Building a brand for yourself or your online business is important to think about early on. The whole idea of brand building is to establish yourself as the go to person for the niche and also build up presence in the marketplace. I have encountered businesses where they seem to only go after one specific sector of the marketplace and end up missing more opportunities to further build your brand.

Social networks

Building up a brand on social networks is the first thing everyone thinks about when they get started online these days and for good reason. Social networks bring us together directly with the people in our niche. There is no better way to feel out your marketplace, than to talk directly to someone in it. Which social networks do you use? All of them. If you haven’t done so already, register your business/your name with every social network out there. Its free and only takes a few minutes. This will save you heartache later when someone else is squatting on your name.

Video

Video became an invaluable branding tool when YouTube was created. Video used to be costly to implement and most people couldn’t watch your movies without having to find some obscure codec. Now there are countless video networks. Webcams are built into most laptops and it costs maybe $30 to go out and grab one at the store. Which means anyone can start building their brand through videos. When I talk about building your brand, I do not mean go and try to make some fancy commercial, I mean turn on the webcam and virtually interact with your audience. It means giving them something of value or teaching them a new technique/method for the niche. Video also means they can see your facial expressions and understand your words on a whole new level.

Personal Blog

Like the one you’re visiting right now! Now building your own personal brand through a blog has been made the easiest thing to do. You can start through any of the hosted blogging solutions like wordpress, blogger or tumblr. You don’t even need a hosting account anymore. I do suggest if you have the money to spend, to at least buy your own domain name and use it to direct to your hosted blog.

Blogging on other sites

Contribute articles and blog posts to other sites inside AND outside of your niche. This is a great way to expand your brand and notariety. Users will start to recognize your name in places you hadnt expected before.

Forums

Contribute your knowledge to forums and usergroups. This also can apply to IRC, if you’re brave enough. Forums are a much more longer term way to establish your brand online, but if you choose the right forums to contribute to, it can really pay off.

To Round it Out

The idea overall for building a brand online is to stay involved and interactive with yours/your businesses user base. This ties in with all your market efforts directly. It is vital you spend almost more time building your brand and presence online than you do building up your product or whatever it is you are trying to sell.