What makes you memorable is more than what is unique about you: your brand is sourced in the value you provide to your audience, and how they see it.

In the rush to market, small business owners often let their branding fend for itself, thinking it will evolve on its own.

How do you source your brand? Identify and address the three essentials of Brand Clarity.

I am often asked, “What should a mission statement look like?”

You could think of it like this: “It’s how we do business.”

You have a vision, but that speaks to the ideal. Mission gets into the everyday. Mission Statements can be any length. You may even want to use more than one.

Most marketing plans fade away out of sight, out of mind— and out of date in a desk drawer that never sees sunlight, or buried in a folder subtitled “Ignore This.”

Why? Because written plans usually sprout from the seeds of their own demise. Such plans raise sugar plum guesstimates untethered to reality and skewed inside narratives that read like a business fairy tale.

Is there an antidote to the folderol? Yes!

As a business owner, you do not simply tape a flyer to a lamp post and expect the world to beat a path to your door. We live in the era of “content marketing” which demands more than ever from you to establish and expand a credible presence. That almost always requires having a modern online identity.

We often hear how essential repetition is for building a brand and staking a claim in a crowded marketplace. Yet what matters most in networking conversations is exactly that… it’s the quality of the conversation. People want to engage in dialogue, not fend off a canned mini-speech or sales pitch.

How can you do this? Ask yourself these 5 questions to simplify what you say and make your message worth hearing.

Old fashioned Identity Theft, thievery and amateur hacking has grown way worse, despite all the precautions that major companies take to protect online clients and activity. 

Yes, you are at risk. Yet there is something you can do for yourself.

I am often asked by clients in the midst of building out their first website, if they need an FAQ page or post. And if yes, what to include. (Frequently Asked Questions.)

What follows is a real-life sample based on my own business, which you can use to spark ideas for your own.

The news these days is full of ethical questions about social media, and business owners (of any size) worry when they may have a sudden bad turn in the limelight themselves. Yet there is a bigger issue at hand. Our 2 Infographics are free, and offer a practical context for action.