This is the first of the Guest Post Free-For-All’s from one of the O.G.’S that I learned from when I first got into the blogging game – Charles “CZA” Sweet. He runs 10 Facets and is the author of countless works online. If you want to contribute a guest post, hit me up at ceo@arthurpledger.com. The best post by December 21 wins a free copy of my upcoming eBook, so dont be shy.

The Value of a Solid Brand

Both the term “brand” and the practice of “branding” has been thrown around ever-increasingly in places ranging from business journals to half-cocked reality shows starring record industry moguls yet few really explain the true definition or the essential need of having a solid one. In layman’s terms your brand is the key identifier for yourself or your business and something that should be just as well thought out as your business plan with careful consideration of how it gets portrayed now as well as in the future.

I’m not going to sit here and insult your intelligence by rattling off a how-to in creating your brand; I imagine y’all already have some inkling of who and what you are and what you want to accomplish but if you need a few pointers, I wrote about it briefly here and more in-depth using the rapper Drake as an example here. What I will do however, is speak on different ways to capitalize off your successful image and open the door up for brand extension through different opportunities.

Once you have figured out what works for you in your public image, the next step is to make it marketable; believe it or not, there are angel investors in every industry and they’re actively looking for a runaway bandwagon that they can leap on and further make themselves hot. Depending on your niche it could be that a larger, more well known and profitable company wants to use your services to take care of a segment they don’t feel would be cost-effective to tackle on their own or a company looking to tap into a totally different demographic than the usual and allow you to do the same on their end. However it comes, there’s an inedible truth to the game–if you can’t affect their bottom line positively, you’re not much good to them. There’s no such thing as a sure bet but there’s always a good investment and it’s in your best interest to become one.

Paris Hilton may not have been as poetic as a Saul Williams or a Sir Francis Bacon but her charisma and party girl antics created a brand for herself that led to a fragrance, a clothing line and (for better or worse) an album. I’m pretty sure she gave thought to have one or all of these things before she became a celebutante but the eventuality of her having these became real only after others saw her value as a media draw. We’re not millionaire heiresses but we can incorporate that small lesson into our own foundations. If she can do that by doing virtually nothing, imagine what you can do.

Remember, don’t just dream…wake up and execute!

Hustle Harder: the Definitive Guide to Upgrading Your Grind coming in January!

-CZA
10Facets.com
@czatheceo

Popularity: 11% [?]