If you ask people to define brand, most will make reference to a company’s logo. And, logo is part of a brand, but only part. A brand wraps in so much more than just colors and pictures. There are many opinions about what the components of a brand are but I look at 5 key elements: Position, promise, personality, story and associations. PROMISE This is the promise you make to your customers regarding your product and service. It is the internal star that should guide all company decisions.  Your brand promise should satisfy a need or solve a problem and every employee in your organizations … [Read more...]

Your employees have bad days.  Customers have bad days. But, when the customer lets the world know on sites like Yelp, it creates bad months or even years for the business owner. While you can’t stop the customer’s very public complaint, you can take steps to mitigate the damage caused by a bad review. So, what do you do to overcome a negative review?  There have been lawsuits against both Yelp and the client. The suits against Yelp were based on extortion - claiming positive reviews disappeared  if the business did not purchased ad space.  This was thrown out. Suits against … [Read more...]

By now, you should have a holiday social media plan in place for your business.  If not, don’t worry--there’s still time to put one together! Before you plan a campaign, make sure you set some goals. Are you trying to raise awareness for your brand? Are you trying to increase your Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest fan base? Or, maybe you’d like to increase your sales conversion. Regardless of the goal, make sure you aggregate your baseline statistics so that you can check them against your campaign efforts to see what is working and what is not. The beauty of social media is that it is … [Read more...]