Chances are great that your competition is not taking full advantage of their time by promoting themselves properly. Take comfort in the fact that most people will not do the hard work it takes to succeed.
If opportunity resists walking through their door, they blame the world for their failure to make an impact.
This time of year is ideal for taking a step back and analyzing how you have done over the past year and what goals you will strive for in the near future. How you achieve those goals will be critical in validating new media you’ve taken the time to implement for your own success. Traditional media are becoming increasingly less important. Technology is fast dominating how we live our lives. How we stay connected from a personal and professional perspective.
Some of these new media include:
• Social networking including Facebook and Twitter. Make sure that your comments are directed towards your services that you offer. Mix in a healthy dose of comments to do with your personal interests. Together, all of your comments will flush out your personal and professional brand.
• Html email. Virtually every one of your target market willingly accept email at their desktop. Where traditional mail fails to breech the gate keeper, email is delivered right into their hands. Developing lists is fundamental in targeting messages that resonate.
• Targeted text email. The simplest form of email promotion. Text email allows you to express a quick message without concerning yourself with visual content.
• Websites. Where once it was sufficient to have simply a brochure site, today the focus is resources and tools for your customer. Using your website to fulfill a need for information, throws a lifeline to them.
• Web video. A fabulous platform for inspirational messages, product launches and any message where visuals can be harnessed to tell a story.
• Podcasts are audio files that generally provides great free content that benefits your audience. There are also video podcasts that extend the medium.
• Mobile marketing is the new kid on the block. The vast majority have smartphones in their possession. Increasingly it is becoming apparent that harnessing this new media will prove it’s importance to us all.
What other new media are you watching? Sharing your insight strengthens us all. Slow moving competition have no idea that many of these new media models exist. Snatch the opportunity before they do catch on. If your competition has embraced these new media, then it is your duty to out-finesse them. As I’ve always stressed, “Lead don’t follow”. Use this holiday season to investigate how you can adopt these new areas to your benefit. Establish time and budget targets to start using them to develop new business leads.
Branding yourself online is really important because this is how people will notice you or your business easily.
 @business telephone Thanks for the comment BT
I know “blogging” isn’t necessarily new media, but I think for a brand to have a strong content outlet is crucial in today’s world. We are in the information age. People head to google and are able to find the answer to ANYTHING. Brands need to be the answer to whatever their potential customers would be asking. Having a blog (that you can promote through social networks, post Web Videos, podcasts too as well, as you mentioned) is a great way to provide your customers with more than just a product. It’s also a great way to prove your value. If you are an expert on your subject, their is an instilled trust with consumers.
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Good stuff! If only more businesses understood the value of their online rep!
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Best,
Meredith
We have to make our presence online by all means available that reach out to our customers. With internet the brand reach beyond all borders. Â
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Enjoyed reading your post.
To expand on the mobile marketing idea, I think that offering a useful mobile application download can help create a captive audience for your marketing message, products and services.
 @WBS I can’t argue with you there  WBS. Anytime you can get someone to download resources is a vote for you and your growing niche audience.
Branding is very important to a business. Proper and effective branding will be a great help for business to exist or to notice by different people which may become a customer.
 @Jonnalyn the trick is to define yourself before the competition does it for you.
Thank you Jonnalyn
Hi,
Great Post! I consider branding to be a great way to build relations in a business. It is an important tool in business. Through branding one can come across many clients and people from different parts of the world notice you.
 @David Nikolic Staying on top of your brand allows a business to define themselves. This definition is something that resonates with a client giving a great reason to build a lasting relationship. Thank you for your opinion David. Don’t you find it remarkable how many businesses neglect their brand and leave that definition to their competition?
At the moment, I find Twitter to be the most effective way of branding your online property without big budget. Hard to imagine a more simple way to attract more eyeballs.. Admitted, video marketing might be even more effective if done right, but I don’t have experience with that. Yet.
 @TechieBrands I’m not finding a fit with Twitter. I enjoy blogging and discussion groups in Linkedin. I try to start conversations with Twitter but the people don’t respond to my comments. Great that your finding results there. Email marketing to my list is also beneficial.