There’s a good chance that most of you have heard of Dollar Shave Club. This was a small start-up business owned by Michael Dubin, a man that had simply got fed up with the expensive prices on shaving razors.

At first glance, this cute idea for a start-up business might not seem any better than anyone else’s. Just how successful can a man selling disposable razors online be, anyway?

Well, thanks to his brilliant video that he placed online, it became incredibly lucrative. The video went viral thanks to its comedic tone and Dubin now has the big name razor companies running scared.

More recently, another success-by-video story has popped up online. A Brigham Young acting major decided to start her own toilet spray company. The product was aptly named Poo Pourri, but that name alone isn’t what got the company all of the 4 million online views…it was the hilarious and rather potty-mouthed (lightly) video that the entire internet seemed to eat up with a spoon.

You need look no further than these two examples to see just how important video can be when it comes to getting your brand’s name out there.

These examples suggest that humor is the key to going viral. In the case of Dollar Shave club, it simply took Dubin saying “Our blades are f*cking awesome” (with the accompanied bleep). With Poo Pourri, it was an elegant looking lady sitting on the toilet, stating that she had just created a “creamy behemoth from her cavernous bowels.”

Of course, given the nature of these brands, comedy is the clearly the way to go in order to properly present their brands. It might be different for your brand.

Do you know what language to use to best communicate with your audience? Do you have a message that you can convey in an interesting way via video?

If so, it might be time for you to finally buckle down and really look into it. Online videos are quickly becoming essential for online success. Are you prepared to join in?

If you are looking for new ways to grow and expand in your business, there is one surefire way to stretch your limits: get the hell out of your comfort zone.

Business owners that choose comfort and familiarity over trying something new will usually find themselves trying to keep up with their competition. This is true for all things related to technology, marketing, and social media related.

As odd as it may sound, stepping out of your comfort zone isn’t something that you can just do. It actually takes quite a bit of planning if you want to get the most out of it.

So get ready to step outside of your comfort zone by adhering to these three principles.

New World, New You: A good way to start your journey outside of your comfort zone is to find an online seminar or even just a handy e-book on a topic that you’re not familiar with. Don’t choose blindly, though. If you actively participate in marketing your business, choose one on marketing…especially if you have grown too comfortable and stale in your current approach.

Find New Inspiration: Find some new magazines, blogs, or websites to start reading. Ask around, especially seeking advice from your social network circles. Find some new material that you don’t usually read and add it to your reading list. Speaking of social media, try stepping out of your normal groups here and there to see what inspirational voices you’ve been missing out on.

Out With the Old: Are you still curating certain practices just because they have worked in the past? If so, examine them closely and see if they are really adding anything to your company. Either eliminate them completely and start with a new approach or tweak the old approach so that it is more relevant to the times.

What tactics have you implemented with your band to make sure you don’t get too comfortable? Any success (or, for that matter, failure) stories you want to share?

Much like your children, talking about them in passing here and there seems distant and downright negligent. So it would have been rude of us to not expand on yesterday’s post of how your children are very much like your brand (and vice versa).

So here are three more ways in which raising a child and building are brand are eerily similar.

Proper Nurturing Will Require Some Expenditure: School clothes, entertainment, toys and (gulp) college all cost money. Oh, and you probably need to feed t hem, too. And food isn’t exactly cheap. Just like you need to spend money to raise a child, you’ll also need to sink some cash into properly growing your brand as well.

From a professional website to hiring artists and designers to make things look pretty, nurturing a brand to the next level is going to cost some coin, too. The trick, of course, it to find the line in both cases that separates necessity and just being spoiled.

They’ll Change as They Get Older: This one can’t be avoided. Growing pains exist in brands just as they do with children. So when your brand hits that slump that you need to find some new social marketing strategy to get out f, just think of how things will be when you kids hit their teens and remember that things can only get better.

Picking a Name is Hard: Okay, we’re just having some find with this one. With a kid, names are harder than most people that don’t have kids think they are. Coming up with a name is hard—especially one that “fits.”

Choose wisely here on both accounts, Pick something with meaning and isn’t going to be drowned out by all of the other brands/kids out there.

Anyone out there have any other cool or quirky examples to further beat this metaphor into the ground? Better yet, do you have any real-life examples of how your brand and your child/children and closely linked?

Hey, remember that annoying Got Milk fad that was going around back in the day? The one where numerous celebrities wore milk moustaches and tried to make drinking milk seem cool? Well, you know who really remembers it?

The majority of Spanish folks.

Roughly translated, “Got milk?” was essentially asking Spanish ladies “Are you lactating?” Seriously…no joke.

Speaking of the Spanish, you may not see many of them drinking Coors Light. There’s two reasons for this.  First, most Mexican beer is far superior to American beer and secondly, there’s a translation issue in an older slogan of Coors. Remember their “Turn it loose,” motto? Translated, that refers to someone having “loose bowels.”

There wasn’t much blowback over this little translation snafu in the world of branding. But there are some companies that just can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to product names having a completely different meaning in different cultures.

Ikea can tell you all about this. In the not too distant past, they have had numerous run-ins with translation problems in a few areas of their brand—particularly in Thailand. A few of the most popular are:

• In Thailand, the Ikea pot plant called the Jättebra, is incredibly similar to a Thai slang word for “sex.”
• Customers in Thailand might have been excited to purchase the Redalen bed, as it the Thai terminology used for getting to third base.
• Neither of the above holds a candle to the Gutvik bed—which, in German, is very close to meaning “great f*ck.”

Oh Ikea, you and your kinky exploits!

But hey…it doesn’t only happen in the US. As a matter of fact, in the Middle East there is a laundry detergent called “Snow.” Sounds nice and fresh and clean…until you translate it from its Farsi origins and into English…where it means “barf.”

What are some other good ones you’ve heard? Has your own brand run into these comical sorts of mishaps?

Looking for a way to make sure your brand stays in the public spotlight? This is easier than you think…you just need to be subtle and a little clever.

It starts with freebies. Have something in your office to offer your clients (or even those would-be clients that step through the doors but end up not becoming a client). This can be something as small and unimpressive as a pen or as handy as USB drive or a tee shirt.

The important part of this, of course, is to have your brand’s logo on these items. This is a very unobtrusive way of getting your brand and out there in front of new eyes. There have been stories reported of people seeing a business name on the back of a tee shirt and calling it based simply on the tee shirt.

You can get in on this action. But what products should you be using to place your brand’s logo on? Well, the most popular and unique are:

Pens: everyone uses them and everyone has a favorite one. So don’t skimp on this. Put your name on a nice attractive pen and hand them out to anyone that comes through your door.

Staplers: This is a popular item for office use and, surprisingly, not many companies have used them to place their logos on. You can get smaller handheld staplers for relatively cheap so you won’t have to spend a lot on handouts for your customers.

Shirts: Although, truth be told, no one is going to want a short with your logo on it unless you have a cool logo. Make the shirt as attractive as you can without breaking the bank.

Calendars: From large desk calendars to pocket-sized versions, calendars are another thing that people still use regularly (although they are readily available on smart phones in a variety of shapes and sizes).

Fridge Magnets:  I know, right? It’s weird, but people are still clamoring for fridge magnets. Make yours cool so that people will want it place it proudly on their fridge. Clever taglines are highly effective here.

What are some objects you’ve placed your logo on that was a little outside of the box? Did it work? What reactions did you get from your clients?

We touched upon managing your brand reputation yesterday. Of course, in the age of the internet, this is much harder to do online. With so many different areas to cover with marketing and social media efforts, it can be hard to keep track of your online reputation.

But there are a few things you can do to ensure that you have full control of your online reputation. Most are easy to do but might take some time, depending on your area of expertise.

If you really want to make sure your online reputation remains in a positive light, try out some of these strategies.

Stay Interesting: Nothing keeps your reputation sparkling like being able to consistently churn out fresh and relevant content that your audience wants to read. You’ll be even more golden if readers turn this content into hot viral topics that get spread through social media like wildfire.

Stay Away from Negativity: Face it. Here and there along the way, you are going to get some criticisms and maybe even some negative reviews or word of mouth. And while these might make you angry and trigger your need to defend yourself, don’t give in to such impulses. It’s perfectly okay for people to have their opinion—and when businesses personally respond in a defensive manner to negative feedback, they often come off as being whiny and needy.

Don’t be that guy.

Keep Tabs on Your Personal Online Self, Too: Chances are that you have a Facebook account for your business and for your own personal life, too. Well, when you’re behind they keyboard and have had a few too many beers, try to remember that your personal accounts are a reflection of your brand. You can’t be professional and well-versed on your business accounts and then get overly political and crude on your personal account with it being linked.

What are some ways your business has managed to keep your band reputation under control and always looking great? Do you find that it is harder online or off?

Remember in high school, it was always some huge deal if people were talking about you—no matter if it was good or bad. And no matter what sort of gossip it might have been, you wanted to keep tabs on what was being said about you.

Yeah…your brand should be sort of like that.

It’s crucial that you know what sorts of things are being said about your brand, especially online. There are basic tolls you can use to monitor this (we suggest Google Alerts and simple Facebook settings from the admin page) but the best thing you can really do is to properly manage your brand’s online reputation.

For instance, if you’re a marketing firm in Richmond, Virginia, a simple Google search for marketing firm Richmond VA will show you what the most popular names and topics in your industry are. You need to be in this list—somewhere on the first page that comes up. Then throw the name of your business in there to see if there are any conversations going on that you are unaware of.

Don’t forget to do the same thing with a Google Image search. You might be surprised with some of the things that pop up on Google images.

Another thing you can do to keep tabs on your reputation is to find out what your competitors are up to as well. From time to time, keep an eye on their reputation as well as your own. If there is anything negative in conversations or reviews in regards to a competitor, work towards using their weaknesses as one of your strengths. This is also a great way of looking for the pet peeves of customers within your industry without experiencing it for yourself.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at a few other ways to keep tabs on what’s being said about your brand and how to manage your online reputation. Until then, look over these tips and strategies to see if your brand can improve on any of them.

Among the biggest bits of “well duh” information that so-called experts continue to drill into the heads of small business owners is that they are dead without social media. This is common knowledge by now. It’s like stressing to a new car buyer that those nifty moving machines need gasoline to run.

Still, despite the wide spread use of social media and its many uses for growing small businesses, there are many brands that are just starting up and getting adjusted to the social media landscape. These people are likely going to have some questions as to how they can best utilize social media.

This is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, some people that have been using Facebook, Twitter and other popular social media platforms continue to have questions. While the scope of these questions changes over time, there are a few that remain constant.

So here are three of the most common questions and the boiled down, simplified answers.

How Do I Turn Social Media Followers into Customers? While there are no 100% proven strategies to get this done, there are a few approaches that seem to work more than others. This includes having a cross-platform presence (utilizing more than one social media outlet) and taking out inexpensive Facebook ads. Holding a contest is also a great way to turn passive followers into customers.

Can I use social media to provide customer service? This is actually becoming a very popular approach, as it directly connects your business with your customers in a personal way. It also shows the public via Facebook posts or Twitter feeds that you take the time to help your customers…and this could help you gain traction with new customers.

How can I keep track of my social media marketing efforts? Thankfully, there are many tools to keep track of what’s working and what isn’t. Facebook allows page administrators to see this sort of information. Also, on Twitter, using hashtags helps you see which of your topics and offers are trending. Most platforms have some form of tool to help you keep track of marketing efforts; it’s just a matter of learning the platform well.

What are some still-unanswered questions you have regarding social media?