Five questions with Rohit Bhargava on his book "Personality Not Included"

Your best friend’s personality is central to how much you like them, how much you look forward to interacting with them, and how you relate to them. We can all agree with that. But cultivating a positive business personality can make your company more attractive, more likeable, and more relatable to your customers, too. According to Rohit Bhargava’s new book “Personality Not Included,”

“Personality is the key element behind your brand and what it stands for, and the story that your products tell to your customers. Every element of your business, from your interactions with your customers to the packaging of your product is an element of your brand personality, and these are the elements that inspire delight or indifference among your customers.”

Mr. Bhargava is the head of the interactive marketing department at Ogilvy Public Relations, a frequent industry speaker, and excellent blogger (Influential Marketing Blog). In support of his book release, Mr. Bhargava put out an open invitation to anyone in the blogosphere to ask him five questions about business personality. Here is our interview:

Can you define business personality?
I defined business personality in the book as "the unique, authentic and talkable soul of your brand that people can get passionate about."

Could you offer suggestions of something unusual that a small businessperson could do on their Web site to assert their business personality?
Definitely. One big thing is language.  Let's face it, the writing on most small business sites (and large business sites too) just plain sucks.  It's total marketingspeak and does little to demonstrate what a brand stands for or even describe it well.  A small business website with a good description of what they do with personality would stand out. 

What are the two most relevant 2.0 technologies small businesses can use to grow their business or define their personality online?
The first is video.  It might not fit your 2.0 technology standard, but I figured I would mention it anyway as relatively few small business sites are using it, but there really is nothing like using video to bring your brand to life in moving pictures, so to speak. The second relevant web2.0 technology is tagging.  Using the right tagging for content (and submitting it to the right sites too) can help a small business to also stand out and also improve their google ranking at the same time.

How much time should a (time-strapped) small businessperson spend on online marketing activities per week?
This is a tough one to answer because it really depends on your business. If you are running a roofing business, the majority of your work might come through word of mouth referrals and you may be better off creating a really great brochure or calling card that people can give to one another.  Of course, you could do this online too, but it really depends on your audience and business.  In this day and age, though, I don't think any small business can afford to ignore the Internet as a channel - so I would say no less than an hour a week.

What is the most important thing to know about your new book?
That it's worth buying!  No, seriously, the most important thing is that it is a very unique book in its approach because my main intention in writing it was for it to be USEFUL.  To do that, I have lots of stories, I share lots of lists and I have a two part structure where the first part is the theory and the second part is all action guides to help you put the ideas of the book into action.  Hopefully it delivers on the charge to be useful, but you'll have to let me know that!

You can find a listing of all the other interview questions and answers on Mr. Bhargava’s blog, along with a free copy of the introduction to “Personality Not Included.” Thanks for your time and thoughtful answers, Rohit!