A Counterpoint to the Branding Craze
I just finished
Branding Only Works on Cattle by Jonathan Salem Baskin on my flight to St. Louis. I’ll be honest that I thought I wasn’t going to like the book. I write about personal branding quite a bit, and the first sixty or so pages of the book seemed to be just a repetitive slam of the product/service type of branding. Boy, am I glad that I read more and finished the book. By the end, I really loved the ideas, and I came away really reconsidering some of how I talk about marketing and have shifted a little bit of what I say when advising people about social media strategy for business. Let me talk a bit more about what changed my mind.
Changing Behavior Drives MUCH More Value
Baskin left me thinking hard about two major points. The first was that money spent on marketing should be money spent on shifting a buyer’s behavior closer towards buying. Yes, I realize that this is fairly basic and fundamental in one light, but if you look at how far from this perspective marketing efforts seem to be drifting, especially online, it seems to me that maybe we should poke people on the shoulder and point out the basics again.
Is it more important that I remember the Geico Caveman, who somehow accidentally became a TV celebrity? Or should I be motivated somehow to double-check my insurance rates against Geiko’s? Repeat this with every brand. Did Starbucks win so many dollars because we remember the green and white logo, or because they invented the “third place?”
Search Is Vital
“Search is a larger, behavioral reality that impacts corporate strategy.”
Baskin rightly points out that marketing strategies that don’t include a heavy element of search won’t work well for us. One of the reasons that I advocate content marketing, such as writing a compelling group blog, is that it’s an opportunity to build search equity. Writing about things that people might search for is a great way to find some new people at your door who might want a look at your product.
Worth It
In the end, I think that Branding Only Works on Cattle is worth a purchase (or if you’re a library type, add yourself to the waiting list). The supporting information and some of the other points that I didn’t write out are worth looking into as well. It’s not a reference that I’ll be pulling down from the shelf every few days, and this book itself probably won’t be Baskin’s landmark work, but I tell you this: I’ll be waiting to see what he publishes next in a few years.
What’s your take on my representation of what he said? What do you think about focusing on behavior over branding? Are you naturally adding search into your marketing mix? Have you considered content marketing?
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Free eBook on Personal Branding
I’ve compiled a free ebook on personal branding called Personal Branding for the Business Professional (pdf format). It runs just about 15 pages (including the cover) and contains everything from strategy advice to some considerations to over 100 tactics and ideas on what to do next.
Most of the ideas come from previous blog posts, but as there have been several new subscribers in the last several months, and because I believe that the information might spread further in an ebook format, I wanted to give it to you free, and without any sign up or anything.
Free eBook on Personal Branding
If you like what you read, please consider blogging a link back to
this post so that people know where to get the ebook. If you’d like to share copies with someone else, please point them to this post and not the file directly, so that I can update the post and the file without concern.
And if you’re happy with what you’re reading here, please consider subscribing for free. I’d love to know that you’re coming back for more.
Thanks!
Personal Branding for the Business Professional (pdf format).
Strip Malls for Personal Brands
Steve Rubel has a thoughtful post about the recent state of Internet social sites. In it, he suggests that users are acting as tenants in a rental property situation, and that it seems we’re all a bit flustered when our properties, like Twitter, have damage. I like the perspective, and I think the conversation should definitely be had. But immediately, I had another analogy come to mind for a slightly different reason. Steve mentioned the difference between “renting” on other people’s services versus “owning” our blogs. For whatever reason, I thought about the way we “shiny object” types are showing up on all these various social platforms, and I thought about strip malls.
We’re Everywhere
A quick digression: I believe that if we ever invent time machines, they will be situated in WalMarts and other big box stores. Why? Because they’re everywhere and look roughly the same. We won’t be as baffled when we shift between locations on the globe.
Strip malls feel like that. Sure, there are different stores, but they’re just places full of stuff. You can get a haircut, buy a cheap Chinese buffet, mail a letter, and take a karate lesson in any given cluster of strip malls. The same names start to pop up.
So, in Steve Rubel’s tenants and owners analogy, I liken a lot of us who are taking up space on these various social networks as some kind of strip mall tenants. Think about it.
I’m on Jaiku.
I’m on Pownce.
I’m on Twitter.
I’m on Plurk.
I’m on Facebook.
I’m on MySpace.
I’m on LinkedIn.
I’m on Utterz.
I’m on Seesmic.
I’m on Flickr.
I’m on … I can keep going.
And so are you. So’s Scoble. So’s Paisano. Lots of people are everywhere all of a sudden.
In a way, haven’t we made little branding strip malls? Little outlet stores for the product known as “me?”
What’s your take?
Photo credit, le
100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media
You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. - Tyler Durden, Fight Club.
Branding one’s self in an online environment built on entropy and go-baby-go is difficult at best, and impossible if you forget to take your happy pills. To that end, I’ve come up with a quick list of 100 things you might do to help with these efforts. Feel free to add your ideas to the comments section.
If you like this one, please don’t hesitate to stumble, blog, digg, bookmark, and otherwise promote the hell out of this. That’s another tactic, by the way. : )
Listening
- Build ego searches using Technorati and Google Blogsearch
- Comment frequently (and meaningfully) on blogs that write about you and your posts
- Don’t forget the conversations hiding in Twitter (use Summize.com) and Friendfeed. Be sure to stay aware of those.
- If you can afford it, buy professional listening tools, like Radian6 or others in that category.
- Use Google Reader to store your ego searches.
- Use Yahoo! Site Explorer to see who’s linking to your site.
- Use heat map tools like CrazyEgg to see how people relate to your site.
- Listen to others in your area of expertise. Learn from them.
- Listen to thought leaders in other areas, and see how their ideas apply to you.
- Don’t forget podcasts. Check out iTunes and see who’s talking about your area of interest.
- Track things like audience/community sentiment (positive/negative) if you want to map effort to results.
Home Base
- Home base is your blog/website. Not everyone needs a blog. But most people who want to develop a personal brand do.
- Buy an easy-to-remember, easy-to-spell, content-appropriate domain name if you can. Don’t be TOO clever.
- A really nice layout doesn’t have to cost a lot, but shows you’re more than a social media dabbler.
- Your “About” page should be about you AND your business, should the blog be professional in nature. At least, it should be about you.
- Make sure it’s easy to comment on your site.
- Make sure it’s easy for people to subscribe to your site’s content.
- Use easy to read fonts and colors.
- A site laden with ads is a site that doesn’t cherish its audience. Be thoughtful.
- Pay attention to which widgets you use in your sidebar. Don’t be frivolous.
- Load time is key. Test your blog when you make changes, and ensure your load times are reasonable.
- Register your site with all the top search engines.
- Claim your site on Technorati.com
- Use WebsiteGrader.com to make sure your site is well built in Google’s eyes.
Passports
- Passports are accounts on other social networks and social media platforms. It’s a good idea to build an account on some of these sites to further extend your personal branding.
- Twitter.com is a must if you have a social media audience. It also connects you to other practitioners.
- Facebook and/or MySpace are useful social networks where you can build outposts (see next list).
- Get a Flickr account for photo sharing.
- Get a YouTube account for video uploading.
- Get a StumbleUpon.com account for voting.
- Get a Digg.com account for voting, as well.
- Get an Upcoming.org account to promote events.
- Get a del.icio.us account for social bookmarking.
- Get a Wordpress.com account for its OpenID benefits.
- Get a LinkedIn account for your professional network.
- Take a second look at Plaxo. It’s changed for the better.
- Get a Gmail.com account for use with reader, calendar, docs, and more.
Outposts
- Build RSS outposts on Facebook. Add Flog Blog, and several other RSS tools.
- Build a similar outpost on MySpace, if your audience might be there.
- Make sure your social media is listed in your LinkedIn profile.
- Add a link to your blog to your email signature file (this is still an outpost).
- Be sure your social network profiles on all sites has your blog listed, no matter where you have to put it to list it.
- Make sure your passport accounts (above) point to your blog and sites.
- Use social networks respectfully to share the best of your content, in a community-appropriate setting.
- Don’t forget places like YahooGroups, Craigslist, and online forums.
- Email newsletters with some links to your blog makes for an effective outpost, especially if your audience isn’t especially blog savvy.
- Podcast content can have links to your URL and might draw awareness back to your content, too.
Content
- Create new content regularly. If not daily, then at least three times a week.
- The more others can use your content, the better they will adopt it.
- Write brief pieces with lots of visual breaks for people to absorb.
- Images draw people’s attention. Try to add a graphic per post. (Not sure why this works, but it seems to add some level of attention.)
- Mix up the kinds of pieces you put on your site. Interviews, how-to, newsish information, and more can help mix and draw more attention.
- Limit the number of “me too” posts you do in any given month to no more than three. Be original, in other words.
- The occasional ‘list’ post is usually very good for drawing attention.
- Write passionately, but be brief (unless you’re writing a list of 100 tips).
- Consider adding audio and video to the mix. The occasional YouTube video with you as the star adds to your personal branding immensely, especially if you can manage to look comfortable.
- Brevity rules.
Conversation
- Commenting on other people’s blogs builds awareness fast.
- The more valuable your comments, the more it reflects on your ability and your character.
- Use your listening tools to stay active in pertinent discussions.
- Try not to brag, ever. Be humble. Not falsely so, but truly, because a lot of what we do isn’t as important as saving lives.
- Ask questions with your blog posts. Defer to experts. Learn from the conversation.
- Be confident. Asking for external validation often is a sign of weakness.
- Good conversations can be across many blogs with links to show the way.
- Try never to be too defensive. Don’t be a pushover, but be aware of how you present yourself when defending.
- Disclose anything that might be questionable. Anything, and quickly!
- Don’t delete critical blog comments. Delete only spam, abrasive language posts, and offensive material. (Have a blog comments policy handy, if you get into the deleting mode.
Community
- Remember that community and marketplace are two different things.
- Make your site and your efforts heavily about other people. It comes back.
- Make it easy for your community to reach you.
- Contribute to your community’s blogs and projects.
- Thank people often for their time and attention.
- Celebrate important information in your community (like birthdays).
- Be human. Always.
- Your community knows more than you. Ask them questions often.
- Apologize when you mess up. Be very sincere.
- Treat your community like gold. Never subject them to a third party of any kind without their consent.
- Knowing more about your competitors’ communities is a useful thing, too. Learn who visits, why they visit, and how they interact.
- Measuring your efforts in building community grows out your brand as a natural extension.
Face to Face
- Have simple, useful, crisp business cards to share. Always.
- Be confident in person.
- Clothes and appearance DO matter. WIsh they didn’t, but they do.
- Have a very brief introduction / elevator pitch and practice it often.
- Ask questions of people you meet. Get to know them.
- Don’t seek business relationships right off. Instead, seek areas of shared interest.
- Know when to walk away politely.
- Don’t try to meet everyone in a room. Meet a half dozen or more great new people.
- Never doubt that you are worth it.
- If you’re terribly shy, consider finding a “wing man” for events.
- Doing homework ahead of time (finding people’s most recent blog posts, googling them, etc) helps one feel “in the know.”
- Make eye contact. It’s MUCH more powerful than you know.
Promotion
- Use Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us and Google Reader to drive awareness.
- Promote others even more than you promote yourself
- Bragging isn’t useful to anyone besides your own ego
- Linking and promoting others is a nice way to show you care about people
- Don’t digg/stumble/link every single post. Save it for your very best
- Another promotional tool: guest blog on other sites
- Another promotion tool: make videos on YouTube with URL links
- Another promotion tool: use the status section of LinkedIn and Facebook
- Try hard not to send too many self-promotional emails. Wrap your self-promotion in something of value to others, instead.
- Sometimes, just doing really good work is worthy of others promoting you. Try it.
You probably have some great ideas to add to this. I’d love to hear what you want to add, or feel free to blog your own list and add value to the project that way. In any case, I hope this was helpful, and I wish you great success in your efforts to brand yourself and show the world what a rockstar you are.
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
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The Real Power of Personal Branding
Here’s the secret to personal branding in a nutshell: be consistent. Try your damnedest to be true to the things that make you who you are, and try your best to improve upon those gifts you have, and compensate for the ones you lack. If you learn nothing else from this post, snip everything off below these words and focus on the first part, because that’s really the nugget, and that’s really what needs your focus and attention. The rest is just support.
In Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online part 1, I showed you a small version of the answer to the question, “WHY have a personal brand?” In personal branding part 2, I shared a few tools you can use. In Connie Bensen’s personal branding bonus round, she shared with you a story about building community. Now, let’s finish it off by talking about what gets done with branding.
Brands Can Be Stories, and Thus, You are A Living Story
By saying this, I’m invoking a powerful promise, the the storyteller’s promise. Simply, tell the story you told your audience you’re going to tell. Think for a moment on this as it applies to you. I tell people daily that I’m here to help you understand how these tools develop community, improve your communications, and do a host of other things better than previous tools were doing them. I promise through my stories that you, too, can figure out how to build influence, develop relationships, and be more useful to your organization (be that a business, a nonprofit, or a circle of friends).
If I let you down, I’m not keeping the promise of my story. It’s pretty simple, really. And not so much touchy feely. I could say the same thing a different way, and a manager would write it on an annual review. Integrity is another word for this.
Improve On What You Have, Not Lament What You Lack
I sat in a woman’s office the other day, and she had a copy of StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath on her desk. I’d read the book as well. It’s a follow on to the popular Now, Discover Your Strengths. These books resonated with me because they gave a different set of advice than what we’re accustomed to learning. They taught me about moving forward with what I’m really good at, and finding ways to work around my weaknesses.
We’ve been taught since childhood that we have to be well-rounded, that we have to improve on our weaknesses, that we should strive to fix what’s broken. Not me. I’m done. I’m focusing on what I do best, and you know what? It’s impressive how that changes not only my perspective and abilities, but also the perspective of my colleagues. It turns out that they’re just as willing to accept the parts of my job that I’m not very good at accomplishing, and they either encourage me to get it done some other way, or when they can, they pitch in.
Why work hard to be what you’re not? Build and deliver power through those parts of you that are already your best gifts. I’ve heard this echoed through several other works. In fact, I could give a bibliography of about 30 books without breaking a sweat that will give you the same advice. Don’t ignore what you might need to do but aren’t so great at accomplishing. Instead, find the way that you’re going to handle those parts of your life, deal with it, and focus even harder on the parts you do well.
The Last and Biggest Secret
Confidence. One word. That’s it. If you can learn to nurture your confidence, you will accomplish FAR more than with any piece of software, nifty logo, or perfect slogan. You will do more through empowering your belief in yourself than through ANY other possible tool or method or strategy.
I believe that everyone can recover from a waning self-confidence. It’s not easy by any stretch, but if you learn (or get help to learn), you can uncover ways to strengthen your confidence, and that power will give you energy and ability and an ability to persist, even when things are not in your favor.
Confidence (not arrogance) is the secret sauce to everything you do with regards to personal branding.
Did You Think It Would Be Tricks and Strategies and Repeatable Methodologies?
There are plenty of ways you could approach this. You could develop the strategy of ubiquitous presence: “I’ll be everywhere, and thus people will get to know me.” You could build a strategy to provide “just in time service,” maybe through using the best listening tools, and having resources enough to provide answers and assistance.
But would any of that work without the parts I mentioned above?
What Would You Add to the Branding Story We’ve Told Together?
Do you have more to say? Would you share your personal branding experiences with us? How might you recommend someone take the four parts (including the bonus) of this series and apply them to their online presence efforts to build up a personal brand of value? What are the benefits of all this work? Have you thought of that one, yet?
Your conversation, as always, is greatly appreciated.
The Social Media 100 is a series of posts written about social media and social networking tools by Chris Brogan. If you’d like to receive every post, please subscribe for free to my blog. There’s also a free newsletter with completely different content, if you’d like to receive that as well. Thank you for your attention.
Bonus- Guest Post by Connie Bensen
Building Brand Through Building Community
A huge thank you to Chris for letting me guest blog! It’s truly an honor as Chris has been a great mentor & I appreciate the opportunity offered to save him from a day of blogging!
Chris has the incredible ability of helping others & has provided me with great mentorship.
I’d like to share my methods for efficiently building an effective brand. Everyone has a story & into this post as I share my tips on building brand. I’m leaving off the word ‘personal’ because it makes some uncomfortable & most of these can be applied to products & businesses. The sociology around branding is intriguing to me. I see people focusing on SEO, monetization, getting a job, etc. And yes, it’s important to be proactive & strategic but if you focus on content & networking those first items will happen indirectly & in a much more powerful way!
My story has been an adventure.
I joined the social media world via Library 2.0 in rural Minnesota. As a public librarian for 10 years I was known as the ‘Library Lady’ in the community. Establishing that presence was much easier than it is to do so online. I read the same books that you have (Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernowitz, Naked Conversations by Shel Israel & Robert Scoble). And I knew that blogging was about finding your voice. But I’ve come to realize that branding is more than that – it’s about finding your purpose & expressing that!
My goal is that these ideas will help guide you through the wilderness of exploration and provide some practical steps to assist you in building your unique brand. It truly is a journey.
The nice thing is that a brand evolves. That takes the stress off. No one wakes up & says, ‘I am…’. That would be too contrived. It’s a periodic review of:
- Who are you?
- What makes you unique?
- Your differentiating qualities & skills are what makes you valuable.
- What’s your message?
- What are your goals?
- Who is your audience?
- What experiences do you have to share with others?
- How can you help others? What value do bring to them?
Tip: After you’ve been blogging for a bit ask others for feedback. What may not be apparent to you usually is to others.
I had my personal blog up for 3 months & expressed to Anna Farmery that I thought my topics of social media were too broad. She immediately told me that my focus was on Community Building. And so it was!
When you have some ideas for those questions decide on a plan that is:
- Memorable – I used a casual photo & the color red; Connie Reece is lovely in her pink boa
- Repetitive – that photo & my name are repeated everywhere that I am online
- Companies have it easy in using their logos & their employees are creative
@LionellatDell @JohnatDell - Consistent & sincere – be you everywhere you go whether online or in person
Those are all part of getting started. The most exciting & challenging part is building community around your brand. (yes! I’m a community manager)
Building brand is all about relationships & networking. At this point you’ve decided what your goals are & set up a blog or built a community (as well as dutifully put in the exciting content). But when/how will people know about your site & what you have to offer?
Listen & observe
This step can be done before you’ve created your site (and probably should be). Read & learn as much as you can about your niche. There is so much out there!
- Use a blog reader & take advantage of RSS feeds
- Find people in your area that you admire & observe what makes them successful. Many of us are happy to mentor when sincere interest is shown in our work.
Interact. Build a Network.
- Contribute to the conversation. It’s imperative to get involved for the rest of my these steps to work. I have tips if you’re nervous.
- Commenting on blogs & in social networks will result in meeting great like-minded people. Add a link to a related post that you’ve written.
- Respond to blog comments via email & thank the person
- Use your blog or site to respond to other’s blog posts & link to them
- Get involved in social networks of your choice – Twitter, Facebook, niche communities, FriendFeed, etc
- Twitter & Stumble posts that you enjoy – it’s a great way to share good articles and drive traffic to them.
- Evangelize for what you believe in – your favorite brands are listening & will embrace you (even if they are people! Because they are monitoring their brand)
Tip: Make sure that comments & links add value & are relevant to the conversation.
Monitor
- Use google alerts, tweetscan.com, yahoo pipes, etc to monitor your brand & respond quickly
- (Radian6 has a great brand monitoring product that quantifies these) – monitor your name, product, brand & keywords.
- Use FeedBurner & Google Analytics to monitor traffic. Where is it coming from? What types of posts or topics is attracting it? I check every day. If you have a business it’s very important to watch trends and adjust accordingly.
Tip: I monitor for ‘community manager’ for two reasons: connect with others on Twitter & read the news about the emerging profession.
Continue to Build Your Network & Increase Your Social Capital
- Re-evaluate the questions at the beginning
- At a certain point you’ll find yourself mentoring others
Building a brand doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a process that requires attention to details. Feel free to ask The web congregates around shared interests & that is the secret to building community around your brand. The reason many of us read Chris’s blog is because of his amazing ability to help everyone. My steps focus on being both proactive & reactive to others. If you help others you will receive equal or more in return. friends & mentors if you have questions or contact me if you would like explanations of how I use any of the tools that I mentioned.
I saw a quote while I was on vacation: How the world sees you, is how you see the world.
It’s all about attitude. Who are you? And how does the world see you?
Guest post by Connie Bensen . The last of the three part series on personal branding will be posted on Wednesday.
Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online - Part 2
In the first part of my series on how to develop a strong personal brand online, I talked about the human elements of branding, and why you should consider building a strong personal brand. Let’s go into the technology of how this is accomplished.
The Technology of Brands
My friend and interactive media strategist Adam Broitman calls Google a “reputation management system.” I love it. Essentially, what Google knows is what’s true, as far as the uneducated are concerned. So, how does Google come to accept you as the authority on something? There are a few measurements to that at present.
- Inbound links from other sources - if someone is linking to your website, you must have information of value, especially if that someone who’s doing the linking is important.
- Outbound links to quality material - this is actually more for human love, but certainly helps prove that you’re a lively presence.
- Readable, searchable pages - if Google can tell what you’re talking about at your website, you probably are trying to offer something to the world.
- Constantly updating content - Google values freshness over staleness (don’t we all?)
- Listed in directories - Google wants to know that you’ve submitted your site for inclusion in the more prominent search engines and website directories.
- Mechanical quality - Google has a lot of other things it values, like well-written websites that follow standards, and it’s a little bit of learning to understand them all. Hubspot makes a free Website Grader tool that would help you understand a bit.
That’s what Google cares about, and that’s how a lot of people are searching for you. But we do this for humans, because humans are who make the decisions. So let’s look into what counts for your strong personal brand technologically, with humans in mind.
Start With a Home Base
First and foremost, build a site to call your own. I recommend a blog, because of a blog’s ability to command more attention from Google on one hand, and because you can use it to build your voice on the other. I recommend buying your own name as a domain ( here’s a list of domain registration coupon codes for GoDaddy.com). It might not be your home base or part of your largest plan, but buy it now while you can. And then, if you have another brand you want to promote as your BIG #1 brand, then buy that domain name, too, and put up a blog.
The aesthetics of your blog and your blog design are up to you. Pretty blogs don’t hurt people’s opinion of your work.
But we have to start thinking outside the blog, too. It’s not ALL about you. Or maybe it is, but it’s about how you get out and travel the web, too.
Build a Few Accounts
To participate on the web these days requires that you build some accounts at various web platforms. Here’s a quick list of sites and why you should have an account there:
- Google Accounts - so you can use several dozen free applications by Google.
- Yahoo! Accounts / Mail - so you can use several dozen free applications by Yahoo. (Also, take advantage of Yahoo’s OpenID account).
- Digg - social news site.
- StumbleUpon - social news site.
- YouTube - video sharing site.
- Flickr - video sharing site.
- Upcoming.org - social events calendar.
- Del.icio.us - social bookmarking.
- PayPal - online money transfer.
- eBay - auction site.
- Amazon.com - shopping site.
- This doesn’t fit anywhere else, but take a few pictures of your head to make avatars for accounts. Your company logo doesn’t cut it to me. I want a picture of your head, so that we can identify you at conferences and the like.
You might have some other “must have” accounts for my list. If so, let’s talk about it in the comments section, and maybe I’ll update with some of them.
Social Networks to Consider
There are plenty of communities online, and these all have social networks to empower them. I could list about a hundred places where you might choose to spend your time, but here are some real baseline social networks where your presence might help further develop your brand:
- Twitter - if you don’t “get it” right away, that’s okay. The learning curve is about 30 days before you feel like it’s indispensable.
- Facebook - I use Facebook as an outpost, where I build my profile, link back to my site, and give people a bit more understanding of who I am and what matters to me.
- LinkedIn - This is a professional network. Don’t let the “looks like a resume” fool you. Write your profile as if a human will actually read it. Be interesting. And participate with the community, and you’ll develop more awareness and build a stronger future.
- And a specialized network. If you have a niche or genre of interest, be sure to find a vibrant community to join that surrounds it. Love photography? Get into Flickr. Huge on music? Get into MuxTape or any million other cool music communities.
Coming Up Next
This is the end of part 2 of the series. Hopefully, you’ve got some suggestions to add to this section, as you clearly have some experience in how these technologies apply.
In the last part of the series, we’ll talk about how you might apply the human skill and the technology to your use of personal branding. This will have a mix of strategic and tactical points for you to consider, and hopefully, you’ll come away with some next steps to apply to your own personal brand.
How’s this working for you? What else do you need? Let’s talk about it in the comments.
Part of the Social Media 100 series of posts. Feel free to subscribe for free to get the rest, and if you want even MORE content, subscribe to my newsletter, too!
Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online Part 1
Gary Vaynerchuk could tell you that his personal brand is worth millions, but he’s modest. My friend and PodCamp co-founder, Christopher S. Penn, often refers to branding by ZeFrank’s definition: “an emotional aftertaste.” ( See the The Show with ZeFrank episode here.) I have some thoughts on how one might develop a strong personal brand online, and what you might do with one, once you build it.
It turns out that I have so many thoughts, that I’m going to break this post up into 3. This will be the first part: Branding Basics.
Why Build a Personal Brand?
You might already know the answer to this question. There are lots of answers, actually, depending on you, your needs, the way the world has shaped you. Let’s look at just one answer.
The easiest answer is that you might want to be memorable, and you might want to transfer your real world reputation into the online world. A strong personal brand is a mix of reputation, trust, attention, and execution. You might want to build a brand around being helpful (what I hope my brand means to you), or being a creative thinker (Kathy Sierra, for instance) or being a dealmaker (Donald Trump), or being a showman (David Lee Roth), or whatever matters most to you, and also what you are capable of sustaining.
A personal brand gives you the ability to stand out in a sea of similar products. In essence, you’re marketing yourself as something different than the rest of the pack. Do you need this? I don’t know. Do you like to be mixed in with the pack?
Hints About Brand in General
What’s the difference between Coke and Pepsi? There’s a taste difference, for sure, but what does the brand signify? Tricky, eh? So what’s the difference between TechCrunch and Mashable to you? I would argue that Michael Arrington is more heavily tied into the Silicon Valley insiders scene than Pete Cashmore, and that the other authors on each site stack differently (I really love Mashable’s Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins, for instance).
Remember that trying to develop a personal brand involves differentiating in a Coke vs. Pepsi, TechCrunch vs. Mashable world. Identifying yourself as the social media expert or the tech geek blogger is about as differentiated as brands of rice.
In some ways, the differentiator on brands is in what you deliver. What differentiates me from others might be in the volume of useful content I deliver. I’m not sure. You tell me what makes me different. My answer would definitely vary from yours.
The Human Side of Brand
First off, remember that branding isn’t playing a role. Be yourself. It will become apparent rather quickly if you’re being someone that you’re not. Gary Vaynerchuk is the same guy, camera on or off. He may or may not tone himself down a bit when meeting new business partners, but I promise you that he reverts to being himself the moment someone’s come to know what he’s about.
Second, you may choose to use some kind of alias, because you’re afraid of the Internet and stalkers. That’s great, except that your brand equity doesn’t stretch to potential jobs, unless you go around explaining that you have a secret identity. As a guy who grew up reading comics, I’m okay with people having identities, but remember: that means the equity doesn’t transfer as simply.
Finally, brands are complex and not especially one dimensional. Don’t try to be a one-note experience. Madonna has much more than one brand element. So does Guy Kawasaki. Don’t whittle yourself down to a simple footnote. Be complex and colorful and interesting. Only, be sure you can say what you’re about in one easy sentence, and that others have a sense of what you represent without your help. Madonna is a creative force of emotion. Guy Kawasaki is an innovator and experimenter.
Coming up in the second part of the series is the Technical side of Personal Branding. I look forward to your comments on this post, and if I’ve missed anything, let me know. There’s a lot to cover. What do you think so far?
Part of the Social Media 100 series of posts. Feel free to subscribe for free to get the rest, and if you want even MORE content, subscribe to my newsletter, too!
Photo Credit, Brian Solis
