It’s All Virtual

Pictured: Examples of notable personal brands, @digiphile and @funnelholic.

Introduction

It’s amazing what you can achieve today with a blog and a social media profile. Blogs have the potential to turn individuals into both media magnates and media magnets.

“A list” bloggers today can reach an audience wider than that of many magazines and national newspapers. Users who share, connect and engage on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ can be “followed” by tens of thousands of users (or more) and engage with their “fans” on a daily or hourly basis.

Building and sustaining your own personal brand is well within your reach. But it takes time, effort and energy. Here are seven tips to guide you on your journey.

1) Define the target audience for your brand.

Even Justin Bieber has a target audience. He’s not writing songs and tweeting for my mom, despite the fact that she may find him cute. Your brand should be defined by an area of specialty or expertise, in the same way that “digiphile” and “funnelholic” have done it (pictured above). This is an important first step, because it defines the type of blog you’ll create, the type of tweets you’ll generate and the type of content you’ll share with your followers.

2) Decide where to invest your energy.

There are only 25 hours in a day (I’m counting those days when we turn the clock back an hour), which means that you can’t be active on all social networks all the time. It’s far better to be highly active on one social network than it is to low levels of activity across ten. Of course, your mix is going to change over time, but it’s important to start off by “budgeting” your time. My priorities (at the moment) are blogging and Twitter.

3) Two words: BE USEFUL.

Keep this goal in mind in everything you do. Whether it’s sharing a link on Twitter to writing your first blog post, being useful brings awareness, appreciation and equity to your personal brand. When sharing links, consider content in the same way an museum director selects works for her next exhibit. Curate content like fine art. The more your target audience finds your content (and the content you share) useful, the more value your brand derives.

4) Engage and Interact.

Social media should not be solely about sharing links. It should include equal amount of engaging with others and interacting with content. For every five blog postings you author, find one third party blog and leave a comment on it. For every four links you share on Twitter, perform one Retweet or “at reply” to another user. As you find interesting content on the web, endorse it to your target audience (via “Like”, “+1″ or “Tweet” buttons). But remember point #3 and make sure you’re being useful.

5) Use the same profile photo everywhere.

As you publish blog postings, tweet, comment on blog postings, answer questions on LinkedIn and “Like” an article, use the same profile photo. Doing so gives others the impression that you’re everywhere. It’s an easy way to build brand equity, without doing too much additional work. Use a recent photo, so that people may recognize you when they see you in person. I often meet strangers who ask, “are you the guy who blogs about virtual events?” and who would believe anyone could be recognized for doing that!

6) Promote others before yourself.

It’s actually quite easy to promote yourself via social media. However, you’ll find that others may be turned off by blatant self-promotion and that you actually do more damage (than good) to your personal brand.  So promote others and tell the world how great they are.  By introducing your Twitter following to other great Twitter users, you’re doing your followers a service (i.e. being useful). As you become more and more useful, you’ll find that others begin to promote you. An endorsement from others is far more meaningful than one from yourself.

7) Adjust and adapt.

Your journey towards personal brand equity will not travel on a straight line. You’ll need to adjust for things that are not working and experiment with new things. Previously, I wrote about how my use of Twitter is different in 2011 compared to 2008.  For me, that’s part of the fun, figuring it all out. It’s also one of the most rewarding aspects of social media experimentation: achieving progress by way of adjustment and adaptation.

Conclusion

There’s never been a better time to build your personal brand online. If you hone in on an area of specialty and follow your passions there, who knows – even Justin Bieber may some day “follow” your advice.

Related Presentation

I presented related tips at a workshop for the EMC West Coast Women’s Leadership Foundation. You can find the slides below.