10 STEPS TO BUILDING YOUR ONLINE BRAND
Here are ten different ways you can develop and make your online brand more global!
1. Put some serious thought into your design.
Don’t take your design for granted!
Carefully think all this through choose the best brand for you. It’s very important to really think about what you want your brand image to say about you – because it speaks volumes.
While larger corporations hire Brand Specialists, this isn’t necessary if you’re an Entrepreneur or Small Business Owner. There are more resources out there than ever before, and most of them cost very little, if anything at all.
If you use WordPress check out this guide Garin wrote about how to find a fantastic wordpress theme.
2. Keep compelling content on your radar.
I use social media to track awesome streams of content.
I use Google Reader for my many rss subscriptions and follow 10 Twitter lists that I created. This content is great to learn from and I re-share the coolest and most powerful resources I find.
Bill Gates was right when he said content is king so I do my best to create and share the highest quality content possible!
It is a good idea to subscribe to the blogs you find the most interesting and helpful.
Breaking the blogs you down into categories will help you filter for the information that interests you the most. In Google Reader you can organize your RSS feeds with folders.
Keeping the number of blogs you follow to a manageable number will help eliminate information overload.
If you follow many blogs on Twitter you can separate them into more manageable sections using lists to create unique streams of tweets.
3. Take advantage of free Google services.
A site that organizes and centralizes all the blogs you follow into one place is called an “aggregator”. One of the best known aggregators is Google Reader.
Since new blogs appear daily, it might be a good idea to set up a Google alert for your blog and other blogs containing keywords that are in your areas of interest. This is a great way to stay current with information, brainstorm new post ideas, and learn new things.
Google Apps for business is an awesome way to share files and documents with a team, and set up custom branded email addresses for free.
4. Get the word out.
One of the easiest things that you can do is to customize your email signature. We see it all the time, but many people forget to do this for themselves. A cool and free tool for customizing your email signature is Wisestamp.
For example, you could add your full name (first and last), your website URL, and any related profiles, such as LinkedIn. Whatever you put in your custom signature, keep it related to your brand. This will also subtly say “I’m a professional”. For more constant and interactive promotion of your brand, it’s highly recommended that you roll up your sleeves and get into Social Media.
Social media is not as scary as it may seem. Setting up a Twitter profile and engaging with the people out there is as easy as saying hello or asking a question. Staying plugged in and keeping the Twitter conversations going will help you build a community of clients, prospects, and colleagues that will reach further than an ad in the classifieds.
To take this a step further, you can build a Facebook business page and fan page. Invite the people from Twitter to these pages. Be sure to leave the Facebook pages and your Twitter page public so that you are easy to find. Facebook and Twitter are instant and endless sources of global connections.
5. Keep your writing style scan able
The easier your copy is to read the more people will read it.
Break your writing into short sentences, rather than long rambling paragraphs.
Using bullets and sub-headers is a great call.
A few reasons bullets are a good tool to use are:
- They make content easy to read
- They look good on the page
- They show the style of bullet you use, which is an element of your theme.
Concise writing is awesome. Less is more.
6. Use free communication software
When two people have Skype accounts they can talk to each other face-to-face for free as long as they both have broadband internet connections.
Skype has an iPhone app that works pretty good for making calls via wi-fi internet.
Google also offers free video & voice calling
I use Google’s Gmail to make free calls almost every single day. Thanks Google!
I’m also pretty active on Google Plus.
7. Be consistent.
Be certain to use the same fonts, colors, writing style and other brand specific characteristics consistent throughout every piece of written material.
When you are consistent you are setting a high standard of quality.
High quality standards are good for everyone!
A standard that I am carrying forward on this blog is to make sure that every blog post has at least one high quality image.
I also plan to create a variety of media for my different websites moving forward, including both audio podcasts and videos!
8. Be creative.
People love fresh and exciting ideas.
Sometimes the best route is the simplest one.
One of the best traits a businessperson can have is to find new ways of doing what everyone else is doing.
Sure, most businesses have a website now. But what can you do, in a creative way, which makes you stand out from the crowd?
Is your business card a standard size and shape like everyone else that passed out cards in the room?
Does your brand make someone stop in their tracks and take notice?
9. Be memorable.
It’s no secret the endless names of companies that have achieved memorability. The key is to be memorable for the right reasons.
Social Media connections are real life connections with real people and these can help you create awesome new friendships and powerful new opportunities.
10. Build Connections & Help Your Network
Help people stepping into your neck of the business woods with solid advice and resources.
Engage with your network and work with the influential people within it. Help other people and they will help you too!
Maybe you retweet someone on Twitter, maybe you leave a comment on their blog, maybe you connect with them on Facebook, there are many different ways to connect with people these days.
The more connections you have the greater your influence will be in terms of the overall reach of your content.
The more you engage and help your network out the more they will return the favor and the better off everyone will be!
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5 Psychological Master Keys That Will Open The Doors to More Sales
How great would it feel if you made one simple tweak to your business, and saw an immediate sales increase?
I know, silly question. It would feel great.
Now what if there were 5 simple tweaks… each of which could have that same effect?
You’d stop reading this article right now and use each of ‘em.
Right?
Right! Who doesn’t want more sales?
Question is what are those 5 simple tweaks? I call them the “psychological master keys.”
But First, The Key to Unlocking the Vault of Higher Conversion Rates
Smart entrepreneurs who want to use the web to increase their conversion rates must master the fields of human behavior and psychology.
I may be biased… after all, I run the #1 blog about online marketing and psychology, but that’s neither here nor there. Understanding that simple insight has worked for me and countless other Social Triggers readers.
And despite what the “experts” say on other bogus “social media marketing blogs,” when it comes to using the web to generate leads and sales for your business, the tools you use have nothing to do with it.
Because, as time progresses, the tools will always change. The people you’re talking to, on the other hand, will remain people. And people are people are people!
And that’s why each of the following 5 psychological master keys are so powerful.
Each tweak is based off of proven psychological principles that have been proven today and will likely remain true for the foreseeable future.
So, without further ado, let’s jump right in.
Psychology Master Key #1: How to Increase Sales by Giving Your Customers “LESS” Options
By now you know that if you give people too many options, they often choose none because they slip into “analysis paralysis.”
But what if you can’t eliminate options from your business? If you’re selling 50 products, you can’t simply eliminate 47 of them. That would kill your business.
So how can you give people fewer options while maintaining your current catalogue of products and services?
That’s where you can take advantage of the process known as “chunking.”
Instead of telling people “here’s all of my stuff,” you say, “here are 5 categories of stuff.” Pick which category is right for you, then pick the item in that category that’s right for you.
Look at it like a Supermarket. When you walk into the store, you know there’s a deli, a fruit/vegetables area, a meat area, a dairy area, and so on. In each little section, there’s thousands of products to choose from. But they make the decision easy on you by “chunking” them into similar categories.
Online the same thing applies.
When you’re designing your site, don’t simply share 1 million different categories of what you write about. Instead, focus on the “main” areas of your site by building insanely specific resource pages like “List Building” and “Increase Online Sales.”
To learn more about how people make choices, check out the Social Triggers Insider master class I held with Sheena Iyengar, the world’s leading researcher on how people make choices.
Action item: How can you use this tidbit to get more sales? Instead of showing your customers everything you’ve got, funnel people to the right places. Use resource pages, and call outs that send people to smart groupings of products and services. As a rule of thumb, I’d use no more than 7 different “choice buckets.”
Psychology Master Key #2: Newsflash…People Actually Like Paying For Stuff
As you know, I sell software and digital training products.
And I’ve been doing it long enough to know that there’s always some guy that complains about “Why would I buy that when I can get the same thing… or something similar… for free?”
Newsflash:
People don’t pay for information or software. They pay for results and convenience.
And it gets better…
When people pay for something, it gives those people a sense of accomplishment, pride, and ownership, meaning they’ll value the goods or services more and complain less.
Who doesn’t want satisfied customers who don’t complain?
Exactly.
Let’s take this back to the web.
If you sell software, information, or consulting, you may worry about your competitors… and whatever it is they sell… and however much they charge.
And while that matters, you shouldn’t sweat it.
You’re in the results and convenience business.
If you can generate more results or make it more convenient, it doesn’t matter what you charge. People will pay.
And they’ll happily pay because people like to pay for what they get.
To learn more about why people happily pay for things they can get for free, check out the Social Triggers Insider master class with Dan Ariely, NYT best-selling author, and one of the world’s leading researchers on behavior economics
Action item: Are you scared to sell what you’re already giving away for free? You shouldn’t be. Even if you give away your best information, chances are there are people who will happily pay you to implement that information for them. Remember, people pay for convenience AND results.
Psychology Master Key #3: Losses Loom Larger Than Gains
The sad truth about people is this:
People will fight harder to prevent losing a dollar than earning a dollar (this is known as loss aversion).
From a logical standpoint, it makes no sense.
A dollar is a dollar is a dollar.
But when it comes to human beings, we’re not that logical. We’re quite emotional, actually.
And when it comes to a dollar, a dollar that’s ours is more valuable than earning a dollar that isn’t ours.
That’s why when people sell their houses they often overvalue their house. After all, it’s THEIR house.
What’s this have to do with selling stuff online?
People respond better to telling them what they’re missing out on over telling them what benefits they stand to gain… because loss looms larger than gains.
So, not only do you need to tell people what they’ll get when they buy whatever it is you’re selling, you also need to reiterate what they’ll lose out on too… for maximum impact.
To learn more about how people make decisions, check out the master class I held with Jonah Lehrer, the #1 NYT Best-Selling Author of How We Decide. It’s linked here.
Action item: Just because losses loom larger than gains, doesn’t mean you should focus on loss. That’s a scarce mindset. However, you should intersperse both gains AND losses in your sales copy. Explain what people stand to gain… and what they stand to lose… for best results.
Psychology Master Key #4: The Secret to Growth is Earning Fans… And Enemies
Last week, while giving a presentation to a packed room, I made the snippy remark:
“I pin all my hatemail to my wall to remind myself to get more hatemail.” – Click to Tweet
Why?
When you’re running a website… a business… hate mail is evidence that you’re doing something right.
I’ll explain.
When you’re using the web to generate leads and sales, you have one main goal… and that’s to make your customers absolutely love you.
But that love comes with a price. When there are people who love what you do, there will be people that hate what you do, too. Even Apple has haters.
I know this sounds dramatic, but it’s true.
And that’s why I happily tell people to unsubscribe from Social Triggers if they don’t like what I have to say.
I know changing peoples minds is damn near impossible, so instead of wasting time trying to “change” someone, I go after the people who already like me… and focus on making them happy.
What does this have to do with getting more sales?
That part is easy.
If you nurture your best customers and readers, they’ll turn into evangelists. They’ll turn into your street team of people who tell everyone to read and buy your products.
I mean, just look at Social Triggers. Chances are you found me because someone recommended that you check my site out, right?
Why do you think they did that?
It’s because I catered to them directly.
To learn more about catering to the “Right” people, you should check out the Social Triggers Insider master class that I did with Ramit Sethi. In addition to finding the right customers, he goes into detail about how he charges 100x more than his competitors
Action item: Are you diluting your message to cater to everyone? Do you often “tone” down what you have to say… with hopes of pleasing everyone? That’s a mistake. You can’t please everyone. You can only please the right people. Instead of working to please everyone, cater to your evangelists.
Psychology Master Key #5: How “Mystery” Helps You Score More Sales
Back when I launched Social Triggers in 2011, Social Triggers grew from a brand-new website to one of the top marketing blogs… practically overnight.
At the time, I never told anyone how I did it… on purpose.
And what happened?
People started to write blog posts speculating about my growth. They’d try to reverse engineer how I did what I did because they wanted to know the answer.
This, in turn, sent more traffic and readers my way, helping me grow faster than ever before.
Why did people write those blog posts?
Because they were trying to solve “the mystery of Social Triggers growth.”
As another example, why are there loads of websites dedicated to speculating about Apple products, Apple features, and anything else that’s Apple?
It’s because Apple is one of the most secretive companies ever.
And their secrets create mystery… which in turn sparks speculation in the blogosphere… which leads to free exposure for apple… and later down the line, more sales.
Mystery = sales.
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How To “Do” Internet Marketing Without Your Computer
If you’re like me then your experience with internet marketing started with your eyes locked on to your computer screen for hours on end.
This, along with information overload, is somewhat of a rite of passage for all of us.
And there’s no doubt that it can be a pretty lonely experience to begin with.
But there is Good News !
There are LOTS of things you can do to practice internet marketing when you’re NOT in front of your computer screen. These things can really give you great ideas of how to make more money online.
As you’ll see it’s all about observing rather than just looking! For example, here are some things that I do almost every day when I’m out and about:
1. TV Commercials
Recently, here in the UK there have been a lot of ads for internet dating on TV. Online businesses using offline advertising to promote themselves are always worth paying attention to – even if you haven’t got the budget for a TV commercial yourself!
2. Bill Boards
These are all around, in the cities, on the side of the road and so on. You can gain a real insight into what the current trends are by studying these. Also, be sure to check the calls to action. Are they telling you to call them on the phone, go to their website or, as many big corporates have been doing recently, sending you straight to their Facebook page?
3. Book Stores
If I pass a Borders or Waterstone’s store I usually try to pop in for 5 minutes. Observe the main stands when you walk in. These can give you GREAT inspiration for new profitable niches that you could exploit online. How are they promoting their books using special offers?
4. Magazines
Magazines cost a lot of money to publish and distribute so they are a great indicator of profitability. There’s no shortage of new ideas for niches so always take a moment to study the titles in any shop that sells them.
5. Radio Commercials
These are great, although slightly annoying 
6. Flyers In Shops, Stores, Libraries
How many times have to gone to pay in a store and noticed flyers on the counter? Can you remember what they were? If not, then make sure you pay attention next time. There are often internet based products and services which are being advertised. A friend of mine recently spotted one promoting someone’s MLM scheme…
7. Go For A Walk
I’ve written about this before here on the GHG Blog. Walking, especially somewhere peaceful and quiet, is a great way to break out from the narrow mindset we sometimes develop when we’re stuck in front of our computers. A great source of Eureka moments in internet marking!
8. Live Events
Get out, meet people. Don’t just restrict yourself to your own niche either. There’s always ideas that you can transfer from other industries. There are lots of seminars, conferences and local meetups that you can attend. I’ve been to about 6 of these so far in 2012, how many have you attended?
I hope this post helps to break the mould a bit and give you some inspiration for new ideas and greater motivation. Be creative and remember that some of the best ways to make money online come to you when you’re not sat in your computer chair!
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Promoting other people’s products and services, namely affiliate marketing, is probably the easiest way to get started making money on the internet.
You don’t have to worry about customer support, taking payments, issuing refunds or putting the time and energy into creating a product in the first place.
However, as time goes on and you get more experienced it is well worth considering creating your own products as there is no doubt that this is where the largest amounts of money are made online.
If you’ve never created a product before then this can seem like a daunting prospect, so here is a short blueprint to help you avoid the common pitfalls.
1. Choose A Launch Date Before You Start
Just as many first time novelists have been working on their masterpiece for 2 years or more, lots of internet marketers spend endless amounts of time working on open-ended projects that never seem to get completed.
So before you do anything set a fixed date to release your product.
This will force you to get things done, not be a perfectionist (a big mistake!) and work backwards in your planning so that you can accomplish all of the other tasks in this blueprint.
2. Realize That The CUSTOMER Matters, Not You
One of the biggest mistakes people can make is to assume that what they’d like in a product is also what their audience would like.
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Get More Traffic, Leads, and Sales with Linkedin
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On the home page of Twitpic there
TweetPhoto is another popular
Twaudio
Twaud.io lets you share audio
Blip.fm
Blip.fm is an entire platform
Bubbletweet
A Bubbletweet is a short video
Although I am not a fan of automated
This is a far more personal and
Dane Cook and several other
Twitcam
Twitcam allows you to stream live
1. Connect your webcam
2. Login with twitter
3. Click the broadcast button
Twitcam tweets a message immediately
This service also archives your video
Sharing Screencasts on Twitter
Screenr
Screenr is a free and easy to use
Once you have recorded, add a message
Screenr also offers an easy upload to
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The Google Penguin Update
Recently Google released yet another change which is being referred to as the “Google Penguin” update. Sounds very cure, much like the friendly Google Panda…yeah right!!
In this post I want to discuss this latest update, and once again address some common concerns, as I seem to be getting a lot of worried people contacting me after their sites got hit hard by Google over the past few months.
So What is Google Penguin?
Penguin was an update to the Google algorithm that was released on the 24th of April, with intention of apparently penalizing sites for over-optimization, otherwise known as spamming. The first thing I want to say is that its early days, and no one knows exactly what this update was precisely targeting, but nonetheless I will do my best to share some insight, as I can happily say that I actually experienced a positive increase or no change across the board on all my websites after this update, and also after the latest Panda update which happened the week prior.
First off, we can start to get an understanding of this update by reading what Google officially states about it. If you read the Google Webmaster blog it says this:
“The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.”
OK so as you would expect Google doesn’t spell it out for everyone, but rather provides a very vague overview and focusses on their overall intention with the update. The key things that we can take from this statement I believe are “high quality sites” and “good user experience“, nothing we didn’t all know already, but who’s actually doing it is more to the point.
One can safely assume that this update, after reading the full Google blog post, was looking at keyword stuffing in content, as Google gives a really over the top example of what this looks like. The example is a poor one, as that sort of keyword stuffing has been slapped by Google for years, so I guess it’s some level of more critical analysis of over use of keywords in your On Page SEO that this update was targeting. With that said, you might want to pay attention to how your content uses keywords and make it look natural. Golden rule for all SEO, make it look natural if it isn’t totally natural!!
The Good Old User Experience
I’ve been harping on about the user experience on this blog a fair bit over the past few months, and you guessed it, I’m going to continue to do so, as I keep seeing sites that get slapped by Google, where the webmasters are shocked and have no idea why. In most cases when I look at these sites, I can see glaringly obvious reasons, as the sites are clearly not designed for the user at all.
I want to also add this quote from Matt Cutts (head of Google Anti-Spam team):
“We want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no search engine optimization at all) to be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling web sites. As always, we’ll keep our ears open for feedback on ways to iterate and improve our ranking algorithms toward that goal.”
…”even no optimization at all…” yeah right, and pigs may just fly one day too!
Also its important to note that Google Panda 3.5 was also rolled at a week prior to the Penguin update, around the 17th of April, so if you lost a significant amount of traffic around that date, then you were most likely ‘Pandalized’ rather than ‘Penguinalized!!!!’
Oh and let’s not forget the 750,000 unnatural backlink warning messages that Google sent out prior to these changes, warning webmasters to remove links that were acquired through unnatural means…what an interesting few months its been!
Google is on the Aggressive
Ok so it doesn’t take a genius to notice that Google is on the aggressive right now, trying their hardest to remove spam from the results and level the playing the field for SEO. I ‘ve never experienced this many changes so closely related than what we are seeing now.
One thing that I must say I find pretty frustrating is that Google tells us not to do much if any SEO, other than make your sites easier to crawl etc…and when it comes to offpage SEO they expect it to happen naturally. The problem for the small guys and gals doing web marketing is that it’s virtually impossible to get enough exposure in the first place so that other webmasters even know about our sites to even consider linking to you. Sure large brands don’t have to worry as they already have a following.
So I don’t think the playing field is that level when Google does the changes they make, but regardless we have to play by their rules as closely as we can, or pay the price of getting no traffic from Google.
So with that said, in light of all the carnage going on out there right now, here’s some suggestions that might help:
Build Sites that Don’t Look Optimized
If Google wants people to just blog away and build affiliate marketing sites or stores etc…without doing any significant SEO, then we really need to mimic this as closely as possible. If you take a look at a few dozen sites ranking in Google now for various keywords, ask yourself if you think they are doing careful On Page SEO or not.
It’s really not that hard to spot, just look at some of the titles of pages on sites and ask yourself if these look like they were written with the keyword in mind or the topic in mind. Of course you will see some junk that is ranking and ask yourself how this got there, but just overlook that as Google will remove the junk eventually, so don’t get caught up on that just focus on good quality yourself.
Also have a look at all the content on the sites and ask yourself if the topics were written with keywords in mind or with topics in mind. Of course if you want to get traffic to your sites, you really have to do keyword research, and then target these keywords, however do it as natural looking as you can, so you still target keywords but fly under the radar!
Create Sites that Will Naturally Get Good Signals
If you focus on building great quality sites, that your traffic will love, then they will naturally want to bookmark your site and share it on Facebook and Google Plus. Not only that though, they will most likely come back again and also search for your site in Google using the site name. Ideally you want your site to get a lot of searches for its name, as it’s a clear signal to Google that people like it. Other good signals are the time on your site, low bounce rate, high average page view etc…
The only way you stand any chance of getting these “good signals” happening on your site is if you actually have a good site, not rocket science really. The problem is that good sites take effort and time and a lot of people can’t be bothered, and instead continue to put up low quality thin sites, and try all sorts of things to dodge the Google bullets, but honestly it’s all a waste of time in the long run, trust me I’m speaking from experience.
Google are only going to roll out more and more updates like Penguin and Panda, who knows maybe the next one will be called “Google Poodle”, ha ha, then you can say your site was “Poodlized!!! In all seriousness though, the sooner you move towards managing less sites, and focussing on higher quality, and thinking about the user experience, that better you will do in Google.
Off Page SEO Can’t Hurt Your Sites…Or Can It?
Ok so here comes the bombshell, Google sent out all these unnatural link warning to webmasters over the past few months, and sites who got them experiences a drop in rankings. The result is that many webmasters frantically started to remove any links they thought Google might frown upon and then submit for a reconsideration. I assume many SEO companies got dropped by webmasters, only to be replaced by news ones who get on their high horse and claim they are pure whitehat SEO and all will go well if the webmaster is to choose them…I doubt it…no one is 100% whitehat.
So why is this a bombshell then? Well the obvious question is, “if low quality backlinks to your sites can harm them, can’t we all go out and build a bunch of low quality links to our competitors?”
My response to this used to be “No way, if Google allowed this it could well create total chaos online”
My response now is “I’m not sure anymore, and I am starting to think low quality links combined with a lack of good signals coming off your site may well cause problems for you!”
I don’t think these recent changes in regards to backlinks will cause widespread chaos by any means, the reason being that chaos, I assume, would mean the likes of Amazon could be taken down, or other well established authority brands. I don’t think will ever happen, as these kinds of sites have way too many good signals for Google to ditch them, and the same goes for much smaller, yet quality sites too.
So what about sites that are ranking well but don’t have many “good signals”, are these open for attack from this negative SEO? I can’t definitely say, but my assumption is that possibly yes, if the negative campaign against them is particularly nasty in nature and well planned out. I sincerely discourage anyone from getting involved in these tactics, as it’s not the way to win a battle, and we would all not like it if someone did it to us.
Avoid Obvious Forced Linking
I encourage people, if you are using forced link building, and I think most of us will have to, make sure you don’t use overly spammy links, such as mass auto-blog comments, profile links, very public blog networks etc…anything that is really obvious and easy for Google to spot as forced linking. Also do your best to create content and tools, anything that will increase the chances of people linking to you naturally.
Also if you create a decent following in your niche this will happen much more easily. I think the key is to use linking as much as you need to, to gain momentum, but don’t rely on forced linking only, otherwise your site will not look natural.
Conclusion
To close this post I want to leave this final thought, spend time analyzing high quality sites in various niches, and take notes on how they make the user experience a good one, and do your best to employ as many of these techniques on your own sites.