How to do your Online Branding Pre-Startup

Expivia wants to be able to help all organizations succeed with their CRM plan. Even those that are not funded yet. We understand that many organizations to be are in a pre-startup mode and need some advice.  Since our organization is no longer in startup mode and is now moving down the road with our mission, we wanted to take a second to try to help those companies that are just starting.  We want to show how they can have an online presence/brand before starting to look for funding.  Every entrepreneur must start somewhere.  We hope this helps some others out there as much as it helped us get started.  If you need help beyond this or just have a question please do not hesitate to contact us at tlaird@expivia.net no matter how small the question.  We have lived it and now have grown from it.


We hope this helps....

There is no reason your future start up should not have its online branding done BEFORE and start up money is even gone after. When you are pitching your business plan you need to have your online presence done.  This shows how serious you are and also frames your vision not just in words but in an arena that people can visualize.  We all know that the first place people will start their research on your company,  product or service is to go online and Google you!  You need to anticipate this and be ready.

This is a story, the story of our company Expivia Interaction Marketing Group, Inc, on how we did a total online branding before we were funded, made it look very professional with very little graphics/webdesign skill and even better…with very little investment.  When I mean very little I mean under $100 dollars.  It does take time and thought but it can be done. We did it and got funded and now are in a different stratosphere.  Here is how you begin. 

 LOGO 

Your company needs a logo.  Whether it is just the name of your company or a different design you need something that is simple yet catches the eye.  We designed our logo on paper, took it to Fedex/Kinkos and for 20 some dollars they designed the digital look of it and gave me a CD with a couple different variations. 

Our logo can be found here:

http://static.wixstatic.com/media/fe4d38_e4ab5dd09ad1ac8281a9d36eb524333f.png_srz_147_52_75_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_png_srz

 

WEBSITE

After looking at all the different free online website design formats we found that we liked Wix.com the best.  It is very easy to use, you do not need to be a graphics design major or know any html coding to make a very professional site.  One of the tips though that we will tell you though is in our opinion you should stay away from their flash sites. Our site was done in html5 and there are a lot of templates done this way. Apple is not compatible with flash so a large part of the population out there with ipads and iphones will not be able to see your site in its full glory.  The website took the most amount of time as you need to get this right.  We took about 20-30 hours on our site.  You have to make sure your brand and theme is stated here.  Anything that you do after the design of the website with other online channels must match/compliment the flagship of your online presence,  your website.    Our website set the pace for all of our other branding.  To create the site it is free.  To get a URL and to get it online costs about 30 bucks.  After that the price is about 20-30 some dollars a month for hosting. 

Here is our website.  All the videos were done for free (I will show you how) and I think it came out really well.  We are proud of it.  While we are in the process of a major overhaul away from Wix, the main features will still be the same.

You can see it at:  www.expivia.net

FACEBOOOK

Next we did our Facebook page.  We used our logo and images from our website to tie it together.  Obviously this is free.  Make sure you go through the phone verification to get the more professional URL name.  One of the first things you can post are topics from your website.  It is a good way to start linking both of them.  Don’t worry about your LIKES right now.  Just make sure it looks like you took time to set it up right.  It’s fine if you ask your friends and family to LIKE your new site but don’t worry about that number right now.

Ours is:  www.facebook.com/expivia

 

COMPANY BLOG

This part of your online portfolio takes time and thought.  Your blog should tell everyone about your company, what do you do, why are you different, what cool things are happening in your niche.  While it is ok to post something that you found from the web every once in a while, the blog needs to have mostly original material(such as what you are reading right now!)  People want to hear from you especially if they are interested in what you have to say.  Don’t cheapen that by being lazy and just posting things that you find online.  People can go to a site like Reddit.com for that.  We try to post at least twice a week our company blog.  The fun part of this is to get others in the organization to get involved, then it does not become a “chore”.  Make it a team effort.  You can start your online blog for free from many different sites. 

We chose Googles blogger for our blog :

www.expivia.blogspot.com

 

PREZI/YOUTUBE

Something that we have done and I believe has really enhanced our online brand was to use Prezi.  If you are unfamiliar with Prezi then that needs to change, especially for a small business.  Prezi is what PowerPoint would want to be when it grew up.  It is an amazing cloud based (no download) presentation format that allowed us to not only make marketing slide shows, products presentation or training guides but has allowed us to place these presentation on Youtube.   This will allow you to have free videos for our website or for those that want to know more about our company.  Prezi does not have a way to actually make a Youtube video but all that you need to do is to download a free screen capture program.  Run the Prezi while the screen is being recorded and you have a great marketing video for close to NOTHING!  Prezi allows about three of these for free and then you need to subscribe.  It is like 3 dollars a month for the ability to do more Prezis than you could ever make.

Here is a link to our blog about prezi to learn more

http://www.expivia.blogspot.com/2013/04/as-interaction-center-has-changed.html

This link will also show you our completed Youtube Prezis. 

Small business owners need to show a little imagination and ingenuity.  This is one way to make yourself different, to use your imagination and show your vision for almost no cost!

 

LINKEDIN

LinkedIn is the Facebook for the business world.  For a small business owner looking to startup a company LinkedIn is invaluable.  Most business people already know about LinkedIn so I will not belabor its importance.  What you need to do though is to put your soon to be business on LinkedIn as well.  This again needs to be an extension of your website/brand.  Same logos and same theme need to be duplicated.  LinkedIn is really nice because it allows you to break down your products and services as well as just giving a company overview.

Here is our LinkedIn services page:

http://www.linkedin.com/company/expivia-interaction-marketing-group-inc-/products?trk=top_nav_products

TWITTER

Twitter is the voice of your soon to be start up.  It’s a free account as most know.  Again you can pretty it up with your logo and pics.  Don’t worry early on about getting followers, that is for after launch of your company.  All you want to go now is make sure you are up, know how to use twitter, and start having some fun with posting things to groups with your common interest or to a future customer base.

Our twitter account is:



www.twitter.com/expivianow  

EZINEARTICLES

Ezinearticles  is a free site that allows you to “publish” original works online.  We kind of ham and egg this with our blog.  It is really just another way to get your word out for free.  All it takes is some time to write.  It is a great way to get hits to your online channels.

You can see our Ezinearticles from our blog using this link:

http://www.expivia.blogspot.com/2013/05/expivia-is-diamond-rated-author-on.html

 

TIE IT ALL TOGETHER

So now we have a website, Facebook page, LinkedIn site, beautiful videos that we have added to the website on YouTube and a Twitter account.  All of this is in addition to all your written work that was done with your blog and article writing.  All of the different channels all have the same theme, complement each other and look professional. 

Make sure that you tie them all together.  If you post on Facebook your Twitter account and LinkedIn page should do the same.  If you have a new blog post your Facebook and Twitter account should shout that out.  You get the idea.

SAVE ONE

It’s a great idea to save one of the more photo centric online marketing channels (like Pintrest or Instagram) for when you get funded.  Do a whole campaign on your start up journey through pictures.  Use all of the other channels to aid in this campaign.  This is a great way to start to build your following and get our name out for very low cost.

It does not take a lot of money to get this going.  Remember though you need to have all of our online branding done BEFORE you start pitching anyone for start up money. 

Once you get into it, it’s so hard stop!  It becomes a labor of love.  It is something that you are never done with but always changing, evolving and trying to make better.

 

After your business plan, this is the next most important piece of your structure that needs to be done before you should start to seek funding.   Once you get funded you can get into the more complex web technologies.  We are lucky enough to be in this phase right now but we will never forget the fun and love we had setting up our initial platform for the world to see!

Please take a second to comment if this has helped in any way!

Feel free to contact us at tlaird@expivia.net