What are your thoughts on how someone who has already made a name for themselves (good or bad) can work to change or manage their brand?

God Bless,
-Coach Kolansky

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The VisionQuest90 Blueprint

April 27, 2009 by 2 Comments

Hey Gang,

As you know, I have been orchestrating Coach Powell’s website for a while now. My real business has been the computer repair business and the Coach and I have traded a lot of services back and forth with each other.

Marvin never really intended to put up a website and have a strong web presence. In fact I can distinctly remember him publicly proclaiming that he didn’t have a website and didn’t need one.

But through a lot of prodding I managed to get him focused on building a web presence because as you and I both know, he has been a LOT more effective in helping all of us with his ideas and processes for business improvement.

I know that without his key ideas on vision I would have been heading for big trouble this year as my business begins to grow beyond my own ability to handle all the work! I don’t know about you, but my biggest fear was that I hadn’t properly thought through where I was heading in business and in life. I am working so hard to make things work that it is difficult to keep my barings on where I am working towards. But through the vision exercises that he has taught me in person and through this website’s content I have been able to know whats right and whats wrong in my own personal and business life.

The main thing we have been working on in the last few months has been trying to get the word out about a process that Marvin created called the VisionQuest90 process. His intention, originally, was to use it only with his Coaching clients to “coach” them through becoming better business owners. Gosh! How selfish is that, keeping all the good stuff for himself ;)!

However, as part of his website, he agrees with me that it would be best to teach you how to use the VisionQuest90 process by yourself. That way you would be able to utilize this powerful process he developed on your own time. That, by no means, devalues his coaching in your business, but this will give you the tools to be able start down the path to do some of the following things:

  • Properly set and reach business goals.
  • Learn how to consistently make the right decisions for yourself and your business. (And how to sleep peacefully at night knowing that they are indeed the RIGHT decisions 😉 ).
  • Get excited about where you are going.
  • Get other people excited about where you are going.
  • KNOW where you are going (this has been key for me, personally).
  • Stay focused on finishing your projects.

On May 7th in the afternoon he is going to be teaching this process in detail for the first time ever. I’ll be posting up a registration form later this week, but in the mean time, what I have done is recorded a 40 minute blueprint of the VisionQuest90 Process.

Marvin and I recorded this yesterday at the local Panera Bread (so forgive the background noise). And MAN the allergies were killing me, so if you hear me weeping over Marvin’s incredible process it is just that it touched me right where it counts (and I’m on allergy overload).

This audio file goes deep into how the process works. I asked Marvin as many questions as I could think of and tried to make sure that we got as much detail as we possibly could fit into the 40 minute audio. I know that there is a TON more to be taught, but this is essentially the core of the model which you can apply to your life tomorrow if you wanted :).

Just click here to listen. Right click to download.

Keeping your success in focus,
-Dan Kolansky and the Ninety Day Power Play

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Strategies for Speed Networking

April 21, 2009 by 2 Comments

Most of the topics we have covered on networking recently have been more abstract in nature. Today’s topic is the last one I had set under “week three.” It is Speed Networking.

I actually have never been to a speed networking session and from Coach Powell’s response which we’ll hear tomorrow it doesn’t really even seem like I will ever need to.

What has been your experience with speed networking? Did you meet the people that you wanted to meet? Was it profitable for you?

If you have been, what were the strategies that you employed to get effective results from this very specific form of networking?

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Day 14: How to differentiate yourself in a flooded market

April 20, 2009 by 6 Comments

This question was originally asked by a financial planner. For those who don’t know much of the financial planning industry, it is tightly regulated to help protect the population from fraudulent or, well, dumb financial planners.

So the end result is that you end up with a ton of people who essentially have the same service and product offering. So being different in that type of industry is incredibly difficult.

Coach Powell had a wonderful answer to this question which I’m going to post up tomorrow (yes, I said tomorrow. I’m putting the answers a little bit closer to the posts). Until the answer goes up though, what are some things that you have done to be different in your own industry? Maybe your industry isn’t flooded like this woman’s was, but there is almost always competition :). Why do you stand out? And can you sum it up quick enough to catch people’s attention?

I know my differentiation, it is right in my tag-line for my computer repair business. I help you love your computer again.

That gets people’s attention :).

Hit us up in the comments below :). Why are you different from all the other people in your industry?

Join the revolution!
-Coach Kolansky

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Why did you want to be what you wanted to be when you grow up

April 20, 2009 by 3 Comments

Lets continue the discussion which we started last week. As we are edging closer to Marvin’s seminar on the VisionQuest90 this topic is actually becoming more and more relevent.

We had some amazing responses (some people actually kind of found themselves again, that was pretty cool to be a part of) to last week’s blog post about who you want to be when you grow up.

Today’s question is more along the lines of why. Why did you pick the thing you wanted to be when you grow up? What was it about that profession which got your blood going?

I shared last week that I have been pretty one-track minded for most of my life when it came to picking out what I wanted to be. The reason why is this, I saw time and again (from my Grandmother running her own dance studio, to my first job where my boss ran his own computer repair company) people who truly were experiencing life. They all knew how to have a good time, and somehow they made a living doing it :).

I didn’t get into business to be lazy, by any stretch of the imagination. But I did see that if I wanted to be able to experience life, entrepreneurship would give me that chance better than anything else.

I also knew that those who were entrepreneurs did tend to be able to spend more time with their families. And not to get too personal, but that was something which I did truly miss as a child in my family. We have always been a whole family, but my Dad worked all week long and so his schedule ruled the house. I only saw him on the weekends, really. It didn’t sit right with me and I (kind of figuring this out as I type this) made a silent vow to myself to have things different when I had my own home.

Again, entrepreneurship provided that option to my household. To be able to work from home was a huge plus to me. And so I chose that profession :).

So…. that was my story. Your turn ;). Comments, please?

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What do you want to be when you grow up?

April 17, 2009 by 8 Comments

It is always interesting when I am at a networking event and I ask someone how they got into the line of work that they are in. I get all kinds of answers, but often the resounding thing that I hear (with a few exceptions) is that they did not plan to be where they are now.

I don’t know about you, but I am exactly where I want to be at this point in my life. There is (despite what my wife may think 😉 ) an overarching plan that I am following for my life which I have been developing since I was in my teens.

The plan has changed some, but overall, I have ALWAYS wanted to be an entrepreneur. I like business. Always have. Likely always will :).

The other night Marvin and I were discussing this because we had been talking about his VisionQuest90 process. I was asking him about what this process does for people that they might not already know about. He told me that the process helps people capture who they wanted to be when they were nine years old. How cool is that? I’m sure you knew what you wanted to be when you were nine years old. A fireman, an astronaught. As Marvin put it, it was the time of your life when you thought you could jump and then never have to come back down. That was magical, wasn’t it?

Why don’t you hit us up in the comments below. Are you what you wanted to be when you grew up? What did you want to be?

This should be a lot of fun :-D.

Join the Revolution!
-Dan Kolansky

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