As many of us get into summer activities, one thing we need to remember is that as a small business owner, we are always creating an impression of our business, affecting our brand and reputation. Whether we are out to dinner with family and friends, socializing at the golf course, tennis courts or beaches, how we behave at all events, whether fun or business oriented, is something we need to recognize as part of our marketing activities.

What encouraged me to write this post was something that happened at a business golf outing I recently attended. All the people at this function were either small business owners or people who worked for small businesses. The group of men playing behind us became loud, rude and somewhat obnoxious. Their behavior was not something that encouraged me to want to get to know them and their businesses. My reaction was:

“What is your business? I don’t think I want to do business with you.”

Reminders for small business owners attending social events

Remember that you are marketing your business 24×7. Regardless of where you are you should be “networking” with people you meet.

• Everything you do makes an impression. Just because you are at a casual social event does not mean you can behave badly.
• Limit your alcohol intake. I know I probably don’t need to say this but over indulging in alcohol rarely has a positive effect on your business.
• Socialize with your colleagues. Notice I said socialize rather than network. At a fun outing, you are relaxing and getting to know people socially.

The above reminders work for both physical events and online social networking. Remember to socialize with your colleagues on Facebook and Twitter when possible to show a personal side that helps complete the entire picture of you. People want to do business with people. Give people a reason to get to know, like and trust you.

When we started our businesses, most of us probably didn’t realize that when we are out and about, we are always sending a message and creating an image for our company. Unlike being a public official or celebrity, we may not always be recognized, but bad behavior is memorable. People will remember the person who treated them badly or behaved unprofessionally. Don’t give people a reason to not do business with you.

What are your tips for small business owners at social events?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Marketing – Always On 24×7 is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

I attended a great event last night held by Next Level Executives on personal branding. Dan Schawbel and John Bates spoke of personal branding – John from the basics of identifying your target market, determining your unique differentiator and offering something your ideal client wants to buy (and will pay money for) and Dan from developing your Personal eBrand.

This event got me thinking that developing your reputation is nothing new – but doing so on such a global basis is what brings the overwhelming nature of personal branding to many business owners. Throughout my entire career, I have had to manage my reputation and “brand” from job to job. How many times were we told never to burn bridges because you never know when you will cross paths with that person again?

Now with the Internet and social media, crossing paths with past acquaintances is much easier and of course, much more likely. Finding out about your next boss or employee is as simple as searching for them on Google (or Googling them in the new lingo). The Internet and its social media tools have certainly shrunk the world and have made reputation management a very important part of our business lives. Managing your online and offline reputation today should be as much a part of your marketing plan as keeping your resume up-to-date was 10 years ago.

But like with everything, getting started may be hard but staying engaged is even tougher.

What should you do to dive into personal branding?

• Determine your goals for developing your personal brand
• Identify which social media tools will work best for you
• Develop a full, professional profile with picture
• Experiment with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and other social media tools if they make sense for your business
• Learn the culture of social media
• Listen to what your ideal clients are saying
• Join in the conversation

If this seems like a big challenge, engage the help of someone who can short circuit the learning curve and get you jump started into personal branding for you and your business. But by all means, get started. This stuff is not going to go away anytime soon.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Personal Branding – Is it really something new? is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

In this era of social media and our ability to effectively connect and build relationships with so many folks around the world, why do some people think that by filling out my contact form, I would ever consider outsourcing client work to them? 

This is a really big pet peeve of mine!

A few times a month, I get several emails similar to the following from people using contact forms on my web site. Some come from freelancers and some from college students looking for work.

This bothers me because it’s:

• Totally impersonal and solicitous, showing no interest in me or my business other than looking for work
• Inappropriate since my contact form is meant for people who may be interested in my services, not the other way around (if I were hiring, I’d have a careers page)!

 (Bob Smith is an alias so sorry any Bob Smith’s out there!):

email: bobsmith@bobsmith.com
first: bob
last: smith
company: bobsmith.com
telephone: 508 555 5555
message: Dear Team Vista, (Really personal greeting)

I am contacting you to offer my services as a Freelance SEO Copywriter.

My name is Bob Smith and I’m based in Boston. You can view a few writing samples on my website here: http://bobsmith.com/

I am very dedicated and available to start work immediately.

I can write any type of SEO article that you may need me to write and I can also include screen shots and images via Flickr’s creative commons in your articles if you so desire.

My rate is US$35/article for any article between 300-1200 words. I also write blog posts of the same length for US$35/blog post. Please feel free to mark my rates up to your clients.

Let me be very clear – this does not build trust or make me want to partner with you. Most business owners are careful about who they select as subcontractors because it reflects on them. I’m sure this person is a very good writer, but it shows no initiative to build a relationship with me.

Before you will ever get people to trust you enough to hire you as a subcontractor, you need to first develop a strong personal brand and make yourself visible to me via social media.

• Find out more about me by visiting my LinkedIn profile (it’s clearly posted on all my web properties).
• Start reading my blogs to understand my areas of expertise to see how you could add value.
• Join my community via MyBlogLog, follow me in Twitter and take an interest in what I do.
• Start writing your own blog and make your knowledge and expertise visible.
• Comment on my blog with intelligence and relevancy.

Develop a relationship with me first and then, maybe if I need a writer for some client work, I will seek YOU out.

Social media makes it so easy to develop relationships with people anywhere in the world who could potentially send business your way. Don’t turn them off by taking this shotgun, impersonal, almost spammy approach. Take the time to learn about that person, what they may need in the way of resources for their clients, engage in a conversation and develop trust and a relationship that will help both of you in the long run.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

How Not to Get Business is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

In the workshop I gave last week: Personal Branding: Promote Your Expertise using Social Media, we discussed the importance of being authentic and transparent when developing your personal brand. With the ease of social media, what you do exposes a little bit more of your personality each time. You no longer can put on a false face and get away with it. You need to manage your online reputation to ensure you always come across to others as you want to be presented. In this world of always connected, everyone is important, every email is important and everyone who visits your blog or social network profile needs to see the authentic you.

Listen to Gary Vaynerchuk in these two video blog posts. The first is on the importance of listening and responding to everyone in today’s word of mouth on steroids world.

Gary is authentic. His Wine Library TV shares his knowledge of wine in an upbeat, easy to understand way. He lives and breathes his personal brand as viewed in his blog GaryVayerchuk.com where he shares his secrets of word of mouth marketing for his personal brand. This video blog is one of his secrets to a strong personal brand.

Watch one of Gary’s videos and you will view a strong personal brand in action.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Personal Brand, Transparency & Authenticity is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

I had the opportunity to be a guest on the morning show at WCRN 830 True Talk Radio hosted by Maurice Lewis who was in for Peter Blute. Joining me was Jack Cutone. The discussion centered around the presentation I did last week on the value of personal branding at Jack’s class at Quinsigamond College called “Business Administration Capstone”. The goal of this course is to prepare these business students for making the transition from school to work.

Whether you are just coming out of college or have been out in the market for a while, there are two challenges that I want to impress on people:

• You need to let your passion drive your career choice.
• You need to differentiate yourself from others in a way that is truly unique.

The first challenge is finding a career where you can “do what you love and love what you do” which makes it easy for you to succeed. In a post on the Personal Brand Marketing Blog, Vikram Rajan states:

“Branding, especially personal branding, is an emotional experience:  For our prospective clients, and for us.  If we don’t feel our passion and purpose, then how can we expect our clients to?” … If you don’t have the inner craving to be rich and famous in your niche target market Community, then don’t even bother.

Think about what he is saying about having the “craving”. Have you ever had to market something you didn’t really believe in? How did you do? I bet people figured it out pretty quickly and you didn’t succeed at achieving the goal you set out. Now, what if that something you are trying to market is you? How successful do you think you will be if you never have a passion for what you are doing? How do you find that unique quality about you that helps you stand out in the crowd?

When you are passionate, excited and engaging, it makes it that much easier to separate yourself from your competition. If you love what you do, you will take the time to:

• Blog and comment about your passion
• Participate in the social networks
• Attend networking events
• Write a book or develop an information product
• Continue to develop your expertise
• Start a podcast or video podcast

Think about what it would do for your personal brand if your blog, article or profile is one of the top results in Google when someone searches for something related to what you do. How do you think you would be perceived by your potential client? What kind of doors would that open for you?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Personal Brand and Passion is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

At a recent presentation I gave to college students about ”Marketing Yourself”, we talked about what it takes to create your personal brand and how social media marketing plays a very strong role. Everyone needs to think about how they are perceived in the market, both from an offline and online perspective. In competing in the job market or for new clients, it is to your advantage to have a professional image developed online so that people can easily find out more about you.

As independent professionals, free agents or entrepreneurs, social media marketing can be used as a very effective strategy to build your brand and enhance your reputation as an expert in your discipline. Before you embark on this path, you first need to decide what you want to be known for. What is your unique differentiator? Then as you would with other types of marketing, you need to develop a social media marketing strategy that consistently reinforces your unique differentiator through your actions.

• Do you have a plan to write articles and distribute them?
• Have you built your profile on LinkedIn, Plaxo Pulse or other social networks that are relevant to your business?
• Do you have a blog, read other blogs and comment intelligently on them?
• Are you contemplating how to incorporate podcasts or video into your strategy?

Social media marketing is an overwhelming topic but can be implemented in small steps. Start simple by developing a blog and commenting on other blogs. Put a plan in place for what new techniques you will  learn and implement and by when. If you don’t incorporate social media marketing into your brand development, you may find yourself left behind.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Personal Brand is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.