Masterful Marketing » online reputation

Showcase Your Skills with Social Media

Debra — Wed, 19 May 2010 18:40:43 +0000

The competitive environment surrounding us encourages those who wish to succeed to learn how to market themselves effectively. Whether you are applying for a job, trying to win a client, or in some cases, applying to a university, using social media to present the real you can make be difference between you getting noticed or being overlooked.

Social media enables many to showcase skills that may not be evident otherwise. Using only the written word is sometimes not enough to evaluate a candidate, especially when it may be more important for a person to fit into the organization from a personality, culture and attitude perspective than just in aptitude. By using social media, people can get a sense of who you are, what you do, how you will add value to them or their organization long before ever meeting you in person.

I was asked by Fox25 News to comment on the one minute video supplement to Tufts University’s admission process and social media in general for a special report on How YouTube Can Help You Get Into College. The students could submit an optional essay using one of eight topics, one of which was a one minute video about themselves uploaded to YouTube. I found this an exciting addition to the standard application process and one that will become more common in the future.

Developing your online presence or personal brand by incorporating various aspects of social media into your activities enable you to show a multi-faceted person rather than a single dimension. Writing is an important skill, but it’s not the only one. Some people are good at showing their personality through their writing styles, but others don’t have that flair. Social media levels the playing field for those who are comfortable using other types of media to demonstrate their skills.

Tips for Building Your Personal Brand

Whether you are already in the workplace, starting a business or graduating from high school or college, you’ve already started to develop a personal brand. If you haven’t paid much attention to how you are perceived through your Web presence, you may want to do a reputation check and then spend a little time working on developing it further.

Have a strategy – understand what you want your image to be publicly and stay consistent. This is no different than a company trying to market their company and build brand awareness. Successful organizations consistently portray the same image. Those that veer from their brand, confuse the market and lose opportunities. Your personal brand is no different.
Know who you are – don’t try to be something you’re not. Figure out who you are, what is comfortable for you to project and then stay on course.
Show a little personality – Too many people try to hide their real selves from the public in their social media profiles. Show what makes you unique, both professionally and personally. It’s what will attract the right people to you who then want to connect with you.

As Brian McLaughlin stated in the report, social media is their generation’s way of speaking, and allowing them to use these tools to present themselves is a way of seeing the world through their eyes. Give people a way to see the true you through creative use of social media.

How have you used social media to build your online presence and reputation? Have you been able to use it successfully to gain visibility in whatever you were pursuing? Share your success stories!

If I Can’t Find You Online, Do You Exist?

Debra — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:24:20 +0000

Eight down and one to go in the year end marketing review series to help small business owners get ready for a wonderful new year.

Before we plan our marketing activities for the new year, we have one more review – do you and your business exist online? As a small business owner, how you are perceived when people search and find your information will determine whether they contact you about your products and services. So as hard as it may be to know the truth, we must understand whether:

We have an online presence or not;
Our online presence consistently projects how we want to be perceived.

Do You Exist?

This may be the easier issue to deal with as you get to start with a clean slate and do it right from the beginning. Make developing your online presence and marketing your business online the major part of your marketing plan this year. If you’re not sure how to go about developing your online presence, it may just be worth it to hire someone to help you make choices. Make sure this person has strong marketing experience in both online and traditional marketing and understands the challenges of small business owners. Make sure this person will guide you through the entire process, from brand and message development through implementation.

Is Your Brand Consistent?

With all the new tools and applications hitting us regularly, it is very common for our brand identity to get out of alignment and become inconsistent from one social network to the next. Maybe you wrote your profiles from scratch each time rather than create one document from which to pull all your information. With profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Business Pages, Google, YouTube, FriendFeed, Technorati and … well you get it, it isn’t uncommon to find old information that never got updated when you updated one. And I bet if you go to your Website, your “about” section may say something different as well. Since you are already online, your marketing effort is to ensure consistency across all online profiles. This effort takes work and regular maintenance, but it is well worth it if you do take control.

What to Review and Tackle

Start with a “vanity search” – that is search for your name and your business name and observe what comes up. Are you or your business easy to find? What is the first impression?
Review your company name, logo and color scheme. Does it project what you do and who you are as a business? Does it work with your differentiators that you determined in part 4 of this review? If your brand no longer aligns with who you are, or you simply never had one developed, it is worth the investment to have one done professionally as it will be what people will see and associate with you. Not too long ago, you could manage with just your company name on a well designed business card. Today, marketing yourself online requires a visual identity that has strength and memorability.
Do you have a Website and blog and are they up do date? If you don’t, get a quality domain name that aligns with your business name or a key differentiator. Have your Website built on WordPress so you can keep your content up to date. Add your blog and provide quality, relevant content that your prospects will appreciate.
Which social networks are you currently using? Are your profiles consistent in what they project to your friends, followers and connections? Is there online content about you that you were unaware of and need to do something about?
Once you determine the state of your online brand, update profiles for consistency and provide new content that will get indexed by the search engines. The more people can hear what you can do and how you can help them, the more likely they will think of you when they are ready to buy. Plus fresh, up-to-date content about you and your business is the best way to counter any old, negative information that may be out there.
Plan to monitor your reputation regularly. Add Google alerts for your name, your business name and your field of expertise. See what people are saying and where your name is showing up.

Online Marketing supports Offline Businesses

Whether your business is a professional service or a local storefront, online marketing, including the use of social media, is a cost effective way to market your products and services. Your online “storefront” is always open for people to find out what you can do for them. And since 69% of people research online before making purchase decisions, your business needs to be online just to be considered. But once you are there, you must be consistent.

What does your online presence say about you and your business?

Personal Brand or Online Reputation

Debra — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:25:21 +0000

Whatever you call it, you still need to manage it!

There’s a lot of conversation about the term personal brand. My favorite personal brand is Bono (no surprise here), but Tom Brady, Madonna, J. Lo, Manny Ramirez, Britney Spears and many other celebritites all have personal brands – some good and some not so good at times.

As small business owners in the social media world, it’s not about creating a celebrity-like image but about establishing your reputation and managing how you are perceived by others, especially those who may want to do business with you. Building and nurturing a consistent reputation for what you are good at (your differentiation) is something you should strive for to make finding your ideal client that much much easier.

And as much as some folks don’t like the term personal brand, there is a brand component to your online (and off-line for that matter) reputation that needs to be managed. When creating your online presence, develop your personal brand consistently across all of your social media profiles so that it can work to establish your credibility and authority. Here’s a checklist of things to do to help with your consistency:

Picture

For some reason, some people just don’t want to put their picture in their profile. Social networking is about developing relationships and people want to see a real person and get to know them. If you are trying to develop a relationship that results in brand loyalty for your business, use a good picture that shows your real personality.

The picture does not have to be a professionally taken picture, but it should project your professionalism. Don’t put on a business suit if you’re style is business casual and your typical client relates better to a more laid back style. Remember your brand should be the real you, not something made up because you think that’s what people want to see.

Have several pictures taken so that you can choose the best one. Use it on your blog, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to increase recognition of your brand across platforms. Sign up for a gravatar so that your picture shows up in comments on other blogs if that feature is supported.

Name

The name or identifier you use should be the same one for all of your social networking websites. If you want to build a professional brand reputation, don’t create something cute. Keep it relative to you and your business. If you have a common name that has most likely been taken, use a combination of your name and business name or add a middle initial if that makes sense for you. Decide before you sign up on something that you think would work across the social media universe and try to keep it consistent so you begin to be recognized.

Profile

Take advantage of LinkedIn‘s business oriented profile format to write a complete profile description using relevant keywords and then copy that description or pieces of it to all the other social networks, tailoring it to the audience. Since LinkedIn is the more business-oriented social network, they provide ample space to fully describe who you are and what you do. Setting one social network as the hub for your personal and professional information prevents you from writing something different for each network you join.

Actions

If you write a blog and update your status regularly, stay true to your discipline and expertise. Focus on how you help people and what’s in it for them. Build relationships, connect people to others that are beneficial to them, answer questions in your area of expertise and did I mention focus? I’m stressing focus because I’ve noticed recently on LinkedIn that there are people who have “best answers” to questions in 50 or more categories that are totally unrelated. Can they really be experts in that many diverse categories? Did they really answer them all or had someone else answer the questions for them (if so, not very transparent)? What is their strength? Who are they marketing to? Being a Jack of all trades and a master at none comes to mind. Pick your targets and focus on your strengths. It will draw people to you who need your expertise.

When you are participating in social media, you are establishing your reputation whether you know it or not. Make it a conscious effort and nurture the personal brand that is truly you.

How well do you manage your online reputation? Share your tips and tricks in the comments below.

U2 photo credit Phil Romans.