Maybe you didn’t even realize this but part of having a successful business includes building a brand. In many ways you are a branding expert without even realizing it. After all, you deal with brands in your everyday life and probably don’t even have to put much thought into it. For example, when you see an ad for McDonald’s, you probably know exactly what they stand for, what products they have, etc. This is branding in a nutshell. But let me tell you, when it comes to branding, it’s a lot easier to be a consumer than it is to be a business owner trying to build a brand. This is why you might need some good solid advice from the experts.
This is where the Brand Identity Guru comes in. The guru himself is Scott White, and he authors the Branding Blog . What I really enjoy about his blog is the fact that he takes a witty approach to a topic that might not be second nature to all of his readers. I have taken a few marketing classes in my time but I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know as much as I could about branding, yet I felt perfectly comfortable reading his posts. One of my absolute favorites is this post called “Brands we love/hate” I can certainly identify with a lot of what he says and I am sure most of you can too.
I often try to remind myself about the differences between perception and reality. And what I mean by that is you may have an idea in your head that you are going down one path, yet others may percieve an entirely different path. It is all about what you project to others as to how they will perceive you. In many ways this is exactly what branding is all about. The idea is to be mindful enough about what you want to say with your brand image so that others will be able to perceive your reality. Sometimes it can come rather easily if you stay true to yourself, but I would bet that any of the most successful companies with some of the hottest brand names out there today didn’t get their image by accident or without careful planning and well executed strategies.
It is in this same sense that I quote from Scott’s post “How I’m going to beat type 2 diabetes using branding and business skilss” in which he says the following:
“For almost twenty years I’ve been helping clients develop a brand identity. I’ve also fixed some pretty messed up brand identities. You see brand identity is who you want to be, but brand image is how everyone else perceives you. Most of the time we see a gap between the brand identity and brand image. ”
So the question is, how will you handle your brand? Well if that question scares you at all then I highly recommend that you check out Scott’s blog, Branding Blog , and become a regular reader. It is actually quite entertaining but it makes you really think about branding in general and that is exactly what every business owner needs to do. And if you’re really serious about building your brand then you might consider checking out his “Pump up your brand workshop“.
The Branding Blog should definitely be on your RSS feed reader if you plan to start an online business and create an image that will keep people coming back. Do it now as opposed to later and maybe you can avoid the ugliness involved in repairing a damaged image.
This was a sponsored review.
Posts
