… and what it’s not.
The Media Orchard blog has an interesting post about brands and branding. They take on Jeff Bezo’s comment that “a brand for a company is like a reputation for a person.” And rightly so. As the Baradels’ team at the Orchard point out, branding is a little more complex than that.
Instead, they say, branding is much more:
Branding is all about personification — giving human traits to things that aren’t human … Branding communicates the continuity of a company’s business model — to shareholders, to customers, to employees. It says, “This is the kind of person we are — if we were actually a person.”
But here’s the hard truth to the matter:
Corporations are not human. And that’s a good thing, because if they were human, they would be sociopaths. This isn’t a cheap shot. A sociopath is a person who is interested only in their personal needs and desires. By definition, corporations are designed expressly to serve the interests of their shareholders — and only those interests.
Now, these are important facts to bring up when discussing brands and branding, but they only tell part of the story.
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Posted by Mike Bawden under Much Ado About Marketing
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I get tired of hearing carping from my freelance friends about never having enough work. After a while, it starts to sound a bit like little birds waiting to be fed.Scott Baradell and the rest of the pickers over at Media Orchard pointed my blog-surfing in the direction of this great self-help post from Matthew Stibbe and the Bad Language blog. Here are some of Matthew’s 27 tips for freelancers to market themselves:
#1. Wake up! No marketing = no business. (Duh!)
#4. Allocate time to do a little marketing work every day.
#6. Keep marketing when you’re busy.
#12. React fast.
#13. Automate processes.
#18. Follow up.
#23. Work for intra-company recommendations.
The whole list can be found here.
The funniest thing in the whole post, to me anyway, is that Matthew lists “PR” as one of the things that doesn’t work for getting new business. While I would agree that the traditional “media relations” thing is probably not a good way for a solo-practitioner to spend his or her time, there are other aspects of public relations (specifically the relationship-building skills with existing clients, etc.) that helps build networks, referrals and, eventually, business.
Positioning and reputation are also two cornerstones of a solid PR program that anyone, including freelancers, can benefit from.
