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2019 Content Marketing Trends

Content is the way users engage with the website of your small business. This can be everything from blogs to podcasts and visuals such as photographs, graphics, and videos.

According to a new survey from Visual Objects, 23% of small businesses said visuals were the most effective content in 2018.

The good news for small businesses is, there are more ways to capture images and post them on websites. But as the data in the survey points out, this is just one-fourth of the content mix you need.

Overall, your small business website has to have fresh content across different mediums to remain relevant to your audience.

The author of the report, Kelsey McKeon, explains the importance of having quality content. McKeon said “Small businesses should consistently publish and update content to keep users engaged but not at the expense of content quality. Content that is current and regularly published shows users that your small business cares about its online presence.”

2019 Content Marketing Trends

The most effective form of content small businesses published in 2018 were visuals and company information, both at 23%. This was followed by videos at 16%, product descriptions at 15%, reviews at 12% and blog posts at 5%.

2019 Content Marketing Trends

The breakdown of the data shows there is no one type of content which dominates on a small business website. Consumers who watch a video one day might read a blog post or listen to a podcast the next day.

The report says small businesses have to publish new content regularly to keep their audience engaged. And the content has to be current to show you care about your online presence. But the data in the survey reveals most businesses are not posting new content consistently.

Only 38% of the respondents are consistently publishing website content. An almost equal amount or 36% publish monthly, followed by 15% at quarterly, and 12% do so only occasionally/as needed.

2019 Content Marketing Trends

So, it begs the question, how much priority are small businesses giving to content? As the survey reveals, it is at the bottom of their website priorities. Web design was first at 20%, followed by user engagement (20%) and e-commerce (19%).

The next biggest priority was SEO and security at 12%, with content coming in last at 10%. The fact user engagement was second and content came in last shows a disconnect in the priority small businesses have about their website. If a business doesn’t clearly identify its priorities, it may have a hard time telling the difference between a quality site and one that just looks nice.

According to McKeon, “Small businesses can achieve their top priorities simultaneously – enhancing website design features can improve user engagement.”

Content for 2019

The report says small businesses intend to publish functional website content in 2019. This includes a mixed variety of content in different mediums.

The majority or 59% are going to be focusing on company information followed by visuals at 57%. Some of the other types of content are product descriptions, reviews, videos, log posts, downloadable content, and podcasts.

2019 Content Marketing Trends

Small businesses have to implement a comprehensive content management policy to ensure consistency year-round.

It begins by designing a website with content in mind to deliver a good user experience for customers. After the design, owners have to invest in new and emerging forms of content to promote the company and increase the presence of the brand.

The Survey

The Visual Objects survey was carried out with the participation of 529 small business owners and managers across the U.S. More than half of the businesses or 54% have between one and 10 employees, with the remaining 46% employing between 11 to 500 people.

The respondents are male (52%), female (48%), millennials (29%), generation xers (45%), and baby boomers (27%).

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, “23% of Small Businesses Say Visuals are Effective Content on Their Websites” was first published on Small Business Trends

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What is the best way to encourage someone to pay attention to personal branding when they’re new to the concept?

These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year and have created tens of thousands of jobs. Learn more at yec.co.

1. Set Up Google Alerts

When it comes to building a personal brand and staying on top of it, you need to make checking your brand into a habit. The most effective way I’ve found to keep tabs on my own personal brand is to set up Google Alerts that go straight to my inbox whenever my name or company’s name is mentioned. – Bryce Welker, Crush The CPA Exam

2. Check Out Social Media Accounts and Reviews for Large Brands 

If I was working with someone new to branding, I’d suggest that they choose a well-known brand related to their industry and research them on social media and a review site such as Yelp. This gives you a chance to see both how the brand presents itself and how customers react to it. It’s important to notice what kind of content they post and the tone they use when responding to customers. – Kalin Kassabov, ProTexting

3. Provide Resources

To encourage someone to pay attention to personal branding, provide them with resources to help them learn. You could send them articles from reputable publications, entertaining and educational YouTube videos on the subject, or even point them to a great podcast episode about personal branding. Hearing it from other people in a way that resonates with them will help them learn. – Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms

4. First, Craft Your Message

Personal branding has been very popular these days — from Gary Vaynerchuk to Richard Branson. Utilize social media as much as possible to grow a personal brand. First, craft your message: What is your brand all about and how do you help your audiences? Then jump to social media and create videos, blog posts and other valuable content to get your message across. – Jean Ginzburg, JeanGinzburg.com

5. Talk to Them About the ROI

The return on investment on personal branding, when done properly, is immense. Customers will seek you out directly instead of shopping around for multiple service providers. They’ll remember you by name and think of you first when they need your products or services. It’s no different from corporate branding in the sense that it makes you reach top of mind awareness within your audience.- Amine Rahal, Little Dragon Media

6. Explain the Importance

First off, when explaining the concept of a personal brand to someone, you must elaborate on why it’s important that they have and maintain one to begin with. Reviews, general mentions and your image on the web are everything when it comes to success these days. By making sure your personal brand is well received by the target demographic, you’ll never lose a customer before the first contact. – Jared Weitz, United Capital Source

7. Ask Them to Reflect on Their Own Perspective of Other Brands

Odds are they’ve noticed and liked what other people or personal brands are doing. Ask them if there is any personal or company brand that really stands out to them. What do they like about it and how they would describe said brand? By doing this, you’ll help them uncover the effects branding has actually had on them, thus making a point about what branding is and why it is important.- Andy Karuza, FenSens

8. Create Great Content

A rookie mistake a lot of people make when it comes to building a strong personal brand is trying to implement “get followers quick” tactics. Focus on creating great content first and be consistent and persistent when doing so. A good way to start is to tell your story in the most authentic way you can. – Diego Orjuela, Cables & Sensors

9. Be Purposeful in the Things That You Put Out There

Everything you post online lives forever in one way or another. Unfortunately, you have no ability to predict or control how others will use that information. It’s important to have a plan for how you want to market yourself to the world and to set boundaries for yourself in terms of how you engage. – Andrew Saladino, Kitchen Cabinet Kings

10. Help Them Understand Their Current Brand

Jeff Bezos is famously credited with saying: “Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.” Run an anonymous survey on Facebook (there is an app for that) among their friends to see what other people honestly think about them to help them realize what their current brand is. This will open their eyes very quickly. – Eugene Gold, WOW Payments LLC

11. Ask Them Simple Questions

The best way to encourage someone to pay attention to personal branding when they’re new to a concept is all about awareness. In the early stages, it’s asking them questions like, “pretend I’m meeting you again 10 years from now. Who am I meeting and what is it like to be around you?” Or ask them about a mentor: Why do they admire that mentor and how did their mentor become a mentor?- Arry Yu, Yellow Umbrella Ventures

12. Run a Personal Brand Audit

A great way to learn about branding and online reputation management is to perform it on yourself. Something new hires and employees can do to get started is to go through this process themselves. We all have social profiles, but they each rank all over the place in terms of Google and SEO. Provide your team with the tools to run this first search and then have them do it again with your own or competitor brands. – Zac Johnson, Blogger

The post Eight Ways Beginners Can Watch Their Personal Brand appeared first on Personal Branding Blog – Stand Out In Your Career.

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According to the AARP, there will be 78 million Americans 65 years and older by 2035. And many of them are not going to be retiring.

With longer and healthier life expectancies, older Americans are becoming maturepreneurs. And the Maturepreneur Today Virtual Summit is going to help you leverage your life long experiences to be a better entrepreneur.

On June 11, 2019, you can attend the all-day virtual summit and get valuable insights from leading industry experts.

Allen Gutierrez, former Associate Administrator of the Office of Entrepreneurial Development, U.S. SBA and General (Ret) Stan McChrystal are just two of the speakers.

Other experts in business and marketing along with strategist, consultants, mentors and more will also be present.

Tracks on legal and financial issues, marketing, franchise ownership and steps to business success will be held.

The summit will end with a panel discussion and Q&A to wrap up the day.

You can register by clicking the red button.

Register Now

Featured Events, Contests and Awards

Maturepreneur Today Virtual SummitMaturepreneur Today Virtual Summit
June 11, 2019, Online

Maturepreneur Today is holding its full day virtual event on June 11, 2019. The summit is for new, existing and budding entrepreneurs in their 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Visit our website to view the entire list of renowned speakers. #MaturepreneurToday

Listening to the Voice of the Customer Listening to the Voice of the Customer
October 16, 2019, Chicago, Ill.

Led by veteran product development and market research experts, this course will introduce Voice of the Customer (VOC) market research and teach you to use it to accelerate innovation in business-to-business markets. The workshop uses a lively, interactive format with numerous hands-on activities and practice exercises to build skills and will also expose you to the latest applications of these techniques in areas such as machine learning and journey mapping.
Discount Code
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This weekly listing of small business events, contests and awards is provided as a community service by Small Business Trends.

You can see a full list of events, contest and award listings or post your own events by visiting the Small Business Events Calendar.

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, “Maturepreneur Virtual Summit Teaches Techniques for Older Entrepreneurs” was first published on Small Business Trends

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Thanks to https://www.allbusiness.com/small-business-website-10-key-steps-121647-1.html

By Allison Bowlus

Whether you are a freelance photographer, own a hardware store, or have another type of small business, a great website is essential for your company’s success. As a webmaster who has worked on building or marketing over 100 small business websites, I know what it takes to create great and engaging business websites.

If you are looking to build a new startup website or make your current site more effective, here are 10 key steps to getting started and helping your small business website compete effectively in the online marketplace.

1. Obtain a good domain name

Your domain name, also known as your website address, is often the entry point to your site. It is important that it makes a good impression for usability purposes, as well as for search engine optimization (SEO).

Here are some tips for coming up with an optimal domain name:

  • Make it easy to spell. Try not to use slang, made up, or extremely esoteric words.
  • Keep it as short as possible. The shorter it is, the easier it is to remember and type correctly.
  • Use the proper domain extension. Try to always make it a .com domain name (as opposed to .net, .co, etc.) unless it is more appropriate to use another extension, such as .gov, .edu, or .org.
  • Avoid numbers and hyphens. They are hard to remember and less elegant and memorable than word-only domain names, and may be misunderstood when vocalizing the domain name.
  • Make the address broad to facilitate future growth. For example, Amazon.com is a much broader website address than BooksOnline.com and allows Amazon to sell pretty much every type of consumer good instead of books only, as was its original purpose.
  • Ensure it is memorable. With so many websites on the internet, it is important that your website name is catchy so people will remember how to access it in the future.
  • Research the domain name. Google it to see if a similar website address already exists online, and search on USPTO.gov to make sure it does not contain any registered trademarks.
  • Check if the price is right. Determine if you can purchase your desired website address at a reasonable price since most good domain names are taken and will need to be bought from the current owner.
  • Avoid nonsensical names. Choose a name that conveys a meaning so that users will know immediately what your business is. Yahoo and Google are catchy names, but they were very expensive to brand, and your small business may not have the same budget.
  • Create an SEO-friendly URL. When appropriate, try to come up with an SEO-friendly website address that includes keywords and geo-location; for example, “www.LasVegasElectrician.com.”

2. Purchase secure, scalable website hosting with good tech support

A website host (or sometimes referred to as a website hosting provider) is a company that offers the technology and services necessary for a website to be viewed on the internet. You connect your domain name to your hosting provider so that when users visit your website address, they are shown your website that you store on your hosting account.

Hosting services can cost anywhere between $2 to $100+ per month, depending on the kind of technology and support you choose. You can usually get a discount if you purchase a yearly plan as opposed to a monthly plan.

Here are some guidelines for choosing a good website hosting plan:

  • Although you can get a “shared server” hosting plan for as little as $2 per month, I would typically advise against this. Shared hosting means you are sharing a server and its resources with other customers, which can make the performance of your site suffer. Also, if one of the other websites on your shared server is hacked, it is possible for your website to also be infected.
  • A “dedicated server” hosting plan is the most expensive option—cost can range from around $100 to $2,000 per month—but it would make your website perform the most optimally. Having a dedicated server plan means that the physical server machine is entirely dedicated to your site; therefore, all the resources are yours and it is more secure than a shared hosting plan, as long as the technology is optimal. However, it is much more expensive than what most small businesses usually are willing to pay. Once you have a very high-performing site, this may be what you need, but it is overkill for most early stage and small businesses.
  • The compromise I typically recommend is a “virtual private server” (VPS) hosting plan which offers the best of both worlds. The cost ranges from around $20 to $50 per month, which is affordable for the hosting services you will receive. A VPS is one machine that is partitioned to act as multiple machines, which gives it a similar affordability to shared hosting, with similar security and performance potential as a dedicated server hosting plan.
  • Make sure your hosting company has phone and/or chat support so you can be helped quickly if you have a problem. Email support can often take too long and become frustrating when a problem needs to be resolved immediately. Phone support is best, but chatting works well, too.
  • There needs to be an easy to use server interface like cPanel to access your server. You do not want to have to use terminal commands to view your server contents and make changes, unless you can afford to hire a professional server administrator to help you.
  • Check to see what kind of server security is in place on the server you are considering. You will want to be able to access your server via Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). There should be daily backups being made of your server contents. There should also be an easy, one or two-click method to install Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates. Make sure the hosting company performs regular security maintenance. Ideally your hosting company has a published security protocol you can review so you know how they keep their servers safe.

Some popular website hosting companies include:

3. Prominently display a clear description of your business

It is important to let people know who you are and what you do right away so they don’t feel confused when they visit your small business website. Make sure your main homepage banner (also known as a “hero image”) and subsequent banners are visual representations of your services, and also that you have an introductory text blurb near the top of the page that describes who you are and what you do.

Additionally, make sure both your main and footer navigation menus have “About Us” page links easily accessible so people can click them and read more about your business in depth.

4. Implement the best content management system

A content management system (CMS) is a software program or application that is used to create and manage digital content. A good CMS will help you maintain your site, and you don’t need much technical knowledge to use it. You should choose a CMS that is designed for your unique needs; different systems are used for different reasons, such as user-friendliness, extensibility, and budget.

The following are some popular systems with descriptions of their strengths and weaknesses.

WordPress: WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS. It has a vast, active support community and many useful plugins to extend the functionality of your site. (And if you cannot find a plugin that does what you want, it is easy to find a WordPress developer who can make one for you!) WordPress is also free and relatively simple to install. Most website developers are familiar with it so it is not hard to find an individual or agency that can work on your site. I normally recommend that small businesses use WordPress to create their websites, due to its flexibility and extensibility.

It must be noted, however, that WordPress’s biggest weakness is security—because it is so popular, hackers target it the most. Your WordPress site needs to be regularly maintained and secured so it is not hacked. Also, it is difficult to secure every single third-party plugin, so keeping your WordPress site secure must be an ongoing commitment through various best practices (checking to see if your plugins have been updated within the past few months, making sure it is a plugin provided in the official WordPress repository, deleting unused plugins immediately, etc.).

Drupal: Drupal is another popular CMS. It offers many of the same benefits as WordPress, including flexibility, ease of use, and a large support community. Notably it is a more secure CMS than WordPress (safer from malicious activity); however, it doesn’t have as many plugin or theme options, which makes it less extensible. For many years, the White House website (Whitehouse.gov) was run with Drupal, but has since switched to WordPress, which it still uses today.

Joomla!: Another popular CMS is Joomla! Out of the box, it has better SEO, security, and multilingual capabilities than WordPress; however, with the help of a few plugins, WordPress surpasses Joomla!’s capabilities.

Squarespace: Squarespace is a service you subscribe to monthly or annually that makes website and blog creation an easy “drag and drop” experience. It includes website design, development, software maintenance, metrics, domain name with annual purchase, SSL security, 24/7 support, and unlimited bandwidth and storage hosting all in one package. It is especially suitable for creatives and provides you with top-notch design templates. If you are on a tight budget, need a simple and beautiful site, but cannot afford a website designer, this is a great service for you.

There is a much smaller learning curve with Squarespace than with WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla!, but it doesn’t have nearly as many extensibility options. However, if you have little or no technical knowledge and are looking for a quick and easy way to put up a website, Squarespace is an excellent option for you.

Wix: Wix is very similar to Squarespace, but it is a bit more user-friendly. It offers a monthly, but not annual, subscription and includes similar features. Wix is also a drag-and-drop builder—you can freely drag and drop elements anywhere on the page; in comparison, Squarespace is more structured in where you can drag and drop on the page. The learning curve to using Wix is even shorter than Squarespace, so if you need to publish a site quickly, this may be your best option.

Wix has a lot more templates than Squarespace to choose from, but once you choose a template, you must stick with it or be forced to completely rebuild your site. With Squarespace, you can change your template anytime without having to rebuild the entire site. 

5. Choose a good e-commerce platform

If you plan on selling goods and/or services through your website, you will need the right technology to do so. (If you do not currently sell anything, you may want to consider doing so since e-commerce could potentially increase your profits.) If you decide to allow users to financially transact with you online, you will need to choose the right platform for your business model.

Here are some popular small business e-commerce platforms:

WooCommerce: WooCommerce is one of the world’s most popular e-commerce platforms—it can turn your WordPress website into an online store. Like WordPress, there are many plugins available, and it attaches to WordPress, which makes it extremely flexible. There are many free and premium themes pre-built for WooCommerce. (As a rule, it is better to use a premium theme from a reputable developer because it will offer better security and support.) If you are not tech-savvy, you will most likely need a WordPress developer to help you set it up and use it. WooCommerce also offers a very high amount of capabilities and scalability that your small business might need.

Shopify: Shopify is a cloud based e-commerce platform that allows you to create and customize an online store, and to manage products, inventory, payments, and shipping. It is not a WordPress extension like WooCommerce—it is a standalone platform that is hosted on the Shopify server—so if you have a main website, your e-commerce site would technically be separate from that. You can link to your Shopify account from your regular website built with WordPress, Drupal, Wix, etc., unless your main website has a Shopify integration plugin.

Features include unlimited products, unlimited bandwidth, fraud analysis, discount codes, reports, and much more. The key benefits of Shopify are that you do not need a developer to set up a store, and everything on the backend is already set up for you when you subscribe. The downside is you do not have as much control or flexibility over your store as you would with WooCommerce.

Shopify Plus: Shopify Plus is Shopify, but with a higher level of customization, more staff accounts, and international e-commerce options. It also has a higher level of support. However, all of this obviously comes with a higher subscription cost, and it still does not have all the flexibility and customization abilities as WooCommerce.

Business Squarespace: Squarespace has an e-commerce subscription option, so if you chose Squarespace to build your site and have very simple e-commerce needs, you can choose this route. Business Squarespace charges a transaction fee, but this can be bypassed by upgrading your subscription to a basic online store. It includes a free domain, SSL security, SEO, abandoned cart recovery, discounts, real-time carrier shipping, and more. However, it has been noted it is not as user-friendly as Shopify. And like Shopify, it is simply not as flexible as WooCommerce.

Wix: Wix actually has a Shopify extension which is very user friendly. You will have to upgrade your Wix account and subscribe to Shopify in order to use it.

GoDaddy Online Store: GoDaddy has a relatively new e-commerce standalone subscription platform that is relatively easy to set up and use. Very little technical knowledge is required to launch your shop with GoDaddy Online Store. The templates are simple and clean, and somewhat customizable. Features include marketing and SEO tools, social media integration, appointment booking, SSL security, rapid page loading, and more.

Other Articles From AllBusiness.com:

 6. Create an interesting, memorable, and engaging website user interface

Make sure your small business website interface leaves a positive impression that drives results. You can do so by implementing the following suggestions:

  • Use beautiful graphics and easy-to-read fonts.
  • Make sure your graphics are compressed and optimized for fast loading. If your website is slow, search engines like Google will penalize your ranking.
  • Research the competition to see how they have designed and optimized their websites; implement similar components that will work for your small business website.
  • Research your target audience to see what they want from your site and make it easy for them to accomplish it.
  • Stay consistently on brand throughout your website design.
  • Design an intuitive navigation system which allows users to get to the pages they need quickly.
  • Publish easily accessible contact information.
  • Incorporate obvious call-to-actions (especially “buy now” buttons).
  • Create pages that are standard for small business websites, such as:
    • Home
    • About us
    • Products/Services (with descriptions and visually appealing images)
    • Sitemap (for SEO purposes)
    • Management team
    • Contact us
    • Terms of use (the online contract governing how users can use your site)
    • Privacy policy
    • Additional pages relevant to your specific small business

7. Optimize your small business website for search engines

SEO is a set of practices you apply to your website to ensure search engines index and rank your website appropriately and then show it to search engine users. Once your website is “crawled” by search engines, it competes with websites that have similar content. The better your website design and content is, the higher your site will show up on search engine result pages.

SEO mainly includes the following practices:

  • Keyword research and implementation
  • Optimal website code
  • Fast loading speed
  • Being secure and having an SSL certificate installed; SSL is the standard security technology that ensures data passed between web servers and browsers remains private
  • Having a mobile-friendly site
  • Existence of high-quality backlinks (links on external websites with related content) that lead to your site
  • Having lots of positive reviews online (Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc.)
  • Using internal links throughout your site to keep people clicking and reading
  • Using social media to link to your site (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.)

SEO is an extremely important ongoing process that can mean the difference between showing up on the first page of search engine results pages (resulting in large amounts of free traffic to your website) or page 300 (resulting in no traffic).

8. Regularly create and publish quality content

Both content quantity and freshness are important to search engines, so it’s important that you create a plan to publish quality articles and/or blog posts on your site and on external sites that link to your site. If you want to rank highly in search engine results and encourage people to return to your site again and again, you will have to update your website with new and relevant content as frequently as possible.

In addition to static page content and articles, a great form of content to post on your website is testimonials. Asking for testimonials from your customers and then publishing them on your website is a great way to post fresh, high-quality content on your site that makes your small business more attractive.

Make sure your content uses an appropriate, on-brand tone that people will enjoy reading.

9. Install webmaster tools

Make use of vital data to help you analyze traffic and site performance by installing Google Analytics and Google Search Console (both preferably via Google Tag Manager), and Bing Webmaster Tools. These tools can be used to track the following types of information:

  • Daily, weekly, and monthly visitors to your site
  • Number of views on each page of your site
  • “Bounce rate”—the percentage of users who come to your site and leave after having only viewed one page (Google algorithms give higher rankings to websites that have a low bounce rate, on the theory that visitors are spending more time on the site and find it valuable.)
  • Average time spent on site by visitors
  • Crawl errors on your site (errors that the search engines found on your site in crawling its content)
  • Broken links on the site
  • Keywords that lead users to your site
  • Backlinks to your site
  • Web page download time
  • Other information that can help you enhance your SEO

10. Implement a website maintenance plan

A website shouldn’t be created and then allowed to grow stale. In order to have a successful website that ranks well in search engines and doesn’t get hacked, you need to make sure it is properly maintained.

Here are some tips to create a small business website maintenance plan:

  • Check Webmaster Tools data at least once a month and have any vital errors emailed to you in real time.
  • Use traffic data to learn more about your audience so you can better cater to them.
  • Use performance data to optimize and fix warnings and errors.
  • Make sure all software is always up to date.
  • Run security scans so you know your website is clean of malware and hasn’t been hacked.
  • Use “split testing” to see if certain variations of your website help performance; for example, if you are selling a product, you might have two versions of a particular landing page with different images and wording—the split testing allows you to see which version has a higher conversion rate.
  • Follow my advice about SEO (see point #7), and continually publish quality content (see point #8).
  • Find on-trend and effective ways to market your business online.
  • Allow website users to provide you with feedback about your site.
  • Continue to check out your competition from time to time to see what they are doing with their online presence and see if what they’ve done can work for you as well.
  • Make sure your website is backed up in multiple ways at least once a day and at least 10 days back.

Conclusion

As you can tell after reading this article, creating a great small business website may not be as simple as you first thought. However, if you follow the steps set forth in this article, your small business will have an excellent chance at succeeding in the online marketplace.

RELATED: How to Install WordPress in Under 30 Minutes

About the Author

Post by: Allison Bowlus

Allison Bowlus is a Webmaster who specializes in WordPress, graphic design, mobile-friendly website development, search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC) advertising, user interface, e-commerce, and blogging/social media marketing. She is originally from Ohio and received her Bachelor of Science degree from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, focused on Web Design and Interactive Media. She has been involved in building or marketing over 100 business websites. To find out how to drive visitors to your website, check out Allison’s article, Small Business Internet Marketing Strategy: Pay Per Click Advertising and Search Engine Optimization.

Visit my website: www.allisonbowlus.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn

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Thanks to http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/personalbrandingblog/~3/GyZihVMC4As/

What is the best way to encourage someone to pay attention to personal branding when they’re new to the concept?

These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year and have created tens of thousands of jobs. Learn more at yec.co.

1. Set Up Google Alerts

When it comes to building a personal brand and staying on top of it, you need to make checking your brand into a habit. The most effective way I’ve found to keep tabs on my own personal brand is to set up Google Alerts that go straight to my inbox whenever my name or company’s name is mentioned. – Bryce Welker, Crush The CPA Exam

2. Check Out Social Media Accounts and Reviews for Large Brands 

If I was working with someone new to branding, I’d suggest that they choose a well-known brand related to their industry and research them on social media and a review site such as Yelp. This gives you a chance to see both how the brand presents itself and how customers react to it. It’s important to notice what kind of content they post and the tone they use when responding to customers. – Kalin Kassabov, ProTexting

3. Provide Resources

To encourage someone to pay attention to personal branding, provide them with resources to help them learn. You could send them articles from reputable publications, entertaining and educational YouTube videos on the subject, or even point them to a great podcast episode about personal branding. Hearing it from other people in a way that resonates with them will help them learn. – Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms

4. First, Craft Your Message

Personal branding has been very popular these days — from Gary Vaynerchuk to Richard Branson. Utilize social media as much as possible to grow a personal brand. First, craft your message: What is your brand all about and how do you help your audiences? Then jump to social media and create videos, blog posts and other valuable content to get your message across. – Jean Ginzburg, JeanGinzburg.com

5. Talk to Them About the ROI

The return on investment on personal branding, when done properly, is immense. Customers will seek you out directly instead of shopping around for multiple service providers. They’ll remember you by name and think of you first when they need your products or services. It’s no different from corporate branding in the sense that it makes you reach top of mind awareness within your audience.- Amine Rahal, Little Dragon Media

6. Explain the Importance

First off, when explaining the concept of a personal brand to someone, you must elaborate on why it’s important that they have and maintain one to begin with. Reviews, general mentions and your image on the web are everything when it comes to success these days. By making sure your personal brand is well received by the target demographic, you’ll never lose a customer before the first contact. – Jared Weitz, United Capital Source

7. Ask Them to Reflect on Their Own Perspective of Other Brands

Odds are they’ve noticed and liked what other people or personal brands are doing. Ask them if there is any personal or company brand that really stands out to them. What do they like about it and how they would describe said brand? By doing this, you’ll help them uncover the effects branding has actually had on them, thus making a point about what branding is and why it is important.- Andy Karuza, FenSens

8. Create Great Content

A rookie mistake a lot of people make when it comes to building a strong personal brand is trying to implement “get followers quick” tactics. Focus on creating great content first and be consistent and persistent when doing so. A good way to start is to tell your story in the most authentic way you can. – Diego Orjuela, Cables & Sensors

9. Be Purposeful in the Things That You Put Out There

Everything you post online lives forever in one way or another. Unfortunately, you have no ability to predict or control how others will use that information. It’s important to have a plan for how you want to market yourself to the world and to set boundaries for yourself in terms of how you engage. – Andrew Saladino, Kitchen Cabinet Kings

10. Help Them Understand Their Current Brand

Jeff Bezos is famously credited with saying: “Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.” Run an anonymous survey on Facebook (there is an app for that) among their friends to see what other people honestly think about them to help them realize what their current brand is. This will open their eyes very quickly. – Eugene Gold, WOW Payments LLC

11. Ask Them Simple Questions

The best way to encourage someone to pay attention to personal branding when they’re new to a concept is all about awareness. In the early stages, it’s asking them questions like, “pretend I’m meeting you again 10 years from now. Who am I meeting and what is it like to be around you?” Or ask them about a mentor: Why do they admire that mentor and how did their mentor become a mentor?- Arry Yu, Yellow Umbrella Ventures

12. Run a Personal Brand Audit

A great way to learn about branding and online reputation management is to perform it on yourself. Something new hires and employees can do to get started is to go through this process themselves. We all have social profiles, but they each rank all over the place in terms of Google and SEO. Provide your team with the tools to run this first search and then have them do it again with your own or competitor brands. – Zac Johnson, Blogger

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