BusinessWeek Online recently published an article on How to Build Brand Friendship. They said that To create a truly powerful brand, you need to establish a sense of belonging, friendship, and dependability between product and customers.

I agree with that, especially in today’s world where the consumer participates and engages in our businesses on a whole different level.

A little while ago we interviewed Jim Banister author of Word of Mouse (if you’re a Buzz Inner Circle member you may listen to the interview here) One of the things I like about Jim is that he often stresses that in our businesses we must create engines of engagement.

So my question to you is this: in your business how are you engaging your clients and prospects? How are you making them producers of your business? As producers they feel a sense of commitment and of belonging, and as Steve McKee mentions, that’s a crucial step in creating a powerful brand.

How do you maintain contact with your clients and prospects? Sure you can have the usual emails they can sign up for, but why not have something that a lot of companies do not have… a printed newsletter?

This is no normal newsletter; it’s a quarterly or monthly newspaper style professional high quality publication. Yes, it can be a bit of an investment. However, I’m sure that it pays off – we do it in our business, and we wouldn’t continue to publish it if it didn’t.

Your newsletter may feature letters from customers, articles related to all aspects of your industry, testimonials, insider secrets, industry announcements, tips and so on. Also, in each issue why not feature your products and services available for ordering? You definitely want a call to action in there.

Remember though, make it so that your clients look forward to each new issue with a passion. Yes, with a passion…

Zig Ziglar once said “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want”

I whole heartedly believe in that. What are you doing in your business to help others achieve what they want? It’s just a different way of looking at it… rather than “what do I have to sell” think of it as “how do I help”. This will set your mind to act in a low key way that is more of being helpful and resourceful rather than selling.

Low key is good… build a relationship, if they come to you it’s because they have an interest – surprise them with good content, be sincere and show that you care, offer solutions and you will see that it works.

This Wednesday we have a teleseminar on the secrets of effective business follow-up.
to register click here:
http://www.buzzbooster.com/followup.html

This teleseminar is part of the launch of the Wise Chicks Club, a club for women entrepreneurs that want to create a sticky business.

I like Seth Godin a lot. I’m an avid reader of his blog and I’ve read his books, but the last one Meatball Sundae is by far my favorite. We see what he talks about happening everyday, people adopting new tools, especially online and not getting any results out of it. Why? Because they didn’t look at the core of their business first and how they should be running it. It is a must read.

The best time to change your business model is while you still have momentum.

A lot of small business owners are really scared to make shifts in their business. They fear they will loose what they have, they think people will see their changes as lost of focus etc.

Any good business needs to make corrections and sometimes even change the whole business model. Sometimes, your current strategy is just not attracting the right kind of customer or even revenue.

The thing is, you cannot come and make changes when things are really bad. you need to do them when your business is doing well, when the market perception is good. So you need to always keep an eye in the horizon to see what is coming and take action before the storm is too close.