A good graphic designer is one of the first people you should talk to when you want to start professionally branding yourself. Like I said in my other posts, it’s not all about the logo and identity but those things should reflect your brand message uniquely. The logo, message and identity form the foundation from which all of your branding is visually built on. Being able to go back to that foundation will save time in the future when you build further. Strategically guided design positions an organization to set off a very desirable change reaction: Positive impressions created higher perceived value which in turn boosts sales.

It’s important to be happy with your designer though. They have the experience but remember this is YOUR company. Designers thrive on feedback and good design doesn’t happen in a vacuum, don’t just say “oh make me something that looks nice” this is YOUR company and it represents you. Be involved in the process. Your business is personal, it means a lot to you and denying that is denying your brand. You are paying the person, make use of them. You should be happy and you should find a designer that asks the right questions and makes you feel at ease.

Like most professions, A designer produces the best results when working with a prepared client. Ask yourself before you begin, what hurdles is your company looking to overcome? What isn’t happening now that design can fix? Is there a conversion that needs to take place or a message that needs to be said? A good designer can help you determine specific solutions but they will need you to first articulate the problems and an approximate budget.

You are not expected to know everything about small business design.

This is what a skilled graphic designer brings to the table. The profession of graphic design is as rooted in strategy and skill as anything else we are likely to encounter in the business world. In involves the carefully considered combination of text and images, of data and strategy, of message and medium.

Every aesthetic choice—color, type fonts, images and structural elements—should be specially tailored to the emotions of the audience you are attempting to reach. What type of emotion are all of these elements inciting in your audience? This doesn’t require a whole lot of delving into psychology. It’s simply about understanding the obvious emotional needs of your end user, plus a few fundamentals about good design.

Working with these combinations, a good graphic designer makes the complex clear. They literally can transform intangible assets like spirit, attitude, trustworthiness, innovation and dependability into tangible visual elements that people immediately understand. A good designer take their job seriously, respectfully collaborating with their clients to create the best solutions for business.

Whether your business needs to sell services, promote new products or just create good will, a skilled designer can marry your company’s objectives with an artistic sensibility that translates into measurable results that impact your bottom line.

Design is not just about putting a coat of paint on something, it’s about making form and function come together so every part contributes. Design is about finding solutions, whether it’s how a effectively to design a showroom that moves the most people through efficiently to creating a website that drives visitors to a specific conversion. A good design can make all the difference once a client arrives at your website to continue on within it. How you interact with your customers is crucial to your brand and the designer should sit right between you, making sure that the customer gets the information they need efficiently and uniquely.

Why is having a professional opinion important?

Like any profession it’s important to talk to someone who has experience with the intricacies of combining business and design. When you have a design created, subjects like legal Issues need to be considered. Can your artwork be trademarked? If you just use clip art it can’t and not only do you run into legal issues but you also aren’t making images for your brand that are completely unique.

So how do you find your designer? LOOK. Check out advertisements for local companies that you admire, especially ones not in your field, look through your junkmail and direct mail pieces. Then contact those companies and ask for a referral. If you do that you’ve already taken a first step and found a designer who suits your style. Another good place to find designers is through AIGA, a professional association for designers. You can find a national directory of members of AIGA online at www.aiga.org.

The dangers of using “design contests”.

Some things to be wary of are “design contests” Let me explain what I mean by this and how it can go bad: What does everyone think of Nebraska’s 2010 state fair logo? I don’t know about you but I think it looks unprofessional, cheap and not a good reflection of the fair or our state. It’s not just me, this  “logo” has become mocked statewide and is a prime example of bad decision that involves creative social media. What happened was that rather than hire a designer they created a contest where anyone could enter and the winner was paid a prize. No creative brief was established that clearly laid out the challenges and expectations from the perspective of the client. No professionals were approached. The result was this horrible logo and when they introduced it, people flooded their Facebook page expressing their disappointment and mocking the logo. In this case the viral capabilities of social media provided the exact opposite kind of publicity they wanted.

What this amounts to is soliciting to have people work for free with the vain hope their logo may fit the bill and be chosen. While it’s possible that it may have resulted in a decent logo there are many problems, FIRST: with design contests you often don’t know the source of the artwork. Was it plagiarized? Can it be trademarked? Do you have full copyright to the work? SECOND: Quality. As you can see from the state fair logo it’s not very good and the response was overwhelmingly bad. THIRD: There are many talented professional designers out there who would have been more than happy to work with the fair to create an affordable professional design for them.

This kind of work is like asking a bunch of lawyers to draft some documents for you. Instead of paying them you tell them you’ll look the documents over and pay the one person whom you like most. Do you think they would be okay with that? These contests have become increasingly popular and it only reinforces the old adage that you get what you pay for. Because more often than not they end badly with dissatisfied customers and upset designers who don’t get paid. I’ve seen it happen before and I’ve worked with companies that have attempted this.

There are plenty of high quality designers in Nebraska, talk to some of them, get their opinions on what you want. You’ll be glad you did.

Do Your Customers Know the Real You?

Think of this before you even think of marketing. Branding should be a a part of your business plan right beside your insurance and accounting strategies. Just getting a logo when you are starting up is nothing more than table stakes. These days you have to think more than that. Crafting an identity is an investment that saves resources in the long term. Not having a well thought out identity is like wearing sweatpants on a date and hoping they will look past them and see the “real you”. As much as we don’t like to admit it, image and first impressions matter.

Whether you are selling cell phones or financial advice, The one thing that can differentiate your business from everyone else is you! The individual is the one competitive advantage that no one can duplicate. Don’t be afraid to be the face of your company, make yourself available and approachable. Then people can get to know the real you.

Are you Just selling something or are you creating an experience for your customers?

What does Harley Davidson sell? They don’t sell motorcycles. They sell an experience. According to Harley-Davidson`s President and CEO, Richard Teerlink “what we sell is the ability for a 43 year old accountant to dress in black leather, ride through small towns and have people be afraid of him” they sell a “rebel lifestyle”. It’s that kind of thinking that creates a memorable brand that will be around for years to come.

Here’s another example of how thinking about the “experience” can elevate your company’s image and branding.

Back to Nike. Nike doesn’t sell shoes, they sell the experience of using Nikes, the feeling of being a winner. They condense that whole message into three words “Just Do It”. It’s a question of being the only one in your market offering something unique. You need to find your uniqueness and commit to it. There may be other people doing what you do, but in your eyes, you should be the only person doing it right.

Branding is an invaluable process and one that can crystallize your personal needs as well as those of your organization. BUT, if you and your company are moving in different directions, no amount of visual treatments will solve your problems. You have to insist upon establishing a plan that aligns all of your interests in a single stream. That way every subsequent decision will be made in a consistent and lucid fashion.

In todays world you can benefit greatly by having your business and personal brand be interchangeable. So many companies market themselves based on what their competitors are doing. There are so many things in common with these businesses. Talk to two identical construction companies and ask them what their best qualities are: They’ll probably say service and quality. While that’s great, can you believe that when everyone says it? How do you know? Find out what makes you TRULY unique and lead with those qualities in every way you market yourself.

Be unique but be honest. Your company has more in common with your competitors than it doesn’t. So many businesses market themselves based on what their competitors are doing. You have to move past talking about “great quality, service and price” and find something that is actually notable. “Great Service” is pretty much the worst story ever told in marketing-because everyone else says the same thing. This may require you to openly admit something you don’t do, aren’t good at or are obsessive about. But most importantly, be honest! Good things rarely start with misleading your customers.

Thanks again for reading. I’ll be back with another post in a week or so, in the meantime if you have any questions feel free to contact me at john@powerbandgraphics.com. Good luck!

What does branding mean to your company?

Some people confuse branding with getting a logo and business cards. They’ll get some cheap logo made with a swoosh and say. “There, I’m branded. Done.” In reality it’s much, much more than that.

Think of the Nike logo, by itself it’s just a curved graphic and does very little. The swoosh isn’t any more sporty, fast or effective than any other logo but it’s been built up over the decades to be associated with all those things. Now it strikes an emotional cord not because of the logo itself but because of the overall brand. A logo is not your brand, it’s simply an icon. An identity is not your brand is just a system used to lend a consistent visual voice for your organization. It doesn’t change who you are, it just augments how you are perceived by others.

Branding is not just marketing or advertising gimmick. It’s bigger than your logo or your marketing campaign. Branding is about asking: Who are you? Why is your business here? What makes you unique? Getting started with branding is about asking these questions. Building credible and memorable branding means being true to those answers and yourself. Real branding can’t be faked. There is so much commitment and passion that goes into starting a business or running an organization. Do you want to be seen as just another company or do you want to be seen as something more?

Effective branding is far more internal than external.

You need to be ready to ask yourself some hard questions, ask yourself: What is my business or organizations purpose? What is the point of what we are trying to do? What at-heart are you made of? THAT and that alone is what branding is all about. MEANING, not marketing. Marketing and advertising is about spreading your message externally, before you do that and you must brand yourself internally. Really define who you are, what your message is and who you want to talk to. That is the first step to any successful business. If you don’t know the answer to those questions then no one else will and your company will suffer for it.

In the end no one will know your business better than you will but don’t be afraid to get a creative professional’s help. They will assist you with taking those things that you love best about your business and being the owner and create imagery and visual elements that help reflect that. A professional can help you remove the unneeded elements and hone the unique characteristics into something that makes people want to learn more. It’s a process but it’s worth it.

Thanks for reading this installment, be sure to check out the next one where I’ll delve deeper into the things a business needs to consider when branding themselves effectively.

I want to talk today about the business owners who take design into their own hands.

This is not an easy thing to do. Sure the software that most designers use can be bought by anyone but it’s not cheap and to an outsider, it’s definitely not easy to use. Creating your own design when starting out can be a frustrating experience. There’s things to learn like RGB & CMYK color modes, the difference between vector & raster images, fonts, image resolution sizes, stock photo copyright, the dozens of file formats and much, much more. Those are just some of the basic things you can encounter when working with design programs but it doesn’t stop there. Just because you can buy the software and push some pixels around doesn’t mean your work will be good or that it will me the requirements for a successful ad. These applications are just tools that a good design uses.

Design is hard but necessary work.

Some people have an eye for composition and can put things together that look good for their needs. Designers usually go through years of training but knowing a program is only part of the battle. It’s hard work. I respect the heck out of anyone who wants to try to take on these tasks. I spent years learning about how to create engaging composition in addition to working with color schemes and learning lessons in gestalt theory. Because it’s become my career it can be easy to dismiss the confusing and often contradictory things that go with good design and the tools it takes to create them.

I know not every business owner can afford to hire a designer and I want to sincerely express how impressed I am with people who try to undertake it. I hope one day, you can let someone in my profession take over that area of your business and help you out. In the mean time, don’t give up and keep following your passion!

Do people even know what you do?

Think about the services you offer, when you show someone your business card or when they see your logo on your store front, can they tell what you do? How often do you have to explain it? “First Impression” is such an overused cliche but it’s true! Are you evoking the right emotions with the first things people see about your company? Can they trust you? Are you a long time local asset? Are you fun? Are you smart? Proper branding, including logo design and identity, can make or break these first impressions.

Great, they’ve found you! How professional does your business look?

Having a website is not an original concept to small businesses any more. Many businesses, however, rely on something that was created years ago, or have let their domains expire and simply not renewed them. Just having a website isn’t enough any more. Don’t just be found, give your customers a reason to visit your site! Introduce some interactivity or capture their attention with a clean, professional user experience. I’m not saying that you need to take advantage of every new technology that has come down the pipe in the last 5 years but online aesthetics changes just like fashion. You aren’t still still rocking a mullet and pinch rolled jeans, are you?

How much more time can you spend not having a well thought out brand? How many more clients will you miss out on?

The cost of having a professional designer or creative agency work with you can pale in comparison of the income you are missing out on. This lost income comes from people that:

A). Don’t know you exist because you are one of a dozen similar companies that doesn’t take their brand seriously.

B). Decided to go with a competition because they just looked more professional.

C). Know your business but don’t know your services or just can’t find you. Design is great but without content that’s relevant to your business, it’s just meaningless decoration.

Focus on your strengths as a company. Design is about perception, if your business is having a perception problem then change it. Start thinking creatively, be open to new visual ideas and you can capture the attention of your customers and keep it! Your business relies on it.

MISTAKE #1: Thinking that having a Facebook Page with nothing on it is better than no Facebook Page at all.

This got a lot of discussion at the Unconference. For designers we were pretty concerned with leveraging social media tools! We discussed how Facebook is a tool just like any other. It’s no silver bullet and if you aren’t using it to actively try and engage your prospects then it’s best to leave it on the shelf. But there’s the problem! What’s the best way to actively engage your prospects in such a way that it generates sales or brand interest?

You really can NOT treat these tools like normal marketing venues. Marketing is about spreading your message EXTERNALLY. People have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for themselves and THEIR interests. Not to constantly be shouted at by whatever company happens to be having a sale that moment. It doesn’t have to be incredibly complicated or require expensive apps. Take a look at SmartyPig, they generate a ton of interest on their Twitter account with a contest, a gift card, video camera and YouTube account.

MISTAKE #2: Spending money on marketing and advertising before a clear and creative brand has been established.

One business owner I met with used to spend thousands of dollars on monthly print advertising to drive people to a website that was completely stuck in 1998. He was a good business owner and provided a great product but he had no clear creative message on his ads. His website did not reflect the quality of work his company did. Eventually he stopped advertising to save money but he could have had a website that stood on it’s own if he had saved a few months worth of advertising, focused his image and  spent the money on an engaging site. Advertising without something unique and clear to say is a waste of money. If people don’t know what you sell, and if you don’t do anything to stand apart then why would they visit your site or call you?

MISTAKE #3: Not doing your homework on businesses that guarantee “Instant First Place Listing on Search Engine Results”

It’s tough to run a small business. You have to be the expert on so many things, human resources, accounting, sales and marketing. It’s impossible to be the expert on everything. Unfortunately there are places that take advantage of that inexperience.

I talked with a business owner who was the sole employee of his business. He worked hard for his customers and relied heavily on word of mouth for sales. He told me he was about to sign with a company that promised first page search engine placement for a “mere” $250 a month. I told him that sounded fishy and asked for more information. After talking with him for a while it was clear this company was merely going to be purchasing advertising on search engines.

So while true, he was going to be on the first page, it wasn’t where he thought. The truth of the matter is that as old as the internet is, there’s still a lot that regular people don’t know about putting a site up and getting people to it. Plus he didn’t have a website to begin with so spending all that money was going to be an afterthought to having a solid, informational website. I told him that if he had $250 a month to blow, then to go ahead but it might be better off to save that amount up for a few months and create a website and really an image that people will WANT to go to on their own. I told him to not just think about quantity of website visitors but quality. Google Adwords can be a fantastic tool for promoting yourself but once you turn that advertising off, the visitors are going to stop coming too.

MISTAKE #4: Not paying attention to changing technologies and emerging tools.

Okay, you are the business owner, you don’t have the time to keep up with every new shiny toy that pops up online. Who does have the time? Remember MySpace? I know people who swear up and down Facebook will replace email someday. I may not agree with that but it does not hurt to keep your finger on the pulse of new trends coming through the gate.

Twitter and Facebook may not be right for every company but it doesn’t hurt to try. If you are a small business, you have the advantage of being VERY nimble when it comes to changing marketing courses. Want to try a blog? Awesome, do it. Maybe set yourself up a Blogger account that isn’t associated with your website. Then tell a few people about it. If and other people seem to enjoy it, keep it up! Maybe even redesign your own website to reap those juicy SEO benefits that many people have blogs for. The point is you can’t know what will fit your business unless you try.

MISTAKE #5: Not getting a professional opinion when it comes to all of the above.

I’m not saying you need to hire a creative professional full time. I’m saying getting an opinion from someone who uses new technologies and is constantly working with new trends can be a huge asset when it comes to making the most of your marketing budget. Designers can be an invaluable resource when it comes to keeping up with trends, staying relevant and finding new ways to interact with people because, after all, that’s their job!

Yet another business owner I met with had his business logo done by a local company that provided automotive graphics. This automotive graphics company did good work in their own field but were completely inexperienced with came to trademarks and threw together a logo that used clipart and suffered from readability issues. It looked decent on the van but wasn’t really suitable for a business card. In the end, if this business owner decides he wants a unique image that he can trademark, it may cost him thousands of dollars extra! Again, it would be impossible for him to know all this himself but working with a professional designer, if even to get a consultation and quote, could have saved him a huge hassle.

So there are five of the mistakes I’ve seen recently that business owners make when branding and marketing themselves. Is it a complete list? Absolutely not. But hopefully it will get you thinking about things you can do with your own business to improve your branding. Focus on the basics first and build the foundation to build your marketing plan on. In the words of Speak Human “Make great stuff and give people a good reason to care.” It goes a long way towards improving any marketing.

I’ve got a lot of love for my hometown and I’m glad I grew up there. It’s one of the reasons that I want to help businesses in those areas compete with larger companies. It’s been my experience that a unique brand and professional appearance can work wonders to create buzz and attract attention. I think the same goes for towns and communities wanting to promote themselves. Some small towns are on the decline while others are thriving. The ones that are thriving are the ones that have found their identity and do a good job promoting it.

It’s all about being able to differentiate yourself. Find those specific qualities that you or your community offers and showcase them! Is it your schools? The amazing landscape? Is it the attractive business potential? Make people know EXACTLY what you have to offer. Focus your image on the people you WANT to attract and let them come to you. Design is all about that. I know that budgets for many of these communities are limited but what makes these places great is the strength of their communities. Get together, find people with the talent and desire to make their communities better! Make a Facebook page and update it with local events and information about people. Start a blog, create some attractive and consistent community signs. Give your town a personality and brand it! There’s so much potential. Take a look at it for yourself and your community, there’s a lot you can do to strengthen the area you love so much.

I’m not going to get into the benefits of blogging or it’s use as a marketing too. That’s an important topic but I want to cover some basic information on just getting started with blogging. There’s a TON of information out there and while I know I’m not covering it all I wanted to give a crash course.

There are a lot of blogging options available now a days. My friend sent me some links to various other blogs he had found that he liked. The first one was a nice WordPress site of another artist. WordPress is a very popular open source blogging content management system. It has a lot of advantages, it’s free, easy to use and has an active developer base with plenty of useful plugins. It’s also easy to customize and there are PLENTY of free and low cost themes to modify the look of it. You can basically go at it a couple of ways: You can install WordPress on your own server, which requires a bit of bit of web knowhow and very slight database setup(PowerBand Graphic’s site was built this way). There’s TONS of tutorials online thanks to its popularity. You can also host your WordPress site on WordPress’s servers. In that case your site URL would look something like www.yourname.wordpress.com. If you don’t want that you would need to tweak some DNS settings on your domain . Here’s some useful links:

www.wordpress.org (this is for downloading the software to install the blog yourself
www.wordpress.com (this is for using WordPress to host your blog for you)

WordPress isn’t the only blogging platform out there either. Blogger (or blogspot) is owned by Google and is a popular way to blog. This service is all hosted by Blogger though. It’s easy to use, free and easy to integrate advertising(if that’s something you want to do) but doesn’t have the same level of customization that WordPress has. Again, you would have a name like www.yourname.blogger.com unless you change some DNS settings.

Another popular blog is Tumblr. Tumblr is getting very popular because of it’s simplicity, style and customizability. It’s very “stream of consciousness” and not the most robust content management system though.

There’s many many more blogging options out there to say nothing of dedicated content management systems. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Some are free, others are not. Some require a decent amount of upkeep and managing others do not. I have worked and researched systems like Joomla, Drupal, Movable Type, Expression Engine, Concrete5, CushyCMS and LightCMS. All good options but like anything worth researching to find out which one fits your specific needs.

NOW on to selling stuff. Here’s where you can get a little tricky. It depends on how you want to do this. Do you want the process to be automated-full-on-ecommerce with a shopping cart where people go through the process without contacting you? That’s where it can get complicated and the answer depends on how much you want to do the work yourself or hire someone. Most of these solutions require some form of fee or constant updating to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Magento is another free option, it’s a full on ecommerce platform that you can download and install similar to wordpress. This might be a bit overkill and time consuming for you though. Shopify is another option for selling things online. It’s a service with a monthly fee but what is nice is the company handles all of your hosting, security & support. Another possible option would be to create a blog and then also create a shop on Etsy Then my friend could just link his artwork in the store from his blog as he creates it. I’ve never used Etsy myself but I’ve heard it highly recommended by many artists and designers.

Phew! Lot’s of stuff to cover! It might also work to start small and test the waters. Maybe set up your blog and create a post for each item you’d like to sell with pictures and details. Then just have people contact you directly to purchase with a paypal or money order. There aren’t any hidden charges from Google that you should worry about when selling stuff from your blog. You may have to start charging sales tax depending on the state that you sell to (I believe if you use Etsy or Shopify they automate sales tax for you). I’d get an accountant you can trust if possible and get their opinion.

In the end I recommended a combination of WordPress + Etsy as the simplest combination for what my friend wanted to accomplish. Like I said there’s an incredible number of options out there. It depends on how much time you want to do this stuff yourself, your technical ability, budget and what you want your site to do. Do your research, there’s a perfect fit for everyone and you’ll be blogging in no time!

Branding is more than just designs, it’s how you interact with your clients and how much effort you put into your services. From the logo on your business cards to the posts on your blog or Facebook page, it’s the image that you project to your clients. Why is that image important? It’s the first interaction a potential client has with your company. It’s about creating credibility and maintaining trust with your current and prospective clients.

To help illustrate these ideas, I developed the Branding PowerBand. It ties together the different aspects we should all consider when trying to establish a brand.

Your mechanic can tell you that your car’s powerband is the range at which it’s providing you the most power. Your Branding PowerBand is the range at which your company’s consistent and focused branding efforts are working the most effectively and powerfully for you. The ultimate goal is to create as much client trust in your company as possible. Gaining that trust benefits your company in every almost every aspect, from getting more sales to attractive higher quality employee talent.

The initial effort is creating your identity, which is your company’s message. It’s your company’s philosophy, knowing your product, your customers, and who you really are. In its simplest form your identity it is your logo, business cards and the message you associate with them. It has the steepest curve because often it’s the most difficult task when establishing your business. It is the foundation where the rest of your brand is built. You may know what you want to sell or what field you are in but do you know who you are as a business? Ask yourself, “What makes you better than anyone else? Are those fantastic qualities that you have, coming through in everything that represents you?”

The next range of the Branding PowerBand is your marketing and advertising designs. This includes your promotional material, product packaging, and ad campaigns.

After that is your web presence including your domain name, website, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, and online advertisements.

From there you take your brand and continuously build upon it by creating relationships with people and solidifying your brand by being an expert in your field. This includes reaching out to people through e-mail newsletters, blogs and social media networks.

To really make your brand powerful you need to stand back and view all of these things as a whole. It’s about creating a consistent message that engenders trust with your current and new clients.

The designs representing you should be more than just using templates and clip art. If you wouldn’t accept anything but the highest level of quality for what you do for your clients, why should the image for your company be any different? Everything you do in your business is a reflection your quality of work. If you are not presenting yourself in the most meaningful and high quality way possible what does that say about your business?

Here are some questions to ask yourself to see if they may need to review their branding:

• Can you say that the clients you are getting regularly are your ideal clients? If not, you may have a branding issue and need to rethink your message to get the clients that you want.
• What does you or your products have that makes it better and different? If it doesn’t light up you and your client’s eyes you may need to review your branding.

All of us should be thinking about the bigger picture and long term plan. The Internet and social media has created a huge opportunity to create incredible brand equity by blogging about what you love and establishing your expertise. You don’t have to wait until you are successful to form your brand. Start thinking like a large brand at the beginning and you’ll be surprised at how ahead of the game you’ll be.

In the end, the services PowerBand Graphics provides are more than just designs. It’s a relationship that I want to create with people to help their businesses compete at a higher level. Anyone can have branding, but creating truly powerful branding means more than just a logo.

Branding yourself using social media can be a crucial way to drive business and create new venues for you to interact with clients.

The thing is (as he describes in more detail), places like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube are great but you can’t just create an account and expect sales from it the next day (or even over the course of initial months). You have to spend a lot of time building relationships and creating a community. This doesn’t happen overnight. Social media works best when you are not shouting out your daily specials, it works best when you create a genuine face to your company. Let your sales and merchandising staff have an individual voice. Train your marketing team in customer care basics. If you are a one-person show, even better, people love being able to put a face to a profession and humanizing yourself is never a bad thing in this corporate world. Networking online is the same as networking in the real world, you recommend and follow people and products you trust, they in turn do the same for you.

The idea is that you are best at what you do, right? For whatever reason you decided to strike out on your own and build a business that does things different than anyone else. There should be a reason clients choose you so prove it to them! Being an expert in your field is what got you where you are today and letting people tap into that expertise allows you gain their trust and increase your value in their eyes. Soon people will be falling over themselves for your opinion and your business. So keep it simple: work hard, be sincere and treat people with respect. You’ll have social media down in no time…