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Walk into 2013 with a BRAND new YOU!
Many of us enter the New Year with resolutions to lose weight, save money, take a trip, etc., but the truth is, most of us never stick to these resolutions. So, here’s my real challenge for the year – to get rid of empty resolutions, and focus on improving my personal “brand.”
I recently attended the “Dine with Alums” event at Saint Mary’s College, and the keynote speaker was Susan Chritton,.Ed.- she wrote the book, Personal Branding for Dummies in which she explains why branding is so important for corporations, celebrities, and ourselves. (Did I mention that she is a Saint Mary’s alumna?) According to Chritton, branding helps position us for success through image transformation and self-prominence.
Here are ten cool tips from Chritton’s book to help you build your personal brand:
150 Years of Saint Mary’s College of California
In celebration of Saint Mary’s College of California’s Sesquicentennial, a few of the KRT SMC alumni attended the “Jewel of the Bay” Gala. The black-tie event took place on Treasure Island in San Francisco and generated a total of $661,000, benefiting student scholarships.
Sell More by Offering Less
One of my friends surprised me with tickets to a sold out Jason Aldean concert. Personally, I’m not a big country fan, but I thought it would be fun to go. Since I want to fit in with the crowd, I thought I would shop for a great pair of cowgirl boots.
The first place I always start my shopping endeavors is Google. So, I logged on and typed “cowgirl boots” and came across various western sites. At first I was skeptical to purchasing boots online, but I figured I would save myself some time in doing so. Most of the sites I came across carried the same boots and around the same prices but one site stood out to me more than the others. Why? The site was user friendly because it broke down the boots into categories i.e. by color, brand, style, etc.
Steven Krug, a conversion guru, provides a few key insights on the best user experience practices:
1. Motivate users by reducing the options available, or create categories on your site that break large groups of products into smaller groups.
2. Don’t make users think. Think about your consumer and make it as easy and clear for a purchase as possible.
A business owner depends heavily on the revenue generated from ecommerce (buying and selling of products over the Internet). These simple best practices should be implemented for the ultimate user experience. From a strategic standpoint, doesn’t logic suggest that consumers want options? Organizing a website by various categories, may not seem like the best plan of attack, but then again it made the experience easier for me, and what motivated me to buy my fabulous new cowgirl boots.
