© Photographer: Apletfx | Agency: Dreamstime.com

“Let’s go online, it’s cheap and more effective.
No.. Offline is the best, it is dirrect and fast result.”

Sebuah percakapan yg sering saya dengar belakangan ini ketika saya berdiskusi dengan klien, mendebatkan strategi promosi yg paling efektif dan efisien untuk membangun karakter brand mereka.

sebagian ngotot jaman new wave seperti sekarang yg penting promo online, dan sebagian lagi masih kekeuh dengan asumsi offline yg gencar bakalan membawa impact yg besar pula.

“kalo pendapat mas Catur gimana? kita harus pake strategi offline atau online?”

Kita pake dua-duanya pak! keduanya merupakan unsur penting dalam upaya membangun karakter brand yg tepat. Sinergi offline dan online strategy bisa menjadi sebuah kekuatan maha dahsyat yg sangat menguntungkan brand/ pemilik merk. Masing-masing strategy mempunyai kelebihannya sendiri, yang kalo diblend akan saling menguatkan.

Offline Strategy sangat bagus untuk customer engagement, membangun persepsi yang positif, kepercayaan dan baseline recognition yang membedakan brand kita dengan brand yg lain.

Online strategy sangat bagus untuk driving convertion, leading visitor to our website/ online message about the brand yang akhirnya berupaya supaya traffic yg ada convert ke sales atau tujuan lain dari strategy online kita.

ga kalah pentingnya adalah content message nya,musti integrate antara online dan offline, dua-duanya mengusung misi yg sama, menyampaikan persepsi brand yang benar kepada khalayak. Harapannya satu, brand jadi makin dekat dengan target marketnya dan makin mudah kita menawarkan jasa/ produk kita.

Bacaan menarik lainnya tentang online strategy dan offline strategy silahkan disimak di Tantangan Konektor sosial oleh Hermawan Kartajaya,Waizly Darwin MarkPlus, Inc.

Selasa Malam, sebuah program referensi pemilu indonesia oleh metro tv “Suara Anda” membahas tentang “Efek Ketokohan Terhadap Pilihan Partai“.

Ada 2 hal yg menarik perhatian saya dalam acara ini:

1. Topik tentang “Efek Ketokohan Terhadap Pilihan Partai” menyajikan hasil survey yg membuktikan bahwa di Indonesia kultur pengidolaan tokoh masih sangat kuat. Jadi siapapun yg berhasil menjual diri (dlm artian positif) melalui message personal branding yg tepat, membuka kemungkinan lebih besar untuk dipilih rakyat.
2. Metro tv dalam berinteraksi dengan para pirsawan tv telah menggunakan channel social media dan internet, Yahoo Messenger/ Skype: suaraanda dan facebook group “Suara Anda Metro TV“. Jadi bukannya menganggap bahwa bahwa new media (internet and social media) menjadi ancaman terhadap kelangsungan hidup media konvensional, tetapi malah dengan cerdik memanfaatkan gelombang trend social media untuk mendapatkan perhatian lebih dari target market mereka.

Apakah ini sebuah upaya metro tv untuk berkomunikasi lebih horisontal? ataukah hanya uji coba channel komunikasi baru karena tergiur mendapat kampanye social media ala Obama yg berhasil membentuk komunitas evangelish global melalui facebook.com?

Yang jelas, “media komunikasi semakin berkembang, cara penggunaan dan pemanfaatannya memiliki kelebihan dan kekurangan masing-masing”, jangan asal latah meniru, strategi online branding yang matang jangan diabaikan.

Conversations are taking place with or without you and this map will help you visualize the potential extent and pervasiveness of the online conversations that can impact and influence your business and brand – Brian Solis

It’s about people, community and social networks. Cool resources from BrianSolis.com
Brian Solis is Principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning PR and New Media agency in Silicon Valley.

One of the main goals of online personal branding development is to be world-wide well-known. There is no more regional limitations, time and place. Your brand will fast, free spread at online medias.

As the largest search engine on the web and major directories, Google Definitely are our best friend for our brand development progress.

Each day google receives several hundred million queries through its various services. google doing your hardest jobs that is collecting a huge database of your brand market audience, gathering content from our blog and site, And now, all you gonna do is filtering the database to find the best suitable market and optimizing your message that shows on your online medias such as website or blog.

Google love You very much, they create so many free services to help you promote your brand through online medias. Here are some:

Google Analytics:
Use this service today and get started to creating targeted ROI-driven marketing campaign and improving your site/blog design and content.
from google analytics you can manage the result for:

•   Driving Traffic
•   Converting Visitors into buyer
•   Tracking and Testing wich page are perform the best
•   Analytics in Context (to broader applicability of web analytics.)

Google Alerts:
Choose your queries or topics, and create Alert to have your latest topics relevant google search result, such as news, webs, etc.
Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:

• monitoring a developing news story
• keeping current on a competitor or industry
• getting the latest on a celebrity or event
• keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

Google Blog Search:
Find blogs on your favorite topics, match the topics into your expertise. find current blogs on your most interested subjects. Then you can start create a new professional networking with other blogs or sites that shows on

Google Co-op:
Create your own custom google search engine. Customize your search engine to make easier your search term, find specific search result that relate to your interested topics.

With Custom Search Engine, you can harness the power of Google to create a search engine tailored to your needs.

My Google Co-op:

Custom Search benefit for your personal branding development:

• to drive more prospective visitor for your success on branding development.
• to create your professional network and communities to contribute on the search engine development
• if you are adsense publisher, a custom search triger more revenues on your Adsense for search.

Google Translate:
Go Global !! When marketers want to promote their new brand, or strengthen their existing brand to another regional countries, the big wall is "Language". With google translate, you can break this wall easily. Google translate single word, text or even a complete web pages into eleven languages.

Google Patent Search:
Check out google patent search result, to make sure that your brand already available. If so, you can do the next step to patent it (if necessary). Believe me, you don’t wanna spend your life-time working on other peoples patented brand.

Google News:
Update your knowledge to catch-up fresh news on your professional expertise topics. You can event set up customised RSS feeds for the news subjects that interest you.

After successful event "A Brand You World – 2007 Global Telesummit" with so many professionals get involve in this events, globally connected through single phone line.

Thanks for Conference Calls UNLIMITED who participate as Gold Sponsor on this event. And now all global telesummit recording and podcast are available.

Some must listen recording:
Use Personal Branding to Take Your Job Search from Zero to 60 – Jason Alba (MP3)
Building Your Online Brand for Career Distinction – Kirsten Dixson (MP3)
Evangelizing Evangelists to Build a Business and Build Your Brand - Guy Kawasaki with Krishna De, Tim DeMello, John Jantsch and Andy Sernovitz (MP3)
Branding Your Resume, Bio or CV: Trends and Tips - Susan Guarneri with Deb Dib, Megan Fitzgerald and Bernadette Martin (MP3)
Promoting Brand You with Viral Marketing on the Web – David Meerman Scott (MP3)

Visit Personal Branding Summit Blog to download complete recording or podcast with iTunes.