personal brand

Why You Need a Website

| wgvegaswoody

You only need a website today if you want to prove to others that you exist. If you are happy to remain in obscurity, you can get along just fine without having your own website.

Individuals, small and medium-size businesses, and nonprofits need a complete, yet affordable, selection of professional and customized services to enable them to win over their particular target audience with online marketing. Usually this means paying today’s high prices for professional services to get your own website. That is just a waste. And so unnecessary.

Nearly half of small and medium-sized businesses or nonprofits do not yet have their own website. One thing that I tell people today may sound shocking: You need to have a website if you want to have street credibility today in the business world. Your personal brand depends on having a website.

I firmly believe in this need to have a website after working since 1996 using the Internet for business. If you are someone who really does not want to have your own website, please read this one page and give me a chance to change your thinking.

I can help you if you start with an acceptance that yes, you need a website if you really want credibility today in marketing your business to your target audience.

Basic Rule of Business

Once you understand the need to have your own website, you need help with strategic marketing and personal branding online. The basic rule of business that I use can be explained using an ocean metaphor: You need to swim in the same waters as your potential customers.

You get the idea. The truth is: To do business today involving seeking and attracting potential customers, you need to bring what you are offering to your customers where they are.

The other simple reality is that having your own website is essential proof that you are savvy enough to use today’s contemporary tools of communication in the digital realm and online. You don’t want to be considered irrelevant or outmoded.

Perspective

Today, the use of the Internet for business is roughly 20 years old. Websites today differ greatly from how websites worked back in the 1990s when the Internet was new.

The major difference is that today’s websites are intended to interactive for your visitors compared to the old-school style of websites from the past.

Let me quickly express what you need and should want: You want a website for today, not a website that is from the 1990s. The past belongs in the past. Learn to respect the past, but understand that we must focus on today and tomorrow.

Living in the Present Day

Today, the best practice is to have a site that is attractive to look at and easy to use, plus, the website works the way it needs to work: People need to interact with you through your website if you want to be successful in using the website for your business.

The manner or way that you employ online and using digital outreach technology should be important to you. Resist the temptation to jump into an expensive contract with a provider of website services that promises you the sun and moon and a couple of galaxies, too.

Sure, having a website today is essential, but you can be smart and conservative in how you go about it. Why? You don’t want to dump a lot of money and time into something that is wrong.

Now a Warning: Merely getting your own website is not a secret doorway to either sudden riches or fame. Rushing out and using social media channels without thinking about why is not the answer to your most pressing business problems. Text messaging to thousands of smart phones may not necessarily rescue you from irrelevance.

Today’s digital technology together with the Internet represent marvelous human accomplishments and inventiveness. Websites and smart phones could surely not have been imagined a few decades ago except by the likes of science fiction writers. But, don’t get lost in the marvels that we now have at our fingertips in the 21st century.

The best way to success is to use digital technology together with the Internet as one of the tools of your trade.

Consider how computerized word processing has become an indispensable tool for writers today. Since word processing is so important to the craft of writing nowadays, how did anyone write and publish books before the invention of word processing software? Trick question.

Here is wisdom you can take with you today: Make effective use of the tools of today’s technology. Use the Internet. Have your own website. Yes, get into Twitter. And Facebook. Send text messages to reach the smart phones you know your audience uses.

Just be sure that you have carefully thought out why you are using these tools: Reaching, interacting with, and persuading your target audience should be your core reason and chief motivation.

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[My original version of this commentary first appeared in 2011 on this and other blogs.]

San Francisco

| wgvegaswoody

SFO  

 
One hundred eight years ago, a terrible natural disaster descended upon San Francisco. The April 16, 1906 earthquake and resulting fire devastated the City and Bay Area. But, this is a resilient place that learned how to stand out from all other places in North America. I am working here now in San Francisco on the 17th floor of a building that stands on landfill and no, I am not afraid.

If you follow my posts here bearing the stand out tag, you already know that I relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada from the Washington, DC area during the dead of summer 2012. What was I thinking?

I asked myself that question as I melted under the unnatural feeling of daytime highs hitting one hundred eighteen degrees. Yeah, sure, the summers are damn hot in Las Vegas. But, everyone knows that.

I had to leave the Washington, DC area to move on with my life. There were many things I loved while living in Las Vegas for over a year. I just had to accept that my job meant relocating to San Francisco. And, what do you know? Although the weather is never hot in San Francisco compared to Las Vegas, in real life a person cannot pick a place to live and work based on the local weather.

Being someone who wants to stand out in life, I jumped at the career opportunity to work in San Francisco and left Las Vegas in the rearview mirror. Well, that’s a metaphor because actually I flew on United Airlines.

The most important lesson I have learned in my life is to seek change, explore new ventures, and don’t regret what you leave behind. Now I am in San Francisco, which is arguably the most beautiful city in North America. There is so much to love here.

This also is a very happening place where the economy is so good that people here choose to pay more than most other Americans for just about everything. Did you know that for $4 you can get toast in San Francisco? Bread and butter toast. Like for breakfast. Not some trendy alcoholic beverage!

Oh yeah, and then there’s that rather annoying legacy of earthquakes. Can’t do anything about that any more than I could change the terrible weather in Las Vegas in summertime.

So, to stand out, I urge you to go where you need to go when you need to move on in your life. No matter what. If you don’t want to stand out, stay where you are. That’s my advice based on my life’s lessons. I hope you will explore my other commentaries on this subject here that are tagged with stand out.

Go Buzz Power

| wgvegaswoody

For everyone who wants to go out into the real world and harness buzz power: My eBook is available for in an updated edition (2022) at no cost to you. Revised and expanded with new content. This eBook with a revised title covers the successful use of strategies and tactics in the digital realm that create public excitement about a person, place, or thing:

Creating Buzz Power: Public Excitement for You and What You Do (FREE DOWNLOAD)

Bounce back after COVID-19 and thrive online! You get a downloadable eBook by Dr. Woody Goulart which will boost your success online after COVID-19 with secrets about how to work from home, launch your own website and self-publish your book to sell on Amazon.  Download this eBook for free:

The author:

Create Your Own Reality

| wgvegaswoody

Throughout Western culture in literature, song, movies and other artifacts there is a common meaning to be found: Each person has the capability of creating their own reality. Tapping into this ancient wisdom can save your life and reinvent who you are.

A very recent echoing of this wisdom came from Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO at GE. Read his simple, yet profound message to a graduating class of college students to see what I mean.

Immelt’s core message is powerful and merits requoting here: “We can’t wait for the economy to stabilize. We can’t wait for a time when there is more certainty. It used to be that you only had to manage momentum. Today, you have to create your own future.”

I’m not sure how I came to be someone who embraces that kind of viewpoint about life. I just do embrace it. Wholeheartedly.

I have been reinventing who I am for many years. Long before I ever heard of the word reinvention, I was doing it in my own life.

That is partly why I write commentaries here on this website. My goal is to share with you what I have discovered to be true. I hope your life can benefit from the lessons I have learned.

Fake versus Real

| wgvegaswoody

American society in 2013 seems to have difficulties separating what is fake from what is real. Just look at the number of those so-called reality shows on television and you will know exactly what I mean. How any one us can hope to stand out from others is deeply affected by this American cultural context.

Since my youth I’ve heard the phrase, “fake it ’til you make it.” To me, the phrase always seemed to be sarcastic and more than just a little shallow. I used to wonder why anyone would want to be fake given the choice to be real. Then I became an adult.

My favorite quote of all time springs from my own lifelong search to tell the difference between fake people and real people. Julius Henry Marx lived from 1890 to 1977 and is best remembered by his nickname, Groucho. He was an American writer and comic with a profound ability to turn deeply intellectual thoughts into everyday language and make people laugh in the process. My favorite quote of all time comes from him: The secret to life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

The ability to find humor in the struggle to separate what is fake from what is real is crucial to your being successful in shaping your own personal brand so that you stand out in positive ways from others. I firmly believe this.

I recommend that this weekend you should rent a movie called O Lucky Man to explore the humor in how people work so hard to stand out. This film stars Malcom McDowell, a talented actor whose face and voice you will recognize instantly because he has appeared in so many films over the years. McDowell was just 30 when he starred in O Lucky Man as a struggling young man trying to stand out from others and become successful in a professional career. This film is a comedy whose main purpose is to make you laugh so that the filmmakers can sneak in persuasive messages in the story to compel you to think about the differences between fake people and real people.

At this point in my life, I have somehow managed to live and work in Hollywood, Washington, DC, and Las Vegas. Being in these three famous American cities severely confuses anyone who hopes to tell the difference between fake people and real people. If you spend any time in any of these places, you will come to understand this simple truth: Hollywood and Las Vegas encourage make-believe for purposes of show business. Washington, DC encourages make-believe for purposes of political power.

Each of us must arrive at our own answers as to whether we are being dishonest if we ever fake it to stand out from others. There probably are moral considerations here, but I dare not tell you what you should consider to be moral. You must find your own way. You would be wise, however, to keep in mind that what is fake versus real often is in the eye of the beholder like truth and beauty.