“Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.” from the article: “The Brand Called You”, Fast Company, Dec 18, 2007.

Whether you are a job-seeker, a budding CEO or an MBA graduate, in the Web 2.0 world, it is very likely that Your Name is being Googled. This person is either a prospective employer who wants to know what you can bring to an organization or a VC who is curious if you really have those connections in your business domain. As an online brand, these people are your customers and they are always looking to see what you are upto. It is not simply smart to be a part of Linkedin (and the likes) but rather essential.

Here’s a list of 5 must-have profiles that will boost your brand to bring you on top of search engine page results (SERPs) and help you in your career/business/profession:

Linkedin:

Often Linkedin’s power is underestimated but unfortunately, this is only because it is either use inappropriately or not used at all. The point is simple: If you have a Linkedin profile, people will know that you are serious about your career. But you got to keep your profile updated and complete because when people search your name on Google, it’s very likely that your Linkedin profile (i.e. your online resume!) will appear on the SERPs.

One rule of thumb to make the most out of Linkedin: Do at least one activity on your profile per week so people know that you exist! Some examples: add people you met through the week to your network as you meet them, get endorsements/recommendations, answer questions (like you care about them), put up opinion polls, ask questions that you need answers to (trust me, you will never run out of questions). Most of all: be professional, sincere and leverage your network (meaning don’t just keep on adding people to your network for the sake of it!) and people will pay more attention to you - THEY WILL HELP YOU.

Facebook:

“Hey! I’m not uploading my personal albums just to stay ahead in my career”. What if I said that employers want to know what your favorite vaction spot is? Your customers want to know what you are doing in your life other than your career. NO THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOUR LIFE SHOULD BE AN OPEN (FACE)BOOK :D! It only means that Facebook is a unique opportunity to show the world ‘you are great person to be around’ - you are the sort that they can discuss politics with, cheer/fight about basketball games and most of all tolerate at the workspace. You don’t need to publicize your Facebook profile but if you have one, you should not be hesistant to add co-workers to your network. Of course, there’s the fine print: You don’t want to be offensive in general and express your opinions using appropriate language. Behave as you would when you are around with your friends (when not drunk) and your friends will look forward to your updates! :D

YourName.TEL:

Does that happen to you? If yes, this could help. If you forget your business card you could just give them your .TEL URL. Since it’s launch in March, it’s likely that your full name is available. Some advantages: 1) Easy-to-remember 2) Optimized for mobile phones 3) Add tags such as ‘finance major student, entrepreneur or marketing intern’ 4) Costs only 15 bux a year and does not require hosting 5) Your info is directly submitted to the DNS thus reducing the lag time to NIL between the updates you make and the changes that appear 6) People can directly call you from your website

Google Profiles:

If you are one of those who has more than one website/blog/profile on the net, this is a useful profile page which brings it all together and makes it more search engine friendly (very likely to show up on the first SERP when someone types in your name). It can list all your links such as Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, etc. along with your interests, positions you hold and contact info. This also allows people to send you a message without having to know your e-mail ID. A safe way to let people get in touch with you. The best part is the Google Maps widget which lets you show the places you have lived in and the ability to share your Flickr albums.

YourName.mp:

I came across the Chi.mp service at one of the Twiistup events I attended earlier this year. If you are like me, you read RSS feeds, use Twitter, Facebook and have a Wordpress blog/blogs. With YourName.mp you can bring together all your updates across various websites for your friends/co-workers to see. The best thing is that you can create different personas - for work, friends, general and other custom personas for your different target audiences. Check mine out here: dhaval.mp. Again this ranks well on search engines.

Go ahead. Dominate ‘Your Name’ on the search engine page results by using these profiles!

Swine Flu: The Official CDC Social Media Toolkit.

Social media goes beyond marketing and business. Check out this blogpost to learn more about how the Center for Disease Control and Prevention is using social media tools to spread awareness about the recent Swine Flu

Social TV: Watch Hulu with Your Facebook and MySpace Friends.

Interesting. But can this beat being able to watch a game with your buddies in the comfort of your living room? I doubt!

This question came to my mind when I read this article on CircleID. While the article deals with privacy issues, it got me thinking about websites and how they could be customized to reach your scattered target audience on the globe.

It is a fundamental yet challenging question that an entrepreneur, a start-up or any established company needs to ask before building their website.

“Where is my target audience and how can I build a website customized to their specific needs?”

Even if your website is right there on the ‘WWW’, you want it to cater to specific needs of its users which differ geographically, lingually and across different time-zones.

For example, do you have a .US domain name for your company which has specific services for your audience in the United States? In the long run, country-specific domain names could help you make the most of your different websites:

• Manage your sales promotions better as per different time-zones
• Have multilingual websites for different regions
• Branding that appeals to that specific geography

In this way, you can start thinking ‘glocally’, thus optimizing the user experience and getting more sales. To get you started, here are the different things you could do with your website to make it more ‘glocal’:

Get those country-specific Domain names:

Getting a .CO.IN, a .US or a .UK may not sound a useful investment but in the long run this will only work to your advantage. If you scout around looking for these names after having established a business and looking to expand to different countries, the chances are that some domainer (people who invest in domain names for a living) already bought that domain name and is going to extract some moolah from you because you desperately need it. You may argue that you have copyrights and trademarks over that name and legally can own that domain name but think again - do you really want to go down the litigation path and book those extra expenses on your income statement? Rather, as most other businesses who fall into this trap, you will end up with a bitter taste in your mouth and pay up the domainer.

On the other hand, if you have them registered already, the overall expenses to your company would be minimal but when you grow it will give you the marketing versatility that it deserves which I’ve described further below…

Multilingual Content is King:

“Most of my customers understand and speak English, why should I bother making a Spanish/Hindi/Arabic website?” Because as someone has wisely said

“Talk to people in their own language. If you do it well, they’ll say, ‘God, he said exactly what I was thinking.’ And when they begin to respect you, they’ll follow you to the death.” - Lee Iacocca (the reason why I’m in business and management is him! :-) )

With multi-lingual websites, you are creating a local brand image for your product. There is no price-tag attached to such an effort which makes your customer feel like home. What’s more, it’s more likely that your competition doesn’t already do this; raise the bar and set a benchmark!

Register a .CN domain name - Hire a content-writer from China and let him work on the content for your website which is appealing to the Chinese population.

Google.com is not the only major search engine:

There is Google.co.in, Google.cn, Google.co.uk. If you are going to optimize your website for various search engines or run a Google Adwords campaign, you might as well do it well! Optimization results and the Google Ad campaigns vary from one domain name to another. For example, below are results from Google.com and Google.co.in for the keyword ‘Paintball’.

So, if you are going to build a different website on a .CN, you might as well pitch this website on Google.CN with a specific ad campaign for your chinese customers.

‘Dollar’ is not a universal language

This is an important element for any e-commerce website. Although, you may be able to accept payment in US dollars through payment gateways, you would like your Chinese customers to know how many Yuan it takes to buy your designer shoes. This is a fairly simple task which can also be automated with some quick programming to replicate your pricing from your .COM website.You can also compare and compete with local websites better by listing your prices in the local currency

Geotargeting your customers

Geotargeting your customers is a great way to divert your traffic from your .COM website to your country-specific website. Geotargeting will identify the client’s IP address and compare it with a database to determine where he is trying to access your website from, depending on his or her location, a relevant regional website is served. For example, when you type in Google.com from India, the browser automatically takes you to Google.com.

A website which is closer to your customer - literally

Technically, this is known as geography-specific hosting where your servers are located closer to your customer. This means that your Asian users are served by a server which is based anywhere in Asia. Such a hosting architecture is quite complex and may be used by companies who have an equally stronger market outside their home country. If your customers are complaining about your website not loading fast and most of them are from outside your home country, it’s likely that you need a server which is closer to their region. Keep in mind though that this is only necessary if your website is media rich and your customer spends a lot of his time on it - such as using a application on your website or simply watching videos.

Getting it all together and going to the next level

It might seem like a lot of work, but getting a head-start is fairly easy -

1. Review your web analytics data or review your market data to find out the second-most important country for your business
2. Get your web-infrastructure services for that in place
3. Build the website

You can repeat the process as you go along before you capture the global market!!  ;-)

If all this seems relevant to your business at this point in time, you can set long-term objectives for country-specific websites too, somewhat like below:

• Multilingual support in the form of multilingual knowledge-bases, customer support and live chat
• Build Strategic partnerships with drop-shippers, merchants and affiliates in different countries for your electronic storefront
• Enable time-zone specific sales promotions for your different websites and display them in the local currency
• Most of all, get more sales through heavy online ad campaigns that actually work and set yourself apart in various regional marketplaces on local search engines and portals

{Domains Mafia offers a variety of country-specific domain names and are often available at great prices, to start, sign up here or simply mail me}

In an attempt to make this blog more lively and engaging, I would be adding some interesting video interviews. This video interview is one of the first in a series to come. Douglas Howe has broad experience with technology start-ups and has been my professor for entrepreneurship start-up strategies. Currently, he is working with an incubation center in the Santa Clarita region. Please read the entire bio below the video. The highlights of the video are available in text below the video as well.

The objective of this interview would be to address some critical issues with tech-startups which Douglas Howe would elucidate upon. Some areas that we would get a better understanding of by the end of the interview would be: starting up, incubators and marketing

About Douglas Howe:

Douglas Howe, Founder and Principal of Emerson Management Solutions, has specialized in marketing, business development and general management, including turnarounds and restructurings of established companies and launches of high growth pre-revenue start-up operations. His successes include projects across a variety of industries and applications and include companies such as Crown Zellerbach Corporation, General Electric Company, Nikon Inc., Van Camp Sea Food Company, Olympus America Inc., Rockwell Scientific Company and Vivitar Corporation. He is a former jet attack pilot in the U.S. Navy where he accumulated 185 combat missions and over 300 carrier landings. Mr. Howe is also a member of the Practitioner Faculty at Pepperdine University’s George L. Graziadio School of Business and Management. In this position, he teaches courses on global marketing, entrepreneurial start-up strategies and business-plan writing to candidates for Master of Business Administration degrees.

Highlights of the Interview:

Three most common mistakes entrepreneurs make

1) Having insufficient startup and operating funds. Often underestimating amount of time and money required.

Solution: 2 to 3X rule. You will take two to three times as long and two to three times as much to reach your next milestone. Make sure you have enough cash for the next milestone. Spend Cash wisely.

2) Failure by the entrepreneur to segment his market.

Solution: Attack, grow and dominate one niche market. Would you rather have 90% of a grape or 10% of a watermelon?

3) Often entrepreneurs focus on the upside. Don’t neglect the downside and the evidence which shows that.

Solution: Do scenario planning . Monitor actual performance against assumptions and projections. Have a contingency plan. It’s important to be able to identify when something is going wrong and to be courageous to adopt a new strategy.

It’s important to be patient - you get the chicken by hatching the egg and not by smashing it. Do your research and make sure that your idea is really feasible.

About Incubators:

• Subsidised Costs for tech-startups: Office-space, Network infrastructure, etc.
• Mentorship and Advice
• Additional Questions about incubators answered below:

• What is the percentage of incubators that often spin off and end up outside the community it was nurtured in?

  U.S. Small Business Administration states that only 40% of new businesses are still in business after 6 years, but this number more than doubles (to 87%) for companies that graduate from an incubator.  And of that 87%, 84% decide to reside in the community where they were incubated.  Therefore, in answer to your question, on 16% of companies decide to move elsewhere.