If your search engine sent

you here looking for a fight,

you’re in the wrong place!

     . . . Uh, the post title — that’s “Profiling” as in filling out website subscriber info about yourself and your business.

Sorry. My apologies to all the rest of you (including lawyers of course) who’ve landed here  looking for a bunch of racial slur charges and counter-charges (hopeful no doubt of gathering ammunition for getting yourselves in an uproar about who is subjecting whom to bias and prejudice in which states, and why, and how awful it all is).

You know who you are: Anti-Arizona political types, NPR and network TV news desk occupiers, and fans of “Cops.”

Three messages for you: 1) The truth will out 2) Sorry to disappoint you, and 3) Click off of here and go yell at your search engine.

     Well now that we’ve cleared the air, and have sent the vast armies of contentious network news and incompetent government types packing, let’s get down to business.

     When you fill out a website profile, here are some good rules of thumb to consider that will help you present a more attractive picture of yourself and your business:

• As a matter of PROCEDURE: draft it first; edit it second; edit it third; edit it fourth; save it fifth; cut and paste it into the window sixth. Not much creates instant panic as effectively as clicking “Save” a blink too soon. Take your time. Get it right.

• As a matter of FORMAT: Live with what’s provided. It will be a lot of years before subscriber websites are all up to speed with the latest options for type sizes, line and border spacing and special (color, shadowing, bolding, Italicizing-types of) accent treatments as you may be used to with your PC and Mac text formatting choices. What you get is what you get! When bullet and numbering options exist, use them, but sparingly.

• As a matter of CONTENT: keep it short and sweet. Conciseness counts! Suffice it to ask when was the last time you read a long wind-baggy profile? Don’t try stuffing your thirty-pound resume into some one-pound profile window. Use highlights as teasers to prompt a reader to want to know more. 

• As a matter of INTENT: Keep it honest; if you don’t you have my word it will come back to haunt you. You may even (shudder) lose Twitter Followers and Facebook fans! Think of your profile as a combination of your “brand” and your “elevator speech.” No matter what your intent is about what you say and how you say it, don’t allow yourself room for exaggeration to creep in.

• As a matter of EMPHASIS: don’t try to be cute; don’t write sales or advertising copy; if you have strong credentials, list them but don’t belabor them; if you lack strong credentials, don’t try to make weak ones look impressive. It’s a profile, not a sales pitch! You can deliver that after a prospect likes what she or he sees and decides to contact you. Humor? Doubtful it has a place in 99% of business profiles. If people want a laugh, they need only start hanging out with that other “profiling” crowd mentioned at the top of this post.

 www.TWWsells.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You. God Bless America and America’s Troops. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

You are your business.

Attitude and behavior

are your brand.

     Small business owners rarely devote enough attention to branding and the importance of branding. It is much more than a logo, name, label, or catchy slogan. Brands reflect the integrity and reputation of both the company and the business owner.

 Your brand and branding messages need to include

 and be wrapped around

ALL aspects of your business.

     Your brand and branding messages need to make a statement about the environment and methods you and your company are engaged with. This “statement” needs to be an integral focal point of ALL of your communications… verbal, visual, written, in-person, and implied!

     Your business exists because of your customer bases: INternal customers (like associates, employees, referrers, strategic alliances and present suppliers) as well as EXternal customers (like past and present buyers, prospective buyers and employees, and prospective suppliers). What it is that you put out to each and all of them every day is what adds up to your brand and branding.

     This translates into how you and your business deal with all of these diverse “customer audiences” on a day-by-day basis, how you treat them, whether you pay your bills on time, if you follow-through with customer service after the sale is made, if your business is a good citizen in the communities that support it, whether your products and services provide true quality benefits and dollar value.

     Keep in mind that one unhappy customer (internal OR external) will tell ten other people about her or his lack of satisfaction, and each of them will tell ten more. In case you weren’t doing the math, that’s a hundred people walking around bad-mouthing a business that may naively dismiss one upset as one upset. But–aaaaaah, the reverse is also true: delight one person and gain a hundred positive referrals!

     Reality is that maintaining positive and productive brand images and branding messages means you need to practice unending vigilence in tending to all levels of (internal AND external) customer service. It is especially important to be and stay tuned in to employee and industry-related issues, and to pounce on problems and deal with them honestly.  

     A great memorable name and themeline are critically important to brands and branding messages, but not nearly as important as a business with clear-cut genuine values run by people with clear-cut genuine attitudes. 

# # #  

Hal@TheWriterWorks.com or comment below.

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God bless you!