A PLANNED EMAIL CAMPAIGN

A PLANNED EMAIL CAMPAIGN

Set up planned email campaigns using a service like AWeber.com. You can 

offer the same type of casual, informational style that is popular with social 

networks, but include links to your products and offers. Include branding 

information like videos and applications that can help people understand 

more about you and your company. Always mix in free branding offers with 

sales offers. This way, when they open an email, they don't expect that 

they'll be sold every time. People just don't like that. It's like answering the 

door to a pushy salesman. However, if they find that you give away free 

information about 50% of the time that might benefit them, they’ll be more 

likely to open that email. 

Try different branding subject headlines in different emails and run split 

testing to see what gets a better reaction. AWeber.com will give you 

statistics on open rates and click-through rates. Once you start to watch the 

results of your branding efforts, you have to have direct feedback on what is 

working and what is not. It will tell you how to tweak your marketing so that 

your message becomes more appealing every time you send out a new 

email, increasing brand awareness and sales at the same time.

EMAIL CAMPAIGN

Email Campaigns

Once you have a large following around the Internet, it's time to take your 

branding to a more personal level. You will want to try to harvest as many 

email addresses as you can in your activities and get permission to market to 

these people directly. Once you have that, you will want to establish an email 

marketing campaign that starts to show people on a one-to-one basis what 

your company or your products are all about.

YOUR EMAIL SIGNATURE

The first place to brand within email is by way of automatic signatures. If you 

don't have one set up to point people to your website, to your offer of the 

week, or to a personal biography, you are missing a great opportunity to 

brand. If someone contacts you for anything, it's the perfect opportunity to 

sneak in some information on your private brand via the automatic email 

signature.

YOUR INTRODUCTORY EMAIL

Twitter will allow you to automate direct messages to people who follow you 

via direct messaging. You’re on your own with Facebook. Either way, you can 

join SocialOomph and send out direct messages for each person who follows 

you, giving them an introductory message that shows more about you and 

your brand to them. Every introductory email should seek to contribute value 

and to not sell anything. 

BRANDING WITH FACEBOOK

Facebook is a little harder to gain a following. It also tends to be more 

complex in terms of the amount and the quality of content you can add. 

While this means that you can brand far more effectively, it's to a smaller 

audience. You can also set up a sales page on Facebook for a company and 

advertise it to the entire Facebook audience based on the demographics that 

you choose within the program, called SocialAds. This allows you to brand 

outside your immediate circle of friends, although it does cost to utilize this 

advertising format. 

By using Selective Twitter or Ping.fm, you can send some of your tweets to 

Facebook, but you need to take care not to update Facebook as much as you 

update Twitter. People will want to hear less from you if you spam their news 

feed with your Twitter updates, and that's one of the main differences 

between branding on Twitter and on Facebook. On Twitter, you can talk on 

and on and no one cares, but if you try that on Facebook, people will drop 

you and many won't tell you why. It's a more intimate setting, and no one 

likes a bore.

BRANDING WITH TWITTER

TWITTER

Let's start with Twitter.com. This unique social networking site is also 

referred to as a “microblogging” site. The entire concept revolves around a 

status update that you can update all day long, but it's limited to 140 

characters each time you update, which are known as “tweets.” Within those 

140 characters, you can post links back to other places online using a URL 

shortener. In general, it is far easier to gain a massive audience with Twitter 

than it is with Facebook. You send out tweets, and people who follow you will 

see them. If they “retweet” your message, people on their list will see them, 

and you can gain more followers. You can add several hundred followers a 

day on Twitter, and many of those will automatically follow you back, 

increasing your audience. You can automate tweets to go out all day, even 

when you're not online, and you can even send them to Facebook with an 

application within Facebook.com called Selective Twitter.

INTERACTION WITH OTHERS

Next, it's important to portray the personality and qualities that you want to 

associate with your brand in personal interactions on the site. One of the 

newest trends is to make an introductory video thanking people for being 

your friend on Facebook and telling them more about yourself. You can add 

this link to their profile as a way of saying hello when they befriend you. 

Use status updates wisely to promote your brand and offerings. Don't just 

use it as an easy way to spam people. In social networking, you have to seek 

to add value to be a brand with integrity. Heavy-duty commercialism is 

frowned upon, and you don't want to be known as someone who promotes 

himself/herself too much. Instead, you can offer value and still generate 

brand awareness by offering helpful hints and links to informational content, 

even if it's not your own. People will associate it with your brand, and it will 

contribute to the community at the same time.

BRANDING WITH SOCIAL NETWORKS

Branding With Social Networks

Social networks are great for personal and business branding. Each social 

network has its own strengths and weaknesses. They all attract different 

demographics too. LinkedIn attracts professionals in established careers, 

MySpace attracts a teen crowd, and Facebook attracts young professionals 

just coming out of college and getting into the workforce. Business owners 

can get online and brand themselves for different audiences, depending on 

who is their core demographic of buyers.

HOW TO BRAND ON SOCIAL NETWORKS

Profiles are the first place that you can brand on social networks. They are 

personal snapshots of your likes and dislikes. They can include the groups 

you join on Facebook, books and movies you've enjoyed, what types of 

relationships you are looking to make on Facebook, and photos of yourself. 

Remember that photos are a particularly powerful means to brand yourself, 

and they can help or hurt you. Don't include photos where you are in an 

embarrassing position or that can change the image someone has of you or 

your company.

Do include images of your business logo. Do add your blog to the 

NetworkedBlogs application so that others can see it on your profile. The 

more friends you have in your niche brand, the more people will associate 

those qualities with you. If you want to be known as a savvy Internet 

marketer who can help others with social networking, then you might want to 

link to people who have that as their main topic of interest or who have 

joined groups on that niche. 

own a blog or website

Blog Or Website

Owning your own website is critical to branding online. Whether the site is a 

strict HTML site, an e-commerce site, or a blog, it doesn't matter. The one 

thing you want to make sure of is that you own the rights to the content of 

the site and that it centralizes all of your activities for that niche on one site. 

If you have multiple niches online, then you'll have multiple websites. It's 

important to consider the type of website you want, how often you intend on 

updating the content, and what sort of domain name best conveys your 

brand.

DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION

As mentioned earlier, be sure to pick a good domain name. Don't include odd 

characters like hyphens, as they can throw people off. A three-word domain 

name is a good choice, since most two-word domains have already been 

taken. However, if you can get a smaller domain name, that’s all the better, 

even if you have to pay for it. You want a top-level domain name instead of a 

site that gives you a sub-domain on their server. This gives your brand a 

more professional image and helps people to remember you better.

WORDPRESS.ORG

After you've picked a hosting company, you have to decide what type of 

website to create that will be used to brand your presence on the Web. If 

you're a professional consultant or freelancer, a blog is a great way to 

personally introduce yourself to others online. Blogs have gotten so 

sophisticated over the years that many company sites are also using blogs 

within their content. 

You can easily have your hosting company install a copy of Wordpress.org on 

your site. This can be customized with multiple templates to give you a 

professional appearance in a very short time. Just be sure that you aren't 

using the community called WordPress.com if you want a top-level domain.