Kathleen Holmlund - Brand Communications Strategist » small business http://www.kathleenholmlund.com Social Media & Brand Communications Strategist Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:14:42 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 Messaging your brand (for Small Businesses) http://www.kathleenholmlund.com/messaging-your-brand-for-small-businesses/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=messaging-your-brand-for-small-businesses http://www.kathleenholmlund.com/messaging-your-brand-for-small-businesses/#comments Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:29:29 +0000 Kathleen http://www.kathleenholmlund.com/?p=170 Before embarking on an online communications strategy to promote your brand or tweaking an already existing strategy, it is important to sit down and review what it is that you wish to convey about your brand.

Ask yourself these 3 questions:

  1. Who are you? (how do you perceive yourself)
  2. How do others perceive you? (your stakeholders)
  3. How would you like your organization to be seen and talked about?

Once you have determined a clear vision of the core purpose of your business or organization, it is now time to develop a credible and authentic voice to communicate this purpose through traditional and online media. The goal is to reach and engage sizable audiences around this purpose.  So make sure that you define clearly who those audiences are as some online tools are more effective than others in targeting specific audiences.

My Desktop

It is now the time to decide which online tools you are going to use to promote your brand on the internet. There are so many out there, and it is important that you evaluate your resources before embarking on this journey. Gone are the days of just putting up a static website and just leaving it there to grow moldy. With the movement towards a faster paced digital era, online content needs to be kept fresh and dynamic, but I will go into that in much more detail in my next post about website development.

]]> http://www.kathleenholmlund.com/messaging-your-brand-for-small-businesses/feed/ 0 Promoting Your Brand Online (for Small Businesses) http://www.kathleenholmlund.com/promoting-your-brand-online-for-small-businesses/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=promoting-your-brand-online-for-small-businesses http://www.kathleenholmlund.com/promoting-your-brand-online-for-small-businesses/#comments Mon, 28 Dec 2009 14:54:24 +0000 Kathleen http://www.kathleenholmlund.com/?p=168 The beauty of exploring the possibilities of building your brand online is that you can do it practically for free. The catch, of course, is that time is money and it takes a good part of your time and patience to further enhance your presence online.  Over the next few posts, I am going to outline some of the key necessary ingredients for a successful online branding strategy. The companies represented in this graphic are all instantly recognizable by their logo and it is the messaging that goes with the logo that I shall be focusing in my first post.

For now, here is a list of the posts that I will be putting up about developing an online communications strategy:

  1. Establish the message you wish to convey about your brand (kind of obvious, but you would be surprised how many people and organizations launch a communications strategy without being too clear on this aspect)
  2. Website Development: how to start from scratch or revamping your old site
  3. Blogs: how these may be implemented into your communications strategy
  4. Social Networking: how to use online networks to further promote and enhance your brand
  5. Online sharing: how to use these tools to share news about your brand
  6. Integrate your online communications strategy with your traditional media strategy
  7. Search engine optimization of your company’s online presence.  (Everyone wants to show up on the first page of a Google search!)
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