If you want to be creative in your business, the first thing you need to do is start ignoring everybody. You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it is created, neither does anyone else. You can just hope it is a strong gut feeling that it will work. And believing your inner gut feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is.

Asking your best friends never worked quite well as expected, either. It’s not that they are being unhelpful, but most of the time they don’t know your world well as you know your world, no matter how hard you try to explain.

There’s a reason why feelings scares us. A big idea might change you. Your friends may love you but they don’t want you to change. If you change, their relationship with you also changes. People are often fearful of changes. They are comfortable with the way things are, that’s how they love you, not the way you may become.

They’ll be resistant to anything that catalyzes the change. That’s human nature. That’s why most good ideas are always initially resisted.

Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it’s done right.

Walt Disney

Brand building is no longer involves big companies. Every brand has a unique voice and they use it wherever and whenever they communicate the message to the market. When brand ubiquity occurs, people find brands even when they aren’t looking. The brand’s reputation precedes its presence. There are 4 strategies involved in building a brand value.

Strategy 1: Innovation

Innovations means doing what no one else would dare going. You have to understand and changes behaviors in the market. Start humanizing the technology to create simple solutions to complex problems. For instance, mp3 player industry existed even before Apple monopoly the industry. There were many mp3 players by brands. What Apple did was simply revolutionize a simple solution by introducing new technology and solves the problem in downloading music for the consumers. It doesn’t have to be rocket science technology in order for your company to innovate.

Creativity is what gives brand the piece of the pie in the marketplace. However, many companies are struggling with creativity. It’s because creativity is often right-brained while strategy is left-brained. When the competition zigged, you zagged. How do you know when an idea is innovate? It’s when it scares the hell out of everybody.

“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two-and only two-basic functions: marketing and innovation.”

-Peter Drucker

Strategy 2: The Authenticity Factor

There are 1,349 cameras on the market, how do you decide which one to buy? It’s a fact that our brains act as filters to protect us from being overwhelmed with too much information. We’re hardwired to only note what’s different. Those brands that try to be a little bit of everything to everyone, end-up being meaning nothing to anyone. Marketing’s functions today is about creating tribes for your brand. People join different tribes for different activities.

Reading——-> Amazon

Sports———> Nike

Banking——-> Citibank

So how do you differentiate your brand than others? The key important point to this question is “Focus”. The questions you need to address are:

-Who are you?

-What you do?

-Why I should listen to you?

Strategy 3: Trust

Understand what your customer wants through empathy. People are living, breathing, feeling, adaptable beings. Engage them and observe their behavior to understand their motivations. How do you build trust?

It comes from satisfying and beating customer’s expectations. Brand will become the most influential strategic tool since the spreadsheet. A charismatic brand is any product or services for which people believe there’s no substitute. Any brands can be charismatic even yours.

“In the old days, brands wanted everybody to pay attention to them. Now brands need to pay attention to everybody else.”

-Umair Haque

Strategy 4: Create A Story

People want to know how you got to where you are, when, why and where you are going. When creating a story, always remember the goal of your story is to create a relationship with your customers. They have to feel like they know you well. Every good story starts with a situation and a problem to be resolved. It must represent your beliefs and values.

Every story portrays a hero. People love it. You, the main character needs to be hero. Do you think you can be a hero in your industry?

Most companies think that their brand building efforts should be focused on designing a fancy logo for their corporate image and then advertise their big fancy logo everywhere so that customers will notice and remembers it. A brand is not a logo.  It isn’t about your trademark because this serves as legal property. What’s more a brand is not merely the same as a product or services because these are the tangibles.

So now what exactly is a brand? It is a person’s gut feelings about a product, a service or an organization. It is because people are emotional intuitive beings. Branding is the art and science of recognizing and satisfying human’s physical and emotional needs by apprehending their contemplation, imagination and emotion. It is defined by the individuals not by companies or markets. In other words, IT’S NOT WHAT YOU SAY IT IS, IT IS WHAT THEY SAY IT IS. Now, the next question is why branding is so important in the web 2.0 and why your company won’t succeed without one?

People are overwhelmed with too many choices and too little time.

Thanks to the internet and web 2.0, information is so abundantly available that it becomes an overload-more than anyone can digest. Now when you type in the keyword “weight loss” into Google search box, you search results returned you with 308,000,000 websites. It certainly overwhelms anyone who are looking for weight loss related products because you’re presented with too many choices but you only have limited time to search for the best product out there. When you give people too much choice, instead of being liberated, they get paralyzed.

“When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of available choices increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy, control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and positive. But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize”.

BARRY SCHWARTZ, The Paradox of Choice

 Most offerings have similar quality and features.

Product development bring about countless of choices that they overload our ability to distinguish or select what we value-so how do we choose? Brands help us choose. It breaks through clutter and helps us in decision making. The justification in branding is it’s all about building positive differentiation that eventually leading to a predominant or at least a profitable brand shares. Marketers must be able to deliver the tangibles and the intangibles in the form that it is able to differentiate a brand among others. This differentiation not only needs to be perceived but also valued.

We tend to base our buying decisions on trust.

Intangible emotional associations are difficult to copy. Once an emotional territory is occupied by a well known brand, it is more difficult to replace the brand with a functional claim that can be beaten. A brand is something that is made up trust and relationships. Stories create the emotional context people need to engage themselves in a larger experience.

“You can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You’ve got to say it in such a way that people feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing is going to happen”.

BILL BERNACH, Founder DDB

The secret to Internet Marketing’s success is how to get the right keywords  at the right time so that searches can easily find you. You must connect with your visitors by providing a relevant result in response to their search. Always think in the terms of delivering a good user experience to your visitors. Even though these principles are important most often they are overlooked. You cannot just put up some content on your websites waiting to be found and ranked by the search engines. With the abundant of information on the internet, search engine rank the results relevant to the keyword that the searches are using when finding information.

Most often many will find it difficult to get keywords for their content. There is couple of ways of doing it in which I am going to share you some of the methods that I am using as my own content marketing strategy.

Method 1: Data from Google Keyword Tool

By far, this is one of my favourite methods to generate and compile a list of keywords that I am interested with. Google Keyword Tool is provided at no cost by Google and you don’t even need to be Google Adwords advertiser in order to use them. However, if you login using your Google account, you will get more keyword ideas.

Just put in the “seed keyword” into the box and click on Search. Google will also give you other keyword ideas and synonyms that are relevant to your seed keyword. You can also to choose to export the date in the csv file.

Method 2: Keyword Tool Software

Besides than using Google Keyword Tool, I am also using keyword tool software called Traffic Travis. It is developed by one of the well known internet marketer called Mark Ling. Besides than the basic feature as keyword research tool, it also allows you to check for SEO and PPC competition. It has both free and paid versions. But I would recommend you to get the Pro version for just $97.

Method 3: Amazon Books

One of the powerful methods most often overlooked is by using the marketplace in Amazon books. Go to the books section in Amazon and see the index of the book. Most of the books in the Amazon allow you to see the table of contents and the index pages for free.

Sometimes, you will find “hidden gem” which no one ever thought of using them as part of their keywords. When you find these relevant keywords, jot them down and go to the Google Keyword Tool or Traffic Travis to analyze the number of searches it gets per month.

Method 4: Live Outside Of The Box

Sometimes, the keywords known by the industry people are not the keywords that are being searched by the visitors. For example you’re a search engine optimization consultant. You might be targeting the keyword “search engine optimization”. But do you know that your target audiences are searching by using keyword such as “How to Get First Page on Google”. Now do you realize how your target audiences are using the terms that maybe different than the terms that you used in your industry. You need to think in the position of your target audience. Findability is very important when it comes to ranking in the search engine.

Method 5: Google Suggest

Just go to the homepage of the Google. As you type along the words, google actually gives you suggestion to other keywords people are using. For example, when you type “How to” see what are people are searching as real time result.

I feel like giving up. Not all day, of course. But there are moments in my life where I feel like giving up. I bet that you have those days, too. Especially, if you’re the type of the high-achieving and goal-oriented person. You’re probably used to running into obstacles-be it the challenges in your professional career, personal life or even related to the commitment of finish reading the book that you have bought a month ago.

Most of the time, we deal with these obstacles by preserving-keeping the spirit of moving on forward. Sometimes, there are times when we get discouraged so we turn into inspirational writing and quotes by other successful people who made it through to be inspired.  Vince Lombardi once said that ‘Quitters never win and winners never quit”. In fact, most people quit. They just don’t quit successfully.

“Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time”.

                                                                                                               -Seth Godin

Many professions and organizations profit from people quitting that’s because our society assumes you’re going to quit. For instance, why not everyone get into the Law School or Medical School directly after graduating from high school? They quit their quest to be the best in the world because the cost just seemed too high.

Extraordinary benefits accrue to the people who are able to push a tiny bit longer than the most of people. It also occurs to the people with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts working on something new.

Quitting is often a great strategy-be it in businesses or personal life. It is a smart way to manage your life and your career. Being hardworking and putting longer hours in something is no longer enough. Especially if the hard work isn’t going to pay off the results that you are expecting for.  Don’t get me wrong. I always believe that hard work will lead to success. But if by putting longer hours into something, then why people less talented than you are more successful?

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
                                                                                                                                                                                        -Albert Einstein

 

Entrepreneurs quit most of the time when their businesses has become a failure. But they continue to pursue other things and eventually they got it through. Strategic quitting is good. While serial quitting is bad and will never get you anywhere. You really can’t try to be good at everything especially if you are aiming to be the best in the world. When you pursue an opportunity, you are quitting other countless opportunities. It’s not about avoiding the humiliation of failure. Even more important, you can realize that quitting the stuff you don’t care about or the stuff you’re mediocre at frees up your resources to be obsess about the things that matters to you.

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it”.
                                                                                                                                                                                        -W.C Fields

 

To be a superstar, you must do something exceptional than most of the people do. Something so extraordinary that people can’t help but talk about it, recommend it and choose it. Average is for losers. Average feels safe but it’s not. It’s almost invisible. It’s the last choice. You deserve better than average!

The internet has become the new way of life for many people to get the jobs, book airline tickets, do research for school projects, check out the weather condition and seek out potential love partners. Viral marketing typically starts out with the marketer creating an electronic content (such as a video or a mini-site) for the purpose of brand building. If the users pass on the content, it has the potential to reach large group of Internet users at exponential rate.Understanding user’s motivation in forwarding an online content is extremely important as the decision to pass it is completely voluntary. In other words, marketers do not pay the users to pass along the online content.

Inclusion

The need for inclusion refers to the need to be recognized as the participants in human interaction which could refer as “togetherness” or “belong”. The motivation that drives users to share information with others is the desire to connect and sharing. As more people rely on internet as the medium of communications, we tend to share our media experiences particularly if they anticipate future discussions.

The only way we all have to get good information here is for those who have it to share it. We relied on others to give us updates when they had info and we do the same for others. I feel extreme frustration when I couldn’t get information myself. Once I was able to get online again, I shared whatever knowledge I had.

The need to be different

Self-image motivates word of mouth communication. Recent study (Chung & Darke, 2006) found that individuals were more likely to engage in word of mouth products closely aligned to one’s self-image that is the content tell others about who you are. Individuation is defined as the willingness to stand out or be different and people who are high in public individuation are more willing to voice their opinion in a community.

“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others”.

-Tony Robbins

The need for personal growth

The interpersonal need for personal growth relates to feelings of competence, achievement, influence and accomplishment. People in this need not only want to make a difference in their social environment, they also want to have some say over how it happens. People with high curiosity enjoy the experience of learning and therefore are more likely to consume online content.

In this story, the cheese is a metaphor that represents what you want in your life. It could be your dream job, an ideal relationship, wealth, health or spiritual. There are 4 characters-Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw. Many of you may have read about this story and some of you may not. If you’re one of the people who have not read it yet, I recommend getting this book from your local bookstore.

A little background of the story:

Sniff-who sniffs out change early

Scurry- who scurries into action

Hem- who denies and resists change as he fears it will lead to something worse

Haw- who learns to adapt when he sees changing can lead to better opportunities.

When you met your old schoolmates for reunion, most often you will talk about how things have changed over times. And how you often thought of returning back to the old days when you were still in the school. Most of the people did not want to change when things have changed. That’s because of the fear that lies in us. The cheese may have different definition to each of us. For some it would be having a lovely family and for others maybe being success at their dream job.

Sometimes our human beliefs and emotions took over and clouded the way we look at things. It made life to become more challenging and difficult. When we stayed in our comfort zone too long, we became fearful and becomes denial to adapt to the changes. We get frustrated and point finger to others over the circumstances and see ourselves as the victim.

Most people are fearful of change because they don’t believe they have any control over how or when it happens to them.  We prefer to stay in our comfort zone because we believe that is the best spot and it’s safe to remain there. We started to imagine how things could get worse if we stepped out from our comfort zone.

I am sure at one point everyone may have experience the same situation as Hem who believes that he will get the cheese by keep on looking at the same place. He believed that there are no other cheese is better than the old cheese. He kept on thinking and believed that there was no cheese out there that is better than the old cheese.

Change happens. There’s nothing you can do about it. Your best bet it to try and adapt to that change. You might be scared to try something new and that’s ok, just do you best. If you don’t roll with the changes, you’ll only hurt yourself. You’ll just live in denial and never see that the grass really is greener on the other side.

There’s always a new cheese out there, whether you recognize it at the time or not. And that you are rewarded with it when you go beyond your fear  and enjoy the adventure. You yourself are the limiting factor for greater achievement and benefits and no one else. Instead whenever we feel discouraged, we need to imagine that how things could get better if we adapt to the changes. Fear is good because it can put you away from potential dangers. But it is not good when you are so afraid that it keeps you from doing nothing.

Nobody knows what lies ahead of us. Think of in this way ‘What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?” Think about how good it feels when you’re ready to adapt to the changes and move on. Because when you stop being afraid, you feel good! Start on embracing the changes and enjoy the fruits of change. You have a right to not only ask Who Moved Your Cheese, but to say “GIVE ME BACK MY GODDAMNED CHEESE!”

The movement in social media has provided the business owners to reach thousands of potential customers and clients with just a click of a mouse. People now know what it is like to have their own microphone to have their opinions be heard. You can’t change that. People are talking and their message can reach thousands. You want to leverage this power for the better. In this article, I will share with you 4 strategies that you could use to be a Social Media Marketing Winner.

Be Thoughtful

“Treat others like how you yourself would like to be treated”.

If someone took the time and effort to message you or tweet you, be courteous to take some time and reply to them personally in return. Interaction should be done in two ways. When you make some effort to give attention to them and acknowledge their effort and time in interacting with you, it helps to cultivate stronger relationship with your customers. You would be surprised even just a simple “Thank You” words would delighted them and make them to respect and like you even more.

People who interact with their followers often tend to have higher number of followings. It makes them feel that they are in part of a community. After all the reasons your followers are following you is because they are looking to interact and engage with you.

Personalize It

Make it exclusive for them. Make them feel that you have written it personally just for them. Don’t just sound like automated response by robot. Since there have been many spams in Twitter & Facebook, people can know whether you really write it personally or it is based on automated response. I know sometimes it can be daunting task to try to engage with everyone but you should also write it occasionally together besides then setting automated response just for weekends.

Engaging personally breaks down the barrier between you and your customer because you make them feel special. And when they are happy, you will get positive reviews. It equals to a good reputation which can very crucial in any businesses and this is something that every company should work hard to achieve.

Transparency

A lot of businesses and companies are doing social media marketing the wrong way. People don’t interact with “brands” in their daily lives. I know I might confuse you now by making the earlier statement. People don’t want to know the brand. What they want to know are the people, personalities and the culture behind it. This is what they care about.

When you walk into Apple stores, you don’t see automated robots behind the counter helping the customers. It’s not realistic. When you are being transparent about your people and the culture that makes up your brand, you are showing that you have compassion and interest in them (which is of course your customers).

Be Responsive

You must be able to respond quickly.  It does not matter whether it is positive reviews, negative comments or questions that arise. Not monitoring your social media presence on a regular basis will risk your reputation. Think of it in this way “What impression does it give when a question goes unanswered? Do not build a reputation as the company who neglects it consumers.

People love to talk. They talk about cars, TV shows, new blockbuster movies, foods and the stuff they use every day. In fact, you may not even realize it yet that people are talking about you and what you sell right now. It might be a light mention or it could be disparaging attack. Or it might be something really nice that get posted on Amazon.com where 20 million of people will read it and decides to buy your books.

Of course, this is what you would like to happen. Word of mouth marketing is about earning that good conversation. It really doesn’t matter whether you are selling real estate, automobiles or internet marketing products. So now you might be wondering what is word of mouth marketing? It can be defined as “Giving people something to talk about to allow the conversations to take place”.

One of the great myths associated with the concept of word of mouth marketing is that it only happens online. It is undeniable that the role of the internet in our daily life has made it indisputably critical components of the sudden spread of word of mouth. Blogs are often seen as the powerful source to spread word of mouth as it endures sharing of ideas with large community of people.

But that’s only a small fraction of it. About 20 % of word of mouth takes place online while the other 80 % happens face-to-face. It is common for us to recommend to our friends and family the stuff that we use and had tremendous benefits out of it. For instance, you go to a new restaurant that just open up in your area. The food was nice and you had great moments there which make you happy about. So the next day, you go to the work and mention it to your colleagues in the office. So the other day, one of your colleagues brought his entire family to the new restaurant for lunch. The wife then recommends it to her friends and blogs about it. Someone read the reviews online and calls a buddy about eating there.  So now you get the idea that word of mouth can happen both online and face-to-face.

So what about the negative ones? Now you might be wondering “What if people say bad things about you?” My answer would be too late- if it’s going to happen, it will happen. I know it’s uncomfortable. Imagine that when for the first time when you type in your company’s name or your product’s name in the Internet, it’s usually a real surprise. It feels like walking into a crowded party when the laughter suddenly stops and everyone is looking at you. However, it’s different. Instead, everyone is waiting for you to join the conversation. People are listening and they want you to be in.

So you only have two choices now- let people talk about you, spread rumors like wildfire and get it wrong or join in, engage and make it work for you.

In recent years, marketing to consumers has become increasingly challenging as continuing fragmentation of media and information overload has led customers to become less and less interested in companies’ brand messages delivered through traditional media such as radio, television and billboards. Now that customers are armed with IPods, TiVo machines, search engines and spam filters, they have gain unprecedented control over media and to content to which they are exposed.

A  Yankelovich Partners Study found that 60 % of US customers find marketing to be irrelevant to them personally. Almost 70 % are interested in products and services that would help block marketing attempts. The same study also found out that customers respond more favorably to marketing when they have control over what they see, when they see it and when they can be active participants in the marketing process. Marketing is no longer about just marketing a product or services. It is about marketing a feeling and having the customer experience the product or the brand.

You cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they’re…the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they’re going to shake up just about every business. Blogs are not a business elective. They’re a prerequisite. (Baker & Green, 2005).

Blogging for Relevance

With approximately 73% of U.S. adults using the Internet at home, work, or another location, it is not surprising that blogging has become another way for people to connect in this digitally savvy world. Significantly, the younger generation is clearly more digitally connected; 88% of Americans aged 12–29 are online, while only 32% of people over the age of 65 are online.

The biggest advantage of blogging is that it “lets you participate in communities you want to cultivate. Clearly, individuals are much more comfortable using blogs as a place to express their opinions and read about the opinions of others, including those held by businesses.

Blogging for Sharing Expertise & Experience

Many leading consultants, writers, and academics share their expertise via blogs, providing readers with the most current information in their respective fields. Thought leaders such as Tom Peters, Charlene Li, Guy Kawasaki, and Seth Godin are some of the well-recognized names in the blogosphere.

Blogging for Understanding Customers

Blogs provide an opportunity for ordinary people to voice their opinions, they enable companies to see their businesses from the viewpoint of the customer. Companies that allow customers to communicate directly with them can get a deeper understanding of their customers’ likes, dislikes, interests, and concerns. This provides marketers with an opportunity to respond or address customers’ comments, while setting the expectation that their opinion will result in a better product, service, or brand in the long run.