Five Ways to Take Control of Your Personal Brand Today

With a bad economy, more pressure at work and overwhelming competition, investing in yourself and your future is crucial. There are a lot of new trends and tricks that you can take advantage of now. Below are five easy and initial steps you can take to start building your brand today. These will help you control your online identity, protect your future, centralize your digital assets, safeguard your brand from threats and more.

Schawbel, Dan. Mashable (2009). Articles>Collaboration>Marketing>Social Networking

Is My Brand Right For Twitter?

Marketers are increasingly engaging with consumers on social media platforms and Twitter, in particular, has received, and continues to gain, attention. From shock tactics, to useful value propositions like @amazonmp3 content feed, brands are revealing themselves on Twitter. We are starting to hear of stories about top executives calling meetings about how they should "get on Twitter" and saying, "We need a social media profile." But should they? Do they?

Weisman, Benjamin J. Marketing Daily (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Marketing>Social Networking

Social Media "Strategies" Getting in the Way of Enterprises' Social Media Usage

Social media is so powerful and diverse that just about the only thing that can get in the way of an organization making the most of it is the idea that social media cannot be exploited without a "strategy." That makes about as much sense as stopping you as you slide your key into the ignition and insisting you first develop a strategy that encompasses your automobile needs for tonight, tomorrow, and every day in the future.

Ray, Augie. Experience (2008). Articles>Web Design>Social Networking>Marketing

Is More Less? Or is Less More? The Quality vs Quantity Debate

Is it better to have 500,000 followers on Twitter? Or is it better to have 100 followers who are engaged and targeted? Is it better to have a website with 5000 pages of content, or a website with 50 pages of well thought out, valuable material? I am not trying to dictate an answer by using value terms in my questions, despite the fact that I am very much of the opinion that less is more and quality trumps quantity, but recent events are arising which may be proving me wrong.

Williams, Nancy. Social Media Today (2009). Articles>Web Design>Social Networking>Marketing

Marketing: Intertwining The Mobile Revolution

Online through mobile will be, is, WAS the future. Ori Carmel from Ambergreen says that The Future of Mobile Marketing crept up on us while we were looking the other way and is already here.

Carmel, Ori. 160 Characters (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Wireless Web>Marketing

A Visual Tour Through the Basics of Social Media Marketing

I've been asked several times to give presentations on the basics of social media marketing, and have now refined my 15 minute introductory tour to the point where I think it's fairly good (and I'm really damn picky about my presentations). The following presentation (in visual and text form) should be helpful for anyone trying to convince their bosses, team or cohorts that investing in SMM is a worthwhile pursuit.

SEOmoz (2007). Articles>Web Design>Social Networking>Marketing

How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic – The Ultimate Guide

The number of excellent resources that have come out since the beginning of the year on attracting links and building traffic has really mushroomed. Plus there are some timeless classics that are still very relevant today. I think it makes sense to compile the very best in one handy location and share it, so here’s my entire collection. If I missed your link and traffic resource let me know and I’ll take a look.

Clark, Brian. Copyblogger (2006). Resources>Bibliographies>Web Design>Marketing

How To Write a White Paper to Attract Clients

Do you have a new idea, business model, product or service? Do you want to get noticed by using a marketing method that might only cost you time? Try writing a white paper to attract people to your door.

Markenson, Ari J. Dumb Little Man (2009). Articles>Business Communication>White Papers>Marketing

The Long Tail

For too long we've been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching - a market response to inefficient distribution. The main problem, if that's the word, is that we live in the physical world and, until recently, most of our entertainment media did, too.

Anderson, Chris. Wired (2004). Articles>Web Design>Marketing

How to Write Web Copy That Sells

How you write your copy really makes a huge difference to your online sales. And even if you don't sell products directly, good sales copy will help you persuade the user to make a donation, subscribe to your newsletter or complete an application form. Here's how you do it.

Content Strategy (2009). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Marketing

Content Based Sales

Content-based sales means using high-quality content to generate traffic, which you then use to earn money (but not necessarily on the web-site).

Content Strategy (2007). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Marketing

What’s the Point of User Documentation, from a Marketing Perspective?

In order to understand the way marketing people see the world, it’s worth reading Blogs on marketing (by people such as Seth Godin), the Cluetrain Manifesto, and reading a few books on marketing.

Pratt, Ellis. Cherryleaf (2009). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>Marketing

Understanding the Persuasive Flow

Wiggly, distracting, or poorly placed ads irritate users. Worse, they teach site visitors to ignore whole sections of layout. Yet some online ads work. They capture visitors visually, and present an engaging hook. They get visitors to click. Even, at times, from the home page. So what's the difference?

Michaels, Mary M. UI Design Newsletter (2007). Articles>Web Design>Marketing>User Experience

Use of Cognitive Tricks in Web Advertising

Web advertisers resort to many unethical approaches (in my personal opinion) under the pretext of creativity. Let us learn about it.

Katre, Dinesh S. Journal of HCI Vistas (2006). Articles>Web Design>Marketing>Cognitive Psychology

XML and Marketing Materials

Marketing materials are always important, and in these difficult times, they are critical to the success of the organization, and there are huge pressures to do more with less and for less money. Enter XML. XML is often perceived as complex, rigid and horrible to work with (geeky, technical) — anathema to the average marketing communications author. But this is no longer true. XML and the tools that support them have matured to the point where the XML is hidden, much in the same way RTF is hidden from the average Microsoft® Word author. Using XML for marketing materials provides considerable benefits, including consistent messaging, reduced time to create content, reduced costs to maintain content, reduced translation costs, and powerful multichannel conversion capabilities. XML is creating a profound shift in the way we create, manage, deliver and control marketing materials. It is a shift that is resulting in significant ROI and increased levels of success.

Rockley, Ann. Rockley Group, The (2009). Articles>Content Management>Marketing>XML

Presenting Consumer Technology with POP: A Rhetorical and Ethnographic Exploration of Point-of-Purchase Advertising    

Point-of-purchase advertising (POP) is responsible for half of the purchase decisions made in the store. Because of: 1) the influence of POP on the sale of technical consumer products and the economy; 2) our need to understand trends that shape technical and business communication; 3) the intermedial nature of POP (where spoken and written words work with place, visual image, physical structures, and multimedia integrated marketing campaigns); and 4) its theatrical and local nature, we need both a situated and theoretical exploration of POP. Drawing upon three months' participant observation in advertising, I describe a POP composing process in an integrated marketing campaign. Cognitive responses to layout and the interrelation of rhetorical canons are considered for preparing communication for a marketplace that is three-dimensional variegated, noisy, and peripatetic.

Cross, Geoffrey A. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Marketing

How to Select a Proper Article Writing Method

Here are two main methods you can use to launch off your article marketing campaign.

How to Write Anything (2007). Articles>Writing>Marketing>Business Communication

Online Advertising: Factors That Influence Customer Experience

In this article, I’ll discuss the cognitive elements at the intersection of advertising and human behavior. By taking an approach to advertising that looks at the impact psychological factors have on customer behavior, I’ve learned that customers respond directly to online advertisements, as we can see from their emotions, behavior, and interactions on the Web.

Kirmani, Shazeeye and Shamugam Rajasekaran. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Web Design>Marketing>User Experience

Marketing of Library and Information Products and Services    

The article considers the concept of marketing in the light of library and information services and mentions the necessity of marketing techniques in library and information centres. It outlines the principles of information products/services marketing and discusses the key steps of marketing for library and information centres. The article indicates the methods of applying marketing techniques to library and information centres and marketing difficulties to library and information services in developing countries are also discussed, with particular reference to those in Bangladesh.

Islam, Shariful and Nazmul Islam. Business Information Review (2009). Articles>Information Design>Marketing

How To Bid Profitably On Nonconverting Keywords

Google has a bidding methodology called Budget Optimizer that attempts to maximize the traffic you receive for the keywords in a campaign. This is useful for early buying cycle keywords. However, every keyword should be reaching some goal regardless of where it falls into the buying cycle. It was difficult to track the effectiveness of these campaigns until recently when Google made some changes to Google Analytics. Now you can more effectively bid on early buying cycle keywords, or keywords that you want exposure for, but do not have direct returns by combining the new Google Analytics goals with a budget optimizer campaign.

Geddes, Brad. Search Engine Land (2009). Articles>Web Design>Marketing>E Commerce

Going Viral

Our plan was to market Project Dragonfly virally. Going out now meant that we were a little early and many details were still on the to-do list. As a user centered design practitioner working with an Agile Development process, I was comfortable working in an iterative manner to engage users quickly so that we think through details and bring solutions forward. Yet something about this situation seemed different to me. We wanted the world to broadcast about the benefits of Project Dragonfly while our marketing efforts simply facilitated the conversation.

Arnold, Steve. Designing the User Experience at Autodesk (2009). Articles>User Centered Design>Project Management>Marketing

Netiquette, Twettiquette: How to Build the Social Media Audiences You Want

How can you build the right following? The question is important because like it or not, as communicators, we’re expected to lead the way in our organizations’ use of social media.

Canavor, Natalie and Claire Meirowitz. Communication World Bulletin (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Social Networking>Marketing

Forget the Golden Rule

Treat others the way you would want to be treated. It seems ridiculous to think that one of the most common rules taught to children somehow hinders effective business communication when these children become adults. But it’s true. To be effective at communicating with customers (for example, internal audiences who buy into ideas or messages, or external audiences who buy products or services), one must turn away from this standard rule and focus instead on treating others the way they want to be treated.

Parkhurst, Morgan Leu. Communication World Bulletin (2009). Articles>Business Communication>User Centered Design>Marketing

A Simple Shortcut For Writing Irresistible Benefits 

Do you know if you're promoting features or benefits in your marketing materials? The answer to this question plays a significant role in the effectiveness of your marketing message. While features are facts benefits explain why facts are important. Its these benefits that target your prospects emotions a key factor in selling situations.

Marketing Tips (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Writing>Marketing