Tag Archive for: Be Your Own Brand

Don’t Worry, Just Don’t.

You’re website ranking has dropped? And?

Rankings are not the Be-All-And-End-All when it comes to business. Does it ‘really’ matter that you cannot be found on Googles’ first results page?

I’ve discussed elsewhere on this website, and have spoken with many people over the years, the ‘importance’ of ranking. I’ve also written about that other ‘thing’ – Brand.

Yes, it’s nice to rank highly in the search results, but in reality, think about the number of websites out there. The live counter (currently) says there are more than 1.7 Billion websites, but of those, apparently less than 200 Million are active.

I’ve always been of the thought that your website is NOT your business, it’s a tool, it works ‘for’ your business. If you’ve established a good brand and you have repeat customers, they’ll talk to people. Don’t think of your website as ‘the’ business.

Yes, I know – there are businesses out there that are purely web-based, but still, the business in NOT the website – the business is the brand. Branding is everything. Even the best looking website on the planet won’t draw you sales, good customer relations and great products sell, not the ‘bells and whistles’ on a website – think Amazon.com, now THAT is a brand.

Functionality and appearance is important when designing a website. Blend your website into your business, just think of your website as a tool – nothing more.

You will have developers out there that WILL tell you that your website is your most important asset, but they are wrong. Imagine, you sell shitty products that break, your staff tell people to ‘piss off’ over the phone, and sometimes, items aren’t even shipped at all – BUT, your website cost you $20,000 and it’s the most pleasing website on the planet. How long do you think it will be before there is NO business?

Over the years, I’ve had to explain this to quite a few people that just ‘thought’ that if you built a great website, and had it ranked high, sales will follow. It doesn’t work that way.

A few months ago, Crain.com.au ranked at position 5 out of a billion pages on Google.com, for the term ‘WordPress Professional’. Today, I am ranked at 86 from 727 million pages.

How has this affected my ‘sales’ – well, it hasn’t. In fact, I’m still telling people that I can’t help them, due to my current load. You see, my work comes from theme developers, community forums and referrals from existing customers. I benefit from my brand, and the level of quality I provide in my service.

When I think about it, I’ve only taken on maybe 3 or 4 jobs over the past 12 months that came to me via this website, and I’ve had to turn away or refer more than 100 jobs in the same period. I could have employed  a couple of people to help me, or passed the work onto other WordPress Professionals, but I’m more concerned with maintaining my brand – it’s worked well for me so far. Also, I can be more selective of the work I do, allowing me to do as much or as little as I like.

For the search term ‘WordPress Professional Australia’, as seen below, I’m ranking at number 3, down from number 1. I can live with that.

At the end of the day, build your brand and don’t worry too much about your ranking – times have changed. Today, your Brand is King.

** I’m going to be missing for a little while, and won’t be posting anything here until after we move to our new home, or after Christmas, whichever is sooner.

Until next time, get busy building your brand and forget about your ranking. Just imagine ranking doesn’t exist, and focus on providing the best service possible, selling the best products you can source / produce. The rest will look after itself.

Don’t forget to share this post, like all my other ones – it helps me with my Brand ;)

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Time Management – Website Vs Social Media

So many people. So many products to sell, so many services to offer.

I’ve written about Brand Awareness previously, please check it out.

The purpose of this post IS about Branding, but more to point, your Brand – YOU.

Facebook is a Brand. Twitter is a Brand. Instagram is a Brand. Understand?

By directing people to your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, what you’re actually doing, is sending their attention away from YOU.

Build You. Promote You. BRAND YOU.

It’ important that you build your own Brand. Spending time / WASTING time on social media, is not building your Brand.

Where do you start? By building your website.

EDIT – March 3, 2019.

Wow, time goes so fast, doesn’t it? I started writing this post on January 2nd.

Sorry for the delay in finishing this post, I’ve been just a little busy, but I’ve got enough time at the moment to finish this post!

OK, I’ve written about Brand Awareness Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Depending on your commitment, experience and whether you are serious enough, or not, will determine if you even have a ‘Brand’.

My commitment  for the past dozen or so years to the WordPress Platform, for example, has allowed me to take on as much (or little) work as I like, because I’ve built up a reputation with a lot of theme developers, and I’ve made a name for myself on many online (theme) forums, assisting people with their WordPress installations, whether it be paid or free assistance. I did the work to build up my name, therefore, Crain is a Brand – for WordPress Development, Customization and Security.

So, what does this have to do with Social Media?

Several years ago, I was working with another guy on a project. His emphasis was placed on promoting via Facebook. Engagement through the Facebook page was terrible. He resorted to buying followers which is a total waste of time, money, AND effort. And it’s not a good look – people can see through it.

Think about this for a moment;

You spend money buying, let’s say, 25,000 followers. These followers usually aren’t ‘real people’ interested in what you have to say or offer. ‘They’ don’t plan on engaging with you – at all. Chances are, some con-artist has paid groups of extremely poor people from third world countries a few cents to set up fake Facebook accounts, and set up a business selling followers at highly inflated prices – and making a killing, financially.

So; You have all these 25,000 ‘followers’ that aren’t real, following you. You put up a post, that gets seen by a complete stranger that likes your post – but doesn’t follow you, and most likely will never visit your page again.

Let me get this straight. I’m not here to bash Facebook, I’m merely using it as an example. If you like posting about your personal life and keeping up with family and friends, Facebook is not that bad. Buying followers also happens on other social media, such as Twitter and Instagram, and other, less known social media apps / websites.

Now, This is interesting. There are some very big businesses, like Envato, a digital assets business (that for one part, provides a platform for WordPress Theme Developers to sell their themes online), well they have a Facebook page which currently has about 215,000 followers. On February 26th, they put up a post that gave them 16 likes, 2 comments and 5 shares.

Then we have the globally known airline, Qantas, that has more than 1.4 million followers, yet only pulls in a few likes per post – well, compared to the number of followers, the number of likes are really insignificant.

It has been suggested that social media engagement with your posts should be no less 5% of your followers. What happened here? I don’t know. But what it DOES show, is that you DON’T need social media to be successful, and they didn’t use social media to boost their brand. Remember that.

My Opinion; There is nothing more ugly than a social media account with hundreds / thousands of followers, that has little to no content / or lots of content – but no likes / comments on posts.

Just think about the time it takes to build up the followers via lots of money from your pocket, then the time you are wasting through posting, with extremely little or no engagement whatsoever.

You really are wasting your time and money. The ONLY people that will disagree with me on this, are the con-artists that are making money off it, and the ‘believers’ that are holding on for some kind of miracle to happen.

Yoast uploaded a post June 7, 2018, titled “Is Facebook getting less important?“. Have a read, you may find it interesting.

I have commented on this website, that having a social media presence is important – you need to be found. It’s also important to have that ‘Brand Name’ across all platforms, but in saying that, it doesn’t ‘have’ to be your actual business name, but you need to associate it ‘as part of your brand’ ON social media, if your actual business name has been taken. For example, I’ve chosen RobertCrainWP as my social media name.

Whatever you do – DON’T register different usernames. Keep them all the same – it makes it so much easier for people to find you, and it doesn’t look ‘messy’.

Remember – social media is not your business. It is a way for people to connect to you. The best way for people to connect with you is via ONE place – your website. Spend your time, and resources, on building a great website that showcases your business, displaying your products and services in a way that social media cannot.

This website is really quite basic. There’s no bells and whistles. It puts my message across, and that’s my only aim. Best thing is, it works! You’ve been to Amazon right? It’s not the best looking website – and in my opinion, it’s almost ugly. BUT, it works – REALLY WELL. That’s all you need, but you can spice it up a little. Images work wonders.

And be careful of dodgy developers that build you a website, using plagiarized content. I won’t name any, but there’s plenty out there. Any developer that copies content from other websites, then expects payment for work completed, is a con-artist, and it’s not good for your Brand.. I wrote a post about this here > Creativity v Plagiarism.

Be unique. Be you. Be your own Brand

And please – Stop wasting your time on social media. Spend time where it really counts. An hour wasted on social media, is an hour wasted from building YOU.

Brand building doesn’t have to cost much money. If you have a great product or service, if you’re great at what you do, you’re half way there already.

If you’re not serious about what you do, or are out there to make a quick buck, feel free to waste your time and money on social media.

When building a Brand, only serious people need apply. Loyalty and Respect will follow you, if you treat customers / clients with the respect they deserve. Remember, they are deciding whether or not to give you money. If they refer people to you, you’re on your way to building your Brand.

As always, feel free to contact me if you like. There are plenty of ways to share my content to your friends on social media, if they’re interested. I’d appreciate you spending a few seconds clicking that share button.

Until next time, have fun!

 

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