If you are a small business owner, you are located in a small personal office or you work from home, you probably use either a cell phone or personal landline as your business phone.  When you call a potential client, what shows up on their called ID?  What do potential clients hear when they call and want to leave you a voicemail?  What if they simply want to know your hours of operation or fax number?  You may not realize this but your telephone system’s features, including your caller ID display and voicemail greeting, have a major impact on how others see your brand.

Unless you are part of a company that has the resources to allow for a rather expensive professional telephone system, you probably have just the basics. Most small businesses do not have the resources or even the need for such an elaborate telephone system.  But it would be nice, right?  So chances are you are using the voicemail system offered as part of your landline or personal cell phone package.

It seems like everyone is online these days, male, female, young and old.  And tapping into this vast audience is a low-cost, highly effective way to launch a small-business brand into the global marketplace. Building your brand through social media allows you to cultivate new relationships, increase brand awareness, develop customer loyalty and make word-of-mouth marketing go viral.  Although social media seems relatively easy to get started with, it takes strategy and consistency to build your brand online.  The most important thing to keep in mind while doing so is no matter how big the company you work for is, whether you work for yourself or for someone else, you still have your own personal brand.

But what exactly does it mean to have a personal brand?  How can one use social media to represent a larger company or firm yet still maintain a personal brand?  Well if you have read my article With Social Media, YOU are Your Own Brand published in June of 2011, I explained that although you may be using social media to promote the offerings of the company or firm you work for, large or small, you are doing so as an individual.  Building upon this previous article, below are are 5 simple steps you can take to build your own personal brand using social media.

When it comes to social media and business these days it seems that, “Everyone is doing it.”  In fact, you may have already dabbled in social media a bit yourself.  The question is are you really doing all you can do to make the most out of your social media strategy?  Are you taking advantage of the various available platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites? Are you ready to take control and tap into the power of social media?

One of the best things about social media is that you don’t need to have a big marketing budget to benefit from the different ways that social media can propel your business.  But you do need to be committed and have a strategy. If you are not going to hire a consultant to assist you, then you will need to invest the time to do things yourself, which is fine so long as you actually do it!

Since we are nearing the end of 2011, in order to get you motivated moving into 2012, I thought I would share with you a list of “Social Media Resolutions” that you should consider implementing in your 2012 marketing and brand building social media campaigns.

Having a brand is not just for big corporations and well-known products. Big businesses, small businesses, law firms, entrepreneurs and anyone else wanting to make a name for themselves can do so by building a brand. The way you portray your business, your products and yourself; in other words your image, is your brand.

Thanks to social media everyone has the ability to connect with like-minded individuals all over the world. But if you want to exploit social media you need to have an effective strategy. It doesn’t take an enormous amount of time each day. In fact with only 15 minutes per day, you can really make quite an impact.  Like everything you hope to succeed with in life, it does take planning and forethought.

Here are suggestions on how you might be able to use social media to develop your brand, monitor quality, engage customers, expand upon ideas and connect with others within your industry.

The holiday season is about having fun, spreading cheer and spending time with family and friends. So in that spirit we put together a few video Christmas cards for our readers. From our family to yours – Merry Christmas! Thank you for reading IPWatchdog.com!

Hello everyone.  I am writing today to provide an update to our readers on several matters (i.e., Renee’s surgery and our server issues), and to make a plea for votes in the ABA Blawg 100 contest — IPWatchdog is in the IP Law category.

Renee’s Surgery

Renee at home recovering.

First, as many readers know, Renee had surgery last Thursday to correct a severely herniated disc in her neck.  See Social Media Diva to Have an Anterior Cervical Discectomy.  This came upon us rather quickly.  Upon having an MRI and seeing her doctor surgery was immediately scheduled.  The surgery went fine and Renee was discharged from the hospital on Friday, and has been home resting comfortably.  She was told to plan on doing little more than sleeping for about 10 days, and she has been complying with doctor’s orders in that regard.

In talking with the surgeon after the surgery we learned more about why surgery was so quickly scheduled.  Apparently some of the shooting tingling down into her legs in the days leading up to the surgery is indicative of near imminent and possibly irreversible failure.  Glad I knew that after the surgery!  In any event, there was no damage to her spinal cord and she is expected to make a full recovery and be better than new.  It will just take some time.  So she will be on hiatus through at least the end of 2012 and taking it slow as she eases back into the swing of things starting in January.

You can see my herniation right in the middle of this image of my MRI.

Last week I learned that, after unsuccessful treatments of physical therapy, chiropractic care, massage therapy and steroids, I am going to need to have neck surgery, which is scheduled for Thursday, December 15. The surgery, called Anterior Cervical Discectomy with Arthrodesis, is necessary to correct advanced Cervical Spondylosis, severe disc herniation, significant spinal compression, moderate bilateral C6 Foraminal Stenosis and severe Osteoarthritis. So for us non spinal surgeons and doctors what that means is I have advanced herniation of my disc at the C6 level which has caused significant compression of my spine and a moderate pinching of my nerve. So why am I sharing this personal challenge with the readers of IPWatchdog?

After meeting with my doctor, discussing the results of my tests, reading through all of the documentation and talking to my mother who had a similar surgery in 2000, I realized that there have been so many medical breakthroughs over the years.  These medical breakthroughs make surgeries like this possible and in many cases with far better outcomes than in years passed.  So I thought I would write about some of those revolutionary technologies and the  Hall of Fame inventors who were responsible for them.

When I speak at events, one of the most common questions I get from professionals is, “What is the purpose of Twitter.” Those of us who use Twitter know what the purpose of Twitter is and how to use it though. But for many, the concept of micro-blogging is still quite a mystery. Once you understand what to tweet, how to tweet and how much to tweet, you are quickly able to make excellent connections, increase your website statistics and search engine ranking, find some of your best brand advocates, and benefit quickly and efficiently from word of mouth marketing. In fact, next to YouTube, micro-blogging on Twitter is one of the quickest ways for information about you, your brand, your business, your products and your services to go viral.

Before one can feel comfortable on Twitter, they must first understand the purpose of Twitter, realize the potential of Twitter and learn how they can use Twitter to meet their overall marketing objectives.  Following, I will discuss and demystify 5 of the top myths about Twitter use for business and give you pointers on how you can get the most out of your Twitter account.

Social media is quickly become THE way to market your business. In the US, more than two thirds of all adults who are active online are also actively using social media today, However, there is still a whopping 57% of businesses who, for one reason or another do not understand the real impact that social media can have on their businesses. Gaining new and retaining old customers, sharing your products and services to a broader audience and giving your customers a voice, are just a few of the many benefits that using social media can bring to your business. There are many myths and misconceptions that keep business owners and marketers from reaping the benefits that social media. If you are one of these businesses, let me “set you free” to explore all that social media has to offer.

It seems that no matter where you go these days, the likelihood is high that you will see a “Free Wi-Fi” sticker on the front door of the establishment.  Whether you are going for coffee, meeting a colleague for lunch, stopping at a rest stop or waiting for an airplane, you can pretty much bet that you will be able to check your email and surf the web while you are there.  But providing customers with free Internet access is just the beginning.  Some of the world’s most well known brands are aggressively using social media as a marketing tool.

Many of the largest and most recognizable restaurant brands are starting to realize the power and potential of social media, not only for the use of their clientele but also in getting their message out in new and innovative ways.  They have begun to realize that building larger online communities equates to higher numbers of restaurant sales. For this reason, media outlet Nation’s Restaurant News teamed up with an analytics and digital branding firm, DigitalCoCo to create the Restaurant Social Media Index (RSMI) highlighting the industry’s Top 100 each quarter.