1. Effective branding combines Web and off-line elements. It is much more than a customer’s reaction to your name or logo. It’s the customer’s total experience with you, your product or service.
2. Think what you sell can’t be branded? Think again. Almost anything can be branded, including you, personally.
3. The Web is the only interactive mass medium, so take advantage of it. Use interactive features whenever possible. The future belongs to the up-and-coming businesses that do the best job of building their brands on the Internet.

Business.com’s “What Works for Business” blog is a great way to keep up with the latest brand-building solutions, trends and strategies for small and medium business.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done:

Tips & Tactics
Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• The best brands tend to tap emotions and appeal to a person’s natural need for involvement.
• Strive for simplicity. Too much information confuses your brand message.
• Be original in identifying your brand identity – the thing that sets you apart. Hint: Not quality or service. Everybody does that!
• Be consistent with your brand’s look, feel and message whenever and wherever they appear.
• Avoid trying to be overly “cool” or in-the-moment. Too hard to sustain. The brand must be relevant, but long term.
• Base your brand on your customers’ needs. Don’t know them? Ask your customers.

In fact, blogging is so easy to do that anyone can have a go – my wife has just started her own video blog at LoveScene Magazine.  Keep it up Sam!

Anyway, have a look at the blogs below and see how much their owners make.  Worth having a go.

Article from http://gobusiness101.com

Article from http://gobusiness101.com

Search engine giants Google have become the world’s first $100billion brand.

They are valued at almost 25 per cent more than their nearest rivals Microsoft.

Coca-Cola are in third place.

Google went up 16 per cent in brand value in the past year to the equivalent of £68.5billion.

Vodafone became the first UK firm to make it into the top 10 of the Brand Z Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands.

Britain’s other brands in the list of 100 include Tesco and banks Barclays, HSBC and Standard Chartered.

Industries which have seen their value grow in the past year are “stay-at-home” brands, according to consultants Millward Brown.

Coffee brand Nescafe benefited from cutbacks on drinking expensive lattes in coffee shops.

Soft drinks, fast food and beer brands grew as more people stayed at home.

Car companies, insurers, clothing brands and financial institutions suffered most.

Joanna Seddon, of Millward Brown, said: “In the current environment, brand has become even more important because it can help to sustain companies in tough times.

“People do not blame the brands for everything that has gone wrong.

“They blame the corporations and the people who run them.”

Yesterday, Google put their success down to customers trusting them.

Apr 30 2009 By Mark McGivern ]]> http://www.theonemanmission.com/brand/google-is-number-1/feed/ 0