Amy Will - Launching & Building a Brand For Dummies

Post a unique and engaging bio on your website or blog and all your social media profiles. See Chapter 8for information about writing copy that promotes your brand.

Include your website or blog address in all your social media profiles.

Create a LinkedIn account. LinkedIn is the best social networking platform for professionals.

Join and participate in popular online discussion forums (including those on LinkedIn) that are relevant to your industry or areas of expertise.

Post regularly on your favorite social media platforms. Before posting anything on any social media platform, assume that a potential employer will read it. Ask yourself whether your post would impress that person or turn them off.

Solicit testimonials from people you’ve worked with or for to post on your website or blog and social media accounts.

If you’re famous or influential (or want to be), building a strong personal brand is a key to your success. Your branding goal is to become popular — to have tens of thousands or even millions of followers on social media and to be in high demand due to your influence or celebrity status.

The key to building a personal brand to become famous is finding topics that resonate with large populations and that align with your own personality and goals, so that you can develop content that’s both genuine and engaging.

With a personal brand, charisma goes a long way. Think about the charismatic people you know. They’re confident, optimistic, approachable, engaging, and energetic; they tell great stories or jokes; they have strong convictions; they’re not afraid to take risks; and they live life to its fullest. Start with those qualities, and you’ll be well on your way to stardom.

People give an organization money only when they believe it’s going to a worthy cause and trust the organization to use the money wisely toward that cause, so having a strong brand is essential.

When you’re building a brand for a not-for-profit organization, focus on three areas:

Storytelling: First and foremost, people need a compelling reason to donate to the organization. They need to believe that the organization will make the world a better place in a way that matters to them.

Credibility: The organization must demonstrate that it uses money wisely to fulfill its mission. If money or projects are mismanaged, people will be reluctant to donate.

Transparency: The organization must keep donors informed about where the money is going and about successful and unsuccessful projects. Transparency builds trust, and people won’t donate to an organization they don’t trust.

Whether you’re trying to attract private investors or planning to take your company public, branding is an important first step. You need to build a brand to convince investors that they can expect a respectable return on their investment.

When you’re starting a new business, you’ll be recruiting private investors, who want to see the following:

Clearly defined products or services that have a reasonable expectation of selling well and generating a profit

A strong management team with a track record of success or at least the knowledge and expertise to start and run a successful business

A solid business plan, showing how the business will pursue success

A clear and compelling brand story

A culture of innovation to drive future growth

Only after you’ve created a highly successful and popular brand should you take your business public. Branding at this stage focuses on highlighting the company’s track record for success, its future ambitions (such as earnings and profits projections), its innovations, and its ability to execute planned initiatives.

If you already have a brand and are planning to expand into new markets — in different regions of the country or in different countries — consider how your current brand will play in those locations and whether any adjustments need to be made. Certain colors might elicit different emotions depending on the culture, for example. You may need to hire a marketing firm in the location you’re expanding into to provide guidance on design elements and content.

Although the approach to building and launching a brand differs depending on the brand type and purpose, the overall approach is pretty much the same and can be boiled down to ten steps. In this section, I lead you through the process. Subsequent chapters cover specific steps in greater detail.

Before you can build a brand, you need to have something to brand or at least a concept for it: a business or other type of organization, a product or service, or yourself. This step involves the following activities (see Chapter 2for details):

Deciding what to brand

Identifying a market niche

Formalizing your brand as a business (such as forming a limited liability company or corporation)

Coming up with the money to build your brand

This step involves clarifying in your own mind what your brand is, what it does, why it’s different, and why it’s better. It’s all about defining your brand identity in a way that differentiates your brand from competing brands or other products or services that may attract the attention of your target market. See Chapter 3for details.

In this step, you set goals for your brand, including the following:

Increasing brand awareness

Creating an emotional connection with customers and prospects

Differentiating your business, product, service, or self from the competition

Building credibility and trust

Increasing sales and profitability

This step also involves building a plan to meet your branding goals and deciding on ways to measure your progress toward achieving those goals. See Chapter 4for details.

A customer avatar is a fictional character that represents your target customers. Its purpose is to give you a sense of your audience that inspires you to create design elements and content that are likely to persuade customers to support and even promote your brand.

This step involves research and analysis to get to know the people who make up your target market, describing your avatar in your own words, and refining it to keep up with the times and any changes in your target market.

You can create more than one customer avatar to represent people from different market segments you’re trying to penetrate. But you want to avoid trying to be all things to all people and making an avatar so broad that your design and content have no measurable impact on anyone. See Chapter 5for guidance on creating a customer avatar.