Masterful Marketing » Social Media

Personal Branding – Is it really something new?

Debra — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 03:05:43 +0000

I attended a great event last night held by Next Level Executives on personal branding. Dan Schawbel and John Bates spoke of personal branding – John from the basics of identifying your target market, determining your unique differentiator and offering something your ideal client wants to buy (and will pay money for) and Dan from developing your Personal eBrand.

This event got me thinking that developing your reputation is nothing new – but doing so on such a global basis is what brings the overwhelming nature of personal branding to many business owners. Throughout my entire career, I have had to manage my reputation and “brand” from job to job. How many times were we told never to burn bridges because you never know when you will cross paths with that person again?

Now with the Internet and social media, crossing paths with past acquaintances is much easier and of course, much more likely. Finding out about your next boss or employee is as simple as searching for them on Google (or Googling them in the new lingo). The Internet and its social media tools have certainly shrunk the world and have made reputation management a very important part of our business lives. Managing your online and offline reputation today should be as much a part of your marketing plan as keeping your resume up-to-date was 10 years ago.

But like with everything, getting started may be hard but staying engaged is even tougher.

What should you do to dive into personal branding?

Determine your goals for developing your personal brand
Identify which social media tools will work best for you
Develop a full, professional profile with picture
Experiment with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and other social media tools if they make sense for your business
Learn the culture of social media
Listen to what your ideal clients are saying
Join in the conversation

If this seems like a big challenge, engage the help of someone who can short circuit the learning curve and get you jump started into personal branding for you and your business. But by all means, get started. This stuff is not going to go away anytime soon.

Personal Brand or Online Reputation

How Not to Get Business

Debra — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:31:03 +0000

In this era of social media and our ability to effectively connect and build relationships with so many folks around the world, why do some people think that by filling out my contact form, I would ever consider outsourcing client work to them?

This is a really big pet peeve of mine!

A few times a month, I get several emails similar to the following from people using contact forms on my web site. Some come from freelancers and some from college students looking for work.

This bothers me because it’s:

Totally impersonal and solicitous, showing no interest in me or my business other than looking for work
Inappropriate since my contact form is meant for people who may be interested in my services, not the other way around (if I were hiring, I’d have a careers page)!

(Bob Smith is an alias so sorry any Bob Smith’s out there!):

email: bobsmith@bobsmith.com
first: bob
last: smith
company: bobsmith.com
telephone: 508 555 5555
message: Dear Team Vista, (Really personal greeting)

I am contacting you to offer my services as a Freelance SEO Copywriter.

My name is Bob Smith and I’m based in Boston. You can view a few writing samples on my website here: http://bobsmith.com/

I am very dedicated and available to start work immediately.

I can write any type of SEO article that you may need me to write and I can also include screen shots and images via Flickr’s creative commons in your articles if you so desire.

My rate is US$35/article for any article between 300-1200 words. I also write blog posts of the same length for US$35/blog post. Please feel free to mark my rates up to your clients.

Let me be very clear – this does not build trust or make me want to partner with you. Most business owners are careful about who they select as subcontractors because it reflects on them. I’m sure this person is a very good writer, but it shows no initiative to build a relationship with me.

Before you will ever get people to trust you enough to hire you as a subcontractor, you need to first develop a strong personal brand and make yourself visible to me via social media.

Find out more about me by visiting my LinkedIn profile (it’s clearly posted on all my web properties).
Start reading my blogs to understand my areas of expertise to see how you could add value.
Join my community via MyBlogLog, follow me in Twitter and take an interest in what I do.
Start writing your own blog and make your knowledge and expertise visible.
Comment on my blog with intelligence and relevancy.

Develop a relationship with me first and then, maybe if I need a writer for some client work, I will seek YOU out.

Social media makes it so easy to develop relationships with people anywhere in the world who could potentially send business your way. Don’t turn them off by taking this shotgun, impersonal, almost spammy approach. Take the time to learn about that person, what they may need in the way of resources for their clients, engage in a conversation and develop trust and a relationship that will help both of you in the long run.

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Push vs. Pull Marketing

Debra — Tue, 13 May 2008 00:20:07 +0000

Someone on LinkedIn last week asked the question about the difference between push vs. pull marketing. The definitions posted for push marketing by various marketing folk were pretty consistent.

Push marketing is when you use various activities to get your message in front of your ideal client. The marketer is in control of what the message is, how it is seen, when and where.

Ok so that coincides with what I term traditional marketing activities. Doing things to make sure your target audience sees or hears your message.

However, I was a bit surprised at some of the answers when it came to pull marketing. First my definition of pull marketing:

Marketing activities that encourage your prospect to seek you out and find out whether you have something of value to offer them. Pull marketing activities build relationships and can include blogging, podcasting, article marketing and networking (both on and offline). Pull marketing uses the law of attraction, incorporating all the components of your personal brand to attract and retain these people as your biggest fans.

But as I read the various definitions of pull marketing, I realized that social media has changed its definition, and probably for the better. Today, pull marketing is about developing relationships that attract your ideal client to you. It shows the value you offer to these prospects so that they naturally are attracted to your products and / or services.

Before social media, pull marketing was viewed quite differently. In an article from MoreBusiness.com dated August 2006, it states that:

Pull marketing is where you develop advertising and promotional strategies that are meant to entice the prospect to buy your product or service. Some classic examples are “half off!” or “bring in this coupon to save 25%” or “buy one get one free”, etc.

With pull marketing, you are trying to create a sense of increased, time limited value so that the customer will come into your store to buy.

And although that last statement may be true, I view this type of marketing as push as the promotional strategies are still controlled by the marketer, not the target market. Offers such as these should always be included in your marketing activities to draw people in. But they are not pull strategies in my mind.

True pull marketing is based on us being visible where your ideal client hangs out and becoming part of their communities. Greg Verdino says it well:

Pull is not about pulling consumers in; it’s about giving consumers a reason to pull us in. Remember truism #1 – they’re in control; they (not we) decide where they go and what they experience. We’ve lost the right to pull consumers anywhere (if we ever really had that right at all.)

Pull means that we to go to them, join their communities, give them reasons to voluntarily draw us into their personal media experiences. We’re not interrupting them. They’re opting into us.

To get your ideal client to discover you, develop a marketing plan that combines a strong personal brand and word of mouth marketing tactics (both online and offline) to increase your exposure as an expert in your discipline. This will help you attract them to you and make them your true fans.

Social Media Marketing – Myths or Reality?

Personal Brand, Transparency & Authenticity

Debra — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:15:02 +0000

In the workshop I gave last week: Personal Branding: Promote Your Expertise using Social Media, we discussed the importance of being authentic and transparent when developing your personal brand. With the ease of social media, what you do exposes a little bit more of your personality each time. You no longer can put on a false face and get away with it. You need to manage your online reputation to ensure you always come across to others as you want to be presented. In this world of always connected, everyone is important, every email is important and everyone who visits your blog or social network profile needs to see the authentic you.

Listen to Gary Vaynerchuk in these two video blog posts. The first is on the importance of listening and responding to everyone in today’s word of mouth on steroids world.

Gary is authentic. His Wine Library TV shares his knowledge of wine in an upbeat, easy to understand way. He lives and breathes his personal brand as viewed in his blog GaryVayerchuk.com where he shares his secrets of word of mouth marketing for his personal brand. This video blog is one of his secrets to a strong personal brand.

Watch one of Gary’s videos and you will view a strong personal brand in action.

Personal Brand or Online Reputation

Social Media comes to Golf

Debra — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:04:00 +0000

Imagine my delight when my own golf course’s professional staff sent an email announcing their video of the week! Marlborough Country Club in Marlborough MA is venturing into social media. I believe they meant this only for their members, but lucky for them, I’m a member! So enjoy their first video of the 2008 season.

Now I just need to get Peter, the assistant pro onto Twitter!