KACHARAGADLA

Tips you can use next year to build your brand. If you aren't fully committed to building your  personal brand  yet, it's time to go all-in. I'm a huge advocate when it comes to personal branding -- it's how I built my first  marketing agency. I leveraged my personal  brand  and  bootstrappedits growth , allowing me to avoid taking out a business loan or giving up equity to an investor. To this day, I retain 100 percent ownership of every business I operate. When done right, you are able to establish yourself as an authority, create an authentic voice and attract business through transparency and expertise. I've discussed ways to  build your personal brand  in the past and mentioned some  online personal branding tools  that you can use -- and now I want to talk about effective strategies. I spoke with several  entrepreneurs  to come up with a list of a dozen ways you can elevate your personal brand in the upcoming year. 1. Launch a weekly email newsle

These four companies manifest their brands in a way that is indistinguishable from their products or business activities. We are seeing a shift in what it means to be a brand and how to build your brand. From about 2007 or 2008 -- alongside the rise of social media as a mainstream technology -- we cultivated a mindset around building our  personal brands  (where the winners were the ones shouting the loudest). This in turn led us to reimagine business brands where the focus was on humanizing those brands. Brands evolved beyond the words and visuals to describe them and manifested more as “what we do, is our brand.” In recent times, this evolution has continued as brand building has focused on greater authenticity, transparency and empathy. This evolution has been  inspired   by consumers who have become more demanding of the businesses that supply them of products and services. Gone are the days where branding was considered a marketing activity purely for the benefit of th

Use these steps to get your branding identity back on course to projecting a clear and concise message. With so much content flowing through an organization, from ad campaigns and branded marketing materials to digital media content and social media updates, it’s easy to see how a company could get a little lost while trying to maintain a consistent brand identity. Multiple people creating many branded elements can make it difficult to keep things aligned. For both big corporations and small business, it can be easy to veer off course, sometimes without even realizing it. The lack of consistency may not be noticeable at first, but failing to identify and stick to a consistent brand identity can eventually have a negative impact. The brand can become disjointed, unreliable and divided so much that it confuses customers, clients, employees, and even the executive team. So, if you feel like you’re starting lose the identify of your brand throughout your organization, use

Most websites focus solely on SEO, but increasing your online visibility involves more than that. When a consumer searches for your company, it’s a fairly safe assumption that you want your website to show up first organically. But how do you make sure it’s super easy for customers to find you, no matter what (or where) they’re searching online? To do that, you’ll need to double-check your online presence to make sure that you’re optimizing all the places you could show up online. From business listings to social profiles, here’s what you should focus on to boost online visibility for your small business. 1. Check all of your business listings Make sure that, not only are you listing your business in the first place, but you’re also providing each listing with consistent, up-to-date information. It’ll make your business much easier to find online. Plus, if it’s easy for consumers to find your number or address, then they’ll be more likely to call or visit. Keep in

Having a unique company voice has become more important in recent years. Companies big and small struggle to find the right tone of voice to use on social media, in content marketing campaigns, in advertisements, when being interviewed by the press, and even in personal interactions. Anything that negatively affects the overall brand voice is problematic. Whether it’s a leaked video of a CEO arguing with an employee or a spokesperson for a brand making bigoted comments online, everything public about your company can affect its reputation. How important is finding the right brand voice? Every company must determine the right tone to set for themselves. While beer companies can get away with humorous advertising and social media campaigns, security companies would be panned for using that tone since most people don’t find the idea of having their identity stolen funny. Some companies are good at taking advantage of trending topics and current events by using them in their soci

When it comes to social media, it isn’t just enough to be   on   it. You need to know how to be effective   with   it. If you're not using social media to build your brand, you are missing out. Globally, a third of all digital consumers follow brands on social media, according to a 2016   report   from Global Web Index. Assuming you don't want to ignore a market of that size, you should be asking yourself: How do I build my brand on social media? Here are seven ways I’ve found from working with  Coaching clients  that make the biggest difference: 1. Pick the right social media platform . There are literally hundreds of platforms, and more spring up all the time. Not all of them are right for all brands, lead generation software company   Wishpond   notes. Facebook is by a wide margin the biggest and most-used network, so most brands will have some kind of presence there. However, if you sell to other businesses, LinkedIn may be a better choice. Likewise, young consumers