Spice Girls #05

You may think that the Spice Girls are so far removed from you and your business it's ridiculous. Well, believe it or not, they have in fact delivered us one of the most powerful lessons on personal branding in the world. Their personal branding strategy uncovers keys to unlocking a highly successful marketing campaign for your services and your individual brand.

Whether you love them or hate them, this lesson in personal branding has seen them become a worldwide phenomenon since they first broke out onto the scene in 1996. The Spice Girls delivered to their audience five distinct personalities that connected them with various personality types within their core target markets. These personalities were as named by "Top of the Pops" magazine as; Posh, Baby, Scary, Sporty and Ginger.

Have you ever asked yourself whether or not you have the personality to make it far in your industry? If you're in business services, is your personality so distinct that it makes you stand out amongst the litter of all of your competitors for all of the right reasons? Is it newsworthy? Are the media compelled to call you when they are putting together a feature on your specialty to ask for your expert advice?

Sadly, most business owners forget to brand themselves separate from and in alignment with their business to increase their credibility and authority in the marketplace they reside. By failing to do so they fall flat on their faces when it comes to distinguishing themselves from their competitors. It is this lack of distinction that hinders their process in successfully creating marketing campaigns that resonate in the ears of their prospective clients.

In developing ones personal brand, many key considerations need to be made. The first and most important one is; what do you want to be known as? Scary Spice, Ginger Spice or even Posh Spice? The reason behind doing this is to develop a "personality/character" that clients can associate with your name. This greatly assists in the retention of your products and services in the minds of your prospective clients. It also places you in a position of authority and credibility and the ability to charge more for your services once you are better known.

It can however take time to build credibility within an industry and for people to start calling you by the label you have created for yourself. This can be propelled forward by regularly attending networking events, presenting keynotes and regularly writing articles for various free and paid publications within your industry.

This past Sunday night I was browsing the TV looking for something to watch, when I came upon the show Access Hollywood and a former Spice Girl singer leading the celebrity interviews.

Upon interviewing the ladies participating in the new season of Dancing With The Stars, the Spice Girl (who's name I don't even know, although one could never forget her monstrous ego) conducting the interviews was very rough on the ladies. It was almost as if there was a streak of jealousy in the Spice diva as to the way she was critiquing each lady's performance. The only woman she to whom she was gracious was Priscilla Presley and that primarily due to her age.

When actress Shannon Elizabeth who dances with Derek Hough was interviewed, I was utterly shocked at how rude and insensitive Access Hollywood's Spice diva dealt with Shannon making unkind remarks which caused Elizabeth to cry.

Shannon who was dressed in a stunning red dress and undoubtedly had the best legs of any star on the dance floor got harshly spoken to by Italian-born British dancer and professional choreographer Bruno Tonioli. Bruno told Shannon, "If you're going to dance, you had better get those legs in shape!"

Whether that was a purely physical exhortation from the standpoint of personal fitness or merely outward appearance I don't know. Of course Bruno like Simon on American Idol makes himself famous by being flashy and edgy in his speech.

I realize Bruno is gay, but any other guy would affirmatively say Shannon Elizabeth is worthy of a "TEN!" shout followed by Bruno's signature approving punch for her legs.

Spice Girls #04

The power of relevant and useful content is still King of online marketing strategy. The absence of quality content will put all well-executed strategies to waste. Perfect link building, beautiful web layout, powerful keywords-all would be pointless if your content is filled with nonsense. If only for this reason, content should be the focus of every internet marketer, web developer and SEO practitioner.

Your content should be relevant to your website and your company's niche market. Your website is the online representation of your business, and what appears in it should be significant to the product or service you are selling.

Many web owners take content for granted. Many count on powerful and well-researched keywords from Google AdSense and other existing keyword tools on the Web to capture and keep their readers' attention. They tend to forget that keywords are meant merely to catch the attention of search engines (so the blog or site gets indexed and crawled) and SEO processes. By themselves, keywords can't keep a reader on your site, or keep him coming back, for that matter. Only quality content can do that. If you're still stuck on the concept of having your blog or website read like the ad section of a newspaper-with every word designed to sell, promote and advertise your business-you're bound to lose out in the long run.

The flamboyant singing sensation-the Spice Girls-were absolutely right when they sang: Too much of something is bad enough. It's true that too much outright selling (in other words, a hard sell) on your web page or blog will turn customers off and possibly drive them away for good. Unless they find something new, interesting, and of true value to them on your page-such as expert advice, helpful tips, or a unique take on a current issue or product-readers are bound to look elsewhere for what they need.

Readers browse the Web to learn and gain something new; therefore, you should seek to educate your readers. If you are a girl-pop memorabilia seller on the Web, don't just feed them with information about the memorabilia you are selling, educate them about the whole pop industry. Introduce your audience to the lives and works of Madonna, The Roxies, The Runaways, Stevie Nicks, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, and the Spice Girls; focus your efforts on providing value and not on promoting your business. Subtly entice them through your stories; you can create a need for your products by introducing interesting new things about your niche instead of blatantly promoting and advertising your products or services. Establish yourself as a reliable source of information-as if you were the Wikipedia and or Encyclopedia Britannica of your niche. Just tell the stories and let these stories do the selling for you.

Spice Girls #03

In 1994, Heart Management Ltd placed an advertisement in a trade magazine inviting girls aged between 18 and 23, and who could sing and dance to audition for a new all girl band. More than 400 applied. The five who were chosen became The Spice Girls, and the rest as they say is history. Would it be possible to put together a new business by using a similar approach?

Girl bands and boy bands have been around for decades: Gerry & the Pacemakers, Manfred Mann, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones, to name a few of the early ones. Before that, there were instrumental bands: Glenn Miller and the Dorsey Brothers. Dozens of groups have formed over the years and contributed to our musical heritage.

The difference between the Spice Girls and the other musical groups I mentioned is that the former was created from a group of people who previously had not known one another. And in business, while this is not impossible, is probably unlikely. That's because of the levels of trust that are needed between the members of the team.

That said, if the vetting procedure is sufficiently rigorous, and the legal and financial systems are established from the outset, then it would be possible to start a new business from scratch with a committed group of relative strangers.

But, you know what? You don't have to do it that way. It's always nice to start a business with your best friends, but if they're not interested, then you could start with your own network. Of the hundreds, or even thousands, of friends you have in your social networks, you're bound to find a handful who would be willing to collaborate with you on a first project. And once you had experienced some success with it, you'd know whether or not you wanted to invite that person onto your team.

Spice Girls #02

In the early 90s the boy bands like the Back Street Boys dominated the world of pop music. It was then that Bob and Chris Herbert, father-and-son management team came up with the idea of making an only-girls band. The Herberts along with Chic Murphey came up with audition for the same and out of about 400 applicants they brought forth the "Spice Girls".

The British pop girl group, Spice Girls, consisting of five singers Victoria Beckham, Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton, Melanie Chisholm and Geri Halliwell, were formed in 1994. They were signed to the Virgin Records, a British record label. In 1996 they released their debut single "Wannabe" which was a worldwide hit and established them as a global phenomenon.

They paved the way for the commercial teen pop culture in the 90s. They repeated their success with their debut album "Spice" that sold more than 23 million copies worldwide and thus created history in the music industry being the best selling album by a female group. They also became the best selling girl group of all time with 75 million copies sold worldwide with only four albums and 12 singles.

The Top of the Pop magazine gave each member of the group their alias which was liked by both the media and the girls. Thus Scary, Baby, Ginger, Posh and Sporty became the most widely recognized individuals and came to be known as the biggest cultural icons of the 90s. Their first book and manifesto "Girl Power!" launched in 1997 sold 200,000 copies within a day, and was later translated into 20 more languages. The same year also saw them winning New Artist and Album of the year at the Billboard Music Awards. They also won the International Hit of the Year and Best selling British Single awards for "Wannabe" at the at the Ivor Novello Awards.

But the group dint stay together for a long. After seeing the height of their career, Geri Halliwell left the group in 1998, making headlines world over. She went on to launch a solo career later. The rest of the girls stuck together determined to carry on the band. After Geri's departure the girls came out with "Goodbye", which was considered as a tribute to Geri. It topped the UK Singles Chart and became their third Consecutive Christmas number one, a feat which was previously set by The Beatles.