Be Better

I hope the first post in this series helped you think about the foundation of your brand, how strong it is, and whether it should shift from time to time. Just like a building, your solid foundation is a necessity, but a little flexibility helps you weather the storms.

Today I’m in Denver speaking at Bloggy Boot Camp. I enjoy going to conferences and learning more about my industry, but I’m not always comfortable meeting new people. It’s not that I’m shy, it’s just that I feel self-conscious approaching strangers.

Conferences are definitely settings that can cause tension and make you question your brand. That whole face-to-face interaction thing can be tough. It kind of forces authenticity on you, because you can’t hide behind an online profile or a telephone.

Which leads me to the next question for the series:

How can I make people like me and my brand when they meet me?

Short answer: You can’t.

Unless you’re skilled in torture techniques, the chances of your being able to force someone to do something they don’t want to are quite slim. You can’t make everyone like you, so let go of that pipe dream right now.

What you can do is maximize your chances of connecting with the right people. And by right, I don’t mean “cool.” I mean the people who will appreciate you and help you and influence you. You can also learn to recognize and avoid the haters.

Here are some tips for doing that.

1. Be yourself. So trite, but so true. How can you expect people to like your brand if you’re afraid to show it? When I was younger, I went to the same summer camp each year. And each year, I’d decide who I was going to be for the summer. Would I be the athletic girl? The flirt? The deep philosopher? I’d try to change myself to be the person I thought would get the most attention and who people would want to hang out with. Guess what? It never worked. I was so uncomfortable trying to be someone I was not, and people felt that discomfort, and didn’t want to be around me at all. It totally backfired. Conferences are a bit like summer camp. Before we go to them, we tend to start thinking about who we’re going to be. Don’t put energy into trying to create a fake brand. Instead, use your pre-conference energy to solidify your existing brand.
2. Do some “presearch.” If you can, find out who will be attending the conference in advance. Conference organizers often get buzz going before an event by creating an online forum for attendees, or creating a Twitter list, or starting a Facebook group. If you participate in this pre-event networking, you’ll possibly make some great connections before you even arrive.
3. Don’t be easily discouraged. Conferences and big events are odd situations. They’re not natural. And many of us are not our best when we’re there. Attendees are stressed and tired and drunk and busy trying to fit everything in and complete their own agendas. So if someone doesn’t make perfect eye contact or take your card or spend 20 minutes discussing her latest project with you or sit next to you at lunch, don’t take it personally. Chances are, it’s not about you. If you’re “snubbed” by someone you’re really determined to connect with, wait a bit, then try again. Catch them at an after party or the next day, for example. In a different setting, you may click. But if not, don’t sweat it. There are plenty of other people worth knowing.
4. Be on your best behavior. If you don’t want people to say bad things about you, don’t give them material. Don’t sneak into a hotel room with an opposite-sex colleague. Don’t trash talk the keynote speaker. Don’t be snotty to the conference staff. You get the picture. There are certain behaviors that, regardless of your brand, are pretty universally considered unattractive. If you want people to like you, don’t do unlikable stuff.
5. Find your complements. No, I don’t mean find people who will flatter you all the time (that’s a compliment). I mean find people who are kind of similar to you, but kind of not. Why? This will allow you to develop mutually beneficial relationships. If you try to get the attention of people who are just like you, you may find there’s an innate competitiveness that causes some friction. If you try to spend time with people who are nothing like you, you may find the lack of commonalities means you have nothing to discuss. Why make networking hard? Don’t fight to create connections that just won’t work. Instead, connect with people with whom you do have something in common, but to whom you also have something to offer (and vice versa). Maybe find the people who have the same job as you, but work for a different company. Or find people who work in a different industry, but who have some of the same hobbies as you. I’ve found that these are the relationships that don’t take too much work, that are comfortable and that stick.

I’ve been chatting in some professional forums lately, and I’ve noticed a conversational pattern. Lots of people are talking about the haters — people who badmouth you, or leave ugly comments on your site, or give your business bad reviews. No one is spared the hater wrath. Whether you’re large or small, out-there or private, popular or unknown, they can (and will) attack. And they will, unfortunately, probably always be around. So to help you combat them, I thought I’d do a multi-part series on how to handle haters.

Today’s topic is:

What if people hate my personal brand?

The other day, I had a meeting with a new client. Most of my clients are referrals, but this lady was a complete stranger, and she didn’t know much about me, other than what she’d seen here.

She hired me to critique her website. As with any client, I studied her site before we met. And I noticed one MAJOR issue with the site. I won’t go into details, but she was doing something many people do, but is considered bad practice and unprofessional. And I also knew that people who do this tend to get defensive about it. So I was unsure about how I would approach the subject. Timidly, I waited for her to bring it up, which she did.

Client: “So, what do you think of this?”

Me: “Do you want the businesslike, neutral answer, or do you want the brassy Southern girl answer?”

(I have my Ouiser moments.)

Let me explain. I have a tendency to be frank. I like to think it’s a charming, polite, frankness, but it’s brutal honesty, nonetheless. Hence the Southern girl reference. Since many of my clients know me personally, they know this is my true brand, and they like it. In fact, they probably hire me for that frankness.  But this gal didn’t know me, and I didn’t know her. I was nervous that she wouldn’t accept the real me. But I went ahead and asked her preference, because I got a pretty good vibe from her.

She asked for — and got — the brassy version of me. And she appreciated it.

But she could have been a client I didn’t even feel comfortable asking. She could have chosen the first option. Or we might have never clicked. Whatever happened, I was being hired to perform a task, and I was duty-bound to do my job.

So what if she hadn’t liked me?

Sometimes, it is personal. There will always be people who don’t like you. It’s not that they don’t like your product or your font choice or the way you decorate your shop. They just don’t like YOU. So what do you do when someone doesn’t like your style?

1. Stay the same. Screw ‘em. You decide that you like who you are and you won’t change just because who you are doesn’t suit someone. For example, if your personality is marked by extreme shyness, and you have a friend who only wants to drag you out to frenetic social engagements, then you can just severe ties with that person. This option is great for boosting self-esteem and solidifying your brand. It sends a strong message about your identity.
2. Change. Maybe a relationship means more to you than a trait. Let’s say your business sacks everything in plastic bags, but most of your customers have let you know they prefer paper bags, and if you don’t change, they won’t shop with you anymore. You decide that since paper bags cost the same as the plastic ones, you’ll change in order to keep your customers. Sometimes a change is the smart choice.
3. You’ll do a bit of both. There is nothing wrong with changing your style in certain situations. I wouldn’t act the same in church as I do at a girls’ night out bash. At heart, I’m the same person, but I know that there are some traits I should suppress at times. That doesn’t make me fake or inauthentic. It makes me appropriate.  It means I know my audience, and more importantly, I respect my audience. It’s no different than putting on a suit and tie for a conservative job when you really prefer shorts and tees. You look good at work, you change when you get home, and everyone wins.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of SEO work recently with some friends and clients. I love working on improving SEO because it’s not hard and it gets great, quick results.

What I find surprising, though, is how many people are using bad SEO techniques. Many of them do it on purpose for a quick score. But plenty of people don’t even know that what they’re doing is considered unethical and may backfire on them.

Yesterday I came across this fantastic infographic from cognitiveSEO. It explains what black, grey and white hat means, and explains many types of SEO tactics. It also gives the pros and cons of each.

Original Infographic @ Black Hat vs White Hat SEO / Provided by cognitiveSEO

Pretty cool, right?

There are plenty of great resources out there for learning about SEO. But if you find a source or a person telling you to engage in any potentially shady practices, I suggest you take everything they say with a grain of salt. And if they tell you that improving your SEO will be either difficult or costly, I’d question their motives.

Got any SEO questions? Ask away in the comments section!

I’m so pleases to have Katja Presnal guest posting today. I’ve long been a fan of Katja’s, ever since I came across the word “Skimbaco” in my Twitter feed. It was an odd word, and it certainly caught my attention. So naturally, I had to click over to her site and find out what it meant. After a quick look around, I thought to myself “This girl really knows how to create a brand.”

Since then, I’ve gotten to know and work with Katja. I’m always floored by her social smarts and online skills. I’m sure you will be, too.

5 Ways to Get Your Blogging Career To The Next Level 

Have you ever felt like you are in the blogging funk? You are stuck in the same level of traffic, same level of income, and quite frankly neither are quite where you want them to be? I need to feel like I am moving forward with everything in my life, and blogging isn’t any different. If things get too stagnant for me, I want to mix things up and try something new. Here are 5 things you could do right now to get your blogging career to the next level while keeping your brand.

1. Weekly or Monthly Feature in Your Blog

Create a weekly or monthly feature in your blog that enhances your brand. My problem with these usually is that if it doesn’t take off immediately, I don’t have patience to grow it. So learn from my mistakes, and don’t give up immediately. A good feature series might take a month or two to take off. If you want to monetize this, then suggest the specific weekly/monthly feature in your blog for a sponsor to make it not just a traffic magnet, and great way to brand yourself as an expert, but also a way to make money. Try also teaming up with other bloggers in the same niche to cross-promote your features and have them to join yours to start a movement.

2. Go to Conferences to Work

Next time you go to a blogging conference, make sure it fits your niche, and it’s not just where your friends go. Today there are so many blogging and social media conferences so make sure to check out if there are any, even small ones, specifically for your niche. Contact PR reps, brand reps, other bloggers who you admire, and social media agency people before the conference and set up a meeting to discuss how you could work together. Think of conferences as an investment in your blogging career and treat it as such.

3. Get a Blogging Job

The easiest way to brand yourself, create an expert status, and make money blogging is to write for someone else. For example, one of the best opportunities out there right now is the Cheap Sally couponing site looking for a money saving/shopping blogger for 2012 to write about sales and deals on their site. This blogging opportunity is worth $100,000 and it would be a perfect way not just to get a job but also brand yourself as a savvy shopper expert. Since this particular contest is an open voting contest, it is good branding for you to even have your name on the list if you are in the niche. Always think of these kinds of opportunities to market yourself.

4. Expand Your Audience

If your traffic isn’t where you would like it to be, go where people are to grow your personal brand. While Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites are of course a must, think outside the social media box. Ask to guest write for your local newspaper, be an expert on your local radio station, gather your best content and create an eBook, or guest post in various other blogs. If the audience isn’t coming to you — you go to them. Take a break trying to grow your follower numbers or StumbleUpon hits and connect with people in an old fashioned way; writing compelling content in various outlets than hopefully will make people remember your name, your blog’s name and follow the little bio link under your post to get more.

5. Start a New Blog

I’m not saying that your blog sucks, really, I’m not. What I’m saying is that by examining your keywords, your topics and how your community reacts to your specific posts you might be able to spin off a new much more specific niche blog. For example, I noticed that my interior design posts at SkimbacoLifestyle.com were getting a nice amount of google traffic on daily basis, but my readers never really commented on them, or cared about them all that much. So I decided to launch SkimbacoHome.com to have a specific place just to write about home decorating, and in a year or so I doubled my blogging income. I was able to grow my brand Skimbaco to something new, while still staying in the same overall lifestyle category. Even if you have a great niche blog, think if you can expand your brand to something new.

Katja Presnal is an Addy Award-winning social media strategist and owns the Skimbaco® blog network and lifestyle brand. She inspires to live life to the fullest and does it by combining social media with everything else she loves. You can connect with her on twitter @katjapresnal and read more at her blog Skimbaco Lifestyle.

I was going through my Twitter DMs today (sometimes they pile up like emails) and I caught one I had missed. It was from my pal Sugar Jones. She was asking me to recommend some books on branding. She’s not the first person to ask me that, and I’ve even had a couple of discussions about branding books over on Facebook, so I thought I’d write a post sharing five books on branding that are worth a perusal.

Kellogg on Branding: This is a pretty serious read. It was written by Kellogg School of Management faculty, so there are a lot of academic theories crammed in these pages. It’s essentially a textbook, so don’t think it will be great to skim during your next layover. But if you want the big picture on branding, this is the Bible.

Branding for Dummies: This may be the opposite of Kellogg, but it’s still a great resource. It’s easy to read, written in plain language, and full of practical information on what branding is, why it works and how you can create and maintain a brand. It’s a very practical, step-by-step reference with lots of checklists and charts.

Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands: This is one of the first branding books I ever read, and the people it featured still inspire me today. This book isn’t about how to brand. Rather, it’s about people who have built amazing companies and have been wildly successful because their story and their brand was compelling. Want to turn a magnetic personality into a cult following? This book may be your guide.

Branding Like the Big Boys: I chose this book because it was written by Martin Thoma, a gentleman who I have been honored to work with, and who has taught me much about branding. This is a great read for small business owners, because it explains how people with limited funds, resources and time can still create a brand identity just as powerful as that of a huge corporation.

Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself: This book covers the trend du jour in branding — creating a strong online identity. This book isn’t so much a “how to do personal branding” guide as it is a “how to network online” guide. But it’s a must-read for anyone heavily involved in social media, chock full of great ideas about marketing yourself online and warnings about the pitfalls you should avoid while doing so. And I think it’s an excellent resource for job seekers.

So there you have it. While this is by no means an exhaustive list, I hope I’ve given you a good place to start if you want to learn more about branding. Does one of these interest you? Do you have any books you’d like to recommend? Please share with us in the comments!

When I go to my gym, I get on a treadmill in front of a huge bank of televisions. It’s called the “cardio theater.” Every once in a while I plug in my headphones and listen to a show, but mainly I just listen to music while staring blankly at the screens (and praying for the workout to be over!).

I often find myself playing a game. I look at the news programs — Bloomberg, CNN Headline, etc. — and watch their guests. Based just on their appearance, I try to figure out what that person does. Sometimes it’s easy — for example, female members of Congress have an unmistakable helmet hair/ boxy suit thing going on. But sometimes it’s harder. The other day on Bloomberg, I was watching a guy who looked like a member of a biker gang. But when they flashed the caption identifying him, I was surprised to see that he is actually the CEO of one of the top cybersecurity companies in the world.

Like it or not, people jump to conclusions about us based on our appearance alone. I do it, too. I wouldn’t want a personal trainer who was overweight, and I wouldn’t seek help at a cosmetics counter from a woman with spackled-on makeup.

Does your image fit your brand? Does your appearance match what you do and how you feel? Or do you enjoy incongruity? Do you have fun playing around with your appearance and surprising people?

Either way, it’s important to think about this from time to time: If someone saw me, and didn’t know who I was or what I do, what conclusions would they draw about me?

In my last post I talked about the danger of discounts. But there is another pitfall that comes with pricing, and that’s, of course, placing a higher value on your product or service than what the market will bear.

The main downside of being overpriced is pretty obvious — no one will pay for what you’re selling. But for many products or services, there are a few suckers/believers who will pay pretty much anything. And if you can run your business with suckers/believers as your main customer base, then so be it.

But I also think there’s another drawback of overpricing that’s not as concrete, or as evident, but that can be even more damaging. It’s the ill will you incur when your prices are far out of line with either what your fans want to pay or what others charge for a similar service.

Let’s face it — pricing is an ego thing. Especially if you’re charging for a service. You’re setting a price based on how helpful or talented or experienced you think you are. So when people think the price you’ve set is way too high, there’s a bit of a “Who does she think she is?” thing going on.

What got me thinking about all this was Gwen Bell’s new Digital Intensive. If you can manage to click through page after page of the typical hard sell, squeeze page, direct response marketing copy, you’ll finally get to the page that describes the service she’s offering. I’ll save you the clicking. She’s offering a 30 to 60 minute phone call. Just talking. No guaranteed follow up. For $999.

Wow.

Bet you don’t think I’m expensive any more, do you?

Look, I’ve got nothing against Gwen Bell. I like her stuff. I follow her on Twitter. We have many of the same interests. If she can make a living doing this (and she probably can), then more power to her. If she can charge that much more for doing that much less than what I do for my clients, then there’s hope the rising revenue tide will lift my boat, too.

But honestly, I’ll never feel the same about her. And I think even if I could, I’d never charge anyone that much money just to have me ask them a few questions. And I don’t think I’m alone. I can think of three people off the top of my head who are highly sought-after professionals in their fields. One is an interior designer, one is a psychiatrist and one is a production manager for a fashion house. They are all highly-educated and have years of experience under their belts. But none of them charge $999 an hour. And I think if I were to ask them, they would all say that even though there are probably people who would pay them that, they would never charge that much. Why? Because they’d worry about what such a price increase would do to their reputation, and what impact it would have on their existing brands.

I encourage you to charge as much as you can for your product or service. But I want you to remember that pricing is a balancing act. Your price must match your brand.

Extreme overpricing can do just as much damage to your brand and your image as extreme discounting.

I’m watching Tabatha’s Salon Takeover right now. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a show where a successful hairstylist and business woman goes into struggling salons to help them improve, like Gordon Ramsay does for restaurants on Kitchen Nightmares.

The owner on this episode admitted that she has about 20 different promotions going on at any given time. That’s unbelievable. And Tabatha just told her something very wise:

People assume there’s something wrong with a business that’s constantly sending out coupons. The only people that want to go to that business are the people looking for a discount, and those are not the clients that will keep a high-end salon and spa in business.

She is dead-on right.

First, discounts, by their nature, insinuate that your product is worth less than what you charge for it. If you typically charge $20 for a widget, but you regularly offer it at a discount for $10, the only message you’re sending is that your product is really worth only $10. If your product is priced correctly in the first place, you don’t have to desperately mark down your prices to get people to buy. If you do want to discount your product for a valid reason, it’s better to do so as part of a temporary promotion (promotion sounds better than discount), or as a reward for some type of behavior (customer loyalty, for example).

Second, coupon grabbers can be an ugly lot. Sure, plenty of us clip coupons for our favorite products or businesses when we see them, because who doesn’t want to save some money on something we’d be buying anyway? But many other coupon clippers aren’t like this. They want the lowest price possible, period. They don’t care about you or your business or your story or the particulars of what makes your offerings special. They will come to you for the discount, and will most likely never return, because they’re too busy patronizing the next business to appear on Groupon.

Third, discounts do not scream “high-end.” Now this may not matter for many businesses, but it will for some. I’ve worked in luxury marketing for a very long time. One of the first things I learned about luxury products is that discounting them often looks tacky. You’d never see a “BIG MEMORIAL DAY SALE THIS WEEKEND ONLY!” banner hanging outside a Ritz-Carlton hotel, would you? It’s important to remember that sometimes discounting may not match your brand and image, and it would in fact be off-putting to the clientele that you covet most.

Look at discounts/sales/coupons/promotions as a training tool. They can either train customers to appreciate you, because you recognize that they are important, and because every once in a while you’re able to forego a little profit to have fun or celebrate a milestone. Or they can train customers to devalue your services, to demand rock-bottom prices that make no profit and to buy your products only when they have a coupon in hand.

What message do your promotions send to your current or potential customers?

This is an older video, but it’s a good recap of my 5 Branding Questions. Video courtesy of Holly at BlogFrog. (And yes, the sun was in my eyes!)

5 Tips for Creating a Winning Brand. BlogFrog Interviews Amy Bradley-Hole! from Holly Hamann on Vimeo.

I’ve been away for a few days because I had to head back to my hometown after a family friend passed away. While sitting in the pew at the funeral, I looked around and realized I was surrounded by people who had known me my entire life. By friends who had seen me at my best and my worst, and who were still my friends despite all that. I felt comforted knowing that there are people in the world who accept me just the way I am. Sure, they give me advice and a (well-deserved) hard time every once in a while, but I know they’ll be there, no matter what.

Do you have people in your life like that? People who will be brutally honest with you, but who will still support you? I think it’s vitally essential that everyone has that type of person in their life. This type of friend is a great sounding board when you’re thinking about making changes, or trying to decide if who you think you want to be is who you really need to be.

It’s also important that businesses have customers like my friends. Does your business have fans who will support you no matter what? If you change location or raise your prices or start shipping via a different method, will they still buy from you, or at least give you feedback about why they like or dislike your decisions?

I like to call these types of friends and fans “unconditional lovers.” I suggest you identify the unconditional lovers in your life and cultivate those relationships. These are the people you want to always have in your corner.

Every year growing up, I used to make grand plans to reinvent myself each summer. In three months, I was determined to get a tan/become a poet/kiss five boys/read every Stephen King book/go to Spain to learn Spanish/date a mysterious older guy who rode a motorcycle. I was going to use my free time to become a completely new and interesting person who my friends and teachers wouldn’t even recognize when school started back.

Most of my plans were truly preposterous though, mainly because I lived in a small town and I saw my school friends every day in the summer, just as I had during the school year. I never spent my summer far away at a relative’s house or went to one of those six-week camps or even traveled much. If I were going to make major changes that would surprise everyone, I’d have to somehow do it overnight. But when you’re young and you read too many Sweet Valley High and Judy Blume books, you tend to get fancy ideas.

But even now, as an adult, I still get itchy for a “rebranding” this time of year. For example, this summer I’ve set two goals: take my kids on lots of outings and cook more healthy meals using fresh produce. There’s just something about the summer that seems like it’s a good time to try new things, even more so than spring. Maybe it’s the set time frame. You’ve got about three months, start to finish, and that’s a good amount of time to get something done. Or maybe it’s because since I don’t have the pressure of getting the kids ready for school each day and homework and conferences and all the other school-related obligations, I feel like I have more time to devote to other things.

Summer isn’t a bad time for businesses to consider rebranding, either. Depending on the type of business or its location, some places see decreased traffic in the summer months. Being less busy allows more time for employees to be retrained, or for the marketing team to create new campaigns, or any other big projects.

Whenever your “slow” or “down” time might be, consider using those weeks or months to make some grand plans of your own.

Do you have any plans for reinvention this summer?

CC image courtesy of jcoterhal on Flickr.

Ever try to launch a website and instead of starting things off with a bang, you almost break the internet instead? No? Just me? No surprise there, I guess.

That’s basically what I did when trying to get this site up and running.

Anyway, I think I’ve finally gotten everything in order, just in time for Bloggy Boot Camp in Boston. Hooray! Better late than never, right?

So follow along, and get ready for all kinds of great information on branding and marketing yourself, your site, and your business online. Also coming soon — the winner announcements from BBC San Diego and Boston!