Branding yourself for health

Posted under Personal Brand Definition by Linda Griffin

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™   is an ambitious 25-year project whose goal is to collect and measure the daily pulse of the well-being of U.S. workers. By interviewing at least 1000 people each day, the project aims to help people create a better way of life by understanding how work affects life and health and vice-versa. It’s no surprise that the index dropped from a high of 66 in January ’08 to a low of 63 in December ’08. The good news is that the index had continued to climb in 2009 and is at 67 as of August.  

 

As part of this effort, the group released the findings of a survey of over 100,000 working adults. Business Owners ranked highest in overall contentment over professionals such as doctors and lawyers and corporate managers. The Wall St. Journal  profiles one of those business owners, Roger the Plumber, in a recent article. According to the article, even though Roger has had to lay some of his employees, he still loves the work that he does and is excited to help his customers solve their plumbing problems. He feels that even in hard times, he is in control of his own destiny. Roger is a wonderful example of someone who is living his brand.

 

Technorati Tags: branding

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