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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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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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Community Day 13: Keeping your pipeline active.

April 17, 2009 by 5 Comments

This is a question which really pertains to all this doom and gloom going on regarding the economy. People are so afraid about not getting business right now, it is scary. Interestingly enough I have been getting a lot of feedback that small business has been doing exceptionally well at keeping their pipeline full.

What has been your experience? What are you doing right now to keep people coming back?

One of the biggest issues that I have is that when I go out networking I end up bringing in so much business that I just simply cannot handle it all. So I get caught up in delivering the service and then I forget to network, and then my pipeline goes dead. After a week or two I’m wondering where everyone went, lol :).

Do you all suffer from this issue? What have you done to keep your pipeline regularly full?

Hit us up in the comments below.

-Coach Kolansky

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Community Day 12: How do you stay in touch, personally?

April 16, 2009 by 3 Comments

Yesterday a marketing program launched called the Product Launch Forumla. This program has been revolutionary in marketing because it is all about how to use the internet to keep a “personal touch”. It is amazing too, because as the owner of the product says, the people who have purchased it have used it to make over $103 million dollars worth of income.

I’m not trying to make you go purchase it, what I’m really trying to do is illustrate just how important that personal touch really is. It is amazing in today’s day and age because it is possible to have such a personal touch in this impersonal world that you could have people think that y’all have been lifelong friends, yet you have yet to even meet each other. You might not even know their name.

I know Internet Entrepreneurs who have pull that off quite successfully. It is like the old adage goes, it isn’t who you know, it is who knows you.

So with all that said, the question of the day is, how do you manage your relationships? I don’t expect you to have a massive following of people who know everything about you, but I do suspect that there is a group of people out there who you want to maintain a personal interaction with. How do you go about doing it?

-Coach Kolansky

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Community Day 11: Finding Networking Opportunities

April 15, 2009 by 3 Comments

Today’s community question about finding networking opportunities.

This is more along the lines of the beginner who is getting started with networking, IMHO (in my humble opinion). I know that when I first got started I didn’t even know what a networking opportunity was.

Now I think that a networking opportunity is something along the lines of something that:

  • Connects me with someone who can help me develop my business.
  • Connects me with a group of people who will promote or help the growth of my business.
  • Puts me in a situation where I can help promote people who I am networked to.

I suppose it is about keeping your eyes open and being ready for oncoming networking opportunities.

But I want to hear from all of you. How do you find networking opportunities?

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