My Best Advice About Personal Branding
In some ways, personal branding is noise. It’s talking about one’s self instead of talking about something that’s useful to others. But another way you might look at it is that personal branding is leverage: once you know me, you start to build a relationship with me. Once we have a relationship, I can share even more with you. The more we share, the more likely we’ll have other common interests down the road. It’s definitely part of the whole social media story, the rise of “me,” and personal branding. Here are 10 posts about personal branding from this site:
My Best Advice About Personal Branding
- 100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media
- The Real Power of Personal Branding
- Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online (part 1)
- Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online (part 2)
- Strip Malls for Personal Brands
- Passion Drives Personal Brand
- Elements of a Personal Brand
- Personal Branding and Social Media
- Quick Branding Tips for Individuals
- 10 Ways to Make Your Next Conference Better
Here are some folks I think do personal branding very well:
- Gary Vaynerchuk
- Christopher S. Penn
- Justine Ezarik
- C.C. Chapman
- Mitch Joel
- Jeremiah Owyang
- Liz Strauss
Is that everyone? Hardly. But those came right to mind. Hopefully, my advice will help you think about your own personal brand. What do you think?
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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Be Sexier in Person
The next time you’re at a conference, and if you haven’t met me, I want you to try something. The rest of you who don’t intend to meet me, have already met me, or who just want to know what I’m getting at, stay tuned. Here’s the thing: you’ve gotta work on how you present yourself. There’s so much value inside you (okay, MOST of you). You’re really loaded with interesting things, and sure, maybe some of us have to pare down some of what we want to share, but let’s just look at this a moment together. You’ve gotta be sexier in person.
Disclaimer
None of this is meant towards any particular person that I’ve met in the last several years. Instead, it’s meant towards me, some of you, and some people I observe in social settings. If you’ve recently met me, I don’t mean you.
Confidence
If I stopped this post now, that’d be enough. If you don’t present yourself as confident, you’re already off on the wrong foot. It’s that simple. Why? Because I need to believe that you have value as you’re coming up to talk with me at the event. I have to feel that you’re pretty comfy with who you are as a person, and you’re looking to reach out and make new relationships to further develop your capabilities and ideas.
If you don’t have confidence right off, here are some tips: think about the three things that someone who’s really proud of who you are would say about you. Don’t tell ME these things, but have them in your mind. If you’re worried how the other person might receive you, stop. Instead, believe with all your heart that you deserve to be there, that you’re smart, that you are just as important.
And you know what? If the person you’re meeting you, after all that, STILL treats you like crap, then you smile politely, walk away, and flush that out of your head as fast as you can, because it’s definitely not you.
Be Brief
Here’s a spot where pretty much everybody could learn a lesson. I need reminders of this all the time. What happens is something like this: we make connection, we talk with someone we like, and we accidentally worry that the other person won’t know we’re smart, funny, useful, whatever. It’s almost like we’re drowning and we have to say everything, in case we never meet again.
Stay brief. Don’t ramble. Be confident that your small elevator pitch as to who you are, what you’re into, and why you’re happy to connect is enough. Believe with all your heart that you’ll have time to unpack what it is you need to say.
Finish Strong
Sometimes, everything goes great, but then people don’t know when to break off the conversation and go meet new folks. Why? Because maybe that’s all there was. If the person wants you to stay, they’ll usually give you indications of that. If they are all done with the conversation, and pay really close attention, they will give body language that says this. Truly. Just keep your eyes open, and you’ll get a sense of when to scram. Don’t scram earlier than that (unless you have to go). That’ll show a lack of confidence.
Some Bonus Round Material
A few more thoughts:
- “What do you do?” isn’t as sexy a question as “what are you working on that’s fun?”
- Yes, your breath matters.
- Dress how you want to be perceived. (I dress in what I call “rockstar casual,” half because I like it, and half because I’m too broke to dress the way I might.
- If you’re not sure what conversation is appropriate, practice with friends ahead of events and gatherings. (I say inappropriate things all the time).
- Remember that there are still boundaries between what’s too personal and what’s not, and yet, please try to be human.
- Remember that conversation is about more than one person. Breathe. Leave room.
What advice to you have? For me, for others? What have you noticed about your fears to meet others, or maybe we should talk about success stories and horror stories?
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 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
