The Importance of Branding - What is a Brand?

In the current economic climate, branding and reputation are becoming more important than ever, as more and more companies are cutting advertising spend and marketing budgets. Even where budgets aren’t being cut (as many companies realise the importance of marketing at a time like this) efforts are being re-directed into different methods and mediums, including the utilisation of social media websites and blogs to generate online PR, branding and communication opportunities. Before looking at how you can use social media optimisation to help your business I thought it would be a good idea to explore the concept of “branding”.

"Brand", "branding" and "brand values" are all terms that are banded around a lot but we don’t often stop to think about what they actually mean. Before you can establish a brand for your company it’s necessary to understand what a "brand" is, and what "branding" entails.

A “brand” is a set of perceptions made by a large group of people about a product, company, organisation, individual, service or even a place. These perceptions might have been created intentionally by active promotion using marketing methods, or they might have been unintentionally created through negative associations, for example created by poor press reviews or common bad experiences.

“Branding” is the process of attempting to generate and control people’s perceptions, or to lodge the name of a business, product or individual in people’s minds, to help them grow or maintain their market position. Any company, organisation, product or individual can benefit from having a brand that presents itself as having characteristics that are appropriate to that particular business, for example reliability, quality, trust, excitement, being cutting edge, distinctive, innovative, friendly, etc.

In my next post (which will be soon I promise) I’ll think about how to create a brand and why you need one…

Snow and Flu

It seems the Gods just keep conspiring against me to prevent me from getting into work – first the God of health and now the weather God. I arrived home from my snowboarding holiday with trillions of fluey germs and was confined to the sofa for a few days of recovery, too weak to even lift my pen (well may laptop actually but as a writer pen sounds more melodramatic) and now I’m snowed in. And as we all know the UK just doesn’t cope well with snow. Scrub that last remark….the UK just doesn’t cope.

I did manage to lift my laptop to send one email to Emma and Jenny (the Ice Blue bosses - see our Team Page profiles) as my voice was too croaky to be understood on the phone and Emma thought it was quite funny so I thought I’d publish an extract of it as a blog post (as I've been so lame at writing any others for a while now. I promise to rectify that with a little help from the God of blogging). See below:

“I'm so sorry to have gotten ill after my holiday - actually I got ill ON my holiday, oh joy!! The law of the great God named Sod struck again by allowing me to go on holiday, relax and therefore get ill. I had been feeling a bit run down for weeks but refusing to give in and then it all came out I think. Of course it didn't help that I decided I was going to ignore it and dose myself up on super-strong cold and flu tablets, Vitamin C and lots of caffeine and go up the hill still. I think the final straw was the freezing cold air rushing at speed down my throat as I surfed the beautiful fresh, virgin powder (don't cry).......for one day at least. I was actually happy that the next day was rainy as I stayed tucked up under a duvet looking at the mountains out of the window from my position on the sofa with a DVD for company.

Then came the day from hell which I think pushed me over the edge into the dark depths of the pit of fluey illness - the journey home, aaaahhh! I have never had a bad journey from Geneva before so I think this one balanced out the many, many good ones I've had, as it was an absolute nightmare. The rain had turned to snow and it had dumped heavily all night so we left Morzine early to get to Geneva on time, again heavily dosed up with hardcore French medication, only to make it safely down the mountain and arrive at Geneva to find the airport closed due to technical problems caused by bad weather!! I then spent the next couple of hours lying on the floor of the airport on Andy's coat, covered by my coat, praying that some flights from UK would be able to land so we could get on one out of there. Luckily our flight made it and we left the growing hoards in the arrival area only to have to wait on another, equally uncomfortable, floor by the Gate. We then celebrated as we made it onto the plane until we discovered we had to wait another 2 hours to get a slot to take off!! I managed to clear a whole row to lie down on by having an almighty coughing fit - I recommend it to get people to move away from you! We eventually made it to Gatwick but discovered that our bags hadn't and they were still in Geneva - oh the joys of flying Sleazy Jet.

So when I eventually made it home I was totally exhausted, feverish, coughing, snotty, achy.....you get the picture! I can honestly say I haven't felt this rough in years, I think I actually have flu rather than a bad cold but I feel terrible about not making it to work. So massive apologies…..” blah blah, etc.

Search Engine Strategies (SES) 2009 London Conference and Expo

Not long now, and we can jump on a train down to the big smoke (ironic to call the capital that as we live in the heart of the Midlands, possibly the most industrial region of the country, and more specifically in the Black Country, so called because of the smog that once came from the factories) but anyway I digress, down to London to the highlight of the year so far – the SES Conference and Expo at The Business Design Centre in Islington. It’s a 3 day conference from 17th – 19th Feb 2009, with an SEM Training Day on 20^th and very useful indeed to anyone in marketing wanting to learn more about online marketing and advertising, including Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation. Marketers, consultants and industry leaders from the world’s leading businesses gather there to review the very latest SEM and SEO techniques, and it is a chance not to be missed to pick their brains and hear their thoughts. Don’t worry if you can’t make it though we’ll bring back all the tips we learn and if you’re very, very nice we’ll share them with you.

Search Engine Strategies (SES) 2009 London Conference and Expo

Not long now, and we can jump on a train down to the big smoke (ironic to call the capital that as we live in the heart of the Midlands, possibly the most industrial region of the country, and more specifically in the Black Country, so called because of the smog that once came from the factories) but anyway I digress, down to London to the highlight of the year so far – the SES Conference and Expo at The Business Design Centre in Islington. It’s a 3 day conference from 17th – 19th Feb 2009, with an SEM Training Day on 20^th and very useful indeed to anyone in marketing wanting to learn more about online marketing and advertising, including Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation. Marketers, consultants and industry leaders from the world’s leading businesses gather there to review the very latest SEM and SEO techniques, and it is a chance not to be missed to pick their brains and hear their thoughts. Don’t worry if you can’t make it though we’ll bring back all the tips we learn and if you’re very, very nice we’ll share them with you.

Acorns Children’s Hospice Trust

We received a phone call on Friday from Acorns Children’s Hospice Trust, a registered charity providing a network of care to life-limited children and their families across the Midlands. We were asked for a small donation, which we gave willingly, but it drew to our attention the plight of the many children and families in the Midlands in need of their help and felt that a donation was the very least we could do. We’d like to appeal to every business locally to give a little something to help fund such a worthy charity.

Acorns cares for children who are “life-limited” - which means they are unlikely to reach adulthood - and offers support to their families. They cover a defined catchment area including the counties of Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and the West Midlands. They have three hospices situated in Birmingham, Walsall and Worcester as well as a community team that offers practical and emotional support to families in their homes.

Acorns offers respite, emergency and end-of-life care and on average one of the children they care for dies every week. They rely on the community to fund the majority of their activities as only 10% comes from statutory funding. That’s why it’s really vital that you help in any way possible as the job they do is amazing.

To support them visit http://www.acorns.org.uk/At_work.asp and help by giving a donation, through staff fund raising or any of the other ideas you’ll find there.

Search Engine Strategies 2009 Conference and Expo – Not to be Missed!

I am now getting really excited about the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2009 being held at The Business Design Centre in Islington. It’s a 3 day conference from 17th – 19th Feb 2009, with an SEM Training Day on 20th.

It’s an industry event definitely not to be missed if you want to network with your peers and learn more about SEM, organised and hosted by leading search engine marketing expert Mike Grehan.

There are loads of excellent speakers with years of experience in their respective areas and lots of training seminars. It’s well worth the registration fee so if you are a chief marketing officer, an SEO consultant, an SEM specialist, a PPC campaign manager, a web developer or designer, an internet marketing specialist, or a beginner in any of the above you should get yourselves to London for this event in February.

http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/london/

See you there…….

Excellent Article on SEOmoz.org

Happy New Year and welcome back. It’s been a while, what with the hecticness of the festive period generally and moving house at this time as well…..doh! I recommend not doing that, ever. I just doesn’t work and when you come back to work after the New Year you just feel like you need another holiday so that you can actually relax.

Hey ho, we’re back and in full swing so the painful memories are quickly receding. Being at work is actually a get away from the remaining boxes and unpacking that will probably never get done, as if it’s not unpacked already then it’s not really needed.

But enough of my personal woes and back to the subject at hand. I just want to mention a blog post by Randfish on SEOmoz.org about “Best Practices for Content Optimisation” as it’s really useful. And as it’s so well written I’m not even going to try and explain it just send you there via this link….

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/best-practices-for-content-optimization

It’s a great place to read daily blog posts as they are written by an industry expert who obviously knows his stuff and he writes really clearly for us relative newbies to understand. So a big thanks to Randfish and SEOmoz.org for all their help so far and keep up the good work.

Go and check it out.