Gradually it is being accepted as a given these days that it is never easy with start-ups, especially with so much happening around the world that portends only a negative for brands and businesses, talk less of a start-up. There is so much to say about the recession but it would weigh much more to emphasise that some people started up during the great depression and survived; going on to create well established brands that had and are still having great and long-lasting impact around the world. The core of this discuss would be centred on turning around your start-up brand in forty-eight hours but that point needed to be made so that a despairing heart might grab a hold of hope again knowing that regardless of what the statistics say, you can nurse this brand to the heights of its potentials. The internet and more specifically social and mobile media have become so vital for brands now regardless of their size. With the kind of budget often available to start-up brands, it is only natural to begin from here. The following six steps would help turn around your brand in forty-eight hours on a very little budget and with some measure of creativity.
1. Create a Logo
For your brand, it is advisable to visualize a logo, and have an idea of emblems to be used that can simply put across your brand in picture format. Like the old cliché goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words. There are so many free logo creator sites such as cooltext.com and a variety of others. You can find a lot more using the search engines. On the sites, it is quite easy to create different texts with the graphics made available especially being quite simple to work with. Next, the pictures talked about earlier can be searched out via free image sites like goggle images and the likes. The graphic texts produced on the logo-creator sites can then be combined with the pictures making use of common soft-wares such as Photoshop, and in no time the logo is ready. Note that only basic skills are required.
2. Set Up a Blog
The next step is to create an avenue from which you can spread the word, and that would preferably be from a website or a blog. Even if it is a bit more cost intensive to build a website, a blog is a very good starting point and there are so many free weblog spots around including WordPress.com or blogger.com. Again with minimum skill required, you can design a very presentable blog for your business. The logo earlier created can be uploaded as the theme or the title image. It is my hope that before now, you must have come up with a mission statement, or an ‘about-us’ which is true, convincing and catchy. This would be uploaded for use in the about this site section. The rest is down to mixing and matching colours, plus basic creativity in placing widgets at vital points on the blog. Remember it is neither a competition nor an examination; so you can always modify the look and introduce new features as time goes on. The blog-site can also be converted in to a full-blown website much later. Talk about building gradually. There are lots of tutorials available on the internet that can guide you around setting up your blog under 24 hours.
3. Set Up a Facebook Page
With a brand logo and a blog-site now available, now is a right time to introduce the social and mobile media in to the scheme of things. The good thing is that most of these blog-sites now have social media buttons or widgets incorporated in to them right from the very start. These therefore provide a ready link, but it is also quite necessary to know that the link must take us somewhere like a landing page for your brand or business. This is the point where it becomes especially vital to set up a Facebook page, something pretty much easy to do. With the ‘create a page’ link right at the bottom of your personal Facebook page, you can start and easily navigate your way to creating a good enough page. There are some free applications available and other helpful ones that can be sourced later. Facebook has got tutorials available in the form of wizards we have now become so familiar with. You would be guided through, and then the rest of the innovation would be left to your ingenuity. Those would include uploading the logo, finding the like buttons, picking off the code and posting it on your blog with a gadget/widget already made available. With the link in place, in no time the blog is connected to the Facebook page with one touch of a button.
4. The Twitter Handle as a Tool for Brand Promotion
Simultaneously while doing the above, or just after that, the blog-site and the now set-up Facebook page should be linked to your twitter handle. Luckily most blogs come with the twitter link button, and as for the Facebook page, there is an option under the page settings that indicates a link to twitter. Another of these options is via applications such as tweets and other relevant Facebook applications. Business these days has gone personal; so more often than not, you are advised to use a personal twitter handle as people often like to connect with the face behind the brand. Talk about a kind of metamorphosis that social media has brought about. Also on twitter you could start growing your list of followers by following a lot of people yourself, and apart from that it becomes quite helpful to follow people within your niche or people specially dedicated to following back. For instance, if your work is centred on brand promotions, you could go follow people under the #brand which you would find by just doing a search; or ‘#teamfollowback’. All of the latter being people who share a common theme or passion, and from there you get your brand message spread out in a bid to make it go viral.
5. Set up a LinkedIn Page- A Social Media Centrally Dedicated to Business Networks
If you are looking for a vital social media that is centrally dedicated to business networks, look no further than LinkedIn. Here you have the particular luxury of a social media specially built for businesses, both small and large brands. It is therefore necessary to set up a LinkedIn page and to update your profile. The good thing with this tool is that it can be linked to the twitter handle thereby completing the cycle of having all of our brand promotion spots-which include the blog, the Facebook page and the twitter handle all linked together. LinkedIn provides the option of importing your contacts, which can facilitate the growth of your network. The package also comes with an offer to join so many groups, via which you could grow likes and promote your Facebook page, ask peculiar questions from people within the same niche, and access links to lots of relevant and valuable resources. One last but very vital advice relevant to this section would be: source materials around your niche, then post and circulate them via your network. In short create value and you would definitely receive value in return, with your brand being the beneficiary in the long run.
6. Set Up an E-mail Signature Piece Below Your Mail Page
The very last but no less important point under this post would be to do a compilation of all of these earlier mentioned brand promotion spots’ details; putting them together in a card format better known as an e-mail signature often attached below every of your e-mail pages,both personal and official. This is so that every mail sent becomes a potential sell point for your brand.
Conclusively, all of this information put together would run on a very tiny budget but result in so much value for your brand. In return, it fetches a lot of followers and so much priceless goodwill. Now, a start-up can do a whole lot with very helpful information and resources; these would in turn reverse the negative trend of imminent death or no chance of survival- a doomed judgment which the environment today has unilaterally foisted on the start-up brand. “Remember where there is a will, there is always a way.”It is a case of how badly do you want it?
gasmaster
geocartography
easyitthai
