A simple brand test

Are you confident that everyone in your organization knows and understands what it takes to build your brand?

Tomorrow at work, stop everyone you meet in your organization and ask them this one simple question: "What do you have to do to deliver on our brand promise?"

Ask the question and then remain silent and listen.

When you get back to your office, write down all the answers you hear.

You might just gain a better understand about your brand and how to better communicate it to the outside world. I'll also bet your next action plan will focus within your four walls before you worry about that big, nasty outside world of customers.

Small business & entrepreneurial branding

Have you ever wondered how small business owners and entrepreneurs might have an advantage over large companies when it comes to building a powerful and successful brand?

When it comes to building a powerhouse brand, the little guys have a huge advantage over the big guys because small businesses and entrepreneurs do not suffer from organizational inertia and usually the vision of the founder of the company is closely linked to the essence of the brand and embedded in the organization. Entrepreneurs have a chance to build entire businesses based on a powerful brand promise while large companies tend to drift away from the original promise that made them compelling and then they foolishly spend millions to try to "re-brand" which may or may not be possible.

I'm researching my next book on small business and entreprenuial branding and want your questions, feedback and case studies now! You can participate in the writing of this next book by letting me know what information about small business and entrepreneurial branding you think is most important to cover. Also, if you have a small business branding case study, please share it with me and if it is appropriate, it might just make it in the book.

Please fill out my brief questionnaire at www.BrandTrellis.com if you have an interest.

Top 150 Marketing Blogs

Todd And is currently tracking the top 150 marketing blogs by using a variety of rankings plus his own weighting system to make the determinations. Check it out because you'll find a wealth of quality marketing blogs on this list.

Online branding

Rich McIver has written a very good piece about how to build your brand on the web. His article, "Little Known Ways to Brand on the Cheap: 99 Tips for Poor Web Startups", offers excellent tips on how to build an online brand whether you are a blogger or simply trying to build your brand online.

A brand is an identifiable entity that makes some specific promise of value. Those brands that need to communicate that value online will almost assuredly find something useful in Rich's tip sheet.