Thanks to Nikolay Chakarov from www.mengear.bg for this guest piece!

Have you ever wondered how to start your own online venture? What are the steps and how to accomplish them?

Don’t worry if you don’t know, because today I will give you a quick introduction of the basic terms and steps you need to think of when you are planning your first online business.

10 Things to Consider When Starting on Online Business:

1. Brand name

Most people are already of the common mistakes they need to avoid when choosing a brand name. These include long names, spelling mistakes, using words that are not related to their business. This simple and important task could cost you days and weeks of planning. As an entrepreneur you are well aware that time is a valuable resource and you shouldn’t overspend it on details. Better done than perfect – right? 

In order to save time and money, make a list with all of the possible and not so possible words and expressions.  Then start combining them. You can do this either alone or with friends or your business partner. The last time I needed a name for our online store, we did it in 25 minutes. Remember – if at any point you decide that your current brand name somehow decreases your rate of success and sales – you can always change your business name. In fact, back in 1996 the number #1 search engine was called “Back Rub”. In 1998 the founders decided to change its name to “Google”. So why bother? Just start today!

Social media, content marketing, mobile and real-time – these have been the mega trends of the past few years.

What we’ve been seen and experiencing as consumers and as professionals in terms of technological development is simply amazing. We can’t live without our smartphones, tablets or other devices such as kindles. We seem to be in a symbiotic relationship with them, where our devices have become extensions to our bodies – without them, we can’t function. Just look around the next time you’re in the city, at the airport or especially in public transport – everyone is gazing at their devices. I promise you, you’ll be shocked at the scene, just put your phone away and look around!

Here are some staggering statistics to convince of the magnitute of technological adoption:

Relationships, relationships, relationships! How many times have you heard this or read about the importance of building relationships with prospects and customers, especially when talking about social media? Countless times I would guess. Well, like it or you'll continue hearing that magic word "relationships" in the years to come. Why? Simple: with the mainstream adoption of always-on real-time communications and information available at our fingertips, your customers demand that you know how you can add value and meaning to them in a highly personalised manner. Creating and delivering such value is at the heart of building relationships.

The reality, however, is that these value-adding, multidimensional relationships are rather a myth.

That's what Edelman reveals with the results of brandshare 2014. It's a study of 15,000 consumers in 12 developing and developed countries, across 11 industries, that sought to understand the evolving relationship between people and brands. The focus was discovering what drives value for business and for the consumer.

Examining brand behaviour and performance, Edelman found that there's actually little value exchange between brands and consumers. The majority of people believe their relationships with brands are one-sided (66%) and purely transactional, where consumers are solely contributors bringing benefits to the brand by buying, but not receiving much in return. Current interactions between consumers and brands add more value to brands than to consumers.

"The Secret Power of Brands" is one of the four MOOCs (massive open online courses) that I am currently doing. Very interesting indeed, so for anyone who is looking to learn more about branding, I can only recommend it. As part of the course materials, we were assigned last week to write a short piece answering the following question: To build a successful brand, is it better to control every aspect of the brand, or to encourage people to adopt it and adapt it? Here's how I answered:

In today's era of real-time, in-the-moment, everywhere-and-anytime world of online communications, brands no longer hold control over their reputation. Organisations do indeed control internal activities such as manufacturing, supply chain management, finance and even corporate communications that allow them to ensure expected quality of products and services, but the way their brand is seen and experienced externally is now defined by consumers. As Brian Solis says,

“Businesses are no longer the sole creator of a brand; it is co-created by consumers through shared experiences and defined by the results of online searches and conversations.”

Brands have no physical objectivity. They sell a way of life. The asset of a brand is that dream that exists in the heart and soul of the customer and her experiences of it, shared in the online space.

In a previous blog post I talked about the art of persuasion and the ethical principles of influence as defined by Robert Cialdni. Today, I want to share with you further important principles from the work of another brilliant man – Dale Carnegie and his best-selling book "How to Win Friends and Influence People". The difference between this post and the one about persuasion is that with the advice from this post you can go a step further – from influencing people to making friends, or in the language of business, from influencing strangers to delighting them into becoming your loyal followers.

I read Carnegie's book a while ago and I've been thinking about how to best present my impressions. He offers valuable advice in the form of well categorised principles and I though it doesn't really make sense to just list them. So I got a little creative and put together an infographic that serves as an ethical guide to human relations and making friends.

Why is that important in your professional life?

As Dale Carnegie says,

"Dealing with people is probably the biggest problem you face, especially if you are in business."