How many times have you read that you should brand
yourself?
What does that really mean exactly? Branding, in a
nutshell, is what makes you unique. When people hear your
name they should automatically know you as...fill in the
blank. What qualities or characteristics do you have or a
service or product you provided that synonymous with you?
Once you figure that out, how do you go about branding
yourself?
What I'll cover here is the actually branding of your. You
will have to figure out what it is about your business,
service, or product that make you unique and basically wrap
it around you.
How to get name recognition can be a hard task if you make
it hard. There are many marketers out there, whom I'm
sure, have courses to help you brand yourself. However, it
does not have to be difficult providing you know your
product or your uniqueness inside and out. Once you figure
that out, the easiest way to go about it is article or
e-zine marketing.
Online marketing of yourself online through article
marketing is relatively free, effective, and instantaneous
way to "get yourself out there." What are other benefits
you may ask?
By submitting articles to article directories, you'll brand
your web site, business and yourself. You should definitely
include your name, business name, your credentials, web site
address and e-mail address in your resource box.
This will allow people to start visiting your site, getting
familiar with you, your products and services.
As an example, I like the concept of growing network
marketing businesses through internet marketing. I'm sort
coined the term "Internetwork Marketer" as someone who does
just that.
You can focus on something similar that you can write about
and essentially brand you or your business as that.
Become an expert on the topics you write
about. This will give you and your business extra
credibility which will help gain and advantage against your
competition.
Being an expert at something means that you're the authority
on that subject matter and you know it through and through.
If you have a business, whether it's online or off, you
should certainly know the ins and outs of it. However, to
be fair, there are a lot of people starting business,
especially online, who are still in the learning phase, and
that's fine. As they focus on a particular niche, they will
learn and become authoritative in that niche or sub-niche.
Your article could also be placed on the publisher's main
page. If each issue is published on their main page this
will give you extra exposure.
Writing compelling articles that provide great content for
others to use and learn from will grab the attention of many
publishers, marketers, and the "curious Joe's" to wanting to
check you (business, product, or service) out.
By getting that extra exposure, you basically have an unfair
advantage in getting more eyes on you. That's when the
legend begins to be born---you start to become a brand--a
household name.
You will get free advertising. This will allow you to spend
your profits on other forms of advertising. You could buy
advertisements in other e-zines that don't publish your
articles.
As you turn those new subscribers or customers into buyers,
you can start to reinvest your money into other forms of
advertising that can get you even more exposure. You can
certainly marketing your articles to offline magazines and
drive those readers online.
The possibilities start to compound and before you know it,
you'll received hundreds of new eyes on you. You've become
the next Starbucks or Mike Dillard but with your own twist
to it that makes you even more unique.
You might earn extra income from people wanting to hire you
to write other articles, books, or even ask to speak at
seminars.
If you are passionate and "know your stuff," this can easily
happen. There is a need for great content and people are
willing to pay those in the know money to write about what
they know.
You could potentially start a new path that can lead to even
greater rewards, all because you wrote about what you knew
and branded yourself through your articles.
You'll gain people's trust. If they read your article and
like it, they won't be as hesitant to buy your product or
service. Help people feel comfortable and
you will be able to increase your profits.
This is a big one. Earning your clients trust through
relationship building is very important, specially online
where web seekers see so much information. Who do they
trust? They trust the person who provides the great content
and isn't out to sell them something right out of the gate.
Relationship building and trust are, in my opinion, the life
blood of your business. You have to nurture it and grow it
and prune it in order to make it stronger.
So, you have learned a little bit about branding and article
marketing and how to use the latter to build the former.
There are many other reasons why you should use this type of
marketing and advertising which I'll share in another
article.
Start focusing on what makes you, your business, and your
product/service unique and begin writing about it. Post
your articles online at different E-zine and start creating
the buzz about you.
