GENIUS PLANET

Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online Part 1

2010-04-14T07:10:00.001-07:00

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?

Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online – Part 2

2010-04-14T07:17:00.000-07:00

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.

Online Publicity

2010-03-20T08:13:00.000-07:00

Publicity is the lifeblood of your business and in the online world you need to have a presence that’s both wide and deep. This means that the moment your company name is Googled you need to show up more than just your website in order to be taken seriously.

Online publicity that brings up your company name in relation to a wide variety of activities shows that:
Your company is professionally active in the publicity of its profile and business.
Your company has a serious presence on the web.
Your company is active in many areas.
Your company has a planned publicity campaign in place and is professional about its products and services.

In addition:
Planned online publicity helps your company profile rise above the level of noise that’s on the web.
Online publicity becomes an important aspect of your company’s reputation management.
Online publicity becomes a vital aspect of your online marketing strategy.

Our online publicity services employ a wide variety of search engine metrics designed to allow your company name to appear in as many slots as possible on Google and other major search engines. You can use Online Publicity to promote your company name or you can use it to create momentum behind the launch of a new service or product. Either way what you are achieving is higher online visibility for your company and greater brand awareness, both of which should be part of your strategy for gaining greater market share.

We package Individuals who are Business, Music and even Intellectual icons online too.
One of our Clients is Arome Adaji (Visit his website at http://www.aromeadaji.com/). You can google out his name to see his brand visibilty online. You are the next online.

Contact us for your Personal Branding or Corporate Publicity today!

Give Me Your Number

2010-03-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

I met her and we immediately created instant rapport. We started discussing football, dabbled into politics, fashion, personal philosophies and finally internet.

All of a sudden, she started falling in love with my person just like i was with hers too. Just that she was the first to acknowledge that verbally.She asked me 5 questions in 5 minutes and i gave her answers that she expected. Got more interested in me.Asked me whether I was on facebook. Yes was my answer. Asked me if I have a website, i told her about www.geniusplanetnigeria.com
She asked of what i do for a living. I told her that I'm an Internet Business Consultant with GENIUS PLANET which specialises in in Web Design, Personal Branding and Social Media.

The conversation took another direction since i was now doing the asking and she was answering me to my satisfaction. I went personal to ask about her love life but not with the intention to start a relationship anyway. After all, I'm engaged already. She was a bit reserved and gave me tips about her love life. I also asked about her passion and she told me about her next project at hand. If you hear it you will know that she got some stuff in her. Her type is rare to find. I'm not talking about fake NGO here.

She is from a wealthy home; one of the families that are ruling Nigeria but unassuming and humble. She doesn't believe in class discrimination. No wonder she talked with me.

At last, we sealed a deal to build her personal brand online. What else do you expect? Give me your number of course. And I did exactly that. If she hadn't asked, I would have asked her of her number.

My conclusion:
Be personal,interesting and intelligent enough to end every conversation with a stranger who's interesting with this powerful phrase "Give me your number" This is the true test of a fruitful or result oriented conversation.What do you say?

ABOUT US

2010-02-28T06:06:00.001-08:00

GENIUS PLANET is an Internet business Consulting Firm based in Nigeria.

We BLOG* TRAIN* and CONSULT.

Our core expertise are:
1. Online Personal Branding a.k.a Online Publicists
2. Social Media ideas and strategies for Individuals, Organisations and Companies.
3. Open Source Web Design and Development Services for Individuals, Organisations and Companies.

We are Young, Passionate, Smart, Talented, Skillful, Friendly, Honest and Trustworthy. Our clients can testify to these claims.

Our passion is to serve and educate Africans on Positive, Profitable, and Productive Internet Skills and Ideas that will bring about the economic revolution we have longed for in Africa.

Please be a part of this internet history by patronising and partnering with us! Africans shall be FREE!

PUBLIC SPEAKING

2009-10-27T10:18:00.001-07:00

Our CEO, Adama J. Adama is an outstanding Professional public speaker. He has honored several invitations to Seminars and Radio/TV interviews.

He can be found with much passion analysing how Nigerians can benefit from the Internet Economy.

Book Him for your events, seminars and/or shows today.

Click the "CONTACT US" page to book Him for events, seminars and workshops.
We respond to inquiries as soon as we receive them.

Thank you very much!

CONTACT US

2009-10-27T10:19:00.001-07:00

We appreciate feedback a lot.

Please contact us using one of the following media:

Mobile/SMS: 2348131905634, 2347034643842

E-mail: geniusplanet2007@yahoo.com

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin

We are waiting for your soonext feedback. Thanks for the kind visit!

PERSONAL BRANDING through SOCIAL NETWORKING

2009-12-22T08:55:00.000-08:00

PERSONAL BRANDING
Personal branding is the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brands (Lair, Sullivan & Cheney 2005). It has been noted that while previous self-help management techniques were about self-improvement, the personal branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging (Lair, Sullivan & Cheney 2005). Further defined as the creation of an asset that pertains to a particular person or individual; this includes but is not limited to the body, clothing, appearance and knowledge contained within, leading to an indelible impression that is uniquely distinguishable. The term is thought to have been first used and discussed in an 1997 article by Tom Peters.

Personal branding often involves the application of one's name to various products. For example, celebrity real-estate mogul Donald Trump uses his last name extensively on his buildings and on the products he endorses (e.g., Trump Steaks).

HISTORY
Personal branding, self-branding, self-positioning and all individual branding by whatever name, was first introduced in the 1980 book: "Positioning: The Battle for your Mind", by Al Ries and Jack Trout (Ries & Trout 1981). More specifically in "Chapter 23. Positioning Yourself and Your Career - You can benefit by using positioning strategy to advance your own career. Key principle: Don’t try to do everything yourself. Find a horse to ride".

ONLINE IDENTITY MANAGEMENT

Online identity management (OIM) also known as online image management or online personal branding or personal reputation management (PRM) is a set of methods for generating a distinguished Web presence of a person on the Internet. That presence could be reflected in any kind of content that refers to the person, including news, participation in blogs and forums, personal web sites (Marcus, Machilek & Schütz 2006), social media presence, pictures, video, etc.

Online identity management also refers to identity exposure and identity disclosure, and has particularly developed in the management on online identity in social network services (Tufekci 2008) or online dating services (Siibak 2007).

One aspect of the online identity management process has to do with improving the quantity and quality of traffic to sites that have content related to a person. In that aspect, OIM is a part of another discipline called search engine optimization with the difference that the only keyword is the person's name, and the optimization object is not necessary a single web site; it can consider a set of completely different sites that contain positive online references. The objective in this case is to get high rankings for as many sites as possible when someone search for a person's name. If the search engine used is Google, this action is called "to google someone"[1].

Another aspect has to do with impression management, i.e. "the process through which people try to control the impressions other people form of them". One of the objective is in particular to increase the online reputation of the person.

Online identity management often involves participation in social media sites like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Twitxr, Last.fm, Myspace, Orkut and other online communities and community websites, and is related to blogging, blog social networks like MyBlogLog and blog search engines like Technorati.

But it can also consist in more questionable practices. Hense in the case of social network services users have the possibility to buy 'friends' so to increase their visibility.

SOCIAL NETWORKING - perhaps you've heard of it before, but are not quite sure what it means.

Social networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups, like small rural communities or a neighborhood subdivision, if you will. Although social networking is possible in person, especially in the workplace, universities, and high schools, it is most popular online. This is because unlike most high schools, colleges, or workplaces, the internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking to meet other people, to gather and share first-hand information and experiences about any number of topics. . . from golfing, gardening, developing friendships and professional alliances.

When it comes to online social networking, websites are commonly used. These websites are known as social sites. Social networking websites function like an online community of internet users. Depending on the website in question, many of these online community members share common interests in hobbies, religion, or politics. Once you are granted access to a social networking website you can begin to socialize. This socialization may include reading the profile pages of other members and possibly even contacting them. You can organize and combine all of your online profiles into one at http://www.whzzz.com/.

The friends that you can make are just one of the many benefits to social networking online. Another one of those benefits includes diversity because the internet gives individuals from all around the world access to social networking sites. This means that although you are in the United States, you could develop an online friendship with someone in Denmark. Not only will you make new friends, but you just might learn a thing or two about new cultures or new languages and learning is always a good thing.

As mentioned, social networking often involves grouping specific individuals or organizations together. While there are a number of social networking websites that focus on particular interests, there are others that do not. The websites without a main focus are often referred to as "traditional" social networking websites and usually have open memberships. This means that anyone can become a member, no matter what their hobbies, beliefs, or views are. However, once you are inside this online community, you can begin to create your own network of friends and eliminate members that do not share common interests or goals.

As I'm sure you're aware, there are dangers associated with social networking including data theft and viruses, which are on the rise. The most prevalent danger though often involves online predators or individuals who claim to be someone that they are not. Although danger does exist with networking online, it also exists with networking out in the real world, too. Just like you're advised when meeting strangers at clubs and bars, school, or work -- you are also advised to proceed with caution online. By being aware of your cyber-surroundings and who you are talking to, you should be able to safely enjoy social networking online. It will take many phone conversations to get to know someone, but you really won't be able to make a clear judgement until you can meet each other in person. Just use common sense and listen to your inner voice; it will tell you when something doesn't feel right about the online conversations taking place.

Once you are well informed and comfortable with your findings, you can begin your search from hundreds of networking communities to join. This can easily be done by performing a standard internet search. Your search will likely return a number of results, including MySpace, FriendWise, FriendFinder, Yahoo! 360, Facebook, Orkut, and Classmates.

SOCIAL MEDIA VS SOCIAL NETWORKING
Lon S. Cohen attempts to provide an explanation in a recent post on the cohcom blog:

Social Media can be called a strategy and an outlet for broadcasting, while Social Networking is a tool and a utility for connecting with others.

The difference is not just semantics but in the features and functions put into these websites by their creators which dictates the way they are to be used. There’s also a kind of, which came first, the chicken or the egg kind of argument to be made here. I suspect that Social Networking came first which evolved into Social Media."

Lon further distinguishes which sites/tools fall into which category. LinkedIn? He calls that social networking. YouTube? It's social media. And what about Twitter and Facebook?

Twitter and Facebook are Web 2.0 sites with the whole package. They straddle the Social Media and Social Networking divide perfectly."

Social Media are tools for sharing and discussing information. Social Networking is the use of communities of interest to connect to others. You can use Social Media to facilitate Social Networking. Or, your can network by leveraging Social Media.

CREATE YOUR PROFILE
Once you have made the decision to join a particular social networking website, you will need to need to register with the site. Even free networking communities require basic registration. Once you are registered, you should be able to start communicating with other community members. Before you start communicating, you may need to develop your online profile or profile page, depending on the networking site in question. Although it may seem easy enough to create a profile, there are many internet users who are unsure exactly what they should and should not include.

Perhaps, one of the most important things to include in your online website is your picture. While a personal picture is optional, it is ideal. Many internet users enjoy talking to someone that they can see in their minds, without a picture this is really difficult. If you are looking to use social networking websites just to meet new friends you may not necessarily need to post a private picture, but it is definitely preferred if you are looking for love. When it comes to internet dating, many individuals will not even view your profile if a picture is not included.

In addition to your photograph, you may want to include your name, but you are strongly advised against giving your full name, especially if your profile or profile page contains a personal photograph of you. In addition to your name, you may want to put down the location of a city you've always wanted to visit versus where you actually live. As with your name it is important to be mindful of "where you are," because posting your picture, address, and full name could be very dangerous, especially if it falls into the wrong hands.

Since anyone, literally anyone, can see your social networking profile, stop and think about the information you are giving out. Essentially, this means that instead of focusing on what you should put in your online profile, you should be focusing on what to exclude. As much as you would like to thoroughly complete your social networking profile with a lot of personal information, you are advised to think about your safety before anything else.

In lieu of your entire personal history, just include your hobbies, political, religious or environmental viewpoints; your likes, and your dislikes. With many social networking websites, including MySpace, you will find that there are preset profile fields for this information. In addition to preset questions or categories on your inclinations, you may also find additional information, including fun questionnaires.

Many social networking websites will ask that you describe your favorite color, your goals in life, your most embarrassing moment, and so forth. As with your other personal information, it is important to stay as vague as possible and not use any full names, especially real ones. Being vague is not being dishonest - it means you're being smart and careful until you know the time is right.

By keeping the above-mentioned points in mind, you should not only be able to create an online social networking profile that is filled with valuable information, but you can do so while staying safe at the same time.

Your safety on the internet is in your hands!

Branding yourself can be a tough proposition, especially if you’ve been downsized and feel like the world has changed and you haven’t changed with it. What follows is my best advice for branding yourself that I offered to one of my friends recently.

0) Before you get started, you need to think about what you want to do and be known for. What would be a great “end” for your brand? What “brand” do you want to sell? This is your VISION for your future.

1) Buy your name.com and set up your website/blog there. This will be your new “home” and you will want to move everything in your life there. If you have a brand name, and your brand name is not already taken, then grab that too. Go to http://syskay.com to register your domain name and 500MB of webhosting for just N2, 500 per year

N2, 500 for a year is a sound investment that will pay dividends down the road. Point them both to the same spot for now. You can export your existing content from your current WordPress.com blog( If you already have-its free) to your new one.

The only pages you’ll need to set up to get started on your blog are: Blog (these are where you’ll write articles and will be the thing that updates), About (your bio/resume), Services (things you can offer others, with testimonials if you have them handy) and a Contact page (put your e-mail, a phone number (nobody calls, but if you’re worried about only listing your home number, then sign up at http://google.com/voice and forward that to your phone number and post that number).

Set up an e-mail account that is your first name at your domain .com and forward it to your Gmail account. Then add that e-mail address to send as from your Gmail account.

Alltop.com and Technorati.com: I figure out which blogs you should be subscribing to, use Alltop.com and find your category. Then, subscribe to every blog in that category and if you’re finding that some of the blogs aren’t as useful at a later date, unsubscribe. Technorati lists the top blogs in various categories and you can search for categories as well. Aside from these two sites, I recommend that you subscribe to Mashable.com, TechCrunch.com and ReadWriteWeb.com to gain insight into the technology and social media landscape.

Tweetbeep: Twitter is a great place to find out what people are saying about you or certain keywords right now. The best way to keep track of it, without using a third party application or logging into Twitter on your web browser of choice, is to use a site called Tweetbeep.com. It has hourly updates, so even if you’re using search.twitter.com for real-time Twitter search, you won’t be missing other tweets. You can even keep track of who’s tweeting your website or blog.

Backtype.com: This is a great tool for seeing conversations around a topic or a blog post. It’s also a site that allows you to subscibe to mentions of a brand or topic in blog comments. Most of the time, people are unaware of what people are saying in blog comments if they haven’t subscribed to the comments or seen the post. This site solves that and drives that information into your Google reader.

Boardtracker.com: This tool will monitor discussion forums where your brand name is cited or topics that are relevant to your industry. Sometimes blog posts get copied into discussion threads too.

2) Figure out your top 5 topics/themes/services that you have expertise in and passion about. Make sure you can write about them and comment on other blogs who write on these topics. Try to think like a search engine. Make them keyword rich words. Work on writing an article a day, 1 per topic/theme/service and what your opinions are on your new home. Read my article on how to become an expert and my article on how to write a blog article for tips/tricks.

3) Use http://hootsuite.com for your Twitter account, and set up a search column for each of these keywords. You may want to include a column for your location too for folks who mention your city or a few cities nearby. You can also manage your twitter, facebook, linkedin and ping.fm account from here. It makes you more productive.

4) Set up alerts on http://google.com/alerts for your keywords, your name and your location. Subscribe to these via RSS at http://google.com/reader and monitor these words/terms. Click in and glance over these articles daily. Read why I love Google Reader
5) Subscribe to 10-20 blogs in your niche via RSS at http://google.com/reader Start following other people who use Google Reader in your niche. Star, share and add notes to the best of what you find. If you want to add me, go to http://philgerb.com and add that as an RSS feed.

6) Go to http://linkedin.com and upload your resume and fill out your profile to get to 100%. Get a custom URL and other things to fill out your profile. Read my best LinkedIn tips. Add me as a contact if you like at http://www.linkedin.com/in/adamajadama (just make sure you tell me how you know me).

7) Get testimonials from folks you’ve worked with on your LinkedIn profile. Then copy and paste them to your website, and add a link to your LinkedIn profile and your Twitter account to your website.

Set up a monthly newsletter at http://mailchimp.com (they have a free option) and add this to your website (you can do this by adding a text widget to your WordPress blog and adding the HTML code MailChimp creates).

9) Create your 90 second commercial. Start with “This is your name” and work from there. Use your key words, create a video, and share this with everyone you know. This is your “elevator pitch” and will refine itself as years go by. Write it out, practice it, make it your short bio on your website, and keep going.

10) Add yourself to every Twitter directory you can find, focusing on your key words. http://twellow.com and http://mrtweet.com are two of my favorites.

11) Follow as many people as you can in your niche and/or that use your key words. Engage them in real conversation. Ask questions and connect!

12) Write a traditional press release and try every possible way you can think of to launch your new “company” without being spammy. Write up the case study of your findings. Make sure you have enough articles up to show that you are for real. Include lessons learned, step by step instructions, etc. so others can learn from you. Telling people how weeds out those people who just want free help and those who say “Wow, this is too much work. I need to hire someone.”

13) Find some local companies and companies in your niche to spotlight on your site. Write about their efforts in your area, and how you would improve them, using what you’ve learned from your own company. Do case studies, and show that you know what you’re talking about.

14) Tweet on topic for at least 30 minutes a day. Check out my presentation on my 30 minute Twitter solution and the 30 minute Twitter solution instructions. Substitute Hootsuite instead of TweetDeck if you wish.

If you’re looking to brand yourself and get a great job, check out my article on how to use Twitter for the job search.

15) Dive into your LinkedIn network and build it as much as you can to find people in the companies and locations you need. Have a cup of coffee with them, and recognize that nearly 80% of jobs are now filled by employee referrals. The more specific you can get when talking to folks on the inside, the more they can help you.

16) Keep writing, keep tweeting, keep connecting and you will get what you want.

Get started TODAY! You don’t have to do everything I said. Dip in and try something today. Get building your brand today before you need to. The sooner you do so, the better off you’ll be, and the less work you’ll need to do down the road.

GRAB A GRAVATAR
How to Create a Gravatar account and create your Identity Online

What is a gravatar?
A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums and allows you to create your Identity online.

How Do I create a Gravatar?
Signing up for a Gravatar is simple and above all FREE. All you need is to associate a picture with your Email address. This would be the email address you enter while commenting. It is important that this email account is legit. My suggestion, associate your Blog’s email account with your Gravatar account.

Step # 1: Sign up for your Gravatar account

You can signup at www.site.gravatar.com/signup

All you need is your email address! You will then receive a confirmation email including a link that will activate your Gravatar account and allow you to set your password.

Step # 2: Set up a password.

Once you sign up, you will get a confirmation email. Click on that link. You will then be taken to a page where you will be asked to type in your password. Set your password.

Step # 3: Upload a picture, set up your Gravatar

You are now told you have no gravatar. Click on Add a new one. You can choose and upload this image from your computers hard drive or from the internet somewhere. It can be anything and remember you are associated with your unique email address so you do not need to worry about uploading a duplicate picture.

Step # 4: Crop your picture and set up a rating for your picture.

Yes, you get to set a rating for the picture you just uploaded as G, PG, R or X rated. X rated means you uploaded a private picture of your very private parts or something explicit. I would suggest not to do so as many blogs would block a gravator to show only G or PG Gravatars.

Step # 5: Associate your Gravatar with your Email address

This is the last step. Once done you are all set. Whenever you comment on a blog post from now on with your email address, your Gravatar would show up next to your comment. You can still post an anonymous comment, but what’s the fun in that !

Congratulations. You just created your Identity online.

CREATE A FEEDBURNER.COM ACCOUNT
Feedburner.com gives you option to customize the feed for your blog, and you can give visitors to subscribe via email and also track visitors and how many people had subscribed to your feed. It also give lot of customization options. Here I will explain how you can use feedburner for providing email subscription option to your blog.

Please follow the steps to create the feedburner account.

Go to http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home
Click on Register link at the top near right side

This will open Google's login page. If you have Google id then login with that other wise click on the Create Account link bellow.
Once you login with Google Account, you will be redirected to FeedBurner's home page
Finally you have created Feed Burner account.

GOOGLE PROFILE
Web 2.0 is more than just a buzz word anymore and to be successful in the world of Web 2.0 you'll need your own Google profile. Creating a Google profile is easy, the more information you add when you create your Google profile, the more willing the person reading your Google profile will be to connect with you. Your Google profile is one more tool you have to network and connect online.

Google Profiles will allow you to include all your important links. If you have a personal website, blogs that you write, social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, you can include all of them in your Google profile. Including links to your other sites on your Google profile will be good for the other sites because it'll give them a search engine boost.

Before You Get Started
Photo - Make sure you have a good photo. The key to a good profile is a good photo of yourself so people know who they're reading about when they get to your profile.

Keywords - What do you like to do and who are you? Those are your keywords. Are you a doctor? That will be one of your keywords.

Links - As I mentioned above, link to your blogs, Facebook profile, Twitter page, websites and whatever else you have.

Service you Offer - Do you have a home based or personal business? If you offer some sort of product or service, your Google profile is a good place to advertise it.

Profile URL - You can choose your own URL for your Google profile. Choose carefully one that suits you. This will be what people see at the top of your browser bar, but also what they see in search engines.

Bio - Make your bio interesting. Something fun will go further than something boring.
Create a Google Profile Step by Step
Go to Google.com type 'Create my Google profile'.

If you already have a Google username, sign in. If not, you'll need to create one before you can go any further.

Enter information like your name, where you grew up, where you live, where you work, where you went to school.

Add a photo of yourself. Everyone wants to see a photo when they're reading a profile.

Create a short bio about yourself, Make it fun and whitty, yet professional. Remember, potential employers may look at this profile. Use bullet points to make important points about yourself stand out. Use bold titles to separate separate parts of your bio.

To the right of the bio is something fun. If there's something you can't find on Google, list it here. Then mention what your superpower is. Then tell people what your interests are.

Add links to any of your personal Web pages, blogs or social networking sites. This way everyone can click through and see what you're all about.

Click on "Create a Google profile".

Copy your Google profile's URL and add a link to it from your websites so people can come and read all about you.

GOOGLE READER
If you like keeping track of websites which are constantly changing their information (such as blogs and news sites), you might be interested in being notified when the site updates its content.

Usually publishers of dynamic websites will allow you to “subscribe” to updates in one of two ways. One is via email updates, the other via RSS (colloquially called “Really Simple Syndication”).

If you’re like me, my inbox is littered with spam and is a hive of activity, so I’m loathe to subscribe to even more email, and there’s always the risk of landing on a spammers data base.

Which is why I like the RSS option. Anytime my favourite blogs or websites update I can view the updates at a convenient time in my RSS feed reader.

There are numerous feed readers available for use, and I don’t intend to cover the options here. I use Google Reader and have been really happy with it. It also appears to be the most popular.

What I like about Google Reader is:

It’s web based (so you can access it from different computers)
You can set up different folders
You can star items for later use or to revisit
You can view items in list view (so you can see just the titles and read what seems important or interesting first
you can view old items
the search facility is great
It’s simple to add a new subscription
Google Reader is pretty easy to set up. I’ve outlined the steps below, with the assumption that the reader does not already have a Google account.
Navigate to Google home page. At the top left of the screen you will see some options. Click on the “more” button and select “Reader”.
Look for the sign in box and click on the “create an account now”

This is NOT creating a gmail account. You can use any existing email account, and this will also allow you to access a range of other Google services.
The next screen tells you that Google has sent you an email with a verification link. Look for that email and click on the link. You will be taken to a new screen which says your email address has been verified. Click on the link to manage your account profile.

Look for the section on the right that says “My Services”. Reader should be listed there. Click on the link.

Congratulations! You have now signed up for Google Reader. Next - How to Add New Feeds to Google Reader. You do this by adding Blogs You are Following at your www.blogger.com dashboard. Keep adding as many blogs as are authorities in your niche. There is a Google reader link below your the "blogs you follow" . click on it and it will take you to your Google reader where you can now read the Blogs you are Following" in full. Doing all these are very easy. If you are finding difficulties in settting them up. Always go back and question www.google.com for direction.

If you follow the instructions above, i'm sure your personal brand will become visible online. Thank you for the efforts to read this blog!

4 Ways to Use Social Media Cues to Engage People

2010-02-24T03:05:00.000-08:00

As much as we (rightly) praise Google for having transformed our lives for the better, sometimes we all want answers that go beyond the right search query. Sometimes we want to reach out to someONE rather than someTHING.

But engaging in a conversation requires trust. And just as no newsletter sign-up form or invitation should be without trust-building assurances and privacy statements, no social media invitation or landing page should be without its own persuasive and trust-building cues.

While looking at Adam Cohen’s recent rundown of social media landing pages (think landing pages that convey social media options for customers), I was struck by some observations. Consider these four cues to incorporate into your social media landing page and campaign designs:
#1: Provide Visual Indications of Connection and Instantaneity

steal of the dayTake a look at this eBags “Steal of the Day” offer, as taken by Rishi Rawat.

Notice that eBags not only points out how many bags are left, but how many shoppers are also being offered this deal right NOW as you are looking at the purse yourself. Is this really social media?

No, but it does show how instantaneity brings the human element into an otherwise “sterile” e-commerce experience.

Similarly below, on the Windows social media landing page, the ability to see the current forum comments and questions is powerfully persuasive. The combination of transparency and perceived instantaneity create the desire to dive into the “conversational stream” that we see passing before us.

windows 7

Microsoft gets it right! The instantaneous Twitter feed makes us feel connected and lends credibility to the site and comments. Putting the Twitter pics and names next to comments provides more credibility cues and a humanizing touch.

Those are both examples of employing this first principle to good effect. Now here’s an example where these cues are not adequately leveraged…

best buy

Best Buy’s page lacks the feeling of connection that Microsoft’s page has. There are no social media cues to reassure the visitor.

Notice that the Twelpforce box is below the fold on the social media landing page and there are no cues of:

* Instantaneity or connection. We don’t see the stream of tweeted questions, nor do we see a McDonald’s-like counter of number of customers served/helped.
* “People” behind the tweeted answers.
* A high signal-to-noise ratio—no displayed answers to show that the responses are better than trusting to Google, FAQ pages, or scrolling through the forums.

#2: Show Signs of the Real Person Behind the Technology

If you look back to the Microsoft social media landing page, you’ll see that pictures are attached to all of the displayed tweets. That cues us to emotionally attach the “real people” warmth to the streaming tweets and comments. Remember, social media is about connecting with people. So include as many “real people” cues as possible. Common ways to do this include:

* Attaching pictures to blog comments. Almost nothing says “real person” more than an actual headshot. Seeing a face humanizes the person behind the comment.
* Pictures attached to testimonials. In the same way that handwriting personalizes a note, a picture of the customer can personalize the testimonial.
* Voice attached to testimonials. There’s so much information attached to inflection, emphasis, tonal quality, and so on. We just feel we can spot sincerity when we hear it—and that works to your advantage when you’ve got sincere customers willing to record a testimonial.
* Video testimonials. This is the best of both worlds: you get voice and pictures!
* Providing live chat with someone specific. Try changing the picture within the live chat icon according to which operator is “at bat.” Everyone likes to know whom they’re talking with. When you provide an actual picture, you give visitors more confidence to initiate a conversation.
* Providing a group shot of your customer service or social media team. Sometimes providing a picture of the individual service tech isn’t feasible, but providing a group shot is. Best Buy could certainly do this and it would sync nicely with their current “Ask a Blue Shirt” TV commercials.
* Making sure your corporate social media initiatives have a personality behind them. Bureaucracies don’t have authentic personalities. If projecting your authentic self is crucial to social media success, then a corporate-looking social media landing page is probably doomed from the start.

#3: Show You Deliver Value

While social media holds out the promise of human contact and intelligent response, it also presents the risk of the knucklehead factor. No-one wants to open themselves up to spam, troll-like responses, and a customer service rep whose only knowledge of the problem stems from the flow chart in front of him.

To engage more visitors with your social media efforts, you will need to include cues that indicate you provide value—many more intelligent insights, answers, and offers than selfish promotions and corporate PR-speak.

If Best Buy displayed the responses to tweeted questions, this would allow them to demonstrate the quality of their answers and a high signal-to-noise ratio. Similarly, allowing transparency on Twitter streams, Facebook updates, and so on can allow the wary to see for themselves what kind of signal you’re sending. This obviously overlaps a bit with the connectivity and instantaneity cues discussed earlier.

Showing your social media team’s pictures indicates that you hold them in high regard, which equates to a higher likelihood of intelligent answers, tweets, blog posts, and so forth.
#4: Use a Strong Call to Action

Social media doesn’t eliminate the need for traditional usability and conversion best practices. Visually prominent and clear calls to action will continue to outperform subtle text-based links. Compare the “See this Steal” and “Join the Conversation” buttons in the first two examples with Best Buy’s “Visit ____” text-based links. Which is more inviting to you?

As with almost everything on the Internet, it always pays to test—both through user testing and A/B or multivariate testing. As my good friend and mentor Bryan Eisenberg would say, “Always Be Testing.”

What do you think about social media cues? Are they valuable? Please add your comment below.

Five Facebook-Only Strategies For Business Success

2010-02-24T02:46:00.000-08:00

It’s hard to find a business participating in social media that isn’t doing something on Facebook. In fact, “I want a Facebook fan page,” has replaced, “I want a company blog,” as the single most heard request from clients in the social media world these days. With 350 million accounts and growing, it’s no wonder.

Facebook is one of my favorite places to recommend for businesses for a lot of reasons. The primary one is that Facebook offers almost of all the various social media tools that companies can apply to their brand.

Facebook allows you to participate without having to spend time or money on your own website. Still, few companies are using Facebook well. One example of a business doing it right is Ernst & Young Human Resources effort (brilliant). But for every good Facebook presence there’s a brand page we like to call a “campground.” Not because lots of people hang out there, but because all you hear when you visit is crickets.

To give you a leg up on getting smart with Facebook, here are five facebook-only strategies for business success.

1. Drive Off-Line Engagement With Event Postings

Facebook event postings are not just whimsical little calendar items. If you use them correctly, you can drive a veritable viral wave around what your business is doing because people who RSVP, comment or add to the event conversation have their activity posted publicly to their friends.

Here’s an example of an event page on Facebook

The catch is making your events irresistible, making the headline, description and invitation irresistible, then delivering on the off-line experience.
2. Give People Virtual Keepsakes With Photo Tagging

Speaking of events, when you have them, take pictures to post on your fan page. Then create some post-event buzz by inviting attendees to tag themselves in the photos. You won’t be able to tag most people (unless they are Facebook friends with the brand page administrator) but encouraging your attendees to tag themselves and their friends gives you a fun reason to reach out to them after an event.

This serves as a long tail effect of your event, driving your fans back to your fan page or event posting to see their images and further engage with your brand. And as a courtesy, put signage up at the event informing people their pictures may appear on your Facebook page or website.
3. Turn Customer Service Up a Notch With Facebook Discussion Forums

This tip works wonders for companies that don’t have some sort of support forum on their own website. Drive customers to your Facebook forums (called “Discussions” on the brand page tabs) by letting them know they can get support there.

Here’s an example of Jeep’s discussion forum on Facebook

Open up a forum topic for customer support and have someone on your staff check the forum for new issues every hour or so (or more depending upon volume). You’ll immediately give confused or frustrated customers a direct connection to solutions without having to spend a lot of money on complex issue tracking software.
4. Promote Your Page With Super Targeting

While I do not have access to specific data, almost every company I’ve talked to that has placed ads on Facebook has been thrilled with the outcome. The click-through rates have been higher than normal display ads and have had immediate impacts on page traffic.

The great thing about Facebook ads is that when you set them up, you can hyper-target them to the exact audience you’re trying to reach. Age, location, interest… filter your targeting to the specific profile of your target consumer and let Facebook do the rest. Because the ads are served on Facebook pages only, Facebook knows the age, location and interests of the people they serve the ad to. It’s probably the most effective ad targeting system in the world. Take advantage of it. Here’s 5 more ways to promote your Facebook fan page.
5. Collect Fan Photos and Videos at No Cost

Want your fans to take their picture with your product at various landmarks while traveling? Throw out a cool video contest or activity idea to engage your customers in some fun creativity. No need to hire a developer to pull together fancy code or pay YouTube thousands of dollars for a branded video contest.

Just ask your Facebook fans to upload their entries. Using the commenting tools provided, you can work up some guidelines for judging or just highlight and post the best stuff on your wall to promote the video makers. Even better, by posting appropriate policies and guidelines, you can get permission to use anything uploaded for company advertisements, projects and more. However, you should beware that Facebook has recently implemented some strict promotional rules. See this post for more on that.

There are lots of other strategies you can use on Facebook to engage your customers and even drive them to your website or other calls to action. These will at least give you some Facebook-exclusive ideas for starters. But these are just my ideas. Please share what you’re doing or your ideas to drive your business on Facebook in the comments.

Are you using Facebook events, photos and discussion groups? How are they working for you? Add your voice to the discussion by commenting below.
Credit: Social Media Examiner

11 Mind-Blowing Reasons Your Business Needs Facebook

2010-02-24T02:31:00.000-08:00

Everyone seems to be using Facebook to connect with old friends, but do you realize what this huge network could mean for your business? In the past 3 years, Facebook has surged past MySpace to become our preferred online hangout. And businesses are beginning to catch on.

Interesting research shows just how influential Facebook has become in our daily lives. Combined with several critical adjustments to how Facebook publishes “news” and intersects with other sites, the state of Facebook is mind-blowing. And that’s a big deal for your business.

Here are 11 vital reasons your business needs to be involved with Facebook:
1. 350 Million Global Users and Counting

Facebook announced recently that they had passed 350 million members, making Facebook the third-largest country in the world, if it was a country. (Perhaps that’s their end-game, joining the UN and raising an army?)
2. 100 Million U.S. Users

Sure, Facebook is strong around the world (Canada has the highest penetration rate), but nearly 1/3 of all Facebookers are here in the U.S. You may have heard of a TV show called American Idol. On a good night, it averages 20 million viewers. Facebook has 100 million American members. Hmmm.

3. Average Facebook User Spends 55 Minutes Per Day

Nearly 1 hour per day, per user. That’s a lot of Facebook time. How can your company grab a bit of consumer attention? This data is based on Facebook’s own published stats, covered by Inside Facebook.
4. Nearly 80,000 Sites Using Facebook Connect

Connect is the Facebook initiative that has the greatest long-range impact. By integrating Facebook closely, sites are making our personal social graphs truly portable. Instead of having to go to Facebook and other sites to visit our friends, they travel with us online (and in our pockets via mobile devices), always there to provide advice or commentary. Even Yahoo! and MySpace are rolling out deep Facebook integrations.

This of course makes Facebook the central hub of not just social media, but the web as well (which is why Google is scrambling to catch up after their competing Google Connect fell flat).
5. Facebook Fan Box Becoming Pervasive

Perhaps the least powerful, but most prevalent, flavor of Facebook Connect is Facebook Fan Box, a simple tool for enabling your website visitors, YouTube video watchers, or email newsletter recipients to become a fan of your brand—without even having to go to Facebook.
6. Average Facebook User Has 130 Friends

Will Facebook users continue to add more friends at a rapid pace? It depends upon how they view their Facebook connections. 130 friends almost bumps up against Dunbar’s Number of 150—the theoretical maximum number of actual friend relationships you can sustain, according to British scientist Robin Dunbar.

If Facebook continues to revolve around relationships that you actually possess in three dimensions—people you “actually” know—then the addition of bunches of new friends may slow considerably. But, if Facebook makes the leap to tie people together more casually (like Twitter), average friend counts could rise dramatically.
7. Average Facebook User “Fans” 2 Pages per Month

If you think tons of your customers should become fans of your company’s Facebook page, you might want to recalibrate your expectations. The average Facebook user “fans” only 2 new pages per month. That’s not a lot, considering how many brands, causes, and organizations we come into contact with on a regular basis.

If you’re going to make growth of your Facebook fan base a key part of your social media strategy, you must create a clear rationale for why consumers should participate with you.

You also might consider a robust, organized approach for promoting your Facebook fan page. (This case study from Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes has some good advice.)
8. Only 4% of Pages Have 10,000 or More Fans

If your Facebook fan page is a bit of a ghost town, you’re not alone. A fantastic study by Sysomos of 600,000 Facebook fan pages shows that only 4% of pages have 10,000 or more fans—and only .76% have 100,000 or more.

That’s why it is so critical to focus your Facebook strategy on activating the fans you have, not just collecting fans like baseball cards.

9. Wall Posts Don’t Impact Popularity

The Sysomos study also found very little correlation between how frequently the Facebook page admin posted to the Wall and total number of fans. However—and this is important—there is a strong correlation between amount of other content (notes, links, photos, videos) and number of fans.

Thus, if you want to grow your Facebook fan base, it is imperative that you move beyond simple Wall posts and add photos, videos, links and other content.
10. Customized News Feed

Facebook’s recent move to an algorithm-driven news feed means that just because someone is your fan does not mean he will see your Wall posts or status updates (true for both individuals and brands). Instead, the default news feed is now comprised of content that Facebook thinks you’ll like, based on your interactions with content from that author in the past, and interactions by your friends with that content.

This puts a tremendous premium on posting engaging content that will get comments and likes and shares. If you’re not paying attention to your content engagement scores within your Facebook analytics, start doing so now, and testing content types to see what works best for your brand.
11. Real-time Search Changes the Game

Facebook is now making most content available publicly, unless you tell them not to via your privacy settings. Twitter opened their data stream to anyone (not just big developers). Google and Bing are incorporating this data into search results, in real time.

This has tremendous implications for search engine optimization and reputation management, because a negative status update about your brand might now show up on the first page of Google search results for your company name (at least temporarily). The shakeout is still happening, but someone in your company needs to be on top of real-time search. Today.

Facebook may not be the ideal environment for every social media initiative, but its huge size forces you to at least consider participating—regardless of what type of business you run.

It’s not just fast-food chains like Souplantation that are promoting their businesses on Facebook. Everyone from the ultra-small business to the Fortune 500 corporation are placing bets on Facebook.

However, some brands are putting an awful lot of eggs in the Facebook basket, which is perhaps justifiable based on the facts above. However, I’m not so keen on building the centerpiece of a social media strategy on what amounts to rented land. What say you?

Is your business taking advantage of Facebook? How important is it to your social media efforts? What advice do you have for creating content and managing Facebook fan pages? Please comment below.
Credit: SocialMediaExaminer

Personal Branding 101: How to Discover and Create Your Brand

2010-02-21T05:57:00.000-08:00

In the past few years personal branding has been discussed exhaustively throughout the Net. The difference between today and over ten years ago when it was first mentioned by Tom Peters, is the rise of social technologies that have made branding not only more personal, but within reach.

From the corporate brand (BMW), to the product brand (BMW M3 Coupe) and down to the personal brand (car salesman), branding is a critical component to a customer’s purchasing decision. These days, customer complaints and opinions are online and viewable through a simple search, on either Google or through social networks. There is no hiding anymore and transparency and authenticity are the only means to survive and thrive in this new digital kingdom.

Many people think that personal branding is just for celebrities such as Paris Hilton or Britney Spears, yet each and every one of us is a brand. Personal branding, by definition, is the process by which we market ourselves to others. As a brand, we can leverage the same strategies that make these celebrities or corporate brands appeal to others. We can build brand equity just like them.

We can also have just as much presence as most startups and mid-size companies and products. Social media tools have leveled the playing ground and have enabled us to reach incredible heights, at the cost of our time. Today, I want to share the personal branding process, so you can start to think about what face you want to show to the world and how you want to position yourself for success!

1. Discover your brand

The single biggest mistake people make is that they either brand themselves just for the sake of doing it or that they fail to invest time in learning about what’s in their best interests. The key to success, and this isn’t revolutionary, is to be compensated based on your passion. In order to find your passion, you need a lot of time to think, some luck and you need to do some research online to figure out what’s out there.

Brand discovery is about figuring out what you want to do for the rest of your life, setting goals, writing down a mission, vision and personal brand statement (what you do and who you serve), as well as creating a development plan. Have you ever been called intelligent or humorous by your peers or coworkers? That description is part of your brand, especially if you feel those attributed pertain to you. To know if you’ve discovered your brand, you need to make this equation equal:

Your self-impression = How people perceive you

Before you enter the next step in the personal branding process, you’ll want to select a niche, whereby you can be the master of your domain. For example, Joel Comm has mastered the Google Adsense niche and brands himself using his name, and Brian Solis owns the social media PR niche with his PR 2.0 blog (under his name). When I say domain, I mean an area where there aren’t many competitors and literally, your online domain name. Once you sort this all out, now it’s time to create your brand.

2. Create your brand

Now that you know what you want to do and have claimed a niche, at least in your mind, it’s time to get it on paper and online. The sum of all the marketing material you should develop for your brand is called a Personal Branding Toolkit. This kit consists of the following elements that you can use to highlight your brand and allow people to easily view what you’re about:

1. Business card: It doesn’t matter if you’re a college student, CEO, or a consultant, everyone should have their own business card. The card should contain your picture, your personal brand statement (such as Boston Financial Expert), as well as your *preferred* contact information and corporate logo if necessary.

You can create your own business card and share it through your mobile phone using mydropcard.com or rmbrme.com. On the web, BusinessCard2.com is a great social network for creating and distributing your person business card.

2. Resume/cover letter/references document: These are typical documents that you need for applying for jobs and when you go on interviews (something over 2 million job seekers will be doing as we speak). Be sure to prioritize each document with information custom to the target position. Take your resume online and add social features to it to make the ultimate social media resume, promoting your personal brand to the world and making it shareable.

3. Portfolio: Whether you use a CD, web or print portfolio, it’s a great way to showcase the work you’ve done in the past, which can convince someone of your ability to accomplish the same results for the future. Figdig.com and carbonmade.com are social networks for people who want to show off their creative skills to the world.

4. Blog/website: You need to own yourname.com or a website that aligns with your name in some fashion. Depending on who you are, how much time you have on your hands and if you can accept criticism, you should either start a blog or stick with a static homepage. Those who blog will have a stronger asset than those who don’t because blogs rank higher in search engines and lend more to your expertise and interest areas over time.

5. LinkedIn profile: A LinkedIn profile is a combination of a resume, cover letter, references document and a moving and living database of your network. Use it to create your own personal advertising, to search for jobs or meet new people.

6. Facebook profile: Over 160 million people have profiles, but almost none of them have branded themselves properly using this medium. Be sure to include a Facebook picture of just you, without any obscene gestures or unnecessary vodka bottles. Also, input your work experience and fill out your profile, while turning on the privacy options that disable the ability for people to tag you in pictures and videos (allowing people to see the ones tagged of you).

7. Twitter profile: Your Twitter profile should have an avatar that is carved out of your Facebook picture and used in your LinkedIn profile. You need to use a distinct background, fill out your profile and include a link to either your blog or LinkedIn profile. Twitterbacks.com, developed by internet mogul Jim Kukral, has templates you can use to sculpt your very own Twitter background (Photoshop skills not included). Twitbacks.com is another solution that also lets you promote your Twitter profile.

8. Video resume: A video resume is a short video of you talking about why you are the best for a specific job opportunity. You get about a minute or so to communicate your brand and are able to send the link, once you upload it to YouTube, to hiring managers.

9. Wardrobe: Your personal style is tangible and is extremely important for standing out from the crowd. Select clothing that best represents you because it will be viewable through your pictures/avatars online, as well as when you meet people in reality.

10. Email address: Don’t overlook your email address as not being a significant part of your toolkit. Most people use email over all social networks and when you connect with someone on a social network, you are notified via email, so get used to it. Your email address poses a great opportunity for your brand. I recommend using gmail because of the acceptance of Google and since GTalk allows you to form tighter relationships with others. For your address, use “firstname.lastname@gmail.com.”

What’s next?

After you spend the time on these parts of your personal branding toolkit, it’s time to showcase it to the world, especially your target audience. Don’t be fooled by the myth that if you build it, they will come. Unless you’re the luckiest person on earth, you’ll have to actually communicate everything you’ve created to others.

In the next post, I will discuss how you can take the personal branding toolkit you’ve developed and communicate it to your audience. I’ll give you tips on how to market your personal brand to become known in your niche. Then, I’ll finish by explaining how you should monitor and update your brand over your lifetime.
Credit: Mashable

Looking for a job? A personal branding strategy to stand out from the crowd

2010-01-23T10:57:00.001-08:00

The traditional job-hunting approach advocated by human resources pundits (make a one-page résumé, don’t talk about personal stuff, make your experience look “broad” to appeal to many different industries, etc.) is basically flawed: by making your résumé look “standard”, and by rounding off the edges to try to be all things to all people, you are basically commoditizing yourself and making it more difficult for you to stand out from the crowd.

Posting a standard résumé on a job clearinghouse site such as monster.com will only put you on a pile with millions of other people trying to get the same thing using the same ineffective strategy. I suggest that you concentrate instead in building your personal brand online using all the tools at your disposal, the most important of which are a blog and your different social media profiles.

Here’s how I recommend that you start:

1. Register your name as a URL:
Unless your name is very original, it is most likely taken. If you get lucky and it’s still available, register a combination of your first name and last name with a .com extension: for example, johnsmith.com (from now on I will use johnsmith.com as a proxy for your name).

If it is already taken, throw in your middle initial (johntsmith.com),use a hyphen (john-smith.com) or register the .org version (johnsmith.org). You can register your name online for less than $10/year by going to an accredited domain registrar (I use Godaddy for all my domains).

Once you register your name, create a branded email address, like john@johnsmith.com and start using it immediately.

2. Set up your personal site:
Start by creating a very simple home page (update: or use a service like Nombray to do it for you), perhaps showing a good picture of you and a few links to four or five main sections, like:

1.Your Blog (this is a must, and the cornerstone of your personal brand online).
2.About Me (a summary of your background, skills, talents, goals, areas of interest, hobbies, etc. You can post a link to your résumé in this section.)
3.Contact Me (brief paragraph indicating how to contact you).
4.My Social Media Profiles (links to your profiles in sites like Linkedin, Facebook, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Flickr, etc.).
5.Multimedia (videos of presentations you have made, interviews you have given, etc.).
Another popular option is to set your personal blog as your home page, and link to your other sections from a menu or from links on your sidebar (if you chose this option, please follow our suggestions on paragraph 3, below).

3. Create a special URL for your blog:
Host your blog in its own sub-directory or folder (johnsmith.com/blog) or in its own sub-domain (blog.johnsmith.com). It is generally easier to follow the sub-directory route (less technical details). If you want your blog to pop up automatically when somebody types johnsmith.com, link johnsmith.com to johnsmith.com/blog through a 301 redirect.

The reason I’m asking you to go through the trouble of doing this is as opposed to just publishing your blog at johnsmith.com is because one day, as your brand grows, you may want to use your home page to showcase the different dimensions of your personal brand (your different products or the different ways your value is “packaged”).

Moving your blog to johnsmith.com/blog at this late stage may cause different URL problems, and will confuse users and search engines. It is better to give your blog its own sub-domain or sub-directory from day one. (Matt Cutts, one of Google’s most outspoken authorities, advocates hosting your blog in its own sub-directory, citing some additional search engine benefits).

4. Make your blog personal:
As you write about your professional areas of interest, don’t be afraid to voice your personal opinions on the topics you cover. Your blog shouldn’t be only factual, but it should reflect your own “editorial review” of the topics that shape your area of expertise.

This is the stuff that will make you truly different to your competitors. Coming across as a real person in this low trust world can be your best competitive advantage.What do you think? Do you have any other tips? Please leave us your comments.

6 Powerful Social Media Persuasion Techniques

2010-02-24T02:22:00.000-08:00

Let’s be honest, you don’t just want your voice to be added to the conversation; you want your voice to be heard, repeated, and valued—and your message to be influential. Ultimately, you’re after influence.

So what better way to understand social media than by looking at the fundamental principles of influence as taught by Dr. Robert Cialdini, professor of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University? In his seminal book, Influence, Cialdini covers six “weapons of influence” that are hardwired into our social and cognitive minds. In other words, we can’t help but behave in accordance with these laws of social interaction.

Does this sound like something useful to keep in mind during your social media engagements? Well, let’s take a look six powerful persuasion techniques:
1. Reciprocation
Influence

In Cialdini’s words, the rule for reciprocation “says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us. If a woman does us a favor, we should do her one in return; if a man sends us a birthday present, we should remember his birthday with a gift of our own; if a couple invites us to a party, we should be sure to invite them to one of ours.”

And so it is in social media: we’re more likely to retweet someone who has already retweeted us. We link to people who have linked to us. And we tend to give a business far more trust after it has provided us with a lot of free value.

Used manipulatively, this turns into autofollow bots that help you amass thousands of followers in a breathtakingly short time—none of whom may actually care what you have to say. Doh!

Used more positively and constructively, if you focus on initiating reciprocity by providing no-strings-attached value to those in your network, you’ll ultimately wield far more influence. Not because the gift economy is a new fad in marketing, but because following the law of reciprocity is how we’re wired as humans.
2. Commitment and Consistency

“Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision,” said Cialdini.

Chances are, you follow too many people on Twitter. And you’re signed up for more RSS feeds and newsletters than you can really read. Objectively, purging your list of followers and unsubscribing would eliminate distractions and increase your social media signal-to-noise ratio.

But most people never make that purge and hardly ever unsubscribe. Part of it goes back to reciprocation, but a larger part stems from consistency: you’re loath to admit that following and subscribing to those people and newsletters was a mistake.

On the positive side, how much more likely are you to comment on a blog that you’ve already commented on before? Especially if you’re now “signed in” to comment on the blog during future visits—and if your Gravatar or Disqus headshot shows up next to the comments?

According to the principle of consistency, you’ll want to remind people of their previous positive commitments through perks, public displays, an elimination of friction for increasing their commitment, etc. It works for Amazon prime, Amazon’s 1-click ordering, and Amazon’s reviewer system, and it will work for fostering blog comments and a blog community, too.
3. Social Proof

One method we use to determine correct behavior is to find out what other people think is correct. We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.

Just watch this video to see this in action!

Whether we admit it or not, most of us are impressed when someone has a ton of blog subscribers, Twitter followers, YouTube views, multiple blog reviews for their upcoming book, and so on.

Yes, people can game the system (autofollows and such), which can jade our intellectual response, but our core and initial emotional reactions stay the same.

On the positive side, creating a lot of value for others can help companies and individuals gain social proof via reciprocation: writing engaging content for guest posts, offering to interview authors and subject matter experts, and so forth. Not only do these activities provide social proof in themselves, but they can help you gain a support network capable of “salting” your blog comments, your retweets, etc.

And when it comes to social proof, tribes matter. It’s not just about what the mass of people are doing on social media that constitutes proof, it’s what other like-minded people and peers are doing. So according to the principle of “social proof,” you should concentrate your social media efforts on finding and building social proof within your tribe.
4. Liking

“We most prefer to say yes to people we know and like,” says Cialdini. Extensions of this principle are:

1. Physical attractiveness creates a halo effect and typically invokes the principle of liking;
2. We like people who are similar to us;
3. We like people who compliment us;
4. We like things that are familiar to us;
5. Cooperation toward joint efforts inspires increased liking;
6. An innocent association with either bad or good things will influence how people feel about us.

How does this work for social media? Well, to start with the virtual equivalent of physical attractiveness, we give extra credence to attractively designed blogs, messages contained in videos with higher production quality, and corporations’ landing pages displaying a better sense of social media savvy in their overall design and layout.

Similarly, individuals involved in coordinating joint ventures for the common good are associated with—and therefore “haloed” by—those efforts, while at the same time invoking cooperation toward a joint effort, which further increases “liking.” Think of Seth Godin’s efforts at compiling free and thoughtful ebooks and then using the compilation to raise funds for a non-profit. Bryan Eisenberg’s Trick or Tweet efforts from a year ago also come to mind.

As for complimenting others, what else is a retweet, a trackback, or a positive blog comment than a social compliment? And yes, those are all activities you should participate in authentically, sincerely, and liberally if you wish to leverage the principle of liking to your advantage.
5. Authority

Cialdini talks about “The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of authority…” In his book, he examines how authority can be conferred by (and also manufactured by) titles, clothes, and trappings.

In social media, authority is less about titles and clothes than about virtual trappings. In his (fantastic) report, “Authority Rules,” Brian Clark talks about how perceived expertise can frequently differ from real expertise. Meaning that the guy known for blogging about and offering intelligent commentary on a subject will likely have far more perceived expertise (and therefore influence as an authority) than a genuine but unknown non-blogging expert.

But perhaps the most direct measure of authority is the number of people who will buy or download a recommended resource based on little more than an authority’s endorsement. How many people would buy a copywriting book simply because Brian Clark said it’s a must-read? How many people will download a free PDF on nothing more than Seth Godin’s evaluation that it contains important insights?

But one thing social media has seemed to spark is a dawning understanding that authority is (or should be, at least) limited to a legitimate field of knowledge. So when a relatively famous figure like Robert Scoble states on his website Scobleizer that search engine optimization isn’t important for small businesses, he’s “taken to task” on it rather severely.
6. Scarcity

Apart from reciprocity, this is perhaps the most used tool in social media. When bloggers open up a class or inner circle membership or subscription service, it is never for an unlimited number of customers or for an always open/unlimited time. Smart bloggers either create or fully leverage already existing scarcity by limiting seats available, length of time to buy, etc.

Laura Roeder has rather famously made scarcity a centerpiece of a signature technique, wherein bloggers hold competitions with free services as a prize. When contestants don’t win, they then value the prize more highly precisely because of the newly perceived scarcity. This makes them more likely to accept a consolation prize of getting the services at a slight discount.
Parting Recommendations

While the six principles of persuasion started out as “weapons of influence” that were used against us by “compliance professionals,” I—along with Cialdini—would encourage you to practice the positive side of wielding influence. To sum up many of the recommendations from the post, here are some very positive ways to leverage the principles of influence to increase your social media success:

* Focus on creating value and initiating the reciprocity principle by gifting your social media contacts with high-value content, insights, reports, etc.
* Sincerely flatter your subscribers, friends, and commenters by responding to them and nurturing your growing community. Actively reach out to people you admire using social media and pay them the compliment of commenting on their blogs, following their tweets, linking to their content, etc.
* Commit to consistent engagement on the social media platforms you chose to use, to the point of staying away from new social media platforms that you don’t have the resources to actively participate in.
* Use social proof as credibility cues where appropriate. Show off your number of subscribers next to the Subscribe button. Possibly use colleagues to “salt” your comments on important posts, build up your network by guest posting, commenting, and retweeting.
* Coordinate within your community on larger efforts for the greater good. You’ll probably be psyched at what you create or accomplish, you’ll do good and feel good about it, and you’ll likely become associated with the effort.
* Put the extra effort in on achieving professional and inspiring design. Dress for success on your blog, website, and social media landing pages.
* When creating a contest or trying to spark immediate action, use the scarcity principle to positive effect. But be honest about it—no changing “last day for” dates, no miraculously replenishing supplies, etc

But, hey, I’d be THRILLED to add to the list if you recognize any of your tried-and-true techniques as falling within—or totally falling outside of—these weapons of influence.

What are your secret weapons of influence? Let’s engage. Please comment below now.
Credit: SocialMediaExaminer

5 Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page

2010-02-24T01:55:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered, “How do I promote my Facebook fan page?” This article reveals 5 ways to use the power of Facebook to grow your fan base.

Why Do You Need a Facebook Fan Page? You may ask, “Why do I even need a Facebook fan page?” Here’s why: Facebook currently has an Alexa ranking of 2. They are the second most trafficked website next only to Google!

This means your Facebook page will be indexed faster on Google and other search engines, so if you don’t have a fan page, be sure to add one and promote it.

Here are 5 great ways to grow your Facebook fans:
#1: Invite People From Your Facebook Friend Lists

Do you have your personal friends and professional colleagues segmented into lists on your Facebook home page?

I have a number of lists in my personal Facebook account.

You can invite these lists as groups to your Facebook fan page instead of sending individual invites. This is the easiest and fastest way to jump-start your fan base.

When you click “Suggest to Friends” on your fan page, start typing in the name of your friends list in the filtered friends section; for example, “Social Media Professionals.” This will automatically send an invitation to your fan page to all of your colleagues listed in that category.

It’s possible that it may take a while before you start seeing those familiar faces pop up in your fan page because people are busy. There have been a few occasions where I’ve gently nudged them with an individual invite, but I keep that to a minimum.

As you add more people to your network, remember to go back to your same lists and send the invite to the new people you’ve added. The names of those who have already been invited will be grayed out and the invite will only be sent to your new contacts.
#2: Find People With Facebook Search

The updated Facebook Search feature (see the Search bar at the top of Facebook) gives you a view into conversations of your friends and status updates that may even show you who may be looking for the services you provide.

There is even an option to search “Posts by Everyone,” which gives you a glimpse into conversations of people who may not even be connected to you. After entering a search term, there will be a display, “Posts By Everyone.” This allows you to view conversations from others who aren’t in your friend lists.

Here is a screen shot when I entered “buying a home” in the Search field:

As you can see, there is a person saying “I think we are buying a house tomorrow.” If this person is already in your contacts list, the following is a very easy conversation starter: “Hi ___, I saw your Facebook comment about your plans to buy a house tomorrow. Do you need any help with school information in that particular area?”

There is another person stating that they plan to stay in their house for a long time. This can be a potential candidate for a loan refinance. Again, if this person is already a friend on Facebook, it would be very easy to start a conversation without sounding like an annoying salesperson.
#3: Attract People With Facebook Social Ads

Social Ads provide advertisements alongside your Facebook sidebar which show related actions your friends have taken on the site. These actions may be things like “Leah is now a fan of The Offspring. Would you like to become a fan too?” It is possible to tailor ads to your friends and their interests, which makes it more appealing for them to take action because you are interested as well.

This strategy requires a small budget, but can be very effective in finding your target market. It is very important to do a Facebook search with specific keywords in your particular niche to find out if it’s being talked about on Facebook (see #2 above).

If you click on “Promote With an Ad” on your fan page, you can start a campaign. You can set a daily spending limit of $10, $25, or other appropriate amount. Because I market mostly to businesses with my keywords (such as real estate broker, loan officer, real estate investor, and so forth)—which are in numerous profiles as job descriptions—I have been able to use Facebook Social Ads effectively for my fan page.

It’s possible to run your Facebook ads for only 4 to 5 days with a $25 per day budget. Then stop the ad for a few weeks if you like and run the same ad again. This allows your fan page to grow in spurts and I have found it to be very effective in growing my fan base without spending a lot of money at once.
#4: Facebook Fan Page Twitter App

The Facebook Fan Page Twitter application is a great tool that brings your Twitter following back to your fan page. When you post a status update, a link or a photo (you can choose) on your Facebook fan page, there will be an update to Twitter with a shortened bit.ly link back to your fan page. This is just pure genius to drive traffic from another source right to your page.

There are other Facebook and Twitter integration applications; however, this is the one that leads people directly back to your page. This gives them an option to become a fan of your page right at that moment if they click on the bit.ly link from Twitter.
#5: Facebook Fan Box Widget

The Facebook Fan Box Widget is a great feature to add to your blog or website. This widget allows you to show your fan base and allows others to become fans instantly. This is just one way to promote your page across several social media sites. It is important to cross-reference all of your social media sites so others can find you and your websites on other networks.

For more great Facebook tips, be sure to check out Top Tips for Using Facebook for Business .

So what do you have to add to this list? Are you finding other effective ways to promote your Facebook fan page? I would love to hear from you and your successes in promoting your pages in the comments below.
Credit: SocialMediaExaminer

How to Better Engage Facebook Fan Page ‘Fans’

2010-02-24T02:05:00.000-08:00

A compelling, active Facebook fan page should be an integral part of your marketing plans. With its 350 million users and average daily session time of 25 minutes, Facebook provides an exceptional opportunity for visibility, Google indexing, live search ability, and fan engagement—whether you’re a solopreneur, a large brand or anywhere in between.

But, if you build it, will they come? And if they come, will they stay and engage?

There are two primary components to Facebook fan page engagement: 1) Sharing quality, relevant content and 2) inciting comments. In this article I’ll tell you how to best engage with Facebook fans.

Of course, there are many other components of effective Facebook fan pages and Facebook marketing in general. However, for the purposes of this two-part post, we’ll focus on content and comments. The more comments you have, the more viral visibility and free marketing you’ll create. But your fans have to have something to comment on!
Share Quality, Relevant Content – Daily

TechCrunch recently posted a Facebook fan page study by Sysomos that revealed 77 percent of fan pages have fewer than 1,000 fans. What stood out for me in that post was this fact: “Facebook fan pages tend to be updated only once every 16 days.”

TechCrunch goes on to say, “On Twitter, you follow someone because you want to hear what they have to say. On Facebook, you fan them just to show your support or affinity. Too often, it’s a throwaway gesture.”

While this may be true for many Facebook members and fan pages, I see a lively fan page as an extension of your blog and business – a place where you can generate real community and further solidify your brand.

1) How Often Should You Post?

* For most fan pages, there is a direct correlation between frequency of posts and number of fans. Frequency is king, but there’s a fine balance – you don’t want to overwhelm your fans.
* If you’re just starting out with your fan page, I would suggest a minimum of one update per day and increase from there to several times a day (mixing up the types of posts – see below) if you’re getting a good response from your fans.
* Daily posting (at least Monday through Saturday) should yield daily comments and engagement.
* You’ll find the right rhythm with your fans. Better to start with once a day than several times a day and have your wall filled with only your own posts.
* Also, keep in mind “high traffic windows.” Depending on your time zone and the time zone of the majority of your fans, you’ll probably want to post sometime between 8:15am PST and 2:00pm PST.

2) What to Post

* I recommend a mix of your own thoughts, breaking news, useful tips, tools, resources and links from other sites in your industry and related industries. Stay on topic, stay focused.
* You could create an editorial calendar for your fan page just like many bloggers do.
* If you’re not sure what content your fans want, ask them – in a poll or status update.
* If your fan base is small and still growing, ask your Twitter followers, Facebook friends, email list, and blog subscribers. They are all potential fans. (See related post: 5 Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page).

In this screen shot of Volkswagen’s Facebook Fan Page, photos from a recent auto show yielded 363 likes and 68 comments and a video trailer got 121 likes and 25 comments. These are great results, as every one of the fan actions created a post on their respective walls and out into their friends’ news feeds. Free visibility, and every line item has a link back to VW’s fan page.

3) Sourcing Quality Content

* Your own blog: Import using the Notes app or, ideally, the Networked Blogs app.
* Create your own Alltop page and review each morning for fresh content to share.
* And/or subscribe to the top 15 to 25 blogs in your industry and related industries in your Google reader and review daily.
* Create Twitter lists and scan daily for new, relevant information to share (see also 5 Creative Ways to Use Your Twitter Favorites).
* Your Twitter Favorites RSS feed imported via the Notes app.
* Your YouTube videos and/or other relevant videos.

4) Cultivating Your Style

* Most people will come back to your fan page if there’s a real sense of community.
* It’s important to be open, inviting, warm, friendly and personable. Even if you’re a large brand.
* Starbucks leads the way with engagement – you might observe their style for ideas. Though they use their globally recognized logo, you’ll occasionally see posts in first person. I think this is commendable, as it really creates that personal feel so important to social networks.

starbucks on facebook

5) Mix Up the Types of Posts

Text

This is your standard status update. You get 420 characters in the publisher to say what you want. As long as you don’t have a link in the update, the post automatically changes your latest Status Update at the top.

I highly recommend using the Facebook fan page to Twitter app at http://facebook.com/twitter. You simply link your fan page to your Twitter account, then choose which posts to share as tweets (Status Updates, Photos, Links, Notes, Events). You may need to experiment to get this just right.

Your posts will automatically truncate at around 120 characters and include a bit.ly link back to your fan page. Regardless of the number of characters, the tweet always contains the bit.ly link. Here’s an example of an update I posted for this blog post:

To track stats on any bit.ly link, just paste it into your browser and add a “+” sign at the end. As of the time of this writing, this post/link had 109 clicks and the post had 23 comments, plus replies on Twitter.

Video

Video is the next best thing to meeting your fans in person. There are many choices for video updates: You talking into the camera, photo montages (try Animoto), screencasts (using software like Camtasia Studio for PC or Mac, or ScreenFlow for Mac).

When you talk into the camera, always make good eye contact with the camera lens – just as if you were chatting to one good friend. You could do a video tip per day or per week. Make sure to keep the length short and the content concise. The ideal length for videos is up to 1 minute and 40 seconds.

You can record directly on Facebook or load a file onto your fan page – see screenshots below:

Here’s a video upload example from Dell Computer’s Facebook Fan Page – a 41-second ad for their nifty new customizable range of laptops, with 179 likes and 57 comments.

Or, you could pull in the video from YouTube as a link (click the Links icon on the publisher) – and this pulls in the live video player just as if you’d loaded the video file as in the example above:

Upload relevant pictures periodically and be sure to encourage your fans to upload photos anytime they wish. Each time your fans upload a photo, the thumbnail goes onto their profile wall and out into the news feeds of their friends.

Make sure your settings allow fans to post content. Just to the right under the publisher, click Options, then Settings:

In the screenshot below, there’s a photo on the Coca-Cola Facebook Fan Page – what’s neat about this photo is it was actually a fan-loaded image that Coca-Cola then reposted using the Share button (a great illustration of how Coca-Cola partnered with their raving fans who created the page).

Links

* Anytime you post a link in the publisher, Facebook displays a preview with a choice of thumbnails. (If you’re publishing content from a third-party app like Ping.fm, the thumbnail will be a default view.)
* You may at times wish to create an actual status update with a link in it, instead of a link with the preview on the wall. Here’s what to do: Before clicking the Share button, simply click the “x” to delete the link preview:

The post goes out as a status update with a clickable link:

Events

You can quickly create Event listings right from the publisher for any virtual or live event you have coming up. Fans can easily RSVP, as a regular Event page is created when you publish the event.

@ tags

This is a relatively new feature on Facebook. You can tag any friend, any fan page you’ve joined, any group you’re a member of and any event you’ve RSVPed to attend. You can include up to six @ tags in any update. Use the @ tagging strategically and your post will show up on your friends’ walls and other fan pages’ walls per the tag. (Just type the @ symbol in the publisher and the first letter or two of who/what you want to tag and a list drops down for you to select from.)

Notes app

This app is typically used to import your blog. However, I like the Networked Blogs app, so I actually import the RSS feed of my Twitter Favorites via the Notes app, which makes it easy to push relevant, regular content onto my fan page wall (and into the news feeds of my fans).
Incite Comments

Now that you have a wide variety of regular, quality, relevant content posting on your fan page, here are some points about inciting comments:

* For status updates, try ending with a question.
* Add your own comments as needed to get the ball rolling.
* Come back and reply often to your fans’ comments – Facebook currently doesn’t have threaded commenting, so I suggest addressing specific fans in your comments as @name.
* Do your best to respond to fan questions as promptly as possible. If you find you can’t keep up with the volume of questions, offer a free teleseminar or webinar in which you answer your fans’ top questions.

Vin Diesel has the second most popular Facebook fan page with well over seven million fans. Vin doesn’t post all that often, but when he does, each post yields tens of thousands of comments and likes. Just like Starbucks, there’s something to learn from Vin’s style – he talks to his fans in a very warm, caring and authentic manner.

In part two of this Facebook Fan Page Engagement post, I’ll cover:

1. How to encourage fans to keep coming back to add their own content and comments and ask questions, etc.
2. Monitoring insights – what do they mean, how to analyze the numbers and adjust your posts accordingly.
3. Should you also use the “Send an Update to Fans” feature? Do fans read their updates?
4. How to spark ongoing engagement via the Discussions tab.
5. Setting up systems for monitoring and responding to your fan engagement, given that there are currently no notifications of activity or RSS feeds to subscribe to on fan pages.
6. Integrating your Twitter followers and activity into your fan page engagement.

Now it’s your turn: What types of content are you finding sparks the most engagement on your Facebook fan page? Where do you get stuck most with your fan page and what else would you like to see covered in future posts about social media engagement? Please add your thoughts in the comments below, then stay tuned for part two!
Original post with images can be found @SocialMediaExaminer

13 Ways to Move Your Facebook Fans to Action

2010-02-24T02:09:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you have a Facebook Fan Page and even some fans. But now what? How can you encourage your fans to act and interact?

In my prior post I covered the various sources and types of content you can post on your Facebook fan page. I also talked about the importance of consistent updates.

However, just like the “Field of Dreams” – if you build a fantastic fan page with plenty of quality content, will they come and will they stay?

They will come and they will stay if you give your fans good reason to engage.

Facebook fan page engagementGiven that over half of Facebook’s 400 million active users log in daily and spend an average of 55 minutes per day on the site, you can get your target audience to spend some of that time getting to know you, your brand, your products and services.

The secret is to create a fan page with the right blend of ingredients that resonates most with your ideal fans. And to ensure they’re made to feel a strong part of your online community.

As mentioned in Part 1, I’ve found there are essentially two components to Facebook fan page engagement: 1) Sharing quality, relevant content and 2) inciting comments. So, here in Part 2, we’ll talk about just how vital comments (and likes, wall posts and @ tags) are to the success of your fan page.

Now that you have a wide variety of regular, quality, relevant content posting on your fan page, here are some ways to get your fans to interact:
1. Ask questions

For status updates, try ending with a question. In the example below, Best Buy generated 274 responses so far to their question about what feature your can’t live without on your phone.

Best Buy on Facebook

And, in this example, Skype got 147 comments to their question about meeting your partner via Skype!

Skype on Facebook
2. Use the words “you” or “your”

Use the word “you” often – “What are your thoughts?” “What do you think about xyz?” Here, the Hard Rock Cafe is giving out a coupon code with the words “Our gift to you because you rock…”

Hard Rock Cafe on Facebook
3. Keep it short

The easier it is for your fans to read, the more likely they are to respond. Keep your status updates short and simple with one topic. You have up to 420 characters per update, but I recommend about half that for an ideal size. For longer updates, use the Notes app – or write a blog post and update.
4. Post in high-traffic windows

Get to know when your fans are most responsive. Depending on in which part of the world the majority of your fans are, you might want to post between 9:00am and 2:00pm in your timezone.
5. Respond promptly

Do your best to respond to fan questions (as wall posts) as promptly as possible. If you find you can’t keep up with the volume of questions, offer a free teleseminar or webinar where you answer the top questions for your fans. You can do this in the traditional way of having people opt-in to get the phone number so you’ll build your email list at the same time.
6. Address fans by name

Come back and reply often to your fans’ comments – Facebook currently doesn’t have threaded commenting, so I suggest addressing specific fans in your comments as @name. See my comment at the bottom of the screenshot below:

Facebook comments
7. Comment yourself

Add your own comment as needed to get the ball rolling. However, don’t step in too soon. I often find that the comments come more freely when you allow your fans to run by themselves initially.
8. Thank your fans

Acknowledge your fans often with simple thanks. Genuine recognition goes a *long* way!
9. Surprise your fans

Don’t be afraid to stray “off topic” from time to time and surprise your fans. In other words, your content doesn’t always have to be directly related to your product or service. You might share an inspirational quote and add your own thoughts, for example.

Facebook quote

If you happen to know a fan’s Twitter ID, send a tweet thanking her/him for the comment on your fan page. With a link of course. :)
10. Use @ tagging

You can tag other fan pages that you’re a fan of and your own friends (along with Groups you belong to and Events you’ve RSVPed for). When appropriate, and used sparingly, @ tags can be a very powerful way to have your post show up on others’ walls, which gives you more exposure and brings more fans or potential fans back to engage.
11. Use the Discussion Board

Give your fans a place to network with one another. Plus, often fans want to do self-promotion. You can encourage these types of activities on a specific discussion thread. Also, when you first launch your fan page, be sure to start 3 to 5 discussion topics so it’s not a blank tab.

In this example, the most popular discussion thread on Chick-fil-A’s fan page is asking their fans where they’d most like to see a Chick-fil-A next. Topics are always listed in order of the most recently commented on.

Chick-fil-A on Facebook
12. Send updates to fans

Each tab on your fan page and each discussion thread topic has its own unique URL. To bring fans back to your page to contribute to a discussion and get them more engaged, send out an update with a call to action and specific link. (To find the Update feature, click Edit Page under your image then look for Send Update to Fans on the right of your Admin page.)
13. Monitor insights

If you’re a perfectionist, the goal is to get 5 stars and a perfect 10 score! Facebook uses algorithms to calculate your Post Quality as determined by the percentage of your fans who engage when you post content, calculated on a rolling seven-day basis. The number of stars depends on how your Post Quality compares to similar pages (for example, pages that have a similar number of fans).

Facebook Insights

The more activity your fan page posts generate, the longer you’ll show up in the News Feed of your fans!

As you build up your fan base, consistently add quality, relevant content and engage your fans. You’ll start to see results that translate into an increase in brand awareness and positive brand sentiment, email and blog subscribers, and of course, sales and paying customers.

How are you engaging your fans? What did I miss? I’d love to hear from you. Add your ideas in the comments below. And do ask any clarifying questions as I’d be happy to answer you.
Credit:SocialMediaExaminer

HOW TO BUILD YOUR PERSONAL BRAND ON FACEBOOK

2010-02-21T05:52:00.000-08:00

With over 400 million active users, Facebook has become a personal, product and corporate branding hub. Every brand that exists on Facebook has the same core features and benefits, such as the ability to create a page, share resources, add multimedia and much more. You have a unique opportunity to leverage this platform for career success or as a playground for you and your closest friends.

The social graph is filled with CEOs, celebrities, entrepreneurs and people just like you who can be reached through Facebook’s messaging system without any boundaries or restrictions. Facebook is also a talent search engine and part of the college admission and corporate recruiting criteria. You will be searched on Facebook by potential dates, managers, and teachers, so use common sense in determining how you want to represent yourself. You are what you publish and first impressions are everything.

What follows is a guide to building your personal brand on Facebook. Continue the conversation by adding your own tips and stories below in the comments.

1. Know your audience

Too many people are sharing information to the wrong audiences. Your manager doesn’t want to know if you just went to the bathroom and, although your parents would love to eavesdrop on your relationship with your girlfriend or boyfriend, you might not want to share those details. Since our lives are starting to converge more and more every day, you need to decide what audiences you want to connect with on Facebook.

Do you want to use Facebook as a communication stream to your family and friends? Are you looking to network with professionals that could help you get a job? These are questions you need to start asking yourself before you add “friends” to your Facebook profile. If you decide to open it up to the masses, then you need to be mindful of what you share and how that could impact people’s perception of you. Remember, you can limit what select users can see on your profile, just by changing your settings, which we’ll discuss more below.

2. Decide on your branding strategy

Everyone should have a Facebook branding strategy and it should be based not only on the audience you’re targeting, but your overall life goals. Depending on who you are, where you are in your career, what you’re passionate about and an expert in, you’ll want to brand yourself differently.

If you haven’t signed up for Facebook, then you have a great opportunity to start fresh and to build your Facebook profile to best represent you. If you’re a current Facebook user, then start analyzing how your brand is being portrayed and take steps to customize it to reflect your branding strategy.

If you don’t want to build a branding empire, a strategy should still be extremely important to you; you’re already branded and that brand can help shape perceptions online to portray you in a positive light and help you secure a good reputation. This means choosing what links and media you share in your news stream to add value to your brand and those you’re friends with.

3. Set your privacy settings

Depending on your Facebook goals, you may set your entire account to private or grant certain individuals permission to view sections of your profile. You can also make your entire profile public for the world to see, which could be beneficial to you if you’re looking to become more visible in your industry and will result in your profile ranking high for your name in search.

I recommend turning tagging settings off for both photos and pictures so that you can take control of your Facebook wall. You wouldn’t want your friends tagging you in a picture of you doing something stupid, would you?

4. Fill out your profile completely

Facebook is a great platform where you can paint a picture of who you are. When filling out the information fields, be sure to focus on the education and work section, where you can reconnect with fellow alumni from college, or past colleagues that might be able to help you get a job.

Also, in the contact information field, be sure to list your blog, any websites you might own and links to your profiles on other social networks. Since hiring managers use Facebook’s search engine to find candidates, it pays to load up your profile with keywords that they can search against. Depending on your Facebook brand strategy, you’ll want to promote more information in certain fields like your contact information and less in other fields.

5. Import contacts and grow your network

Each month, you should go through the process of importing your contacts from your email accounts and your instant messenger screen name accounts. This will help you continue to grow your Facebook network as you’re meeting new people through your other channels.

If you have a blog, it’s also a smart idea to use Facebook Connect. By having Facebook Connect on your blog, you can bring your friends with you and promote your content through social interactions that start on your blog and end up on Facebook.

6. Update your status

Updating your status on Facebook allows your to project a single message to a large audience. Your status is a reflection of who you are and what you do. You can update your status with press mentions, your latest blog entry, a new project you’re working on or your interest in a particular job. Based on your branding strategy, you’ll want to update your status to either keep people informed about what you’re up to, push them to your content or both.

7. Start a group or a page

Facebook groups have fewer features than Facebook pages, but they are still important. Use a Facebook group to bring people together in your industry, become a valuable contributor to that community and market your blog, your product, or yourself! Facebook groups let you share links, videos, photos, and start discussions.

Facebook pages are for brands, ranging from Coca Cola to Barack Obama and even you. These pages resemble your Facebook profiles, so only use one if you have a large number of Facebook friends. By having a Facebook page, your brand can go viral, holding a spot on other people’s profiles. The other main advantage is that your page will rank high for your name in Google and you can use it for your professional career, while keeping your personal profile private.

8. Join or start an event in your area

One of the best aspects of Facebook is that you can get involved in your community by joining or starting an event in your industry. By opening up your event to everyone, you can meet new people and discover other people who have shared interest and can support your career. Events can also be cataloged on your Facebook page.

If you’re looking to start a weekly or monthly event and want to keep a calendar, logging it on a page is a good strategy. By starting an event, you’re positioning yourself as a leader and an expert, which is great for your personal brand.

9. Link out to your Facebook profile

You might already have a blog and accounts on other social networks, including Twitter, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Technorati, etc. If you do and your Facebook strategy is to promote yourself and remain public, then placing a link (and possibly a Facebook icon) on these other sites to your Facebook profile is a great idea.

As the chief marketing officer for your personal brand, you want to build your friend list, so that you have more people to market to now and in the future. Think of your Facebook profile as a digital asset and grow the equity in that asset over the rest of your life.

10. Feed your social networks

By using Ping.fm, you can update your status on Facebook, as well as many other social networks in an instant, without duplicating your efforts. Also, you can import your blog titles in Facebook using notes or by using an application called Simple RSS.

Not only does this make you more productive, but it appears as though you’re contributing to your community, without you having to think about it. Since Facebook is all about sharing, those that share more will be remembered more, which is great for personal branding.
Source: Mashable

The Internet in 2020: What the Experts Predict.

2010-02-21T05:40:00.000-08:00

Most experts agree that Google won't make us stupid. Indeed, 76% of technology stakeholders and critics interviewed by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University believe that the Internet and search engines will enhance human intelligence by 2020.

For this new report, the Pew Research Center conducted in-depth interviews with over 800 experts about what they think the Internet will look like in 2020.

Here are some of the key quotes from the report:

Will Google Make us Stupid?
Just the Stats
76% By 2020, people's use of the Internet has enhanced human intelligence; as people are allowed unprecedented access to more information, they become smarter and make better choices. Nicholas Carr was wrong: Google does not make us stupid (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google).

21% By 2020, people's use of the Internet has not enhanced human intelligence and it could even be lowering the IQs of most people who use it a lot. Nicholas Carr was right: Google makes us stupid.

4% Did not respond
"I feel compelled to agree with myself. But I would add that the Net's effect on our intellectual lives will not be measured simply by average IQ scores. What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking."- Nicholas Carr

"Google will make us more informed. The smartest person in the world could well be behind a plow in China or India. Providing universal access to information will allow such people to realize their full potential, providing benefits to the entire world." - Hal Varian, Google, chief economist

"It's a mistake to treat intelligence as an undifferentiated whole. No doubt we will become worse at doing some things ('more stupid') requiring rote memory of information that is now available though Google. But with this capacity freed, we may (and probably will) be capable of more advanced integration and evaluation of information ('more intelligent')." - Stephen Downes, National Research Council, Canada

"The problem isn't Google; it's what Google helps us find. For some, Google will let them find useless content that does not challenge their minds. But for others, Google will lead them to expect answers to questions, to explore the world, to see and think for themselves." - Esther Dyson, longtime Internet expert and investor

"People are already using Google as an adjunct to their own memory. For example, I have a hunch about something, need facts to support, and Google comes through for me. Sometimes, I see I'm wrong, and I appreciate finding that out before I open my mouth." - Craig Newmark, founder Craig's List

"The Internet has facilitated orders of magnitude improvements in access to information. People now answer questions in a few moments that a couple of decades back they would not have bothered to ask, since getting the answer would have been impossibly difficult." - John Pike, Director, globalsecurity.org

Will The Internet Enhance and Improve Writing, Reading and the Rendering of Knowledge?
Just the Stats
65% By 2020, it will be clear that the Internet has enhanced and improved reading, writing, and the rendering of knowledge.

32% By 2020, it will be clear that the Internet has diminished and endangered reading, writing, and the intelligent rendering of knowledge.

3% Did not respond
"Most writing online is devolving toward SMS and tweets that involve quick, throwaway notes with abbreviations and threaded references. This is not a form of lasting communication. In 2020 there is unlikely to be a list of classic tweets and blog posts that every student and educated citizen should have read." - Gene Spafford, Purdue University CERIAS, Association for Computing Machinery U.S. Public Policy Council

"This is a distinction without a metric. I think long‐form expressive fiction will suffer (though this suffering has been more or less constant since the invention of radio) while all numeric and graphic forms of rendering knowledge, from the creation and use of databases to all forms of visual display of data will be in a golden age, with ordinary non‐fiction writing getting a modest boost. So, English majors lose, engineering wins, and what looks like an Up or Down question says more about the demographic of the answerer than any prediction of the future." - Clay Shirky, professor, Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University

"When I was a boy, homework consisted of writing a paragraph. Now, youth writing paragraphs in a blink of an eye. They are mastering language only to reinvent it. They are using it in new forms. Tags. Labels. Acronyms. And the game becomes a written game of who can use written word most effectively. Reading, writing, and communicating will become much more fluid as youth are more engaged in the practice of these skills, and have a greater motivation to practice their skills." - Robert Cannon, senior counsel for internet law at Federal Communications Commission

"When writing itself appeared, philosophers feared that it would weaken memory and degrade intelligence. But it allowed for a great, albeit externalized memory and an enlarged, albeit shared intelligence. [...] The Internet will have similar effects, with some losses but, on balance, more gains." - Mark U. Edwards, senior advisor to the Dean, Harvard University Divinity School

"More people are reading and writing, and in more ways, for more readers and other writers, than ever before, and the sum of all of it goes up every day." - Doc Searls, co‐ author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto"

Will Online Anonymity Have Gone the Way of the Dodo by 2020?
Just the Stats
41% By 2020, the identification ID systems used online are tighter and more formal - fingerprints or DNA‐scans or retina scans. The use of these systems is the gateway to most of the Internet‐enabled activity that users are able to perform such as shopping, communicating, creating content, and browsing. Anonymous online activity is sharply curtailed.

55% By 2020, Internet users can do a lot of normal online activities anonymously even though the identification systems used on the Internet have been applied to a wider range of activities. It is still relatively easy for Internet users to create content, communicate, and browse without publicly disclosing who they are.

3% Did not respond
"The privacy and civil liberties battles over the next decade will increasingly focus on the growing demands for identity credentials. New systems for authentication will bring new problems as more identity information will create new opportunities for criminals. Identity management companies will also go bankrupt and try to sell off their primary asset ‐‐ the biometric identifiers of their customers." - Marc Rotenberg, executive director, Electronic Privacy Information Center

"Anonymity online will gradually become a lot like anonymity in the real world. When we encounter it, we'll take a firm grip on our wallet and leave the neighborhood as soon as possible ‐‐ unless we're doing something we're ashamed of." - Stewart Baker,

"'It will be an archipelago of named users, who get a lot of value from participating in that part of the ecosystem, but still set in an ocean of anonymity." ‐‐ Clay Shirky, professor, Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University

"Anonymity will continue to have its place; that is the architecture of the web and it will be difficult to change that. Nonetheless, I believe that verified identity will come to be seen as an added value in transactions (including conversations) and as a way to recognize more value (reward in financial or ego terms)." ‐‐ Jeff Jarvis, prominent blogger, professor, City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism.
Source: ReadWriteWeb

Attaining The S.T.A.R Status.

2010-02-15T00:51:00.001-08:00

Personal branding emphasizes on creating your uniqueness, distinction and going the extra mile to be outstanding by standing out tall among your equals. First Bank Nigeria has a rewarding program called the S.T.A.R which stands for S.tand T.all A.mongst the R.est. Every year, staff who attain this S.T.A.R Status are rewarded openly at their Annual General Meeting (AGM).
The Universe has a way of rewarding outstanding people. No one goes the extra mile to stand tall among the rest that is not rewarded. Guiness Book of Records chronicles outstanding global achievements. Employers promote outstanding employees. People patronise outstanding products and services.
What are you good in? What are your areas of strength? Where do your passion lie? Discover it. Work on it. Practise it. Rehearse very well. Read more about it. Expend the extra hours. Be passionate. Decide to be the next success story that will top the news items across several media.
This is your year of outstanding results. You will stand tall among your contemporaries as the best MD/CEO, Manager, Writer, Singer, Poet, Speaker, Event Organiser, Consultant, Web Developer, Marketer, ...
My conclusion: I'm commending young Nigerians and Africans who are Unemployed, Employed and Self-employed to work smart to attain the S.T.A.R Status in their various fields of endeavors to attract personal success. Building a successful personal brand is the surest path to greatness in today's competitive world. Strive hard to attain the S.T.A.R Status. The universe will definately reward you! What's on your mind?

SOCIAL MEDIA SUPERSTARS

2010-02-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

If you love Social Media like you love music, then you need to connect with these Superstars. The list is ongoing. I will keep updating a time goes on.
Take you time to 'google' them first. That is the reason why I did not hyperlink their names.
Enjoy!

* Brent Csutoras
* Brian Clark
* Chris Brogan
* Chris Winfield
* Dan Zarrella
* Dosh Dosh
* Marshall Kirkpatrick
* Matthew Inman
* Muhammad Saleem
* Rand Fishkin
* Seth Godin
* Sonia Simone
* Tamar Weinberg

Please comment by suggesting other Super Stars to me. Thank you in advance for doing just that.

100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media

2010-01-23T10:55:00.001-08:00

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.

WHAT THEN IS PERSONAL BRANDING?

2010-01-23T10:51:00.000-08:00

I decided to bring to you the definitions of Personal branding that I tumbled across the web. I will keep editing it until it becomes a one stop shop for the definition of the subject matter. Go ahead and read it!
Personal branding is the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brands (Lair, Sullivan & Cheney 2005). It has been noted that while previous self-help management techniques were about self-improvement, the personal branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging (Lair, Sullivan & Cheney 2005). Further defined as the creation of an asset that pertains to a particular person or individual; this includes but is not limited to the body, clothing, appearance and knowledge contained within, leading to an indelible impression that is uniquely distinguishable.[1] The term is thought to have been first used and discussed in a 1997 article by Tom Peters.[2]

Personal branding often involves the application of one's name to various products. For example, celebrity real-estate mogul Donald Trump uses his last name extensively on his buildings and on the products he endorses (e.g., Trump Steaks).

My Definition of Personal Branding

The art of articulating and communicating your skills, personality and values so that others seek you to help them solve a problem.

While these are very few words, each of them is there for a reason, so let’s dissect the phrase and understand what each word means in the context of personal branding:

■Personal Branding is an art: it takes practice, creativity and patience to do it right. There is really no checklist or sure recipe for success, and building your brand is a long term, ongoing process.
■Personal Branding involves your skills, personality and values: while skills are important, it’s not only what you know that counts. After all, business requires you to interact with people, so personality is also important. However, there’s a third, crucial element: your values. Without being true to your values you will never achieve a strong personal brand. You need passion, and for that you have to do something you believe in.
■You must be able to articulate and communicate what your brand is all about: you may have a potentially strong brand, but if you’re not able to define it and share it in a simple way that resonates with your audience, your brand will never reach its true potential.
■A strong personal brand makes others seek you instead of you seeking them. A sound personal branding strategy will help you build your reputation and your network so that interesting opportunities come to you.
■For a personal branding strategy to be successful, you must be able to solve a problem. You must provide real value and exceed your customers’ expectations.
So there you have it, my take on what personal branding means in a few simple words.

What is your definition of personal branding?

55 TWITTER TOOLS FOR PERSONAL BRANDING

2010-01-23T10:44:00.000-08:00

I promise myself that my personal resolution for 2010 is to recycle, reblog and originate blog post this year like I have never done before.
This article was originally written by Robert Bravery. I decided to post it here so that i will stop visiting his website everyday. I mean, it's very hot. Read, enjoy and remember to visit his website: www.integralwebsolutions.co.za/blog.aspx
Twitter, the social network and micro blogging service, that everyone seems to be using. Starts out quite mundane and innocent, until you get hooked. Then you get so involved that Twitter seems to take up a significant portion of your day.

Now there are some great tools to help you and make you more productive and more interesting on twitter. Check it out.

Tweet Everywhere
These Twitter tools help you not only to send your tweets to twitter but also to other social networking and social media sites like Friendfeed, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.

Ping.fm
Hellotxt
Desktop Clients
These twitter tools get installed onto your desktop computer or laptop and allow you to tweet, organise, DM, Reply, use URL shortners and a whole bunch of other awesome things directly from your desktop computer. This without the need to use the traditional Twitter Web interface.

Twhirl
Tweetdeck
Contact Management
These Twitter tools help to manage your contacts, those whom you follow and those who follow you. You can also search for new followers, analyse those following you, find out who they are following and a bunch of other cool things as well.

Buzzom
TwitterCounter
Mr. Tweet
Twubble
Group Tweets
These Twitter tools help with twittering productivity. You can DM and Tweet to groups and lists of people at once. If you want to send the same DM to a group of your followers but don’t want to do the same thing every time, then check out these Twitter tools.

TweetGuru
GroupTweet
Twitter Directories and Search
These Twitter tools are just that. Directories where you can search for new followers or find who is following you via certain parameters and keywords. What their follow count is, their bio, etc. A really helpful set of tools to increase followers relevant to your niche.

Twitter Search
Twellow
WeFollow
Twitterholic
JustTweetIt
LocalTweeps
Share Files, Pictures & Videos via Twitter
These Twitter tools allow you to share multi media files via Twitter. Most of them store those files outside of Twitter on their own servers but offer links to said files. They also allow you to use your normal Twitter ID and password.

Tweetcube
Twitpic
TwitTurm
URL Shortners
As I’m sure you know, Twitter doesn’t lend itself well to the long-winded. With only 140 characters at your disposal, shortening long website addresses is a must. These Twitter tools help with making those long URL’s into much, much smaller ones. I’m sure there are many more, but here are just a few that I use.

Snip URL
TinyURL
is.gd
bitly
Su.pr
GatorUrl
Mobile Clients
Do you tweet and use Twitter through your mobile or cellular phone. Here are some Twitter tools that you can add to your mobile tweeting arsenal.

Twittelator
TwitterBerry
Pocket Twit
Tiny Twitter
iTweet
Twibble
Twitter Backgrounds
These Twitter tools help you to design new and appealing backgrounds. Sick and tired of the default twitter background. Design your own or select from a list of free backgrounds.

TwitterBacks
TwitterGallery
Free Twitter Designer
TwitterImage
Tweet Schedulers and productivity and auto tweets
With these Twitter tools you can schedule tweets for later as well as tweet blog entries. Help when you are either very busy or away for a short while. If abused might seem very un-personal and automated. Duh.

PostLater
Tweet Later
Twitterfeed
Twitresponse
Twitter Statistics, graphs, analysis and evaluators
These twitter tools allow you to evaluate your twitter profile, run analysis on your twitter reach and popularity. In general they offer all sorts of stats and graphs relating to you and Twitter.

Twitter Grader
Twitter Ratio
Tweet Value
Tweetstats
Twitter Fun
These Twitter tools are just for fun. You can send weird ASCII characters, tweet upside-down, even convert your tweet to pirate talk.

TwitterKeys
Twitter text flip
Copy paste characters
Pirate Twitter
Toolbars and Firefox addins
Twitter tools to make tweeting from within your browser so much more fun and easy.

MyTwitterToolbar
TwitterBar
Twitizer
Conclusion
Ok before you go saying, hey you’ve missed one,two, many. Let me say that there are thousands of twitter apps, add-ons, and tools all aimed at twitter, I cannot possibly list them all. Perhaps you are using one that I have not mentioned and you think it is a must have. Let us know in the comments below.

The Four Red Light factors for Your Business Brand By Erin Ferree

2008-12-18T10:28:00.000-08:00

Where I live, there are 4 traffic lights between my house and the main road. So, before I can really get on my way in any journey, I usually have to stop, no matter where I'm going. Some days, I even have to stop and wait at all 4 lights. All this stopping and waiting gets tiresome—but it pays off by getting me safely to my destination.
Branding your business can be a lot like these traffic lights. There are certain things you must decide before you can really get started on the fun part—drawing your logo and designing your marketing materials. Frustrating, but making these decisions is a necessary part of making sure that you will create your brand correctly.
Making decisions about the 4 following Brand Definition factors does make you stop and wait a bit but ensures that you proceed through the branding process safely and create a brand that will help your business to reach its goals safely and comfortably.
Red Light 1: Who You Are
You need to know what your business's personality is, and how it is different from your personality. Which is always a tough question for a very small business of one or two people to answer. Ask yourself which pieces of your personality get shown to your clients and which you reserve for friends and family.
Also, you have to know why you're in that particular business. Is it because of your expertise or a feeling that you get from working with your customers? What are you trying to create for your customers? For yourself?
If you're clear of your personality and your motivation in your business, then you will be able to be clear when communicating that to your audience.
Red Light 2: What You Do
You can't create your brand until you know what types of services or products you'll be offering. What do you do for your clients?
You also need to know what formats you're offering those in. Are you doing consulting services, offering group trainings, or selling online products or a product that needs to go on the shelf? You may be selling several of those options, and if that's the case, is there one format that you'll concentrate on over the rest? Marketing online products is often a very different project than marketing consulting services, so knowing what you're selling can help inform your brand.
Red Light 3: What Makes You Different
In order to figure this one out, you have to first look at who your competition is. And "I don't have any" isn't a valid answer—that's a very idealistic way to look at things!
You may think that what you do is utterly unique, but your clients don't see it that way. They're always going to be doing research on a few different ways to solve whatever problem they're having—so while you might think that you're unparalleled, that's rarely the case in your clients' eyes (unless they've come to you on a very strong referral).
So, you have to find your competitors—or at least those companies that your clients have you quote against—and then figure out what their Brand Definitions are and how your business is different.
Red Light 4: Who You Can Best Help
To create your brand, you have to know who will be looking at it. Once you know who your audience is, you can take the first 3 red lights and write and design expressly to communicate those factors to that specific audience.
This is another area where entrepreneurs are a bit idealistic and like to say "But, everyone's my target audience!" While that's a nice thought, if you try to create a brand and marketing materials that will appeal to everyone, you'll wind up with bland materials that won't really work for anyone.
Think about the clients that you've had the best results with—and the best relationship with. You want to work with clients who you can really help and who are easy to work with as well.
Now, this process may be hard for people who are just starting their businesses to go through, but that doesn't mean that you can run through these red lights in order to create your brand. Instead, consider just creating some temporary materials until you have at least 6 months to a year in business to look back on to see what habits you've established and how your business really turns out.
Even though waiting to figure out these red lights may be frustrating, it will pay off by building a brand that will get your business to its goals safely and comfortably. Once you've turned all of these red lights to green by answering these questions, you're ready to move on to the "fun" part of designing your brand—drawing your logo and marketing materials.