Branding, Marketing & Business advice...

Although a brand is very much literal "image" and "graphic" related, it is also much more than that and holds much deeper meaning for both you and your business. This article explains this in basic terms.

Branding is not just creating an image or logo and having everything look the same. It begins at the core of your business and evolves into a way of life.

Some questions to ask yourself:

"It is not possible to get excited about the future if we don't believe in something. We have to believe in a dream, and work towards making it a reality. If we don't, the time we spend becomes meaningless. So let's start doing something about it."

This article is about the things we believe in, and how they can make a difference to our lives and how to create a winning brand.

Many customers approach us every day and it is up to us to make their dreams a reality, but before we can attempt to assist them, we have to take a look at what shape we are in.

BUT WHAT IS A BRAND? - this is where you need to concentrate;

A "brand" is the personality of a company, it is the defining characteristics that makes the things we buy unique. Here's an example: When you're thirsty, you don't just ask for cooldrink, you ask for a Coke. When you're hungry, you don't say I'm going to buy fast food, you say I'm getting McDonalds, or when someone asks you what shoes you're wearing you don't say sneakers, you say Nike's.

I think you get the picture.

In other words, a brand is made up of the thoughts and emotions that people associate with a product. Your brand identity lies at the heart of all your operations, it captures what you stand for and the essence lies in your company's values.

By filtering everything we do through these values, we create a very distinct and unified image which establishes a brand identity, in other words, what you as an organisation stand for - and that is your mission statement.

This statement gives you purpose, it is the driving force behind all levels of your organisation, from the CEO to the receptionist - it is your internal mission statement. You have the ability to provide the ultimate product/service because: "no one understands the product/service like you do".

This is what you as an organisation should believe in. Your customers don't simply come to you for a product or service, they come to you to improve their lives. This is the motivation behind your payoff line or company slogan.

With this statement you are promising your customers that when they make you their supplier, you will turn their aspirations into a reality.

A corporate culture is made up of the set of beliefs, attitudes and accepted behaviours that a group of people that work together hold. Basically put: "it's the way we do things around here".

You want to become a company that is good at identifying the unique skills different people bring to your business. You want to develop these skills and incite everyone to be the best that they can be - because satisfied, stimulated people are creative, productive and motivated. It is only this kind of team that can provide "the ultimate service".

Take a minute to think about your immediate work environment. Consider how you feel about your business and the people that work with you. Are you having an electrifying influence on each other? If not, it's quite simple to change it. We have to cultivate the ability to inspire. It's highly contagious. Every singe person in your business has to become contagious.

How to make it happen:

Once you understand what your higher purpose is at work, you need to accept and commit yourselves to this dream. This is when the things we do start to become meaningful.

But how are you going to do it?

It starts with you. Your attitude rubs off on those around you. Once your people are united and working toward a clear and definite goal, your internal culture becomes very powerful.

With this unique attribute, the external world will begin to see you as a company that is prepared to give them something beyond the ordinary, something they cannot experience anywhere else.

By living your brand values, you can start to work toward your goal and practice what you preach. An important aspect in attaining this goal is tied up in building meaningful relationships. At your company the customer can expect to be related to, and that makes all the difference.

Here are some ideas:

Your first assignment is to answer some serious questions:

These questions can also be posed to your staff. Take the time to read their responses and consider their thoughts.

These are the basic fundamental building blocks for a successful business brand. So as you can now see, it is not just a product name or logo but it is about what stands behind it and what inspires it. So build your brand, starting with core values and you will see a distinct difference in the success of your brand.

We make decisions every day based on the way things look. The same goes for your brand: your logo, your business cards, your website, brochures etc. are a reflection of your company. More often than not, customers interpret quality design work as quality products. We are in the business of making your brand look good. This means translating your brand and company values into compelling visual and interactive formats. All aspects – from your logo and business card design to the sound of your receptionist’s voice say a significant amount about your business and brand. When these are streamlined and strategic, these messages can form a positive emotional link with your customer. Our profession at PG13 is to consult on these matters and collaboratively refine your brand strategy.

Here's 10 ways to get more traffic to your website for free:

1. Optimize your site for search engines

Search engines have always been a major way to get traffic for free. That is why you need to do your homework and optimize your site so that it ranks well for the keywords you target. SEO is still the most powerful way to get traffic for free and you really need to invest some time and efforts in the optimization of your site.

2. Frequently update the contents of your site

If you expected some shocking secrets revealed, you might be a bit disappointed. One of the first steps in getting traffic for free is trivial but vital – get great content and frequently update it. In terms of SEO, content is king. If your content is good and frequently updated you will not only build a loyal audience of recurring visitors, who will often come to see what is new, but search engines will also love your site.

3. Take advantage of social bookmarking sites

Social bookmarking sites (especially the most popular among them) are another powerful way to get traffic for free.

4. Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Social networks are also a way to get traffic for free. If you are popular on networks, such as Twitter or Facebook, the traffic you get from there can easily surpass the traffic from Google and the other search engines. It is true that building a large network of targeted followers on Twitter and supporters on Facebook takes a lot of time and effort but generally the result is worth.

5. Get links with other sites in your niche.

Another way to get traffic for free is from other sites in your niche. Getting links with other sites in your niche is also good for SEO, especially if you manage to get links without the famous nofollow attribute. But even if the links are nofollow (i.e. they are useless for SEO), they still help to get traffic to your site. If you manage to put your link in a visible place on a site with high volumes of traffic, you can get thousands of hits from this link alone.

6. Use any chance to promote your site for free.

Free promotion is always welcome, so don't neglect it. There are many ways to promote your site for free and some of the most popular ones include free classified ads, submissions to directories, inclusion in various listings, etc. It is true that not all free ways to promote your site work well but if you select the right places to promote your site for free, this can also result in tons of traffic. Also see "where to place free advertisements" on this page.

7. Create a free product or service.

Content drives most traffic when you offer something useful. There are many types of useful content you can create and they largely depend on the niche of your site. You can have articles with tons of advice, or short tips but one of the most powerful ways to get traffic is to create a free product or service. When this product or service gets popular and people start visiting your site, chances are that they will visit the other sections of the site as well.

8. Use viral content.

Free products and services are great for getting free traffic to your site and one of the best varieties in this aspect is viral content. Viral content is called so because it distributes like a virus – i.e. when users like your content, they send it to their friends, post it on various sites, and promote it for free in many different ways. Viral content distributes on its own and your only task is to create it and submit it to a couple of popular sites. After that users pick it and distribute it for you. Viral content can be a hot video or a presentation but it can also be a good old article or an image.

9. Use offline promotion.

Offline promotion is frequently forgotten but it is also a way to get traffic for free. Yes, computers are everywhere and many people spend more time online than offline but still life hasn't moved completely on the Web. Offline promotion is also very powerful and if you know how to use it, this can also bring you many visitors. Some of the traditional offline ways to promote your site include printing its URL on your company's business cards and souvenirs or sticking it on your company vehicles. You can also start selling T-shirts and other merchandise with your logo and this way make your brand more popular.

10. Include your URL in your signature.

URLs in forum signatures are also a way to get traffic for free. There are forums, which get millions of visitors a day and if you are a popular user on such a forum, you can use this to get traffic to your site. When you post on forums and people like your posts, they tend to click the link to your site on your signature to learn more about you. In rare cases you might be able to post a deep link (i.e. a link to an internal page of the site) rather than a link to your homepage and this is also a way to focus attention to a particular page. Unfortunately, deep links are rarely allowed.

Getting traffic for free is a vast topic and it is not possible to list all the ways to do it. However, if you know the most important ways – i.e. the ways we discussed in this article and you apply them properly, it is guaranteed that you will be able to get lots of traffic for free.

Dependant on your location and product or service offerings, there are many "free advertisement" spots on the net. Hereunder are a few "hassle free" ones that we like:

A recipe for disaster. Follow this formula and you are guaranteed to failure.

1. Quit taking risks - The fact is that all human progress was and is a function of risk taking. Trying something new is always risky but as the Russian proverb goes, “Having things too good is also not good.”

2. Be inflexible - Machiavelli said: “For this is the tragedy of man – circumstances change, but he doesn’t.”

3. Isolate yourself - There is nothing like a physically isolated fortress to keep the riffraff away, so get yourself a great big office in some remote corner in the most remote executive office block and then shut the door ! Above all, don’t wonder around and talk to people. And for even greater effect, surround yourself with a collection of advisors and staff who are paid to think you are wonderful . Follow this commandment and you will remain tranquilly confident that what you know is right.

4. Assume infallibility.

5. Play the game close to the foul line - Many would be surprised to find it listed among the prescriptions for failure rather than for success. Unethical people can flourish for periods, sometimes very long periods, but ultimately their lack of morality – their lack of humanity – destroys them.

6. Don’t take time to think - honouring this commandment will lead to failure, but with the avalance of information and the speed of business, who gets time to think? But you have to make time to think.

7. Put all your faith in experts and outside consultants - This way you can actually avoid all responsibility and getting someone else to do your thinking for you.

8. Love your bureaucracy - When organisations grow large, they slide into bureaucracy, which inevitably results in rules and routines becoming more important than the ends they were designed to serve! The less talented even believe that bureaucracy should be tightened in times of trouble when creativity is probably more appropriate.

9. Send mixed messages.

10. Be afraid of the future - There is a difference between prudent caution about the future and the unrestrained fear of that future. To aspire to any kind of leadership in business you simply have to be a rational optimist.

Above information extracted from an article that appeared on www.businesstimes.co.za in 2008 regarding a book written by Donald Keough, former president of the Coca-Cola Company.

These are the "Top 10" qualities any professional Project Manager should have:

Inspires a Shared Vision

An effective project leader is often described as having a vision of where to go and the ability to articulate it.

Visionaries thrive on change and being able to draw new boundaries. It was once said that a leader is someone who "lifts us up, gives us a reason for being and gives the vision and spirit to change." Visionary leaders enable people to feel they have a real stake in the project.

They empower people to experience the vision on their own.

They offer people opportunities to create their own vision, to explore what the vision will mean to their jobs and lives, and to envision their future as part of the vision for the organization."

Good Communicator

The ability to communicate with people at all levels is almost always named as the second most important skill by project managers and team members. Project leadership calls for clear communication about goals, responsibility, performance, expectations and feedback.

There is a great deal of value placed on openness and directness. The project leader is also the team's link to the larger organization. The leader must have the ability to effectively negotiate and use persuasion when necessary to ensure the success of the team and project. Through effective communication, project leaders support individual and team achievements by creating explicit guidelines for accomplishing results and for the career advancement of team members.

Integrity

One of the most important things a project leader must remember is that his or her actions, and not words, set the modus operandi for the team.

Good leadership demands commitment to, and demonstration of, ethical practices. Creating standards for ethical behavior for oneself and living by these standards, as well as rewarding those who exemplify these practices, are responsibilities of project leaders.

Leadership motivated by self-interest does not serve the well being of the team.

Leadership based on integrity represents nothing less than a set of values others share, behavior consistent with values and dedication to honesty with self and team members. In other words the leader "walks the talk" and in the process earns trust.

Enthusiasm

Plain and simple, we don't like leaders who are negative - they bring us down.

We want leaders with enthusiasm, with a bounce in their step, with a can-do attitude.

We want to believe that we are part of an invigorating journey - we want to feel alive.

We tend to follow people with a can-do attitude, not those who give us 200 reasons why something can't be done.

Enthusiastic leaders are committed to their goals and express this commitment through optimism.

Leadership emerges as someone expresses such confident commitment to a project that others want to share his or her optimistic expectations.

Enthusiasm is contagious and effective leaders know it.

Empathy

What is the difference between empathy and sympathy? Although the words are similar, they are, in fact, mutually exclusive.

According to Norman Paul, in sympathy the subject is principally absorbed in his or her own feelings as they are projected into the object and has little concern for the reality and validity of the object's special experience.

Empathy, on the other hand, presupposes the existence of the object as a separate individual, entitled to his or her own feelings, ideas and emotional history.

As one student so eloquently put it, "It's nice when a project leader acknowledges that we all have a life outside of work."

Competence

Simply put, to enlist in another's cause, we must believe that that person knows what he or she is doing.

Leadership competence does not however necessarily refer to the project leader's technical abilities in the core technology of the business. As project management continues to be recognized as a field in and of itself, project leaders will be chosen based on their ability to successfully lead others rather than on technical expertise, as in the past.

Having a winning track record is the surest way to be considered competent.

Expertise in leadership skills is another dimension in competence. The ability to challenge, inspire, enable, model and encourage must be demonstrated if leaders are to be seen as capable and competent.

Ability to Delegate Tasks

Trust is an essential element in the relationship of a project leader and his or her team.

You demonstrate your trust in others through your actions - how much you check and control their work, how much you delegate and how much you allow people to participate.

Individuals who are unable to trust other people often fail as leaders and forever remain little more than micro-managers, or end up doing all of the work themselves.

As one project management student put it, "A good leader is a little lazy." An interesting perspective!

Cool Under Pressure

In a perfect world, projects would be delivered on time, under budget and with no major problems or obstacles to overcome.

But we don't live in a perfect world - projects have problems. A leader with a hardy attitude will take these problems in stride.

When leaders encounter a stressful event, they consider it interesting, they feel they can influence the outcome and they see it as an opportunity. "Out of the uncertainty and chaos of change, leaders rise up and articulate a new image of the future that pulls the project together." And remember - never let them see you sweat.

Team-Building Skills

A team builder can best be defined as a strong person who provides the substance that holds the team together in common purpose toward the right objective.

In order for a team to progress from a group of strangers to a single cohesive unit, the leader must understand the process and dynamics required for this transformation.

He or she must also know the appropriate leadership style to use during each stage of team development.

The leader must also have an understanding of the different team players styles and how to capitalize on each at the proper time, for the problem at hand.

Problem Solving Skills

Although an effective leader is said to share problem-solving responsibilities with the team, we expect our project leaders to have excellent problem-solving skills themselves.

They have a "fresh, creative response to here-and-now opportunities," and not much concern with how others have performed them.