When you work for yourself you wear many hats.
Working for yourself doesn't mean you work alone.No one strikes out on their own just to give themselves another job.
This is Solo(ish), a resource for solopreneurs, focused on the art and business of being self-employed.
Social Media: A Marketing Tactic or Strategy?
While social media platforms provide tactical tools, they are just a part of a comprehensive marketing strategy. By expanding your tactics arsenal beyond social media, such as leveraging email newsletters, advertising, and engaging in speaking opportunities, you can connect with a broader audience. However, the key lies in adopting a strategic approach.
To DON’T List for Startup Brands: Avoiding Pitfalls of Building a Strong Brand
Launching a startup brand can be an exhilarating and challenging endeavor. As you embark on this journey, navigating the path carefully and avoiding common pitfalls hindering your brand's success is crucial. By keeping these branding "don'ts" top of mind, you can...
5 Tips for Building a Strong Brand for Your Small Business
Branding is a critical aspect of any business, as it helps differentiate you from your competitors and communicates your unique value proposition to customers. While some of the biggest brands in the world, such as Nike, Harley Davidson, and Starbucks, have massive marketing budgets, effective branding is possible for businesses of all sizes. Here are five tips for building a strong brand that resonates with your clients.
7 Tips For A Mid-Year Brand And Marketing Checkup
As we approach the halfway point of the year, now is the perfect time to take a step back and evaluate the effectiveness of your brand and marketing strategy. It’s a good idea to do a mid-year checkup to ensure you’re on track to meet your goals and make any necessary adjustments before it’s too late.
From Unknown to Unforgettable: Creating a Strong Brand for Your Startup
Creating a brand from scratch can seem daunting, but by following these steps, you can establish a powerful and effective brand that sets your startup apart from the competition.
The Fundamentals of Developing a Strong Personal Brand
Managing your personal brand is an ongoing process that requires constant attention and effort to build and maintain one’s brand image. But doing so can significantly impact career success and professional relationships.
Networking Virtually…tips for the new normal
With social distancing becoming the norm, networking has moved to online platforms, but it is still an essential tool for building relationships. To be successful, you must have the right mindset, where you focus on how you can help others, not how they can help you. This approach builds mutually beneficial relationships, which is the goal of networking. You can start by nurturing existing relationships, checking in on close friends, family, and colleagues. To meet new people, you can target specific groups or be open to random connections. Allocating just 30 minutes a day to LinkedIn can be an effective way to network online by skimming your feed, commenting on relevant articles, and sending personalized messages to your connections.
Your Brand Needs a Purpose
Mission, vision, values, and positioning statements are the most widely recognized strategic tools used to define a company’s business, strategic objectives, and overall approach to reach those objectives. Another less frequently recognized strategic statement that many companies neglect to employ is the Purpose statement.
The Fortune is in the Follow Up
A follow up email or call isn’t about trying to sell additional products or services. The best follow-up is one that adds value to the recipient.
Brand Marketing in a time of COVID-19
Branding is long-term focused, rather than special promotions or a discounts. The tactics for staying top-of-mind 6 or 12 months from now are different than getting them to notice you right now.
We’re all working from home now.
Since so many people are working from now, and Brenits Creative is a 100% remote-work team, I wanted to share the four things that I have been doing consistently for 20 years.
How To Name Your Brand
To remind us that names have only as much power as we give them, Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, says (and I'm paraphrasing) "would not a rose by any other name, smell just as sweet"? Um, no. Shakespeare obviously didn't have to worry about branding. Naming...
Scare Tactics In Branding and Marketing
Human beings have base fears such as the need for protection, for reassurance, for status, for achievement, recognition, and so on. Addressing these fears is the basis for many brands’ positioning and their marketing. But how successful is fear as an emotive driver...
To-Do, To-Don’t, To-Done!
Sometimes it feels like there’s a lot on my plate. I run my own business, sit on two boards, serve as leadership for my referral networking group, and I teach. Most importantly, I’m a husband and father. I have a lot of stuff that needs to get done every day. But I’m never overwhelmed enough to say, “my plate is overfull.”
Plan and run better meetings
Meetings are a necessary evil in our business. Between staff meetings, project planning and review meetings, vendor meetings, and of course client meetings, its any wonder we get real work done at all. But one thing I have learned in almost 25 years in the creative...
Defining Your Audio Brand Strategy
From Netflix's "Ba-Dummm!" to the "ba-da-DA-Dum" of Intel, or even the three roars of the MGM lion we associate certain sounds with brands in the same way that we do their visual logos. These "audio-logos" are so recognizable that you probably heard them in your head...
A Fresh Start: Rebrand Your Business or Refresh Your Website?
No business can afford to rest on its laurels. While your company may be keeping up with economic and market changes, is your brand keeping up? Does your website communicate to your target audience how you’re keeping up?
You may be trying to decide if you should rebrand your business, or just update your website. Here are 10 factors to consider helping you make your decision.
Lessons learned working in-house that helped me be a better consultant
By the end of 2015, after being an in-house creative director for nearly 8 years and working in this field for over 20 years, I found myself self-employed for the second time in my career. Now, as I enter my fourth year as a brand and creative strategy consultant, I attribute some of my success as a business owner to my experiences and the lessons I learned by working in-house. Reflecting on that time being in-house, I can also say that my consulting mindset, and teaching instincts, also attributed to my success leading in-house creative teams.