Tonight I’ll be speaking at Refresh Boston. The chat is called Hopping on the Brandwagon, and it’s all about branding and marketing for small businesses.
Here’s a terrifying fact: my presentation still isn’t finished.
I’ve done a bunch of work with branding and marketing before — I like to think that even though I’m a web developer by trade, we all contribute to the brand of the company we work for, no matter how large or small. When you speak to clients, when you tweet, when you write articles on your own site: you’re advancing brands and people’s general perception of the world around them.
You could say that last minute work is part of my brand. It’s when I do all of my best work. I’ve stopped trying to pretend that that’s not true, and now I embrace it. In fact, it wasn’t until about 12:30 last night that I started feeling great about the presentation.
Nerves
I haven’t given a lot of talks, but everyone I’ve talked to about it seems like they feel the same way I do right now before they give a talk: nervous. No one wants to look like a fool, and even though I’ve been doing research and pouring over this talk for weeks, there’s always the chance that I get up there and freeze.
Oh, I’ve also heard tonight’s talk is being recorded so that we can watch my “um’s” and “uh’s” together forever. Good good. (But no really, it’s a good thing.)
As I write this, I’m sipping on coffee. That’s probably not a great idea.
Anyway, if you are a part of a small business and are near Boston and want to learn about why branding is important, what it really is and get some ideas to take with you to improve your brand, come see me talk! Hopefully I’ll keep the mistakes to a minimum and my feet on the floor.
