When you write an article, make a speech, converse with a prospect, create a web site, and/or engage in any other form of business communication, always incorporate your brand. If your brand is “The Financial Strategist”, casually write or comment that, “The reason I’m called the Financial Strategist is because of my unique approach to…” Modesty is an admirable trait, but if you don’t toot your own horn, sometimes there’s no music.

Make it visual.

Even if the brand is used only in words and type, include it prominently in your written and electronic materials. If it’s conducive to a logo or graphic, then use this avenue to impress it in the mind of your readers or viewers.

Trademark or register it if possible.

Your name is, by definition, unique. However, if you are “The Conflict Resolver”, explore a trademark or registration mark, and use it constantly. The Telephone Doctor is an example I used in a previous post… the woman behind it is Nancy Friedman, but her moniker is her uniqueness. It’s what people will recognize and remember.

Use it as the title of a book or an article.

Virtually nothing will solidify a brand like a book based on it. Just look at the “for dummy” books as an example of this. It doesn’t hurt to use it as a speech title, if you’re a speaker.

Put it in your email signature file.

This is automatic once it’s set up, and it’s a no brainer to sustain, but the volume of people associating the brand to you will grow exponentially.

Create a product based around the brand.

This could be an audio cassette or CD series, a manual or booklet, or even a game. I’ve seen people use mugs, t-shirts, and bumper stickers, although I personally don’t care for that sort of thing.

Have clients or readers endorse it.

Obtain testimonial letters and blurbs that specifically mention your brand and how great it is. Then include that testimonial in your website or promotional materials.

Build a newsletter or blog around it.

If you can produce frequent content, a monthly newsletter or a daily blog topic will help create brand awareness on the frequency that you’re able to produce.

Be outrageous.

One financial consultant that I know of makes it generally known that he drives a Ferrari, and he uses that car name in his personal email addresses. As a result, he developed the “Ferrari brand” associated with his consulting: high quality and high performance.

Experiment and change brands.

Few brands last forever amid changing times, and new times create new needs. There’s no scorecard on your success rate with a brand. Keep trying them out and changing the ones that don’t seem to grab attention. Proctor & Gamble, Coca Cola, and Mercedes Benz all constantly introduce new brands. What have you got to lose?

©2010 Chris Bloczynski. All Rights Reserved.

The concept is simple: rather than missed or ignored calls going to your carrier’s voicemail service, they get shuttled to PhoneTag’s instead. There, the message is transcribed and sent to you as either an SMS or an email. If you choose the latter, the original recording is also attached as an audio file.

There are some usability tweaks possible, but that’s the basic system. Setup is straightforward – once you sign up online, PhoneTag sends you an email with a personalized number to dial on your phone. That automatically activates the service and sets your redirect to the PhoneTag voicemail. Switching it off is another, shorter number.

You’re given a voicemail dial-in number, to manually listen to messages, but the expectation is that you’ll only ever use it to personalize your greeting. PhoneTag also has an online inbox, which allows you to tweak system settings – the type of audio file sent as an attachment, whether you want an email or an SMS – as well as browse through old messages.

I’ve been using PhoneTag on a G1, where one side-effect is that the regular voicemail no longer works (as you’re no longer using T-Mobile’s system). I’ll wager that you won’t miss it, though; thanks to push email I knew exactly when a message had been left and, even better, what it said. Picture that when you’re in a meeting, or in class, or during a meal (anytime when actually using your phone would be frowned upon, in fact).

Through the online interface you can also upload the contents of your phonebook; then, rather than the number of the contact coming through in the email subject line, their name does. The email From: field is also from that contact’s email address, meaning you can simply reply to that message rather than call them back. It’s a neat way of shuffling calls into emails, leaving a “paper trail” as you go, and it has the added benefit of increasing name recognition accuracy.

Normal accuracy depends on a few factors, including accent, background noise and how usual the words are. PhoneTag uses a couple of different indicators to flag up where it has difficulty understanding: a word in brackets signifies a problem, with a single question mark indicating that the word is spelled phonetically, and a double question mark indicating that the system couldn’t recognize a section at all. You can reply to an email with “:redo” in the body to run it through the recognition system again.

In general, though, accuracy is good. Names can present an issue, though PhoneTag recognizes all but the more unusual, and I’ve found that high levels of background wind-noise resulted in an email peppered with double question marks, but listening to the audio file told me that I’d have had just as much difficulty decoding it myself.

There are a number of price plans, offering pay-per-use or a choice of monthly subscriptions. You can either pay $0.35 per message, $9.95 per month with 40 included messages (then $0.25 for each subsequent) or $29.95 per month for unlimited messages. There’s a fair difference between those two monthly price plans, and I’d prefer to see an intermediate offering at around the $15-$20 mark. Of course, those fees are offset somewhat by no longer paying to dial into your old voicemail, which can be even more expensive if you’re roaming or using your phone internationally.

How much value you’ll get out of PhoneTag depends on how much you use your current voicemail, and whether you prefer using voice or text to communicate. What I’ve found is that PhoneTag can actually cater to both types of user: the voice camp get to quickly prioritize which missed call is important and needs to be returned, while those who prefer text can surreptitiously shift voice conversations to email or SMS.

It’s hard not to like PhoneTag, or certainly grow to appreciate it. Perhaps the most telling judgement of a service is how much you’d miss it if it were gone; I’d certainly hate to go back to regular voicemail. You may need to do some basic calculations based on how many voicemail messages you envisage getting each month, what your carrier charges to retrieve them and how much value you put on the extra convenience, but make the jump and I’m pretty confident that you’ll be pleased.

©2010 Chris Bloczynski. All Rights Reserved.

Community One – Your readers

Like I said before, the people who visit your site are your community of readers. Of course, readers are a very important community… without an audience, you’d be writing to yourself! Readers are interested in the topic that you write about, and, based on the strength of your writing and your connection with the reading community, they may be attached enough to your particular brand that they’ll visit you over and over again. Readers may not necessarily participate any more than visiting your site, but your goal as a writer and webmaster is to inspire your readers to participate as much as possible.

Community Two – Your commentators

Commentators are people who are interested in the topic of your site and who are willing to participate in the commentating community by leaving feedback on your articles or interacting with the other commentators on your articles. The topics of conversation generally don’t stray far from the topic of the article. You can recognize frequent commentators by installing a plugin that displays their names in your side bar, or perhaps by inviting them to submit content for your website.

Community Three – Forums

Forum readers have a high level of interest in the topic of the particular forums that they frequent. Forums are like an open discussion on the web. Forum members can introduce new topics, and other members can chime in to the topic with their own questions or opinions. In case you don’t know, you have the ability to host a forum on your own site! This is a great way to stimulate cross-topics of conversation that are related to the topic or niche of your site, but not necessarily limited to the content of your articles (although if you host your own forum, you may run across some great content ideas!) For ideas and more information on hosting your own forum, check out VBulletin.

Community Four – Your email list

The people who subscribe to your website’s email list are generally extremely interested in your thoughts and ideas on the topic or niche that you cover. You may find that some members of your email list also participate in your forum, or actively leave comments on your articles, making them members of multiple communities on your website. However, there’s a critical element involved with being an email list member that you may not find in the other communities… an extremely high level of trust. When someone entrusts you with their email address, here’s what they’re saying:

I’m so interested in what you have to write about that I’ll allow you to email your thoughts and ideas directly to me, and I trust that you won’t abuse the privilege of having such an intimate and personal way to connect with me.

Email list members can be the most responsive of all of the communities you manage. You can inspire readers to join your list by incentivizing them with extra content and special access to material that they wouldn’t normally get as a regular reader. It’s always a good idea to keep the trust of your email list members by being careful to only email with appropriate, well thought-out messages and by not sharing or selling your list to other marketers. For more ideas and information on managing an email list, check out AWeber, an autoresponder and email list building program.

Community Five – Your social networks

This one is sort of a bonus, since so many people are members of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and others. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the visitors at your site in particular, but any network or community that you belong to is one that you can potentially leverage for traffic.

The members of your social network most likely know you personally in some way. They may or may not be interested in the topic of your website… but they may trust you enough based on your social interactions to potentially support your site by becoming a reader. There are lots of articles that offer more advanced advice on how to leverage social networks for traffic, but the main thing to remember is that it’s always a good idea to be careful to not abuse the trust of your personal relationships by being too aggressive in promoting your website.

Bringing it all together

Ultimately, you’ll need to find a balance in working with all of these communities to bring success to your website. You’ve got to have a skill to meet people where they’re at. Not all of your readers want to comment on your articles. Not all of your email list members will visit your site every day. Hopefully, though, understanding each community will help you to find the best way to work with them to achieve the kind of participation that you need at your website.

©2010 Chris Bloczynski. All Rights Reserved.

Jason’s speech showed promise as he talked about how early internet communities, such as Usenet, were ruined by over-aggressive marketers who introduced the very first affiliate spam… websites and links that were designed to make the affiliate money and provide very little value to the user. This type of marketing quickly alienated Usenet visitors, and the once vibrant community disappeared overnight. Jason went on to provide other examples of how people are gaming popular communities such as MySpace and Wikipedia with spam, because these communities allow anonymity and are therefore easier for spammers to infiltrate.

At this point, however, Jason turned his attention towards popular blogger/affiliates who publicly report their income, specifically displaying photographs of two affiliate marketers holding up six figure paychecks of affiliate income. Jason had this to say about these two marketers:

“You guys think small. Holding up a six figure check is just pathetic… is that your industry’s biggest success?”

Jason went on to say that he personally thinks that those same people who game search engines and social networks are among the smartest and most resourceful people he had ever met, advising them to “give up your life of crime and holding $100,000 checks… realize that you’re smarter than half the folks working at large internet companies and get to work creating the next Digg, StumbleUpon, Flickr, Google, or Paypal.”

Calacanis further said that affiliate marketers who pursue low effort/high reward models of making money on the internet were poisoning the web with affiliate spam. Of course, everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinion… but Jason’s semi-elitist view was insulting to a number of Affiliate Summit attendees that I spoke after the keynote. I also didn’t feel like Jason’s sour view of the affiliate marketing industry allowed much room for people’s own dreams or desires… I’m sure that many marketers would be thrilled to pull down six figures a year working from home!

All in all, this years keynote speech appeared to be the most memorable and controversial keynote in the history of the Affiliate Summit… it was definitely the talk of every table I sat at throughout the course of the event. While it certainly inspired a strong reaction from attendees, I personally didn’t find much of what Jason said from the stage to be very constructive. But hey… that’s only my opinion.

©2010 Chris Bloczynski. All Rights Reserved.

Even today, though, using the internet as a channel of distribution is considered traditional to a lot of marketers who rode the crest of the internet distribution wave when the web became easily accessible and widely used in most homes across America.

Today, the new standard for media accessibility is being set by a personal media device called the iPod Touch. Inspired by the popularity of Steve Job’s iPhone, the iPod Touch broadened Job’s market by allowing consumers to enjoy the best features of the iPhone without subjecting them to a wireless contract with AT&T. The iPod Touch accesses the internet through any wi-fi connection, as well as storing your favorite music, videos, podcasts, and pictures.

Next generation features

Here are the things about the iPod Touch that stand out and mark personal media devices as the next frontier… within the iPod’s Safari internet browser, you can:

• access embedded MP3 links, listening to the embedded files through the headset.
• read embedded PDF’s.
• watch embedded YouTube videos on the proprietary YouTube video player (can flash videos be very far behind?).
• surf the web as you listen to podcasts or other audios.

In a normal laptop browser, the ability to do these things is far from revolutionary. However, what we’re talking about here is the ability to do all of this on a wi-fi enabled personal media device that fits in your pocket.

Application for Marketers

What does a personal media device that has this kind of access to the internet mean for marketers? Honestly, the iPod Touch hasn’t reached enough of the market to be able to tell… yet. Let’s take a look at how information and internet marketers will be able to potentially take advantage of some of the features that the iPod Touch offers.

• Podcasters will be able to train their audiences to listen more actively. Podcast audios are often played “in the background” by listeners “on the go”… riding a bus or driving to work. With this device, now podcasters can reference specific web sites or examples as they speak, giving listeners the option to participate more actively if they wish to follow along.
• Owners of membership-style e-courses and websites will be able to advertise that their courses can be read, watched, or listened to on personal media devices, adding to accessibility for students.
• Information marketers can sell devices “preloaded” with applications, videos, bookmarks, or audios. You could sell an entire course or subject that’s been loaded on the device, and take advantage of the inclination to buy the device that customers may already have, based on the strength of that device’s brand.

From a marketing standpoint, personal media devices that make the internet so portable and accessible could mean big bucks for internet marketers… already, email-enabled wireless devices like the T-Mobile Sidekick or the Blackberry practically put email marketers right in the pockets of their prospects. Can you imagine your next video, podcast audio, ebook, or curriculum being that close?

Is now the time?

At the time of this writing, Apple has not created the ultimate personal media device. The iPod Touch still has several limitations… you can’t play embedded videos in the Safari browser unless they’re loaded on YouTube, for example. The availability of an unsecured wireless network is another factor, and the device is so new that it hasn’t penetrated enough of the market to determine how valuable this new accessibility can be.

What Apple has done is get people to reconsider the value of the personal media device. IPod Touch is certainly the benchmark for the industry to meet, at this time. The question is, how long will it take before marketers can start to assume that the audience they want to reach has adopted this technology?

At best guess, it could be another three to four years… possibly at least a year before a new device is released that trumps the iPod Touch, and then another couple of years to allow for penetration. At that point in time, I believe there will be a lot of money on the table for marketers who understand the incredible power of reaching an internet-savvy, on-the-go audience that has access to the marketing message directly in their pockets.

©2010 Chris Bloczynski. All Rights Reserved.

• A monthly/daily planner: I strongly recommend using a planner that includes “month at a glance” pages, as well as daily planning pages with a daily schedule, to do list, and a section for note taking. Franklin Covey is an excellent brand, and they have efficient planning systems that start around $70. There are a lot of planners that only feature “month at a glance” pages, but I think it’s absolutely negligent for a business owner to use these slimmed down versions… there’s simply no room to track your schedule, chart growth, or follow up on important tasks or to-do’s in a box that’s only an inch square.

• A top of the line communication device: There are some great mobile phones on the market right now. The best ones feature a full keyboard with email capability, internet access, and smart text messaging features. The days of trying to type messages by figuring out what number corresponds to the letter you want to use are past… it’s silly and ineffective. Having mobile access to your email and web allows you to be ultra-responsive to customer service issues and follow up quickly. The  Iphone, the G1, and the Blackberry are all fantastic communication devices. I use a G1 by T-Mobile… and it does backflips compared to some of the new phones off the shelf.  All of my voice messages are transcribed by PhoneTag and emailed to me so that I never have to dial in to check them. I also get email alerts from Google when people use my name or web address on their pages.

• A business folder: Your folder should contain names, phone numbers, and email addresses of your business prospects and clients. You should also keep information about your business goals and anticipated growth in your folder, as well as relevant budget information and any other financial or business information that you might need to reference on short notice.

I believe that these three tools are critical to the mobile entrepreneur. Ultimately, you’ll want to automate your business so that it runs as efficiently as possible with as little interference from you as possible, but in the getting started stages, you should carry these things with you everywhere so that you’re ready to switch into high gear and drive your business towards massive growth.

©2010 Chris Bloczynski. All Rights Reserved.