Brand Against the Machine: How to Build Your Brand, Cut Through the Marketing Noise, and Stand Out from the Competition

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The Sound of Silence

THE SOUND OF SILENCE can be a dangerous thing in business. You work hard to build an engaging brand and enjoy the interaction between you and your target audience. So what do you do when your audience stops engaging with you and goes silent? You have to jump-start the conversation.

There are a few key areas in your business where you may have noticed them going quiet. You know your audience has gone quiet when you see a decrease in your e-mail open rates and click-through rates. A decrease in your retweets on Twitter and conversation/likes on Facebook. A decrease in blog comments, a decrease in referrals, and even a decrease in incoming phone calls. All of this can and will lead to a decrease in sales and opportunities.

Hopefully you'll only notice a decrease in just one of these areas. If that's the case, the fix is fairly easy. If every channel has gone quiet, then the first thing you need to do is check and see what you've done wrong. Any brand can screw up, especially personal brands. Sadly, I see a lot of people damaging their personal brand via social media on a daily basis. A strong opinion on something controversial can make your audience run the other way in a hurry.

Assuming you haven't massively screwed up, then fixing a silent audience can be quick and easy. Regardless of what company you use for handling your e-mail list, almost all of them provide statistics on open rates and click-through rates. You should monitor these and watch for trends ...