Looking today for some inspiration for a blog post, I decided to take a dive into the archives (a standard tip as one of the ways to deal with blogger’s block).

I noticed that back in October 2004 I had posted here about some key principles to which Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson  is said to have attributed the brand’s success – Virgin’s “brand values”. The book Business the Richard Branson Way: 10 Secrets of the World’s Greatest Brand Builder, by Des Dearborn.

The principles were:

• value for money
• quality
• reliability
• innovation
• an indefinable, but nonetheless palpable, sense of fun

So I was thinking, how would a home based business go, applying those principles or taking them as a model set of brand values?

I can’t imagine anyone arguing seriously against the first three: value for money, quality and reliability. So surely we can take them as read.

I’m personally ok with innovation in any business context, including for professionals working from home. For example in my coaching business I am always keen to learn about ways I can coach more effectively from a distance – e.g. I love Skype for that, both the audio and video versions.

Sense of fun as a brand value

But what I found really interesting to be reminded about was the Branson/Virgin commitment to fun.

Then I realized I am reminded of it whenever I get on a Virgin flight, which I do fairly frequently. The crew always seem to have a genuine sense of fun, while at the same time having an air of knowing what they are doing professionally, just as much as I see with crew on planes of their competitors.

And by the way, now that I think of it, I wonder why the crew on the competitor planes don’t give any sense that they are having fun, any sense that they might be feeling – if I can put it this way – that right now the best thing they could be doing in the whole world is helping to make my flight and that of a crowd of others on the plane as comfortable, safe and enjoyable as it could be. As the Virgin crews seem to be able to do.

My sense is that it’s that kind of “sense of fun” the adventure-loving, knighted tycoon Branson means as one of the key Virgin values.

So back to the professionals working from home.

I’m trying to think whether having and displaying a sense of fun (indefinable, but nonetheless palpable) is part of how I do business now.

I certainly feel it is. I know I enjoy the coaching process, including when it is dealing with quite serious business issues. I enjoy helping companies develop and implement their social media strategies. In that sense I have a sense of fun about what I do. And I enjoy continually learning more about coaching and social media and sharing what I learn.

I quite like the idea of elevating the sense of fun I *feel* in doing business to being a key brand value. After all, if I’m not having fun doing business and letting that show, I believe I’m going to have a difficult time trying to help clients look to having a sense of fun in their business – however indefinable, but nonetheless palpable that might be.

What do you feel about all that.?

Is a sense of fun a useful, appropriate value for a business?

Is there anything about working from home that makes it particularly appropriate – or inappropriate?

Can you share an example of how having and displaying a sense of fun might help (or has helped) your business or a business you know about?

Or the obverse – how it has been present but has not served your business, or someone else’s, well?

The post Would the Richard Branson Sense of Fun Work for Home Based Business? appeared first on Thinking Home Business.

If you’ve noticed, when you leave a comment on a blog post, that other commenters have images of themselves alongside their comments but your comment has only a grey “mystery man” blob or a symbol like the one in the margin here, where the others have pictures of themselves, this post is for you.

Note: this post includes quite specific details about how to get a usable picture – may be -101 obvious to some, but we all have to start somewhere and I remember when it was all a mystery to me!

What is a Gravatar?

“Gravatar”? Strange word: and unless the dictionary on the shelf in your office or at home is very new, you almost certainly won’t find it there – maybe not even in an online dictionary. Apparently the word is made up from Globally Recognized Avatar, using “avatar” not in the Hindu sense of an incarnation of a higher being, but in the – literally more mundane – computer usage of a graphical representation of a user.

So Why would you want a gravatar?

Personal interests aside, it’s simply about branding.

I realize some people don’t want to have their personal photos online or use their personal photos as part of their branding. My own view is that your branding will be more effective when potential customers or colleagues can see a picture of you.  Just as I believe that your comment on a blog post or forum thread will be more effectively communicated if people can see a picture of you. Matthew Stibbe has an excellent post on using a good photo to build your personal brand.

Of course, your gravatar does not have to be of you. It could be, for example, a company logo. There is a whole side conversation that could be had here about corporate and personal branding, but for the moment and admittedly at the risk of over-simplifying the underlying issues, think about what you are wanting to communicate: if you want or need people to see you as someone they can – in the marketing phrase du jour – know, like and trust, ask yourself whether that trifecta is more likely to get up with a (good, professional) picture of you or one of the company badge?

How do you go about getting a gravatar?

Easy peasy.  Three steps.

1. You go to the Gravatar site and click on the Get Your Gravatar Today button. They then send you an email so you can confirm your application and have access to your new account.

2. You find or create a picture 80 x 80. If you are worried about how to edit a picture to get that size, Irfanview is a free, downloadable program with great editing tools. You will need a picture which is square. To get that you may have to crop a picture you have: Irfanview is great for cropping.

If you need to get instructions for cropping, search on <Crop> in the Irfanview Help screen.

You select the part of the picture you want and make it square. You do that by adjusting the frame until the width and height coordinates match (or nearly match within a pixel or so) as you will see in the blue section at the top of the Irfanview window: in the illustration here I have adjusted to 259×259, because I want to see how it looks before I reduce it to 80×80).

After you have cropped the picture, save it as something like imagename259.jpg (to avoid confusing it with the original or the avatar picture you are about to make).

Once you have saved the cropped version and if you are happy with that, it’s time to make the smaller, 80×80 version. With the cropped (square) image open, click on Image -> Resize/Resample and you will see a box as displayed here.

Uncheck the box that says <Preserve aspect ratio>, then type 80 in the width box and 80 in the height box (see screenshot below). Then save as something like imagename80x80.jpg so you will know that’s the one.

3. You go into your Gravatar account and upload your lovely new 80×80 picture.

You’re done. And as Mike Bergin explains in his helpful post, Get Your Gravator On, which I drew on for this post:

Not only will all your new comments be beauteous but your graphic will populate every comment you’ve ever made on a gravatar-enabled blog as long as they’re linked to the signifying e-mail address.

For the motivation to research and write this post thanks to the post on the subject at Blogging for Boomers.

I look forward to seeing more pictures of smiling (or serious) faces on the comments here.

If you have any challenges with setting up your gravatar, please leave a comment here and I will do what I can to help you sort it out – or another reader may well get in first and help.

For WordPress bloggers who would rather not have their site plastered with just the standard Gravatar logo, the default where a commenter has not activated their own gravatar, there is a very interesting option with WP-Identicon. Haven’t explored it or tried it – just noticed as I’m wrapping up this post.

The post Gravatars – What, Why and How to Get One appeared first on Thinking Home Business.

The old card is pictured here.

With a few offline events coming up I really do need something more up to date.

I’m taking this opportunity to figure out just what role I see the card as playing in my marketing and what I want the card to communicate about me and what I do.

That process is making me do some serious questioning of the whole business of business cards.

I’m by no stretch of the imagination a graphic designer, but for reasons outlined below I’m casting caution to the winds and designing this card myself, with the help of a couple of basic tools, Microsoft Publisher (part of Microsoft Office) the free, downloadable Irfanview image software and online tools provided by business card printers (details below).

This is a longer post than I’d orginally intended. Its length is partly due to its reflecting over 20 years experience of using a variety of business cards, with at best mixed results. I’m hoping the post might be helpful to someone, sometime, although as it’s about a DIY exercise I’m pretty sure it won’t win me any friends in the business card design game!

Memories of cards past

I’ve had a lot of business cards in my time, first in the public service once I reached a level of seniority where it was deemed appropriate for me to have a card, and then in business. In the public service I think it was a status thing, kind of a right to show off my title once I reached the executive level.

When I started in business, getting a business card was one of the things  you did. And you went to networking functions or meetings and exchanged cards with the other people there. I think the theory was that this was a way to attract business, although as I reflect on that now there is no single instance that springs to mind where I could say my business card did in fact ever play a key role in attracting new business.

That reminds me of the gag I heard a few years ago: “Did you hear about the consultants’ Christmas party? They all had a drink and exchanged business cards.”

I didn’t have or need a business card when I was a school teacher or when I drove a taxi. No point. I believe I needed one as a consultant and coach. I am pretty sure I still need one.

But what kind of card am I going to have? What words and other information will it have on it?

I’ve done some online searching for ideas, with mixed results (some links at the end of this post) and the realization that I have to figure out what will work for me, rather than rely on others’ ideas of what “should” be done. My ideas on that have changed in recent years and in fact my thoughts on the subject are still changing (evolving I hope).

My pre-conceived notions challenged: Bob Burg on the uses of cards

My ideas about business cards and their value for business started to change when I read master networker Bob Burg’s book Endless Referrals. Bob is not big on cards, or at least on how cards often get used.

He certainly doesn’t have time for the way they get used often at networking functions. If you have ever been to a networking breakfast where a person you’ve never met arrives and sprays their cards around the table like a dealer at a casino you will get the idea. Waste of time.

Bob says there are three uses for a business card: 1) you could win something (you know, the fishbowl thing at the local restaurant, or some other “email address catcher” receptacle at an expo); 2) you could get a lead (he is less than enthusiastic about this one); 3) you can get others’ cards. This third reason – to get others’ cards – is, Bob says, the only one that matters. “As far as I’m concerned” he writes “this is the one truly valuable benefit of business cards…”.

Although he is not what you would call an enthusiast, he’s not completely down on the idea of business cards:

Although I make light of business cards, and generally find they are not worth much more than the paper stock on which they are printed, they can have some value when used correctly.

Another challenge: The Case of the Disappearing Cards

I’ve started asking myself and the occasional person who will listen “Why do so many people not have cards any more?”

Because increasingly I’m noticing that people don’t have them, especially people in Internet/social media related business, with the notable exception of people who are in that arena but more in design, advertising and marketing fields.

Is it because business cards are so 20th century, so analog, so uncool? Is it a sign of a quiet revolution against the tide of newsletters, promos, last chance offers, exciting news that flood our email boxes in response to all those cards we’ve given out at breakfasts, in the bowls at expos, at business gatherings?

Or is it because a lot of us feel that we and our contact details are now so findable online that we don’t need the expense and inconvenience of having cards designed and printed and then having to carry them around, against the moment when someone at a function says “Do you have a card?” Or say we meet a business person from Japan.

Awkward thought: am I at risk,  if I fall in with a bunch of geeks, of looking like a real doofus if I ask for or produce business cards? Oh the embarrassment!

And what about the planet?

No doubt because I work mostly online, I always seem to have these days more business cards than I need. And the ones I have are now out of date, using a title I no longer use. And with that thing of it being only marginally more expensive to have a thousand printed than five hundred, I hate that moment when, sooner or later, I have to ditch about 600 cards I’ll never have use for again because the information on them is out of date.

Not to mention the speed of change in technology and business

Business cards, it seems to me, used to have a longer life than they are likely to have now. Twitter didn’t exist when the first version of my current card emerged and when I updated it in 2007 it did not occur to me to put my Twitter handle on the card, whereas now I’m doing so with my next card.

I also used then the title “Blogging Evangelist” which I don’t use now, not because I don’t promote blogging for business – I decidedly do – but because it’s not the focus of my business in the way it was back then.

The new card project

Taking all those considerations aboard, I do believe that, for the time being at least, I still need a card. But I’m going with temporary and home-built design, using some basic tools to get a result which I believe will work for me.

These are the principles I’ve applied:

Front of card

• include photo (a feature of the older and current card commented on positively, many times)
• my name in a font size easy to read at a glance
• my preferred contact details: mobile (cell) number | Twitter @ handle | email address
• primary web/blog address
• tagline
• no title (I find using titles triggers pigeonholing)

Back of card

• what I do in social media – strategy
• a quote about the importance of strategy
• room for recipient to jot a note
• matt finish (current card I had foolishly made gloss – no one could write on it!)

What’s not there

• other blog/web sites (potentially confusing)
• landline number (not always at base but usually have mobile)
• fax number (no discernible usefulness)
• coaching information (again, potentially confusing – thinking about a separate card)

Design and printing I’ve used Microsoft Publisher for the card design, Irfanview to adjust the picture, Click Business Cards (based in North Sydney, Australia) for the printing.

My intention is to do another version before my next overseas trip, with the international phone number (country code etc). In the US, I’ve found the people at Overnight Prints really helpful: but I had to learn the hard way that “Overnight” was a brand, not a literal promise – it was still speedy by the standards then (and perhaps still) prevailing in Australia and very economical.

Both Click Business Cards and Overnight Prints provide really helpful online tools. With each, you can use one of their templates or use their blank format and upload your own image/text, as I’m doing with the new card.

My new cards will not be certainly not as elegant as the old ones, but I am confident they will be more practical in helping communicate what I do in the social media space.

I quite liked the old black background but it was never part of an overall branding and in fact the card I’m producing now is more aligned with the very plain style of my main web/blog sites.

Some links for stimulating card design ideas (some fairly zany, which could work for some businesses):

• Neil Patel has a great post on really creative cards.
• David Airey has a thought-provoking post and comment thread on the question of good and bad design for business cards.
• Jacci Howard Bear offers on About.com a  list of the 11 Parts of a Business Card.
• Some good ideas are also in the article Business Card Design and Printing, by an Australian graphic design company.

I welcome any suggestions as to how, within the parameters I’ve indicated above, I could improve on my new design or comments on how I’m proceeding with this project. As there is no cost other than my time in any re-design, and a fairly modest cost for another print run, I’m quite open to practical suggestions. And anyway I’ll be doing a new run when I’m next planning to travel internationally.

The post My New Self-Designed Business Card appeared first on Thinking Home Business.

As I continued the process I wrote about yesterday, of figuring out how to answer effectively the “What do you do?” question and – by extension – how that might be something people could be interested in paying me to do for and with them, my thoughts turned to the idea of personal branding. And positively at first. As in, Yes, that’s what I should be working on, my personal brand.

But as I thought a bit more, I wondered.

Part of my wondering was because I have a somewhat negative mental/emotional association with the “branding” word/concept, going back to childhood days on my father’s family’s farm – most likely an association shared by anyone who has grown up on or spent time on a farm with cattle and horses.

Back to what people in the city, specifically marketing and advertising, mean by “branding”.

I don’t recall when I first heard the term “personal branding” or such catchy expressions as “Brand You”, but I admit to quite liking the underlying concept, or at least liking what I understood about it. That may be partly because the concept has some very articulate and persuasive evangelists who post about the subject in an interesting way, such as William Arruda, Dan Schawbel and others on the Personal Branding Blog.

So what is “personal branding”? I imagine the experts define it in various ways. The BNET Business Dictionary says it is:

the public expression and projection of an individual’s identity, personality, values, skills, and abilities.

and adds, just so we get the point:

The idea of personal branding has evolved by applying the concept of a product brand or a corporate brand to an individual person.

In itself that doesn’t tell me a lot. Dan Schawbel and others believe that there is some confusion about what the term means and on a wiki set up for the purpose they offer the following as “The Real Definition of Personal Branding“:

Personal branding describes the process by which individuals and entrepreneurs differentiate themselves and stand out from a crowd by identifying and articulating their unique value proposition, whether professional or personal, and then leveraging it across platforms with a consistent message and image to achieve a specific goal. In this way, individuals can enhance their recognition as experts in their field, establish reputation and credibility, advance their careers, and build self-confidence.

That seemed reasonable enough. But I can’t say it got me excited.

I was still feeling uneasy about this idea of personal branding.

Then I came across (actually I looked for and came across) a contrarian view on the subject.

Not an easy process, by the way, if you are using Google as your search resource – seems there are a lot of true believers out there.

In business, I get nervous if everyone is agreeing (I won’t say “sub-prime”).

So the contrarian view.

In his post “Personal Branding” is a Misconception, Michael H. Goldhaber argues that

the idea of personal branding — common though it is — gets things backwards

Goldhaber’s blog is about “Attention, the Attention Economy, etc”

His argument on personal branding is, as I read it, framed within a context of blogging and can be summarized (although not necessarily done justice – I recommend you read the whole, very entertaining post for that: ok, it might not be entertaining for personal branding evangelists, but should be for others) as follows:

• A brand is superficially a proper noun, such as the name of a place or a person – John Smith, Spain – but is linguistically an ordinary noun, differing from a common noun like “cow” or “strawberry” – “in that it is supposed to refer only to a line of pretty much identical products that all are associated with a particular company” – e.g. Heinz.
• “…regular brands — far from being something that individuals need to emulate — are actually reminders of the singular persons or personalities who originated or stand behind the branded products or services” (examples, Microsoft and Bill Gates, Apple and Steve Jobs)
• “Why Pablo Picasso is not a brand” (you need to read the whole argument – can’t do it justice with bullet points!)
• I think his fourth point is about being yourself as a creative, entrepreneurial person, fully, at any given moment, which (this is how I read it) can’t be encapsulated in a “brand”.
• Be spontaneous – personal branding is “a red herring”

James Chartrand,writing at Copyblogger, talks about “personal branding prison” and argues you should be branding your business, not yourself.

Start building value into your business so that potential customers think of your business name first and your name second. Get people interested in working with your business, not you.

That brought me back to a thought I’ve been having through this whole process, basically the idea I first understood from reading Michael Gerber’s E-Myth – that one of the key ideas (the main idea?) of being in business is to build your business up to the point where you are able to sell it. What to me is a no-brainer corollary is that a business which is branded with my name is going to be, on the face of things, harder to sell than a business with a more generic or less person-specific name.

That’s my real challenge with personal branding.

For me, the jury’s out.

Comments are very welcome.

Photo credit: photoflux via Flickr, Creative Commons licence

The post Just How Valuable is Personal Branding? appeared first on Thinking Home Business.

When it comes to talking about the importance of protecting our reputation, I can’t improve on The Bard.

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.

William Shakespeare, “Othello”, Act 3 scene 3

Which is why, as individuals, as business owners, we get upset and take action, including legal action, if we feel someone has harmed our personal good name – i.e. our reputation – or that of our business.

Yet I keep meeting otherwise well-informed people who do not seem to be aware that:

• their name (brand) is online
• they need to be active in protecting it in that environment

Some people I speak to about this seem to think they don’t have an identity online. Let alone having any need to take care of their online reputation.

Any of us who have spent any time online, posted a comment on a forum, had an assignment on a website somewhere, been a member of an organizing committee for a community event, or simply had our name on a list which happens to be online, should assume we have an online identity.

You won’t always find it on Google, although it could be there. What is potentially very problematic for a lot of people is that if someone – say, someone you want to do business with – googles your name and comes up with that name but as attached to someone the police are looking for, or adverse comments by someone about you or your business, how would that make you feel?

People who start to think about this but may not know a lot about how the web works, and specifically about how search engines work, may feel there is nothing they can do to remedy the situation.

An example I use frequently to illustrate the potential problems and opportunities surrounding online reputation is the Zoominfo site. It is particularly important for anyone in the job market, or likely to be at any time, to check out their profile on Zoominfo, which is an early port of call for recruiters looking people up online. The info on Zoominfo comes from a couple of sources: a) what its robots find about you, or someone with your name, on the web, and b) what you put in (you can also change info there that is out of date or incorrect). I found I had several “identities” there and was able to sort them out so the ones that were about me were consolidated and I could “disown” the others. I was also able to add a lot of information, so now if anyone searches for me either directly on Zoominfo or on another search engine and the Zoominfo link comes up, the information there is what I want people to see.

There is in fact a lot that people can do. And I would say, should do.

In her post Online Reputation Management a few days ago, Meg Tsiamis wonders why so many companies “do not seem to pay attention to reputation management” and points helpfully to Andy Beal’s excellent Free Online Reputation Management Beginner’s Guide, which is still getting favorable comments two and a half years on.

See also:

Business and Branding #1: Built to Last or Built for Now

Business and Branding # 2: Finding What Works

Business and Branding #3: Brand You

The post Business and Branding #4: Online Reputation Management appeared first on Thinking Home Business.