Branding yourself with your business name

Posted under Personal Brand Definition by Linda Griffin

Photo Credit Brent and MariLynn from Flickr

 

You’ve decided to take the plunge and start your own business. Now you must decide how you want to name it. Start by brainstorming. Write down the words that best describe either your product or the problem it solves and try different combinations of those phrases.

 

The Write Express web site has lots of good writing resources and it also has a random name generator. Use it to kick start your thought process but you’ll have wade through a lot of nonsensical combinations that don’t reflect your brand or mission. ‘Branding yourself brainless’ was one of the suggestions that came up for this blog. I don’t think so!

 

Ideally, you want to make an immediate positive connection in the mind of your potential client and you want to make clear the benefit your brand will provide. Let your personality come through and make your business name memorable. Joe’s Pizza is totally unforgettable but Joe’s Taste of Italy invokes the potential customer’s senses.

 

In today’s Web 2.0 environment, you may have to try multiple business naming combinations as many obvious names have been snapped up and registered by people who are holding them to be used later or sold to the highest bidder. You may have to get extra creative assuming you want to have a corresponding web site.

 

In future posts, I’ll cover more aspects of this topic. If you have run across a particularly memorable business name, please share it in the comments.

 

Technorati Tags: branding, marketing

Branding Yourself three easy ways

Posted under Personal Branding Strategies by Linda Griffin

After you create your mission statement, the next step is to tie it to your business brand. It will do you no good to create a wonderful mission statement and then sit in your office waiting for the phone to ring. You must actively brand yourself and pursue your prospective customers.

 

One of the first things I recommend in branding yourself is to create a tag line and use that tag line as much as possible. It’s a quick way to tell people what to expect from your brand. Add it to your email signature line. My email signature line says: Showing you how to rise above the competition. It reflects back to my overall brand and business name which is ClearWind.

 

You want to tell everybody you encounter and work it into the conversation during networking events. Pretty soon, people will start to remember you by your tag line. Use it when you’re in line at the post office, when you’re traveling, after church when you’re socializing and at parties. Every interaction with another person is an opportunity to publicize your brand.

 

The second way you can brand yourself is with your business card. Business cards are one of the easiest ways to showcase your brand. They’re very inexpensive and you can change them frequently or have multiple versions that focus on different aspects of your brand. The key to having a memorable business card is to let it reflect your personality. Go beyond the standard templates and add a photo or graphic that highlights your unique traits.

 

The third way to brand yourself is with a web site. I believe that in today’s environment of widespread social networking, everyone should have a personal web page. At minimum you should have a profile on one or more social networking sites. Why? So that you control your brand image. You probably don’t want the pictures of you at the family reunion to be the first thing that pops up when a potential client is performing an online search on your name.

 

Try these three techniques and let me know how you make out.

 

 

Technorati Tags: personal branding, social networking