Set your brand's foundations, strategy and guidelines

Building a powerful brand with core values

Milestone: Share your core values with your classmates and prepare for some direct questions in the
Milestone: Share your core values with your classmates and prepare for some direct questions in the Classroom that will allow you to fine tune your them to make them more precise and powerful.

Download your Week 1 Project: Creating Your Core Values
Share your brand's core values
Share your progress in your project section to get feedback from other students

Defining Your Avatars or Ideal Audience

Milestone: Post your avatar's profile in the Discussions and prepare for feedback that will help bri
Milestone: Post your avatar's profile in the Discussions and prepare for feedback that will help bring this person to life.

Download your Week 2 Project: Creating your Avatar
Introduce your classmates to your “avatar”
Share your progress in your project section to get feedback from other students

Getting Yourself Out There With Content Marketing

Miletsone: Share at least 3 niches and 1-3 blogs for each. If you're stuck, I'll serve up
Miletsone: Share at least 3 niches and 1-3 blogs for each. If you’re stuck, I’ll serve up some advice on where to go hunting and how to think of content that will excite your avatar in the Classroom.

Download: Week 3 Project: How to find blogs for content marketing
Attack blogs with the right content
Share your progress in your project section to get feedback from other students

Creating Your Social Media Manifesto

Share your take on your brand's Voice on social media, what Purpose it serves, and what unique
Share your take on your brand’s Voice on social media, what Purpose it serves, and what unique Actions you’ll take daily to grow your brand.

Download: Week 4 Project: Creating your social media manifesto
Share your purpose statements

Class Wrap Up

Additional Resources

Welcome to Week 1 of class! To get started, here is a short clip I created about branding that encourages you to ask yourself 3 big questions to really define what your brand is really all about.

Here's a question for us all to think through this week: What is the one business you would be happy to run, every day of your life, even on the weekends?
Time to introduce the world to your ideal customer/user/audience member. Post their “profile” in the classroom and prepare for some feedback that will help bring this person to life.

Bonus points to students who have a picture and name for their avatar.

Here are two blog posts that will help you flesh out your avatar even more:
1. 6 Simple Steps To Define Your Audience for Content Marketing
2. These Tips Will Define Your Blog's Target Audience

Here's a helpful question to think through: How do you know you’re making the right decisions for your brand? Are you confident you understand what language to use, what media outlets to tackle for outreach? What social media platforms to engage in?
By now, you have a strong sense of your brand and who your avatar is. Well, now time to tell us what blogs they read and what kind of content you’re going to deliver. The most helpful resource for this week:
- Check out Alltop.com - the #1 source for finding blogs within any niche rapidly
A good question to think through for this week: What websites, blogs, and news outlets would I love to be written up on and why?
Simply being on social media isn’t enough, you need a foundation that will guide you now and will carry over to any and all future hires that will manage your accounts.
- Check out my video on How to Use Social Media
Think through: How can we use social media to advocate for our work, share interesting news, prove we’re leaders and masters of our niche, and engage our current audience?
The theme of this week is: ask me anything! Share your questions in Discussions so I can cover them in this final Q&A.

Mark Koekemoer

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