You are a brand.  Your products or services are your brand offerings.  When you add something new to your offerings, that becomes your brand extension.

Let’s say you are a successful author.  You’ve written a great book on marketing.  You’ve promoted the book with advertising, personal appearances, traditional media and even social media.  Your brand, to the consumer, is “marketing expert.”  Now you’re ready to add something new to your services.  You might add consulting, coaching, webinars or live trainings.  But if you were to add a cookbook to your brand, you’d have a great deal of work to do in order to bring people along with you as you evolve your brand from business to baking.  BUT, if cooking is your passion and you’re using cooking as a metaphor for blending, mixing and creating a product, you’d have a brand extension.  If the book were about your favorite cookie recipes, you’d need a new branding strategy.

It’s possible for a personal brand to evolve and include a wide variety of products and services.  However, adding things far afield from a brand’s original DNA is best done once the brand is mature and the brand leader (YOU) is well established and has a strong and loyal following.

For the rest of us, annual evaluation and planning for our emerging brand life cycle is an exercise worth doing.  As you plan your growth, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Where’s the money? What is my most profitable offering right now? In other words, what are people buying from me now?  When people are willing to part with their money to purchase your products or services, that’s the simplest and purest market research.
2. Customer needs: are my current clients or customers asking me for additional information or services I don’t yet provide?  If those services or products are within your skill set, this is the proverbial low hanging fruit.  Put energy and time into providing your current client base with what they are already asking you to offer.
3. Next offer: after I’ve delivered my first product or service to a client, and I know they are happy, what do I want to offer them next?  This is the beginning of your funnel.  Take note of the needs of your clients. See if there are natural additional ways to serve your client base.  Repeat this question after every new product or service to create additional offerings.
4. Brand extension: once you’ve developed a client base the trusts you and is thrilled with what you offer, you can begin to stretch your brand. This is best done in increments.  Taking our example, the marketing book author might now write about sales by making the connection in the consumers mind between sales and marketing and letting marketers know they also have to be salespeople, especially if they are entrepreneurs or small business owners.  Next, our expert might branch out and claim mind share as a provider of information about product development, distribution and even sourcing.  He or she might divide upcoming product offerings into categories that provide deep knowledge in the how-to aspects of each phase of creating new products or services. Then our expert could create speeches, live events, webinars, DVD series, more books and other creative delivery systems for those new products.

Brand development is like story telling. Don’t try to take your reader from “Once Upon a Time,” to “the wicked witch was dead” in two steps. Tell the full story. Lead the consumer through your thinking process by offering logical, helpful, inventive product and service development. And, every step of the way, double check to see that your brand development is ringing true with your customer base.

Do you have questions about extending your brand? Let’s talk.

XYDO’s tagline is Social News Evolved and I have to say I think they’ve nailed it.  The individual buckets or lenses through which XYDO filters my news experience has been terrific.  About 80% of the news items served to me have been spot on in my target interest area.  The other 20% have at least been interesting.

After signing up for an account, I was able to choose the topics, areas of interest and daily briefs I was interested in receiving. I receive world news, top social media news, breaking news and other topics that interest me professionally.  I’ve elected to receive a daily brief of these headlines, which I’m able to scan in minutes each morning and share with my network, right from the brief.  XYDO offers me the opportunity to “teach” it what I like so I’ll receive more targeted news in the future.

In a recent call with XYDO co-founder, Eric Roach, I learned that they curate nearly 2,000 topics selected by their users.  What I love about XYDO is the fact that they don’t just serve me stories from trusted sources (which they do) but that they measure and cluster the stories based on the buzz about a topic, measuring social endorsement and applying their own algorithm  that prizes freshness.

Roach pointed out that because of this formula, XYDO often identifies breaking news and serves it to clients before it hits mainstream media like CNN.

So what’s new for XYDO? I told Roach that I use the briefs more often than I visit the website and that’s something that he would like to influence.  They’re working on improving the experience on the website with a major redesign, making it easier to navigate and will be launching an iphone and ipad app shortly that Roach promises will incorporate a “beautiful, elegant user experience.”  I also asked Roach how he plans to monetize XYDO and he mentioned corporate sponsorships are in the works in the near future.

Bottom line?  XYDO saves me time, serves me news I can use and I’m going to continue to use the service.  I recommend you take a look to see if it’s right for you.

What news aggregating site  or curator do you use?

Among the new features being rolled out this week from Facebook are the enhanced friends lists options which many feel was a response to Google Plus Circles, and the introduction of a Subscribe button with multiple implications and applications.

The subscribe button is, by far, the most radical of the changes and for the first time, allows people who are not your friends to see your personal profile updates if you enable the subscribe button.  So, Guy Kawasaki or Pete Cashmore haven’t accepted your friend request.  Bill Gates is ignoring your pokes and messages.  You can now subscribe to their personal profile posts if they decide to enable Facebook’s new Subscribe button.  Why should you or your brand care?  You should care because Facebook has just opened up an interesting option for celebrities, authors, entrepreneurs, speakers and other high profile public figures to create great reach for their posts, beyond their friendship circle.  However, this comes with some challenges, privacy concerns and the need for those users to understand exactly how this works and what they’ll be sharing.

What does this mean for brands, small businesses and entrepreneurs?

For business people who use their Facebook profile as yet another entry point to their brand, albeit a more casual one, you can now place a subscribe button on your profile.  This allows people who aren’t your friends access to those posts you mark as public. This will be useful to celebrities, speakers, authors or other very public Facebook users who have reached their 5,000 friend cut-off, but still want to allow new friends to see their posts.  If you use your profile strictly for personal communications with family and friends, you’ll want to skip implementing the subscribe button and continue to decline or ignore requests for friend connections with business contacts.

What does this mean for you, the user?

As a user, you can subscribe to the posts of industry leaders, celebrities or political figures who set their personal profiles to allow subscriptions and you can decide what types of posts you want to see.  For example, you can hide all posts related to games so that you’ll never know when Lady Gaga hits a new high score on Bejeweled, but you’ll always be notified when she posts a new photo.

Facebook provides more details and the link to add the Subscribe button to your Facebook profile here. The profile owner can choose to be notified when someone subscribes, too. This is one to watch as it evolves in use.

Will you enable the Subscribe button?  Why or why not?

When used strategically and in synergy with a well-rounded marketing campaign, Twitter is the social whipped cream.

Here are five nifty Twitter tools to add to your entrepreneurial arsenal. Each one brings something special to the table and could add just the sparkle you need for your next campaign.

TWEETDOC

Create a document bringing together all the tweets from a particular event or search term. A tweetdoc allows you to keep a record of what happens on Twitter. You can set parameters such as date and time ranges, number of tweets to capture, hashtags and search terms and capture the Twitter conversation. Great for brand monitoring reports, competitor analysis, real time news stories such as the recent Hurricane Irene reports on Twitter, conference chatter to find and follow influencer’s and other attendees or simply to keep your finger on the pulse of an industry or technology.

TWYLAH

Twylah aggregates your tweets and highlights your brand areas of expertise, based on what you tweet about. It serves them back to you in a beautiful SEO optimized webpage that gives readers a clear visual impression of who you are and what you talk about. When you send a “power tweet” from your Twylah page, your Tweets are captured, organized visually and by keywords and your Twitter followers are directed back to you optimized landing page, which is populated with relevant tweets on the same topic. Twylah gives you yet another piece of high style social real estate to reinforce your brand identity. Seeing all your Tweets in one spot, visually and topically aggregated is an eye-opener too and can serve as a brand audit to help you quickly see if you’re hitting your target messaging or going off topic too often.

TWEETGURU

A quirky series of Twitter tools, auto tweeting bots and services that allows you to, among other things, direct message multiple Twitter accounts at once. You might want to use this feature if you’re reaching out to your personal list of press people on Twitter about a launch party or a big brand announcement. The free version has a limit of 12 accounts at one time for your direct message but this can save you time and that’s the point.

HOOTSUITE

Hootsuite’s free tweet scheduling feature is easy to use and with a modestly priced pro account agencies can manage multiple accounts at once, assign individual tweet action items to team members and keep track of which team member answered the Twitter query and their new analytic tools generate custom reports for clients and play nicely with Google analytics. Hootsuite is a timesaving tool, a team tool, a monitoring tool and a scheduling tool all in one.

TWUBS.COM

Twubs are groups built around content aggregated from hashtags. Twubs gives you a live tweet feed of an event, conference or Twitter Chat based on a specific #hashtag and offers tools such as a Tweetup and Events scheduler. You can register your event hashtag at Twubs, embed a Twub widget on your website, and the Twub offers a complete Conference suite of tools like live moderation, conference displays, live event audio and presentation streaming, RSS feeds and more to engage participants who attend in person or those watching remotely. These features could be used by speakers and can even include photos and videos. A moderator can view the stream in a time delay mode and control which tweets are shown to the audience and which should not be.

What other Twitter tools would you add to the list? Let’s share our favorites here.

The successful entrepreneur will research, test, price and market according to the results of his or her testing or will go straight to market on a concept that has little or no developmental costs.  For example, a business coach who already has a program that he or she does one on one with clients could easily take the program to webinars without much testing by recording it using any number of programs such as Keynote for Mac, Camtasia or ScreenFlow to name a few.

If the entrepreneur has a product or service that delivers value, has identified the likely end user or client and is ready to test the waters, pricing strategies now come into play.

The number one question I get from entrepreneurs is “what should I charge?”

I can’t tell you what to charge for your product or service.  That depends on your niche market, the product or service itself, perceived value, quality of delivery, what your competitors charge and many other variables.  What I can share with you is that most marketing professionals see a significant drop off in opt-ins or purchases when a consumer is given too many choices.  In other words, make your offer simple and increase the chances of consumers taking immediate action and purchasing your product.

There’s a theory that offering more than three choices to people decreases the likelihood of purchase. They become overwhelmed, feel confused and in some cases, suspect that they’ll make the wrong choice and not get the best deal.  Here’s the pricing formula I see most often in researching internet marketing guru sites.  We’ll use consulting services for our example.

The A, B, and C Concept for Consultants

Package A:  This package offers people the chance to consult with you for your highest hourly rate and for the lowest commitment.  For example:  Two sixty-minute calls per month for $500 with a one month commitment required.   In the Package A scenario, people can commit to just one month and pay you $500 to “sample” your services and if your consulting proves valuable, you can convert them to a longer term package.  In this scenario, it’s essential that the consultant bring their A game to Package A, and deliver such value and solution based advice that the client can’t image themselves without your assistance going forward.  In our example, Package A works out to $250 per hour for a total client commitment of $500.

Package B:  This package offers the best value and is the one you really want people to choose because you know that you can make a bigger difference in your client’s business or life if you have more time to do so.  So you make it significantly more desirable financially to choose Package B, BUT you require the client to commit to a longer package and thus a larger financial investment.   For example:  Two sixty-minute calls each month for a three month period would be priced at a discounted $225 per call.  Clients save $25 per hour by committing to a three-month package.  Package B offers the client a total of 6 consultations at $225 each for contractual agreement of $1,350 and a savings of $150 over your standard hourly consulting fee.

Package C:  This package is your high-end offer and requires the longest commitment but gives the highest value.  Here you are rewarding clients who are willing to invest in intensive committed work with you by giving them the steepest discount BUT making them commit to the highest out of pocket cost.  If clients choose this package, they’ll be saving $3,000 over your regularly hourly consulting rate.  This package would offer one 60-minute call per week for a total of three months or 12 calls at $200 for $2,400.

The thinking behind these package strategies is that the clients who choose Package A are exploring.  The clients who choose Package B want to invest in their business but are cautious and careful and want experiential proof that you can deliver what they need.  The clients who choose Package C are ready to move forward in their business, believe you are the one who can help them and want to take advantage of the maximum financial discount you’re offering.

Whatever package they choose, your job there is to over deliver to the point that they feel they truly desire to have more of your time and they’ll contract for more or if their needs have been met, they’ll give you a great reference you can use to attract other clients.

At the end of any Package contract, always ask the client if their needs were met.  If not, work to rectify that.  If so, ask if they will give you a testimonial quote that you can use on your website.  Most people will say yes.  Then you’ll be promoting your services with positive, real life case study quotes.

Nearly every guru or expert mentions consistent engagement as a routine or habit that contributes to online success.

Ever since the publication of  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, people been fascinated with the notion that there are some common traits, habits, rituals or routines that all successful people embrace.  They extrapolate that by adopting these same routines or habits they, too, might be able to tap into their own path to personal and professional success.

In speaking with leaders in a wide variety of fields, I’ve come to realize that this is not entirely true.  The habits or routines followed by leaders are as diverse as are their talents.

Still, a recent Twitter conversation about daily habits and successful business leaders, prompted  me to ask 14 top performers in a wide variety of fields to share one thing they do, every day, they feel has contributed significantly to their success.

Here’s are the lessons I gleaned from what they shared.  The headlines are my interpretation of their routine or habit.

1.  Associate with interesting people

Robert Scoble, Robert Scoble, Blogger, Tech Evangelist and Rackspace Executive

“For years now my main habit is to have a different conversation, every day, with someone who is DOING something interesting!  I’ve kept doing that for years, and recording almost all of them, and that has enriched my life immeasurably (and my career, too). I make sure I always keep my calendar full with at least one conversation with someone different.”

2.   Pay yourself first

Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analyst, Altimeter Group

“Opening and responding to emails is often the act of paying someone else –instead I ‘pay myself first’ by researching, reading, and writing my thoughts on a blog each morning for about 2 hours before responding to email.”

3.  Make technology serve your needs

Ben Parr, Editor-At Large at Mashable

“I have a private wiki that I use to organize my entire life. It has a list of what I want to accomplish, my personal philosophies, important links and even my bucket list.”

4.  Clear your head and keep your energy high

Loic Le Meur, founder of Seesmic.com and LeWeb.net Conference.

“I run nearly every day. That makes me relax and take some distance about daily projects. While many think it’s tiring, when you get into it you actually feel an incredible energy kick for the entire day if you run in the morning. It makes me feel happy and nice to my coworkers and makes me forget about annoying things I would otherwise have a tendency to focus on.  Otherwise, I could not understand technology the way I do if TechMeme wasn’t there.”

5.  Eat your own dog food.

Laura Fitton, CEO/Founder Oneforty.com and co-author of Twitter for @Dummies

“I actually ‘eat my own dog food!’ Every day I use SocialBase (our social media productivity management software) to stay on top of my social media presence. It lets me easily track tasks and bookmark the tools and platforms that I need to keep updated every day. It reminds me of my daily, weekly & monthly recurring tasks, and gives me a jumping off point to execute them in one single spot.”

6.  Flex your spiritual muscle

Michael Stelzner, founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com and author of Launch

“I pray! I thank God for working through me, pray for inspiration and ask for encouragement during the difficult moments. The Lord has always taken care of me.  This is something I do in my car just before I walk on into the office.”

7.  Practice what you teach

Mari Smith, Facebook, Social Media & Relationship Marketing Specialist, Author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day

“Every day, I personally respond to as many messages as I can, whether by email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I do my best to make time to thank and acknowledge people. As Sir Richard Branson says, “lavish praise on people.” I agree wholeheartedly. People love to be heard and I pride myself on being inclusive and treating others as equals. At the end of each day, I can sleep peacefully knowing I’ve reached out and connected with as many people as possible and it ultimately all helps to build social equity.”

8.  Keep an inquisitive mind

Rieva Lesonsky, CEO GrowBiz Media

“One of the keys to my success, is I “explore” every day. I check Twitter, read the newsletters I subscribe to, go to my favorite websites. There’s so much information out there which can inspire or inform something I’m working on.  As busy as I may be, I make sure to do this every day.”

9. Replenish your resources

Gretchen Rubin, author of New York Times bestseller, The Happiness Project

“My habit: Getting enough sleep. Research makes it clear that sleep has an enormous influence on our mood, health, energy, athletic performance — lack of sleep may even contribute to weight gain! The top two reasons for people to be in bad moods at work? Tight work deadlines and lack of sleep. As a writer, my mental acuity and energy are critically important. I see a huge difference in my analytical capacity, my creativity, and my productivity based on how wide-awake I feel. It’s hard to turn out the light before I finish that chapter or answer one last email, but now I’m zealous about getting enough sleep.”

10.  Plan for success

David Zinczenko, Editor in Chief, Men’s Health

“I get in before the rest of my staff almost every day. It’s the only time that I can concentrate on writing, editing, and other close work. Once the team is here, it’s all about meeting and managing. I’m a nutrition guy, so I stock my office with healthy snacks and drinks like almonds, trail mix, dried fruit and coconut water. It keeps my energy up, and I don’t need to waste time running out to look for something to eat. And, I go to the gym almost every day at lunchtime, and read through emails on a stationary bike. It makes the second half of my day much more energetic, and I take less time—and get more done—during a workout than during most business lunches.”

11.  Trust your intuition

Maria Andros, The Video Marketing Queen, creator of The Social Media Traffic Blueprint and The Video Conversion Formula.

“I think that the biggest key to my success has always been strengthening my intuition on a daily basis. I download ideas and get inspiration for the content of all my programs much like an artist does. Often it’s very easy to let our analytical minds take over and keep us stuck. I feel that the more we are in tune with our inner guidance, the more we can make the right decisions to move our businesses forward. For example before I partner with anyone, or create a new product, I listen, for if it’s a hell YES or not. If not, I do not proceed, as that will only have a impact down the road. I have learned the hard way in the past.  I practice listening to my inner voice and my gut and it’s almost always accurate. I highly recommend building this muscle as it can make a great difference in your results.  I think that some of the most successful people in business are very in tune with their intuition and this helps them to stay on track and moving forward.”

12.  Banish the naysayers

Kathy Kinney, Actress and Author and literacy advocate

“I get out of my own way. ”

13.  Find your creative zone

Wally Lamb, #1 New York Times bestselling author of She’s Come Undone, and I know this Much is True

“Since I began writing fiction 30 years ago, I have always found the shower to be a place where my creativity is unleashed. I hit the ‘rain room’ each morning before I hit the button on the computer. The earlier the better–5:00 a.m., if possible.”

14.  Create space to think

Peggy Rajski, Academy Award Winning Director Of Trevor and co-founder of The Trevor Project

The daily habit that contributes to my success is morning meditation.  I’ve done it for over 20 years.  I usually sit for 20 minutes or more, but honestly, even 5 minutes does the trick.  I feel more resilient, ready to take on the challenges of the day, and less likely to experience ‘I think I’m going to kill you if you don’t do what I want’ versus ‘I think this is kind of funny that I can’t get what I want.’ But more often than not, I do get what I want–or understand that what I’m getting is what I need regardless of what I think I want.

15.  Cindy Ratzlaff, Author, Speaker, Consultant

It’s only fair that I share mine as well.  I set a success goal every morning, for that day.  I write it on a white board in my office and when I find myself being pulled off track, I ask myself “will this action serve today’s goal?”  If not, I set it aside until I’ve accomplished the daily goal.

Are there habits or routines you can incorporate in your own life to achieve a higher level of business success?  Please share and let’s see if we can enrich one another’s daily practices toward higher levels of achievement.

First, when you share valuable information through social bookmarking, you position yourself as a resource to your online community.  You train your potential customers to follow you to stay up to date and in the know on advances, news and strategies in their fields of interest.

Social sharing creates social influence for you and the original content creator.

When you comment on a blog post, and, this is important–add to the conversation by contributing additional resources, original thoughts or insights–you also position yourself as an individual or brand highly engaged in your field of expertise.  The more interesting your comments are, the more likely people will follow your digital footprint back to your home base and subscribe, follow, friend or bookmark you.

Share to Position Yourself as a Leader

When you read a blog post you like from a writer whose work you value or respect, leave a comment. By doing so, you provide a service. Google and other search engines pay attention to the amount of interaction that takes place on a website and the more interaction, the higher the social authority of that particular blog.

Think about it in this way.

1. You’re at a business conference where you hear a presentation about a new technology coming out of a brand new start-up.
2. You go back to your company and tell your colleagues to check out this new start-up because they have some valuable marketing tools that might help you on an upcoming project.
3. Your firm hires these new innovators for a project which is hugely success because of their new technology.
4. They grow and continue to innovate and help your whole industry.
5. You are a hero at your company and you, in turn, consider that original business conference to be your new “must attend” event.
6. HOWEVER,  if you attend the conference but tell no one about what you’ve learned, their start-up fails to thrive and grow for lack of customers  and eventually they don’t produce any new ideas or products and perhaps even go under.
7. Everyone loses; the start-up, your company, and you.

The same thinking applies to blogs. If you find a blogger is consistently providing you with valuable tips and strategies, then commenting is your way of encouraging Google rank them well and ultimately to help others find this blogger. So being a conscientious blog content consumer by subscribing and leaving comments is a way for you to contribute to the ecosystems you inhabit. And, in return, you garner social equity for yourself as an aggregator of useful information, a leader in connecting your fans and followers needs to resources they can use and as an informed player in the marketplace.

Bookmarking Benefits

Social Bookmarking is another responsible way to help spread valuable or entertaining information. In addition to leaving a comment, go to one of the many social bookmarking sites and recommend the blog post to others. Social bookmarks are a way for you to save links to posts you’ve found helpful, and others can subscribe to your bookmarks.  By bookmarking a blog, story or news article, you create a home for it where you can easily access it and refer to it again later.

This serves as a visibility strategy for you because you found the post or blog, and now, by bookmarking it, you’re telling other that it’s worth reading.  You increase your own social currency as someone who passes on great information and ideas, and you increase the visibility of the original blogger.

It’s Called “Social” Media for a Reason

Social Media is, at it’s heart, people engaging and sharing ideas with one another. So remember to consume information and pass on the tips and strategies that you find most useful. In this way you become a valuable resource to your followers, you become more visible to those you follow and you foster a sharing mentality throughout your network.

Some social bookmarking site you might consider using include:

* Digg
* Delicious
* StumbleUpon
* Reddit

Please let me know if you have a bookmark list so I can consider subscribing. It’s time to create conversations about YOU by creating conversations about others.

The dot com’s, dot net’s and dot co’s will still be the mainstay, however, because the new branding opportunity for companies to use, say .Nike, will come at a steep price.

According to Mashable.com, these new opportunities will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of the usual $9.99 and the annual renewal could be as high as $25,000. So the majority of businesses and entrepreneurs will still be using the generic URLs.

Will there be a massive “land grab” for .socialmedia, .food, .organic, .Auto? On your mark, get set, go.

Many still fear that Twitter is a time rabbit hole and that building a large following on Twitter will unleash a time commitment they can’t accommodate.

Here are eight timesaving tools to help any sized business or individual entrepreneur find, follow, engage or manage their time on Twitter for productive results.

1. Twellow: This site is the Yellow Pages of Twitter.  This free site allows you to register your Twitter account under three different keywords such as marketing, branding, social media or whatever keywords a potential client might enter to find your business.  Listing your Twitter account here will help others to find you when searching for the service or product you provide. Therefore, leads or followers coming from Twellow are more likely than average to be seeking what you have to offer. It’s fast and easy to register and worth your time.  Additionally, if you use Twellow while logged into your Twitter account and Twellow, you can search, find and follow others directly from the platform.
2. Twitter App for Facebook: The Twitter stream is a fast moving conversation and therefore, your tweets once out of sight are out of mind.  Making any content you create do double duty is a good timesaving strategy.  Using this app to cause Facebook to auto-post from Facebook to your Twitter account makes your daily Facebook post work harder by also speaking to your Twitter followers. And, the added benefit is the way this app creates a truncated link to bring people back to your Facebook page to read a post that is longer.  This is a subtle invitation for Twitter followers interested enough to click the link to continue reading to “like” your Facebook page.  Again, always ask your content to work in multiple ways.
3. SocialToo: Auto follow everyone who follows you. I’m a believer in auto following everyone who follows me on Twitter. It’s an easy way to build your following and allows people who find you to DM or Direct Message you on Twitter. I’ve been interviewed by national newspapers and contacted by future clients this way and had I not employed a policy of auto following, they would not have been able to reach me as easily and quickly.  I upgraded from a free account at SocialToo to a one-time $10 fee to use their set it and forget it auto follow tool. I love this feature and cannot recommend it enough.
4. Hootsuite: In my opinion, Hootsuite is one of the best social media dashboards for managing Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin accounts at a glance and pre-scheduling tweets. I use it regularly manage 10 or more Twitter accounts alone, using Hootsuite and their newly enhanced metrics are terrific for creating client reports and for insight into which marketing messages are working and which are falling on deaf ears and may need tweaking.
5. Tweetbeep: Google for Twitter. Set alerts for your keywords, your business name and your competitors to keep yourself in the loop and to find good information to tweet to your followers.
6. Tweepi: This handy site allows you to weed out the accounts that don’t follow you back, to reciprocate those that follow you first and to clean out inactive accounts from your Twitter tribe.  A free version is suitable for smaller accounts and a paid version adds significantly more functionality for larger accounts or agencies.
7. Tweetchat: Follow hashtag conversations in real time without distractions.  By doing so, you can quickly and easily find people talking about keywords and topics that interest you or your potential customer. Use hashtag conversations to bring yourself and your brand to the attention of others by participating in interesting, on-point twitter conversations.
8. Timely: Analyze your Twitter patterns and get recommendations on times of day when your followers are most likely see, read and respond to your posts.

What other tools are in your Twitter toolkit?  If you have tools and strategies for maximizing your time on Twitter, I’d love to hear about them.  Let’s share with one another.

Can you put your core offering into one compelling sentence?

I always ask them, for the purpose of achieving those goals, to shift their focus from the end result to the first challenge; clearly stating their unique value to a potential customer.  This “why to buy” focus helps businesses center their marketing, branding and public relations messages around the most important point of all—their offering.

F.O.C.U.S stands for “Find Our Core Unique Service.”  Figuring this out helps companies address one of the four key elements of branding; variation.  Asking the tough questions, doing the research and creating clear, concise communications will save entrepreneurs and even bigger companies time, money and frustration.

Some questions to ask to help define the unique service or selling proposition are:

How is this service or product different from all others in the competitive set?

• Less expensive, more detailed, easier to use, more conveniently located?

Does the personality of this business or service give it something special?

• Is the business or service provider more highly qualified, more experienced, personally enriched by the product usage?

Why would someone choose this product or service from all other choices available?

• Better customer service and support, first to market, more stylish packaging, more rave reviews, higher perceived value?

Try to put your core offering into one compelling sentence.  This exercise will tell you if you’ve nailed your F.O.C.U.S.  I invite you to post your F.O.C.U.S. statement here and I’ll give you my opinion on whether or not your statement conveys your F.O.C.U.S. to me.  Go.