The Credibility Branding Blog

Blogging, List Building and Brand Building

If you are an entrepreneur or even if you are a larger company, having a good qualified opt-in list is increasingly becoming a foundational marketing program. For those focused more on online sales it is your lifeblood. There are a lot of people out there discussing how to build a list, here are a few things I have learned using some of the obvious and also incorporating more strategies using my credibility branding model.

Blogging:

Blogging is a great way to establish your brand by using content to establish expertise and personality. I call it a networking and branding building platform. Your web site is a brochure, your blog is you own personal magazine that can illustrate your point and show what you know.  The networking part is leveraging the power of your voice and the audience you are building to improve your relationship with influencers who by association can improve your brand. Here are a few hints to do that:

• Re-post articles of those you want endorsements from or influencers you would like to form relationships with and tell them you reposted one of their works
• Do a review of these same people content and blogs and ;et them know you did so
• Ask readers to join your email list / blogger list

Blogging is a great way to drive a new audience to your newsletter list, if they like your blog they want more.

Squeeze pages and Bonus Gifts:

Squeeze pages are designed to build your list; you give away free stuff on the squeeze page in exchange for an email address. I recently created one for my credibility branding audit (you can check out here). You can use is as a broader strategy; start with a squeeze page to build a qualified list for a specific product. Then offer a phased approach of phased products to that audience.

Try out social networking sites

There are a number of social networking site that will drive traffic and if done right can drive the right traffic to create new subscribers, here are a couple:

• List Bandit - List building networks; one I recently cam across is List Bandit. It is a group of like mined individuals building lists on top of each other, it is worth signing up and trying it. It is a little confusing to start but you get a series of emails that start to walk you through how it works. Also a hint… at the beginning they offer you a special deal that only comes up at the time of signing up they are right and it is a good deal if you can afford it.
• Stumbleupon is a downloadable toolbar that embeds into your browser and gives you the      chance to surf through thousands of excellent pages that have been stumbled upon by other web-users. You can drive traffic by telling the right audience about something that is relevant to them (maybe your blog).
• Del.icio.us is a place to store your bookmarks in one place, bookmark things for yourself and friends and check out what other people are bookmarking. The key is to drive people to your bookmarks      and also get onto other peoples lists. This is another one of those credibility branding things, if you can get on an influencers list it drives traffic and builds your credibility by association.
• Twitter a mini blog based on only 40 characters per post based on the premise “what are you doing” build a following here too.
• Squidoo build a page about your passions create a specific lens of your product here is mine. You      can also start you own groups, I started one that is starting to slowly build.
• MyBlogLog, one of my favorites this is a blogging networking community. Bloggers are      influencers and are ahead of the curve, MyBlogLog allows you to meet and interact with fellow bloggers. A great site where you meat great professional friends that are doing the same thing as you. I have gotten many newsletter subscribers from here and fans and I have become fans of      some pretty awesome people.
• There are a lot more… please leave comments with ones you have found to work and how they work.

Pop Ups

The days of pop ups are waning, however apparently they still work. The key is to have it pop up at the end of their stay as they are clicking away and offer a gift to incent them giving their email.

Bottom line with all of this is to go after the audiences that make sense for your product don’t get an email address just to get an email address. Use these practices to drive a pre-qualified audience to you products. Use them to further establish your credibility and to get those points of credibility across in your messaging. Be careful not to get distracted by these tactics by doing too much of this and not running your business.

Blogging Your Brand - Can Brand Building and Link Building Cohabitate?

I saw something today on MyBlogLog. A member used a very famous celebrities name to entice a click through. Once at the member’s site it was obvious that it was just a ploy and the site delivered on the ongoing brand identify of that ploy. “I tricked you to get here, now I will likely trick you to sell you something,” is what that particular brand stands for. This type of clever traffic building tactic is impacting your brand every time you use it. If you really want to create an interesting effect on users, don’t be lazy and use obviously manipulative tactics, create something worthwhile visiting, leverage influencers to help you get the word out and build credibility through third party endorsements. Use sound SEO tactics of keyword relevance and proper back end coding, network and build your links with an integrity that represents your brand.

I also noticed as I purused the blogisphere there are these complicated link building practices among bloggers. My philosophy is don’t link to something unless it is in alignment with your readers interest. Otherwise what is the point of the traffic. You want traffic that is targeted and qualified right? You want visitors that are going to eventually buy something from you don’t you? Traffic for the sake of traffic is not going to help you over the long run even if you are going for Ad Sense links or building circulation to sell advertising. The target audience won’t link if they are driven to you for the wrong reasons from the wrong blog. Advertisers will eventually catch on that the traffic is not authentic and doesn’t deliver the demographics or the content focus they were looking for. Even if you do increase your Google and Technorati rankings there is a risk to your brand perception by using these tactics. I am not saying don’t do interesting link building programs… but do them with a brand aligning publicity hook or with the right partners one who will deliver the right demographics and have a quality site to start with.

So what does your brand stand for? Think about this for a moment, write it down. It may surprise you. Now look at your traffic building or offline marketing strategies, are they in alignment with what your brand stands for? Look at you blog itself, does it speak to your brand? If not make adjustments, go back to credibility marketing basics, find the points of credibility in your company or product then promote those and use your brand to highlight it. This will build long term loyal customers not fly by link throughs.

For bloggers, your customers are your brand so be careful who you invite.