Cindy Ratzlaff

Bestselling author, award winning brand marketing and social media pro, Cindy Ratzlaff, creates sales driving campaigns for authors, books and publishers.

7 Brand Visibility Superstars | Maximum Visibility Blogging

By Cindy Ratzlaff

7 Blog Strategies for Brand Visibility

Most people do not think of themselves as brands.  They think of themselves as having a great, marketable idea or a top-notch marketing tool or a book or motivational speech, but not as a brand.  Viewing yourself, and therefore your product, as a brand will clarify the steps needed to take your idea, product or self out into the world and connect with consumers.  Here are 7 quick blogging strategies you can adopt, right now, to boost your visibility and build you brand into a sales driving machine.

7 quick blogging strategies you can adopt right now

  1. Blog:

    If you’re not blogging, you’re missing an important opportunity to spell out exactly who you are and what you offer to consumers in a way that positions you as a thought leader in your area of expertise.  You can start a blog on WordPress or Blogger in minutes, and for free.  No excuses on this one.  As Nike says, “Just do it.” When I started my blog, I used my very first post to clearly share exactly what my brand stands for and to announce my presence to the waiting world.  I also used that first post to establish my brand voice; personal, intimate, transparent.

  2. Guest blog:

    Take your expertise out to the world by offering to guest blog for larger websites.  In the last few months, I’ve written several blog articles for major sites such as Oprah.com.  Doing so increased my visibility and helped bring my work to a new audience. The key when blogging for other sites is to make sure that you speak to that sites audience interests while still maintaining your own brand voice.  I loved writing for Oprah.com because I was able to talk about overcoming challenges, which is just one element in developing a strongly branded platform.

  3. Encourage Discussion:

    Blog posts that give step-by-step how-to information about a topic in which you are a pro will be highly viewed, encourage questions and responses and will increase your social currency as a teacher.  A recent post on the blog Social Media Examiner by Nick Shin garners more than 214 questions and comments and another 752 retweets.  That’s valuable word of mouth brand building.

  4. Lists:

    Creating blog posts with lists is a spectacularly easy way to encourage other people to link to your post and provided info nuggets for a fast read. Darren Rowse of Problogger.com says lists can be short, they are pleasing to the eye and they are very likely to be passed on to others.

  5. Listen:

    Check your Google analytics for some real insight into what your followers want from you.  I wrote a post on How to Add a Twitter Button to your Facebook Fan Page more than a year ago that still ranks as the #1 draw to my website, so recently I updated it to reflect Facebook’s new look and added visuals to help people understand the instructions.

  6. Be Provocative:

    I wrote a piece called “Bacon and Book Marketing Strategies” to illustrate the value in keeping up on trends. This piece spoke to my audience with humor but also grabbed the attention of a wider consumer base and brought new readers to my blog.

  7. Re-purpose your content:

    As new people find and follow your blog, don’t be shy about bring up older posts and introducing them as a resource to this new groups of followers. Blogging powerful, useful content is a key component in my Maximum Visibility Plan.

I invite you to post a link here to the blog post you think best illustrates one of these ideas.

Five Questions with the Expert | Career Reinvention When An Industry Changes

By Cindy Ratzlaff

Catcher in the Sky’s Lisa Gordon

Lisa Gordon spent two decades at the top of her field in advertising sales for newspapers and magazines like Time, Real Simple, Prevention and Entertainment Weekly. When her industry took a particularly hard hit as the economic climate worsened, she realized that she needed to reinvent herself, add to her skill set and move forward without looking back.  Lisa’s transformation took her from old school, traditional communications to the new high tech and cutting edge world of app development.  We caught up with Lisa recently to ask her five questions about her reinvention process.

RATZLAFF:

Your background is in print advertising sales and sales management, how did you make the leap to developing mobile apps?

GORDON:

I spent more than twenty years in businesses related to ad sales. When I started
working in the 1980’s I was in a thriving field with no end in sight. I could
never have guessed what kind of atrophy would occur this many years later.
When my oldest son went to kindergarten I was experiencing a lot of personal
upheaval and was in the fortunate financial position to take some time off to be
with my kids. After three or four years I started thinking about getting back to
work. By this time, newspapers and magazines were closing all over the country.

It was clear that I could not go back to a vanishing industry.

I had had my own business for ten years so the idea of going back into business
for myself was a very attractive one. Having some time off gave me the insight I
needed to break from my rut. I contacted a former colleague and we
brainstormed ideas for more than a year. With an idea in hand, we consulted with
a dear and successful friend who gave us direction. In the end, our app has
nothing to do with any of our original business ideas.

RATZLAFF:

What do you find to be the biggest challenges in starting over in an industry that is not just new to you, but new in general?

GORDON:

Actually the easy part is starting in a new industry. I embrace the challenge of
learning something new. The difficult part is the fact that the industry is new.
There are no real experts yet. The app industry is growing at an exponential
pace. It seems like everyone is learning by trial and error and what worked last month, won’t necessarily work this month. Being part of this Wild West is fascinating to experience from the inside.

RATZLAFF:

Your apps, NameCatcher and NameCatcher Biz help people to remember names of acquaintances. What inspired you to create these apps?

GORDON:

For the most part it was born out of necessity. My partner and I both have young children and I have an aging father. Just through our kid’s activities and my dad’s caregivers, new people, acquaintances, really, come in and out of our lives regularly. These people are important to us, but sometimes it is just hard to remember all of the names and how we know them. It can be embarrassing to keep asking people to repeat their names. As a regular user of my own app, I have seen how good it makes someone feel when they are remembered.

RATZLAFF:

You and your partner both have marketing backgrounds. Can you share your thinking on how you’ll go about marketing your apps?

GORDON:

One very interesting thing about this app is when people see it or hear about it they
instantly know how they would fit it into their own life. And, everyone thinks they
are our demographic. The truth is, nearly everyone with an iPhone is our
demographic. As exciting as it is to have the millions of iPhone users as possible
users, such a broad audience is hard to reach. So, we have broken down the possible
users by category and are targeting them individually. So for example, we speak to
“mom” targets differently than we do to our Boomer targets. We will often break
those targets down even further so we can speak directly not generically.

RATZLAFF:

What advice would you give to someone who wants to get into the mobile app business or any new business for that matter?

GORDON:

  • Start with a great idea, but be flexible as to how it can work as an app.
  • Get a basic understanding of the app business and the available platforms before investing any money.
  • If you are not technical, hire the right people who are. If you are not good at marketing, hire someone who is.
  • Never get comfortable with the way things are because they will change.

Both NameCatcher and NameCatcher Biz are available for download at itunes and readers can find more information about the company, Catcher in the Sky, on their website.

Five Questions with the Expert | Children’s Literacy Icon Mrs. P

By Cindy Ratzlaff

Mrs. P’s photo by Jacqueline Veissid

While businesses, public figures, celebrities and authors know the importance of adding social media to their outreach strategy in order to bring their message and brand to the more than 500 million users of various social platforms, the age limitation for participating on some social media platforms has made it challenging to use them to reach children directly.  One team understands that reaching the influencers and the parents is more important than speaking directly to children in a marketing campaign.  The creators of MrsP.com mastered the art of the conversation and are demonstrating the importance of relationships and partnerships when it comes to growing their brand and spreading their message.

The face of MrsP.com is Kathy Kinney, best known for her nearly decade long portrayal of the role of Mimi Bobeck on The Drew Carey Show.  She is well on her way to creating another iconic character in Mrs. P, the fantastically quirky ambassador of reading who shares her love of books through an engaging and interactive website for children.

A cross between Mr. Rogers and Pee Wee Herman, Kathy Kinney’s Mrs. P brings books to life as she reads classic children’s stories in a series of webisodes.

Her talking fireplace, magical bookshelves and games are designed to appeal to emergent readers up through tweens (the scary book room will particularly appeal to this age group).  Mrs. P, herself, graciously agreed to be our guest this week for “Five Questions with the Expert” and share a few of her thoughts about using social media to spread her love of reading. In fact, she was so delightful, she answered a bonus question!

RATZLAFF:

You have a fabulously interactive destination website for children. How are you using social media to reach young readers?

MRS. P:

I’m not trying to reach my young readers directly since most are under the age of 12, but rather their parents and the other adult influencers in their lives — teachers, librarians, literacy advocates and organizations. I have found blogs to be a very effective way to spread the word about Mrs. P, whether as a guest blogger or by enlisting their sites to announce events like my annual writing contest. I’ve been using Twitter to meet these bloggers and fans. But I’m not really interested in showing up Shaquille O’Neal and getting the most Twitter followers in the world, but prefer to connect with people who share my same passion for literacy. I try to have personal and meaningful conversations with my followers and love to share articles about the tremendous importance of reading to children. As much as I’m tempted, because I love to talk about myself, I try not to make it only about me. I’m also proud of the give-and-take on my website. If someone posts news about Mrs. P on their site, we will re-post their story on my site, introducing them to our audience.

RATZLAFF:

How do you separate your Mrs. P persona from the business side of running a website?

MRS. P:

I like to keep focused on my mission as Mrs. P, which is to spread the joy of books and reading. When I receive invitations for interviews, appearances, and business relationships, I ask them to contact my business partner, Dana, who handles that side of the house. She considers the validity of the inquiries and deals with the technical details so that my online presence can just be about Mrs. P’s mission – and having fun!

RATZLAFF:

Can you describe a day in the social media world for Mrs. P?

MRS. P:

I try and ensure that there is something new and fun on my Facebook site several times a week. I have a much smaller audience there than on Twitter, where I make an effort to engage with my followers every morning and evening. I also coordinate with my “elves” to make sure my website has fresh news and engaging messages on my “Did you hear…” page. I’m lucky because there seems to be so much good news lately about my site that I can share with my audience.

RATZLAFF:

Is there any one social platform that performs better than others to help you connect with the influencers who help you spread your literacy message?

MRS. P:

While Mrs. P has very active Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and You-Tube accounts, I do think that Twitter has been the most effective. For example, Everybody Wins! USA, a literacy organization for which I am an honorary board member, will occasionally build Tweet campaigns with us, and together, we grow our audiences and spread news about the importance of literacy.

RATZLAFF:

Have you incorporated video or audio into your social media strategy?

MRS. P:

Video has been a key element in our social media strategy. The team at Mrs. P created a fun music video called “Listen Up, Kids” to get young people excited about reading. We made it available as a free download on iTunes. I asked our fans to post it on their blogs and Tweet about it, and in the first day, we had 25,000 downloads! We also posted it on YouTube to let people know it was free. We had a similar experience with the winning entries from my writing contest. Again, we had over 22,000 downloads the first day by using social networking to spread the word. I think if you have a strong mission and are also willing to give something meaningful away for free, it’s a powerful combination. It’s certainly worked well for Santa Clause over the years, and it’s also built a great deal of awareness for the Mrs. P brand.

RATZLAFF:

I heard a rumor that Mrs. P has plans to create mobile apps.  Any truth to that rumor?

MRS. P:

Oh, yes. The mobile world is a wave I really need to be riding! So in September I will launch a free (there’s that wonderful word again!) Reading Challenge app for the iPhone. It will be a fun and engaging way to test reading comprehension. And it’s yet one more way to bring awareness to literacy and to my website.

Parents, librarians, grandparents and teachers can find Mrs. P on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and of course children can visit her magical library, choose a book from her shelves and have Mrs. P read them a classic.

Is Your Brand Message Clear? | *Twitter Lists* Know

By Cindy Ratzlaff

If you are struggling to nail down your keywords and floundering to solidify your core brand message, there is a free brand development tool available to you right now.  The tool polls millions of users and aggregates a succinct list of key words and phrases that reflect exactly how your potential client or customer sees you.  You can access the tool easily, at no cost to you and use the information to effectively shape future brand messages.

What is this amazing tool?  It’s Twitter.  Within a short time of being an active Twitter user, you’ll begin to see the word “Lists” in the upper right hand corner of your Twitter profile, right next to Followers and Following.  Lists is a clickable link.  Click on it and you’ll see how your Followers have categorized you.  You’ll see their Twitter name and what they named the list to which they added your Twitter name.

The bulk of the lists I’ve been added to seem to be Authors, Marketing, Social Media, Peeps to Follow.  I’m pleased that my brand message has been consistent and clear.  If the lists had been Rockstar, Pastry Chefs, travel agents; then I’d have had some work to do in focusing my brand message to attract the following I desire.

Once you check Twitter Lists to see how your followers perceive your brand, take some time to interact with those Twitter followers who took the time to put you on a list.  Go to the profiles of two or three each day.  Read a few of their most recent posts.  Comment, add value and interact.  The chances are good that if they’re following you, then their followers might also be interested in you and you in them.

Twitter Lists are a great way to filter the noise of Twitter and find engaged, interested people who want to hear what you have to say.  Those lists are creating conversations about you!

Brand Strategy for 2010 | Publicity, Marketing and Communications

By Cindy Ratzlaff

January is the perfect time of year for authors, speakers, small businesses and entrepreneurs to take stock of how their brand strategy for 2009 performed against expectations. Taking a hard look at the four pillars of branding; voice, visuals, value and variation, ask yourself how your brand delivered in 2009 based on your business goals and was 2009 profitable?

You voice is your message or your promise. Your visuals are the physical manifestation of your promise, the look that inspires and compliments your message and promise. Your value is what you offer and your variation is how you differentiate yourself from the all others in your area of expertise. How are you unique and what special offer do you have that causes clients or customers to choose you and your product over the competition?

However painful, an honest evaluation will set you up for success in 2010. Ask yourself “What worked for me in 2009 and will that continue to work in 2010 or do I need to evolve that strategy to a higher lever?” Then ask yourself “What underperformed or just plain didn’t work in 2009 that I’ll need to drop from my strategy in order to make room, physically and psychologically, for new and innovative strategies? What must I replace that is no longer worth additional investment of my time and money?”

For authors, this often means deciding which of the many platform building strategies are working and which are not? You might be spending a great deal of time with social media and not enough time writing your next project. You may need to bring new balance to that mix. Or you might need to rev up your platform building by spending more time developing a good mailing list in anticipation of the publication of your book.

A great exercise is to put together a month by month plan with real goals attached to it. By way of example, let’s say an author is publishing a book in June of 2010. Their plan for the first couple of months of 2010 might look like this:

January

  • Set up a Twitter profile, a Facebook profile and Facebook Fan page, a LinkedIn profile and a YouTube Channel.
  • Spend 15 minutes every morning finding and following people who are interested in books, publishing, reading, the arts or my area of expertise on Twitter. Follow everyone who follows me, even if they don’t seem to be a natural fit with my goals at this time. I never know who will be following them and what their interests might be. The goal with Twitter is to cast a wide net. My Twitter follower goal for January is 1,000.
  • Attract 500 new fans to my Facebook Fan page by posting a combination of links to articles of interest to my desired fan base, short posts about my writing process, photos of my speaking engagements, and once a month teleseminar and/or newsletter.
  • Add 500 people to my e-mail list by creating a weekly inspirational or tip oriented e-newsletter that would provide information directly related to my area of expertise and would be added value for my readers.
  • Write two articles to submit to print or magazines that cover my area of expertise and that would link back to or reference my Facebook page or my website or my e-newsletter.
  • Research list of speaking engagements for my summer or fall tour or for on-going promotion of my work throughout the year.

February

  • Attract 500 new fans to my Facebook Fan page (see January for ideas)
  • Add 1,000 people to newsletter mailing list by creating a contest and offering a desirable prize such as a Kindle, Nook or something readers might enjoy. The modest amount of money spent on the prize can pay dividends in new fans and word of mouth buzz.
  • Send out first newsletter and include links to all of my social media sites, announce any upcoming speaking engagements, give readers a reason to want to hear from me again.
  • Write two additional articles for magazines and syndicate January’s articles if they were not already published by any outlet. There are many syndication services such as http://ezinearticles.com who will broadcast your articles. The goal here is to create awareness of my name, book topic and to whet the appetite of readers for my upcoming book.
  • Contact speaking engagements that fit into summer or tour timetable.
  • Write non-time sensitive Op Ed piece and “bank it” until Spring.

March

  • Attract 500 new fans to my Facebook Fan page
  • Add 1,000 people to newsletter mailing list by creating a “refer your friends” promotion. Offer something special to current subscribers who encourage two or more friends to sign up for the newsletter.
  • Send out second newsletter. Engage my newsletter readers with polls, questions about future topics they might enjoy reading from me and create a sense of community by giving them insider information about me personally, my book and a look inside my life as a writer.
  • Write two additional articles for magazines and syndicate any articles that have not yet been published from the previous month.
  • Install the Slideshare application on my LinkedIn profile and create a powerpoint presentation about my upcoming book, making sure that it’s not an advertisement, but actually has value to a wider audience. Give facts, figures, interesting snipets. Post the powerpoint using Slideshare.
  • Write one additional non-time sensitive Op Ed piece and “bank it” for submission to newspapers in the Spring.

April

  • Attract 500 new fans to my Facebook Fan page. Make sure I’ve installed the Selective Twitter application on my page so that all my Facebook posts are broadcast to my Twitter profile as well.
  • Add 1,500 people to newsletter mailing list. Use my Facebook Fan page to talk about articles in my previous newsletters and invite people to sign up for the newsletter by installing an opt in box on your Facebook Fan page if I have not done so already.
  • Send out third newsletter. Invite people to connect on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
  • Firm up speaking engagement tour.
  • Contact bookstores in those towns to arrange bookseller for back of room sales.
  • Connect with a publicist who can book radio, tv and print in those towns.
  • Post 4-5 short personal videos to my YouTube Channel to give potential readers a taste of my personality, book, speaking style and what they can expect if they choose to buy my book. Again, these are not commercials. These are personal windows to allow the reader to get to know me.

May

  • Attract 500 new fans to Facebook Fan page.
  • Add 1,500 people to newsletter mailing list.
  • Send out the next newsletter with all tour dates and locations.
  • Create an Event through Facebook Fan Page and alert everyone on my list to upcoming tour dates and locations.
  • Create an Event on LinkedIn with the same information.
  • Put all of my social media platforms to work full force in getting the word out about these live events.

June

  • Launch my book with the personal appearances and ask all my friends, fans and followers to help me spread the word.
  • Post, Tweet and e-mail several times per week, if not everyday, during launch month and create the impression that I am everywhere at every moment. Attract new readers to my work by giving my writing away – in small samples – through social media.

* * *

Now, of course, this is not a comprehensive marketing plan and every book marketing plan needs to be unique, but you get the idea. Put actual goals and numbers to your strategy to help you keep on track, and be realistic about what you can do yourself and when you need to bring others in to help you.

Remember, your trying to create a conversation, a massive conversation, about YOU and your brand. Do you have additional ideas for creating your brand strategy goals for 2010. Let’s share those ideas with one another here.

Get a free copy of "How To Create An Author Brand," a step-by-step guide for developing your brand message.