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Alease Michelle McClenningham – Personal Branding at #DMFB14

The success of business is simple: Find the consumers who will best benefit from your product or services and turn them into customers.  While the concept may sound simple, it is one of the biggest struggles most business owners and managers face.  Until now!

As a coach, educator, entrepreneur and author, Alease Michelle McClenningham provides creative, proven and practical systems so that new entrepreneurs can sell more products and services to the right people.  She will show you how to define your brand story, focus on the strategies and tools that will make the biggest impact and help best communicate it to your target market audience. The results? You make money doing what you love!

Owner of Alease Michelle Studios, LLC, a branding and design company for small business owners , Alease is also the author of the best-selling book: Greatness is in the Comeback: 12 Action Steps in Discovering Ways to Reinvent Yourself.  Alease holds a B.A. in Art Studio/Graphic Design from the University of South Carolina, an M.A. in Visual Arts from Goddard College, and has enrolled in a doctoral program at Argosy University in Instructional Leadership.

After finding herself at professional crossroads in 2004, Alease put her innate strategic planning skills to work. Assessing the positives and negatives of a situation assisted in developing what she calls a Reinventing Action Plan (Rebranding Plan). “This was my time to use this new found opportunity to do what I wanted to do, and not what I had to do” says Alease, “Developing my own brand has been challenging and exciting. I’ve been very successful and a lot of my peers have asked me how I was able to turn a bad situation into a profitable business.”

Alease now loves helping other business owners find their success.  By not believing in themselves, thinking that everything has to be perfect and talking and not taking action, Alease finds that many people are their own roadblock to success. She wakes them up! “I tell my clients, ‘stop talking about it and let’s get to working on it.’”

Alease lives by two great piece of advice; “Stop thinking about what other people think of you! Do what makes you happy!” from her father and “It almost seems impossible – until it’s done.” by Nelson Mandela.

Let yourself be inspired by Alease Michelle McClenningham at her session Make A Name For Yourself – 5 Steps Every Entrepreneur Needs To Create A Personal Brand Strategy .  Come learn how to find the consumers who will best benefit from your product or services and turn them into customers as Michelle shows you the way to sell more to the right people.

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Mark Traphagan – Content Marketing Expert at #DMFB14

Speaker Spotlight Series

Content marketing isn’t just a fad; not just the next marketing buzz term that you won’t care about next year. Properly understood, it is the heart and soul of your online marketing.

Mark Traphagen

Mark Traphagen

Perhaps the biggest buzzword in the digital marketing world since social media, everyone recommends it. Everyone thinks they ought to be doing it. But at the same time, a growing number of observers and pundits are declaring that the easy entry days of content marketing may already be over (if there ever really were such days). Some are beginning to talk about “content shock” or a “content glut.” The fear is with so many piling on the content marketing craze, consumers and prospects will become “content blind.”

Mark Traphagen is the Senior Director of Online Marketing for Stone Temple Consulting, a Boston-based national digital marketing agency. He is responsible for building the online reputation, authority, and visibility of the Stone Temple Consulting brand, as well as consulting with Stone Temple clients. He is widely recognized as an expert on Google Authorship, and has over 80,000 followers on Google+!

He got his start in a small independent book store in Philadelphia that was getting killed by Amazon. When the manager tasked him with taking the business online, based on nothing more than his deep qualification of “being a guy who likes to blog”, he was thrown into the world of online marketing. He learned quickly, and in two years had built a store and an online presence that was actually competing well in its niche market.

One of Mark’s pet peeves is “people who think it [content marketing] can be done effectively with the right set of tactics or tips”. I can smell that belief when I read their content. Effective content marketing, as with any marketing discipline, can’t be reduced to a set of tricks. Anyone who thinks it’s about “creating list posts” or “posts of a certain word count” or “all about the keywords” is missing the boat big time, and not doing their business any good.”

When you attend Mark’s session – How Not to Be the Next Online Content Marketing Casualty, you’ll learn why content marketing is essential to building your brand online, why so many fail at it, and how to build an effective strategy to be one of the success stories. Come ready to be both inspired and educated in the world of effective content marketing for your business.

Register now!

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Michele Lawson, the Branding Expert at #DMFB14

Speaker Spotlight Series

Michele Lawson knows what it’s like to find freedom – the kind of freedom that comes from working for yourself. She’s built her business on helping businesses translate their personal and business brands into online writing and marketing. You can tap into her expertise at the Digital Marketing for Business conference in her session, 5 Biggest Branding Mistakes for Small Biz.

Michele Lawson

Michele Lawson

We asked Michele a few questions so that we could get to know her better.

How did you get into your current field?

I have a huge interest in business branding and marketing but my passion has always been writing.

After working for 30 years of working for others I decided it was time to take the leap and become my own boss. I began as a content writer for businesses in order to to help them drive consumers to their website and social media platforms. After 100% of my clients asked me to expand my role into brand marketing, it became apparent that I needed to merge my two loves… writing and business branding.

Over time, I have noticed a trend in challenges that small business owners have when it comes to social media and online marketing. That is why I was so excited to bring my presentation, 5 Biggest Branding Mistakes for Small Biz to the Digital Marketing for Business 2014 attendees.

What is your favorite thing about your current job/business/line of work?

Professionally, I love showing people how small tweaks to their current online activity can make a big difference in their brands presence.

From my clients who want to learn to manage their own business online to my clients who enlist my online management services, all get that same sigh of relief when they find out just how easy it can be.

Personally, being a freelancer means I can work with people who I truly enjoy working with, I can manage my time in order to be professionally successful as well as have a quality personal life. I also love to learn new things and I am constantly curious so the ever changing world of social media is always intriguing to me.

Do you have any specialty areas or pet peeves you’d like to share?

I have two, and while I wouldn’t necessarily call them “pet peeves” – I will call them client challenges.

The first is something we have all had experience with and it is the “shiny item” syndrome. With branding it is important to follow through with your marketing plan and stick to it long enough for it to gain momentum. All too often, businesses want immediate results and when they don’t get them they move on to the next shiny object. This leaves a business putting way too many irons in the fire and not leaving any of them long enough to make their business HOT!

The other is what I call “All eggs in one basket” syndrome. This is when a client is certain that there is only one way to introduce consumers to their business. By using only one method of marketing, a business is only attracting one small segment of their target audience. Over the years, I have had experience with both types of client “challenges” and have been successful in educating clients so that they become more aware and begin to nurture a stronger brand image.

What is the most important thing an attendee will learn from your session?

The session title “5 Biggest Branding Mistakes for Small Biz says” it all! Any attendee who feels that there is something in their business that is just not clicking… that they are just not getting the results that they want from some of their current marketing strategies… will love learning what the top 5 mistakes are and will also be very relived to know that most are a very easy fix.

They will leave with tips that they can implement as soon as they return home. We will address the top 5 components of their online presence that drive consumers to their website: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Attendees will learn how to make their business a go-to resource!

What is the best piece of advice you ever received and from whom?

“Everything in life is obtainable.”

My own father passed away when I was a very young child. My father-in-law was the biggest male influence that I ever had in my life. When he saw something he wanted – he went after it. He taught his three children (four if you count me) to do the same. Any accomplishment, dream or goal…. it didn’t matter. If you wanted it badly enough you would find a way to get it. The only limitations that you have are the ones you create yourself.

My father-in-law passed away many years ago and while not a day goes by that I do not miss him, his message lives in me always.

Is there anything else you would like attendees to know?

I believe that one of the most brilliant businessmen in the world was Walt Disney.

I once heard a story about Walt Disney’s son and a reporter. The reporter asked the son about his sadness over the fact that Walt never got to see Disney World since he passed away before it opened. The son replied, “That is where you are wrong…he saw it….that is why you see it today!”

Of course, the son was talking about the vision Walt Disney had for his business. He saw his dreams, lived his dreams and then worked to turn them into reality. But Walt also knew that he was only one part of his success….”You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” -Walt Disney

Michele is an inspired digital marketer who follows her passion. Let her inspire you during 5 Biggest Branding Mistakes for Small Biz. You can attend Michele’s session at 10 am on Wednesday in the Small Biz track at Digital Marketing for Business 2014.