In preparation for the launch, the following notice is up on the account management system:

For those of you that can’t see the image it states:

Scheduled Maintenance:

“Please be aware that we will be performing scheduled system maintenance on Friday, July 31, starting at 10pm EDT, lasting approximately 7 hours. During that time you will not be able to access networksolutions.com or log-in to your Network Solutions account.

We value your business and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause”.

If you want to check out the information on your account system before the maintenance go to https://www.networksolutions.com/manage-it/index.jsp

Did you get the email on the new Network Solutions?
This past week as a customer of Network Solutions I got a great email introducing me to the new Network Solutions. It looks like the picture on the right. So you don’t have to read the fine print, it says:

In recent months, we’ve asked you to tell use how we can better serve your needs and improve the products and services that we provide. We’ve received an overwhelming amount of valuable feedback which is driving a reinvention of our company.

On August 1, 2009, much of the hard work we’ve been doing to improve your overall Network Solutions experience will be on full display. Here is what you can expect:

- Every need addressed. We’ve re-engineered and simplified our products and services to better meet your specific needs.

- Find what’s right for you. The new networksolutions.com has been restructured to give you control over how you browse—whether you’re an individual, business owner, designer or developer.

- Get the guidance you need, when you need it. We’ve developed more robust support and educational tools to help you start and grow your business online. Plus, we’ve enhanced our community websites so that you can freely interact and learn from others just like you.

If you want to see what is to come this weekend, check out the preview at http://preview.networksolutions.com/index.php

See you on the other side of the weekend with a new look and and a new and improved Network Solutions.

Everyone thinks they know how brands work and pretty much everyone of them have no clue. Despite these brands which result in their most identifiable element – the logo, the concept of branding has become less of an art and more about category creation and domination or dare I say survival of the fittest.

This is where The Origin of Brands by Al & Laura Ries comes in to profess and demystify that message.

Is it Really Like Survival of the Fittest?

With a title inspired by Darwin’s “The Origin of the Species”, Al and Laura Ries, who are father and daughter have become know for their series of books on marketing which started with The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. They take the approach that evolution is a useful analogy for marketers. Throughout the book, readers are encouraged to think of Darwin’s tree of life.

While their travels did not take them to the Galápagos Islands it did however take them around the world studying all the top brands and why they are great. There are many trees and the branches outward that make them diverse. Quoting Publishers Weekly “For example, the television tree used to consist solely of the three networks, but now comprises an array of cable and satellite offerings. The “phone” tree includes cellular, picture, computer, digital and other varieties. Using many examples, the authors explore this notion: “Competition between individuals (brands) improves the species. Competition between species (categories) drives the categories further and further apart.” To survive in today’s competitive market where technology makes innovations much faster than in the past, companies must continue to introduce new computers, cars, phones, food, etc”

Despite the expansion and innovation that a company could experience in “branching out” to other offerings on their respective tree, they run the risk of not being profitable and delivering for their shareholders. You see this all the time with fast food places, soft drink companies, sport clothing companies,

The Whole Point of the Book

The key to success and the whole point of the book that the authors offer specific advice on surrounds devising a new category rather than a brand. Much like the dot com era when many tech companies were creating new brand spaces and working with Gartner or other analysts to own that space. Siebel did it with CRM, Oracle did it with databases and Microsoft with desktop software. On pages 169-170 they list all these great brands who were first in their space.

Reading this book you take away that only the most innovative marketers will be triumphant  if they create a category and launch with a clever name as well, such as Starbucks did for the high-end coffee-shop category.

Who is this book for?

While the book is primarily directed at readers working in marketing, advertising and related fields, managers and executives at both large and small businesses will benefit from it as well.

Would I Buy It?

Probably not, but others should. I went through it pretty quickly and with a fairly strong marketing background I get the essence of what it was trying to say, which was pretty logical. However, if I was an entrepreneur that had no clue about marketing or branding, then I would totally own this book and keep it forever. It helps you think about your competitive space especially when you are looking to be different, be innovative and demonstrate why investors should put money in your business, then this book would be perfect for you. If you are established in business and trying to focus or “prune” as they call it in the book then I would also take a quick read.

If you want other reviews from the pros and from the passionate readers, check out their page on Amazon.

True, this is nothing really new about personal branding. There are experts on it, books about it and passionate detractors. However, with sites like Twitter and Facebook creating very valuable property if you can get your name and/or your company name to extend your personal brand, it is more important all the time. Most people don’t know who the heck you are but they can through techniques like Personal Branding and establishing yourself as a Thought Leader in your area of expertise. Jay lays out a nice and simple 10 point plan to accomplish this and own your “personal brand” and the space you plan to occupy.

10 Simple Rules to Effective Personal Branding

1.) Be Your own Brand Manager (develop your brand marketing plan, how are you going to promote, set specific measurable goals)

2.) Determine your USP (what makes you distinctive, how can you enhance your unique skills)

3.) Follow Your Passion (where do you like to hangout, what do you

4.) Listen to everyone else

5.) Embrace Your Inner Author (Create Unique Content)

6.) Build Your New (Set a goal to make a few quality connections, give to get ask about them, Ask about them)

7.) Volunteer to Shine (Develop new skills, enhance skill through freelance opportunities)

8.) Innovate to Lead

9.) Be Entrepreneurial – Entrepreneur is a verb

10.) Speak Up! – Go to Toastmasters, Presentation Zen

I think that no matter how you feel about the term “Personal Branding” you can’t deny that with all the content and bombardment of information we receive every minute of the day it is harder and harder to be recognized. Jay is convinced that this will become even more critical in participating in Web 2010 and he is probably right on target.

What are your thoughts and feelings on “Personal Branding”?

I know there are experts out there, dectractors and people learning this approach and I want to hear from you all. Leave a comment on whether you think this will be important now, next year and beyond.

Photo Credit: Digital Mommy

(Why am I writing like this? Short, choppy sentence fragments? Because I just re-read the Tom Peters article about personal branding.)

Anyway, back before we started counting strangers, random acquaintances, and search engine hits as friends and followers, we had a term that more or less covered personal branding: “reputation.”  (This term has also been co-opted by marketing types.)

Back then, reputation meant how you were seen by your peers (as well as other people you dealt with, but your reputation among your peers was key). If you were an average low- to mid-level corporate drone (like me), reputation was all about if you knew what you were talking about, and if you knew how to get stuff done. And unless you made it into the news (either for good or bad accomplishments), reputation propagated pretty slowly, and pretty locally.

Enter the Search Engine

Of course, the Web changed all that, because we started posting more stuff publicly — at first, usually under an online persona or handle. Then, we made things globally accessible. And then we made them easier to find, and then even easier to tie to our true life identities, and then started posting stuff resembling actual work. All of which has pretty much nuked the idea of separate online personas, and paved the way for the concept of a ubiquitous personal brand.

Handles, Nicks and Brands as Shortcuts

Now, this entry started out as simply a followup to my earlier entry about the ubiquity of Twitter handles. For many of us who came up in Web 1.0, our online identities started as handles picked for reasons clever or mundane, which were naturally used for vanity domains, and then were just as naturally used for usernames in the second explosion of online presence.

If you were lucky enough or had enough forethought, you could use the same identity across all these locations (though not the same password, right?). Plus, if you had a relatively common name, or one dominated by someone truly famous, it was a way to route people around to you.

Actually, I still think that handles and nicknames have a value in helping direct people to different aspects of our expertise and ourselves. Hell, that’s what company names are for, right? They’re not meant to obscure identity, but to enhance it. Or at least focus it to particular areas. Depending on your OS, handles are aliases, shortcuts, or symbolic links to your identity.

Now that I think of it, there’s one last downside to personal branding that’s tied to your name, to borrow an example from the security experts. One of the problems with biometrics is that if your information gets compromised, you’re kind of stuck — you can’t get new fingerprints or a new retina (though I guess they’re working on cancelable biometrics now — keep in mind that this is just a metaphor.) If your name is your brand, I suppose you’d just better not screw up. Though I guess it’s easier to change your name than your fingerprint (less painful, too). But still.

Anyway, did any of this make sense? I’m not sure myself. Perhaps I am hurting my personal brand by posting it. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Building brand is something that you start doing & then build on it. It can be as simple as the suggestions in the Word of Mouth article. As you have success you can add to it. The nice thing about establishing your brand & marketing your business online is that it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. But it will require you to consistently invest time.

For my example I’m going to use a niche business & customer segment that I worked with for almost two years. Let’s consider a professional photographer that wants to sell her photos online. She has created a site for posting proofs from portrait & event shoots. And she also has created a section where she displays her nature & landscape photography that’s for sale.

So, she’s ready for business right? Her clients can view their proofs, place them in the cart & order them. But how can she get the word out about her service & her nature photography?

Here are a number of ideas that you can use immediately. Some also work for your personal blog. In upcoming articles I will be covering the following:

Brand Monitoring & Responding

Having a blog (forums for more conversation if it makes sense)

Monitoring Site Traffic & Trends

Newsletter

Listing Sites

Online Press Releases

Participation in Social Networking sites

Utilizing an Events service

What would you add to this list?

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