This week,  New York City celebrates fashion week. Thousands of style gurus from around the globe will get exposed to the hottest new looks, designers and trends as they all proudly prance on the catwalk.

A noted item this season looks a lot like an old “fanny pack”. However, now it is called a “belted satchel” or as creative director for Diane von Furstenberg, Yvan Mispelaere proclaimed they are “hands-free bags”. Mr. Mispelaere refers to the smashing accessory as an item of functional shape, but with a touch of glamour, luxury and seriousness.

The old item with the new life sells for $325 to over $4,000.

A little strategic word-smithing goes a long way or should I say, a reincarnation of a nomenclature?

Here’s a few others that come to mind.

Mercedes, BMW,  high end cars
Old word, used car
Reborn word, pre-owned vehicle

Groupon and LivingSocial
Old word, coupon
Reborn word, deal

Name re-birthing does not just apply to products, people do it too.

Bernie Madoff’s daughter in law last name
Old word, Madoff
Reborn word, Morgan

Need more resources on brand naming? Check out these previous blogs.
3 A’s of an awesome brand name
Koolwordz
Name you business

The TV broadcast industry does it with news scoop.

Tabloid papers do it with rumors of dirt.

Email marketers do it with headlines.

Flirty people do it with compliments.

Online marketers do it with time sensitive offers.

And dancers do it with a boa.

They all give you just enough to peek your interest, get your attention and then hook you in for more.

Now bloggers like me are doing it.

The next 5 days are going to be really big.
Some of the best blogging I’ve ever done. Check back and you’ll get some never before shared secrets, the skinny on this years Super Bowl commercials, full details on my next book with a major publisher and why I’m going to the Middle East.

Stay tuned. I won’t disappoint you.

For more on conquering customers, view: 3 free ways to help connect buyers to your business.

Standout brands are distinct, memorable and own their turf. Think about Target (hip, cool and great design), Alfec (the duck icon), and Lady GaGa (outrageous style, no borders behavior).

They didn’t copy the pack, they lead it with a set of unique attributes. If you want to break through a clutter of the same old boring stuff that 95% of your competition are doing, then be original, odd and offbeat. And avoid these 5 costly mistakes.

1) Don’t use other people’s quotes in your marketing content and social media. Create your own original quotes, ideas, opinions and and insight.

2) Don’t use the same colors and graphic styles that are everywhere in your industry. Break the rules. And then rule your category.

3) Don’t use the same tired copy points and words that your competition uses. Tell memorable stories and create your own words that are unique and belong to you.

4) Don’t use, over used stock images and photos that everyone and their uncle has used since 1982. Find compelling pics, try adding treatments to them with cropping, borders, colors and filters. Or take your own.

5) Don’t expect everyone to love your distinction. Change or an unusual approached often get resisted early in the game. How may people loved Google when it first launched?

When you find your solid path of brand distinction and stick to it, your marketing dollars will have more power to help build a strong and sustainable brand.

Also check out: The 3 A’s of an awesome brand name.

Yesterday, I pledged to join the daily blogger club. Yep! To be one of those who pumps out a post, like their favorite song – effortlessly, passionately and often.

Since I am somewhat the oxymoron of a creative, structured soul, I must kick off this copy writing cause with a tight, ritural-minded plan.

So here it goes.

Must have tools.
A notebook or two you really like. I carry one with me where ever I go. My recent travel journal notebook sports Audrey Hepburn in her famous glam shot from the Breakfast at Tiffanys movie. I also keep a notebook at my bedside. This one is quirky and covered with colored dots. And of course must have writing instrument too.

Steps and guidelines to stress-free and gushing good blog posts.
1.) Keep an ongoing list of ideas, words and topics that you grab throughout the day. When it’s time to write refer to to this list.

2.) Before you go to bed, pick your topic for the next day. This may change when you dream or read page 6 of the New York Post.

3.) Pick a highly creative-flow time zone in your day. For me, my blog writing will become a morning scheduled ritual, like brushing my teeth and reading my affirmations.

4.) Set a goal of sharing at least 1 strong point. Some days this will be enough. A point can be an answer or a question.

5.) Don’t strive for perfection, 2,000 pithy words or a Pulitzer Prize.

6.) Do strive for strengthening your brand, deepening your online presence, expanding your brain and challenging your reader to think and take action.

7.) Say something in your voice. Cutting and pasting someone else’s quote is lame and lazy and does not add to your unique brand, or your stature of authority and expertise.

8.) Find inspiration from new words (sign up for a word of the day alert like: Wordspy or Visual Thesaurus), bizarre photos, videos and things you are curious about.

9.) Have fun. Push the envelope off the table and drop a rubber toad into someone’s purse or briefcase.

10.) And for some reason you can’t crank it out as you promised your read, post a creative excuse.

Now write on!

Share what works for you too!

Don’t forget to check out: Ladybugs, VW bugs, bed bugs and technology bugs.

My wish list for the Branding Diva is fairly simple: make my projected profit numbers, live a high standard life, beat most of my opponents in tennis, have fun, stay healthy and earn the #1 organic search result on Google. The first five I mastered and was not surprised. The last one (a pleasant surprise) happened this last quarter.

I earned the #1 spot in Google results under Branding Speaker.

So how did I do that?
I did not invest any money with an SEO specialist or ranking company.
I did not call Google and beg.
I did not do the search result dance around a bonfire.

Here’s what I did.
The 10 steps that got me the #1 listing on Google for Branding Speaker.

1. I did my own keyword research.
2. I added as many of these keywords into my web copy as I could.
3. I updated my meta tags.
4. I secured my URL for more than three years.
5. I tagged all my images with ALT tags.
6. I wrote relevant keyword content and posted it everywhere, creating links back to my site.
7. I set up and tagged all of my videos on YouTube which is owned by Google.
8. I repurposed every piece of content I ever wrote and posted it everywhere.
9. I set up all of my social media that link to my site.
10. I set up RSS feeds on my site.

If it worked for me, it can work for you. Good luck!

For more on how to get search results, view: Making history in Saudi and 5 lessons from the experience.

This weekend was full, but not with all my favorite things. Friday night I celebrated a girlfriend’s birthday and went to a swanky steak place, consumed caviar, nice wine and had a good time. Saturday AM, I had a league tennis match and before I even got there, I was convinced I was going to get beat. My opponent had the reputation of being over skilled in our group and had beaten everyone. To my total surprise, I played my best tennis and beat her. Pretty cool.

That afternoon I had marked out time to work on my book proposal. My proposal has been finished for months and my agent has been working the field, pitching away. I’ve gotten two bites back and a request based on a the publisher’s feedback. Simple enough, right? Starting point, feedback, tweak up and send back. A nice orderly way to manage my Saturday. Well it didn’t quite look like that. By 6PM I had transformed into a non thinking, sleepy, procrastinating zombie. Then stress was entering my head because I knew I also had other things to do before Monday. I was making no progress on anything. My conclusion: I needed some new black shoes. So I hit the stores. Nothing called out and said “Buy me, Buy me”.  Another thought entered my mind, Sushi and Saki – now there’s a nice combination! And I have my notebook and file with me. I’ll eat, drink and work. Well I did the first two, drove home and passed out. Missed Saturday night live, damn it!

Sunday morning arrives along with a mammoth, too much, Saki headache from the night before. For the next few hours I scribbled nonsense, napped, had a nightmare, watched football and procrastinated even more. This was so unlike me. The weekends are my best creative output time. I’m usually a machine.

My logical alias checked in. He whispered, “You are scared, Karen. Scared you may come up with a brilliant new twist for the book proposal, the publisher will hire you and then you will have a giant deadline. Or you won’t come up with JACK and you’ll get rejected.” It’s all bad. So is drinking poison, which was not even on the list and just as unlikely.

It’s 4:15 and my local Tampa Bay Bucs are playing on the radio. TV was blacked out. That makes my cranky too. But, I can burn through another couple hours of fear and fuel my procrastination even more.

It’s past 8pm, the Bucs lost 28, 24 and I have not written one darn word or even had a half of a thought of genius. It’s cat nap time, again. I set my iphone for 20 minutes. I will rest, from all the hard labor I did today, wake up and then write.

I opened my computer and within a couple of hours, drafted a discussion document about an expanded approach to my book proposal, wrote a short blog, sent 10 new business emails out for speaking gigs and went to bed. Phew, got through it! It should not have been so painful. I suppose next time my brain freezes I will go exercise, that usually works well for me, but this weekend my funk wasn’t liking much exercise other than looking for the remote control.

Today I feel like new person, maybe because the document was off my plate for a few days. I was venting to one my colleagues about my brain freeze and procrastination, guilt and stress and she sent me this excellent article on high-level creative thinking. It’s worth the read and I will try the advice next weekend. Thank you Lauren!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this on going challenge I had this weekend. What’s your story?

That is a million dollar question. Email continues to get high marks as an effective channel to reach customers and prospects, but it can also cross the line of too much, too frequent and even feel pest-like.

Oddpodz is very sensitive concerning how often we reach out to our community. Starting this week, we are going to employ a new schedule of sending ezines to our friends and supporters. Twice a month we will blast our top posts from our three blogs. On the off ezine blast weeks, we will post a wrap up article in the Grow your Business blog. And if you want a daily dose of Oddpodz, please sign up for our RSS feed too.

Let us know what you think? Just enough? Too much? Need more?

And 3 myths about the practice I’m going bust.
I believe publicity is worth the investment, if the coverage is relevant to your brand, if it appears in the right media outlets and you earn enough frequency.

As a small business owner and entrepreneur for nearly 28 years, I’ve been very fortunate to have earned a lot of media exposure in my career. I’ve been on Bloomberg radio and TV, CBS’s The Early Show. I’m a regular guest on FOX TV, I’ve been featured in Fast Company, The New York Times, The New York Post, The Miami Herald and Entrepreneurial Magazine just to name a few. This media coverage or publicity has directly made deposits in my bank account. I’ve gotten speaking gigs, consulting assignments and sold books. But let me bust a few myths about this powerful practice, too.

1) Publicity is free.
Not true. Sure every now and then a company gets a call from a media source and it didn’t cost much, but some good luck and timing, and a nice feature story appeared. However in most cases, earning publicity takes time and money. Whether it’s hiring a professional PR firm, a writer or communication planner to craft to your message and or PR materials, or just the expense of getting your news out through buying lists or postage. It’s not free.

2) All publicity is good publicity.
Not true. In the mid 90’s one of my clients was involved in an FBI investigation. As a vendor, my company was dragged through this mud even through we had nothing to do with the crimes in question. This was very unfortunate and did not help my business. If fact, the negative publicity through pure association with the company hurt my business.

Additionally, when an executive or employee stays something off message or stupid, this can dramatically impact the image of the brand.

3) Hiring a big name, expensive PR firm will guarantee you publicity.
Not true. In addition to working the media myself, I’ve engaged PR firms for fees of $500.00 to $15,000 a month. There is no correlation between fees and success. The magic sauce is the degree of contact with media that means something to your business, the real news you have to share and timing. If you are a small company there are many things you can do to get publicity all by yourself. I created a TA-DO list of getting publicity. These tasks and methods have worked for me and can work for you, without investing a boatload of cash. It’s not free it will take some time and strategic actions.

In the Publicity TA-DO list you’ll learn about

• A free daily service that features what reporters are looking for and how to connect with them
• What’s needed in your press kit
• And the BIG “never-dos” when you are building a relationship with a reporter

Beyond, my tips in the Publicity TA-DO list, PR Newswire, one of our partners has some great publicity insight on messaging, release distribution and campaign analytics. They’ve put together a special PR toolkit of discounts and resources for the Oddpodz community. I’ve been a customer of PR Newswire for my companies and my clients. They have been a valuable resource for media lists, distribution and competitive monitoring issues. This is worth checking out.

In closing, publicity should be part of every company’s marketing mix. It is a great way to further position a brand as an authority in their industry, leverage third-party opinions and provide repurposeable content for search engine optimization.

Subject lines are critical in email. They are often the power behind getting read. Equally as important are the words you want to avoid, so your email does not get Devoured by the spam eater. I found this list and some other good SEO tips. They seemed to cover the bad boys.

100 spam trigger words & phrases to avoid

1. #1
2. 100% satisfied
3. 4U
4. Accept credit cards
5. Act Now!
6. Additional Income
7. Affordable
8. All natural
9. All new
10. Amazing
11. Apply online
12. Bargain
13. Best price
14. Billing address
15. Buy direct
16. Call
17. Call free
18. Can’t live without
19. Cards Accepted
20. Cents on the dollar
21. Check
22. Claims
23. Click / Click Here / Click Below
24. Click to remove
25. Compare rates
26. Congratulations
27. Cost / No cost
28. Dear friend
29. Do it today
30. Extra income
31. For free
32. Form
33. Free and FREE
34. Free installation
35. Free leads
36. Free membership
37. Free offer
38. Free preview
39. Free website
40. Full refund
41. Get it now
42. Giving away
43. Guarantee
44. Here
45. Hidden
46. Increase sales
47. Increase traffic
48. Information you requested
49. Insurance
50. Investment / no investment
51. Investment decision
52. Legal
53. Lose
54. Marketing
55. Marketing solutions
56. Message contains
57. Money
58. Month trial offer
59. Name brand
60. Never
61. No gimmicks
62. No Hidden Costs
63. No-obligation
64. Now
65. Offer
66. One time / one-time
67. Opportunity
68. Order / Order Now / Order today / Order status
69. Orders shipped by priority mail
70. Performance
71. Phone
72. Please read
73. Potential earnings
74. Pre-approved
75. Price
76. Print out and fax
77. Profits
78. Real thing
79. Removal instructions
80. Remove
81. Risk free
82. Sales
83. Satisfaction guaranteed
84. Save $
85. Save up to
86. Search engines
87. See for yourself
88. Serious cash
89. Solution
90. Special promotion
91. Success
92. The following form
93. Unsolicited
94. Unsubscribe
95. Urgent
96. US dollars
97. Wife
98. Win
99. Winner
100. Work at home

Do you know of any others? Please share.

Some other tips to remember.

1. Writing subject lines for email should include: thoughtful creativity, keywords, a sense of urgency, value points, benefit words and emotional triggers.
2. Don’t repeat your subject line, just because you think it’s a campaign. Your readers may not know that. They could think it’s something stuck in the pipeline and likely trash it. Instead, if it’s a campaign or you have branded your series, add a number, a keyword tied to benefit or hot topic phrase.
3. Test. Split your list and try a couple variations.