If you want to reach the Millennial generation — loosely defined as people born between 1980 and 2000 — it probably won’t come as a surprise that you should use the Internet: some 93 percent of Millennials spend regular and extended periods of time online, according to recent research from Pew. And since Millennials also have the highest labor-force participation by age bracket in the US, it’s a lucrative segment of the population for brands to target.

According to new research from MTV, however, companies run the risk of alienating the very audience they mean to attract if they go about social media marketing in the wrong way. “Extraordinarily nuanced codes and informal rules of behavior are emerging in social media,” MTV’s Nick Shore wrote in a report about his study’s findings published in AdAge this week.

Here are a few takeaways from the research for brands looking to reach Millennials on the web:

• Be quotable: Teens and young adults are hyper-aware of every thing they say online. Often, they’re much more comfortable conveying their feelings by quoting or linking to someone else — as shown by the abundance of song lyrics and quotes on any given teenager’s Facebook wall. “What we observed many of the millennials doing… was being controversial by proxy,” MTV reported. In fact, fully 54 percent of the survey respondents said they posted video clips or articles they agreed with in lieu of posting their own opinion as a status update. If a brand can make somewhat racy yet quotable content, Millennials may do their viral marketing for them.
• Ask and answer: Millennials don’t like to wait — and they can’t stand to be ignored. More than 60 percent of MTV’s survey respondents said they demand immediate feedback for text messages, and 70 percent for IM and Facebook chat. That may be because 58 percent of them said they get a boost in confidence when they get feedback online. If brands want to really engage with Millennials, their communications can’t just be a one-way street. Responding to Tweets and Facebook wall postings could go a long way toward winning over today’s young consumers.
• Reinvent — again and again: Young people are constantly tweaking their online personas. Ninety percent of survey respondents told MTV that it is important how others view them on Facebook, and a third said they “always” modify their photos before posting online. “They constantly and fluidly shift between chosen identities in order to present their ‘best selves and lives’,” MTV said. So while an older generation may have wanted their brands to project an air of consistency, Millennials crave just the opposite. MTV pointed to Google as a key example of a brand successfully co-opting this, with its daily changes to its homepage logo.

If you have any other ideas for connecting with Millennials, please chime in using the comments.

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The Indie Web movement is primarily about ownership and control over your identity. The difficulty is that many of the tools that we need to achieve the complete vision of data ownership just don’t exist yet, or they exist, but not in a way that is accessible to most people. During IndieWebCamp, we focused on discussing these current issues and starting to build some of the tools necessary to make the Indie Web a reality for regular people.

Start now

Here are a few things that you can do now to gain better control over your own data:

• Own your domain. The first step is to purchase and own your own domain name where you will build your online identity. If you aren’t ready to take the next step of hosting your own website software, you can start by redirecting your domain name to where you currently have your website.
• Use your domain for email. While some take the extra step of hosting their own email server, I’m OK with having my email managed by Google , but using my domain. If Google decided to shut my email down for some reason, I can always spin it right back up with a different email provider because I control the domain name.
• Host your own blog or website on that domain. Get some space on a server where you can install your own software and have control over your environment and ownership of your data. This has become much easier recently with one-click installs at many hosting providers where they can help install and upgrade your software if needed, so this doesn’t take as many technical skills to manage as it did a few years ago.

The future of the Indie Web

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But is that all there is? Would it be possible, for example, for us to use personal brands to enhance the business brand? To put it another way, could business brands gain depth, richness and outright likability if they managed to encompass the personalities of the individuals behind those brands?

The web makes this possible in countless ways. Let’s look at a case study that shows just one approach to using personal brands to add dimension and credibility to the corporate brand — and engage more authentically with customers.

Personal-Corporate Branding in Action

One of my clients publishes a podcast dealing with news and developments in their field of expertise. The brand, which is established, has something of a cult following built on a strong community.

The brand is now considering integrating interviews with staff members into the podcast, in which those people would talk about the projects they’re working on, what industry developments or events have captured their attention, and so on. Perhaps they’ll answer listener questions directed specifically to them. Perhaps they’ll return later in the year to report on the projects they discussed in their first interview.

This idea emerged alongside a strong social media presence. The company’s Facebook page is frequently updated with in-office photos, comments on team events and involvements within the industry, and so on. While the company’s  social media presence is managed by a single person, the brand has a strong personality built on the strong personalities of the individuals who work there. The podcast idea builds the personal brands into the personal brand even more strongly.

Potential Benefits

The essence of branding is to present to the audience traits with which they’ll identify. Brands that are heavily human-based — service brands in particular — and which have a strong company culture have the potential to enrich their brand perception by tying in the brands of staff members.

This can add depth to the corporate brand, make it more personable as well as more personal, and make it feel more real and less contrived. That’s especially the case in the social online environment — a place where personalities rule.

Hearing from the actual experts in an organization can reinforce customers’ belief in the brand’s expertise and technical leadership — not only is the brand at the forefront of its industry, but the people who work for the company are on the cutting edges of their individual disciplines, too.

Similarly, getting a sense of team members’ passion for their work can inspire a belief in brand quality, assuring customers of the brand’s dependability and its alignment with their own values and ethics.

Potential Pitfalls

Among the objections to the idea of merging, to some degree, personal brands into corporate brands is the obvious issue of consistency: will the inclusion of personal brands (or simply personalities) dilute the corporate brand? Will they confuse customers and be difficult to manage?

The case of my client above is probably a good way to avoid the potential issues: the podcast host represents the corporate brand proper, and guides the personal brands into the equation. The host sets the boundaries for the discussion as the podcast format sets the boundaries for the brands’ integration. The integration is controlled and carefully managed.

Business owners may be concerned about other issues, though: the potential to inadvertently promote their staff to headhunting competitors, for example (something that shouldn’t matter much if your culture is strong and your team members loyal to your organization; after all, if someone does wants to leave your company, they won’t wait to be headhunted).

Another concern might focus on the dangers of adhering a corporate brand to the brands of individuals who might move into different roles, or leave the company, undermining brand equity as they do so. The degree and way in which the personal brands are aligned with the corporate brand is the issue here: get it right, and your team members’ individual personal brands won’t be integral to the brand — they’ll support it in concert, and subtly, rather than on an individual level, or loudly and directly.

Does your business brand incorporate the personal brands — or personalities — of your team members?

Photo courtesy stock.xchng user banola.

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Today, we Google candidates to research their online presences, and often pay more attention to their social network activity than we do to their official websites. Candid behavior on social networks has shored up — and undone — countless reputations.

When we’re least expecting it, someone’s viewing our public profiles, and drawing conclusions about whether to follow, friend or even hire us.

Astute people-researchers — your clients, potential employers and customers — are going one better: they’re using social networks to research what others are saying to you, and about you.

Just as they may be more inclined to rely on your social network activity to reflect your true personality, they may see the Twitter @ replies you’ve received as the clearest indication of what your clients or colleagues think of your work.

What Do Your Contacts Say About You?

Take a look at the unofficial, off-the-cuff replies your contacts have made to you through Twitter. What do they say about you and personality?

Different prospects may look for different things in your @ replies; they may research your personal, social interactions as much as the number of retweets and responses your professionally-focused tweets receive.

Whether they’re adept with social media, or haven’t been using it for long, they’re likely to be impressed by the depth of the interactions you have through social media: How often you’re thanked for answering questions or for helping others (and how you’ve done that), what kinds of things people say about your work or performance, and so on.

On a day-to-day basis, few of us think about looking at our @ replies from a professional perspective. But if you’re seeking work, either as an individual or a business, you should.

Soliciting Great @ Replies

If your prospective employer or client uses social networks, @ replies directed at you will undoubtedly contribute to their opinion of you. For large companies dealing with hundreds or thousands of customers, it can be difficult to change the overall tone of @ replies overnight, but those of us with more contained exposure can take steps to build or enrich a record of positive, deep social network interactions in a comparatively short time.

Not surprisingly, those steps are the same ones you’d take if you wanted to be a more engaged, and engaging, social media user. Ask and answer questions, tweet great links and resources (and invite feedback or discussion on them in the process), point to breaking industry news, and contribute to larger discussions on relevant topics or events.

These time-honored tactics for engaging with social network contacts are, as you’d expect, the best way to solicit positive, meaningful @ replies.

We’re Watching…

Those embarrassing social media anecdotes — the boss spots pictures of an employee doing who-knows-what at a work-sponsored function and hauls them over the coals — and the publicity around social network security, have made most social media users closely consider their exposure through these media.

But the realization that people aren’t just assessing your performance — they’re also assessing the kinds of responses you attract — may make that sense of scrutiny even greater.

The ongoing evolution of social media as a people-research tool is certainly shaping the way we behave through the networks we use. While few of us are likely to make radical changes to our social networking approaches, we may tweak certain messages in light of our increasing exposure.

How do you feel about prospective employers or clients researching you on social media? Are you keeping an eye on the @ replies people make to you?

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The terminology you use to acknowledge and address negative feedback is critical to your clients’ and colleagues’ perceptions of you. Of course, your behavior in response to that feedback is also critical. But given that you’ll likely need to respond — either in person, or via email, IM, discussion thread, or some other text-based means — before and after you act, the words you’ll use are worth thinking about.

I’m not suggesting you become a politician and talk around issues rather than addressing them head on; nor am I advocating dishonesty or spin. All I’m saying is that the better the language you use to respond to negative feedback, the more professional, reasonable, and capable you — and your personal and professional brands — are likely to seem.

“I’m Such an Idiot”

It’s an old marketing adage that every customer criticism represents an opportunity to exceed expectations and gain loyalty. It follows that the words you use to respond to clients or colleagues who question your work can cement their perceptions of your professionalism, or fatally undermine your relationship. Think of BP’s proposed “Top Kill” solution to its environmentally, economically, commercially, and politically fatal oil spill, and you’ll get what I mean.

“Top Kill”-style bumbles can happen in the workplace, too. Once, a client of the company I worked for asked the creative who was supposed to be delivering the final product why the copy changes we’d taken in the previous meeting hadn’t been made. The client was the CEO of his organization, the relationship was positive, and he asked the question in a reasonable, curious tone of voice.

The creative crumbled. His jaw dropped as he looked at the work he’d “finalized”. He put his head in his hands. Then he said, “Oh. Oh no. I’m such an idiot! I received those changes, but I forgot to implement them!”

This response achieved a number of negative outcomes. It was unprofessional. It made the creative appear flaky and lacking in self-confidence. It put the client — who, after all, had asked honestly and non-confrontationally — in an extremely awkward position. And it made the consultancy the creative and I worked for look extremely amateurish.

Good Language, Bad Language

There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging the truth, admitting your mistakes, and taking responsibility for errors or oversights you’ve made. The first rule of accepting negative feedback is, obviously, to accept it — preferably with good grace and humility. But in doing that, there are certain types of language you should avoid, for the sake of your personal or professional brand, as well as your contact’s confidence.

Insulting Language

Never use language that suggests you’re anything but a serious professional who takes pride in their work. Whether or not your client or colleague thinks you’re an idiot for making whatever mistake you’ve made is irrelevant. You shouldn’t insult yourself, or anyone else, in acknowledging responsibility for an issue.

Everyone makes mistakes — including your colleagues — so don’t allow yourself to be overcome with guilt. You’re not an idiot; neither is that third party who let you down, and who you now want to blame for the problem. Substitute “I’m such a moron” or “Pete at the print shop is a total hack” with, “I’m sorry, I followed our standard procedure for checking the proofs, and even had a couple of other people look over it, but obviously we missed this error. It’s my mistake.”

Panicked Language

Gasping, exclaiming, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I didn’t see that!” and moaning “Oh no,” are all evidence of panic, and no client wants to think you can’t handle the everyday ups and downs of work life. In fact, they don’t want to get the impression that there’s anything you can’t handle.

So avoid the language of panic. Even if your heart’s racing and your palms are sweaty with horror upon receiving the negative feedback, don’t panic. Just take a breath, apologize calmly, acknowledge the problem, and pledge to investigate.

Casual Language

If a colleague or client raises an issue with you, you can assume it’s a serious problem for them. So, use appropriately serious language in your response.

BP apparently weren’t thinking of this point when they called a possible solution for the Gulf spill the “Junk Shot.” In talking about a multinational, apparently uncontrollable environmental disaster that’s impacting an ocean ecosystem, countless species, thousands of miles of coastline, and millions of human lives, you’d think they’d be able to come up with a solution that sounded a little less like circus entertainment.

Remember this the next time someone provides negative feedback on your performance. Giving negative feedback is never pleasant. Your contact is doing it because it’s a serious issue for them. So forget telling your contact “I’ll check it out when I get a sec.” Tell them you’re reviewing it now. If the problem is very serious, consider using more pointed terms, like “investigating” or “inquiring”. Always try to provide a timeframe in which you’ll have an explanation or researched response to their concerns, too.

Overly Personal Language

Usually, it’s not appropriate to provide details of your personal troubles as excuses or explanations of poor performance. Even saying something as generic as, “I’ve been having some personal problems” only serves to make your client or colleague feel bad for raising the issue. That’s the best outcome. At worst, it can make your more hardline contacts question your professionalism: “So your dog died. Whatever. Can we just focus on the issue here?”

In most cases, your client or colleague doesn’t need to know the background against which you underperformed. They’re more likely to want to know the mechanics of what went wrong, and/or how you’ll improve matters. Keep your language on the job and the problem at hand. That said, don’t take personal responsibility for things that aren’t actually your fault. There’s a difference between owning a problem and taking undue responsibility for it. Be honest about your role in the problem, and what you’ll do to resolve it, but also be honest about any aspects of the problem that were — or are — beyond your control. This is as much about expectation management as it is about protecting your reputation.

Take Care With Tense

In presenting your explanation, or other information, to complaining contacts, try to use the past tense to explain the issue: “We were using a process that didn’t anticipate…” rather than, “The process we use doesn’t anticipate…”

Use present and future tense — and spend more time — to focus on your process for resolving the issue and how it’ll provide a good outcome. “I’m undertaking training course that addresses these topics, and those skills will help me perform better in this area,” for example.

The language you choose can boost or undermine your personal or professional brand. What tips can you give to help those fielding negative feedback at work today?

Image by stock.xchng user hisks.

This question, which I came across in a recent interview with designer Arik Levy, stood out as possibly one of the most telling things we web workers can ask ourselves.

In our online work, many of us experience dwindling face-to-face contact with our colleagues and have to persuade and inspire co-workers, employers and clients we’ve never laid eyes on, let alone actually met.

If we put all the rhetoric of elevator pitches, unique selling propositions, authenticity, standing out from the crowd, personal branding, and getting feet in doors together, mix it up and boil it down, this is what it comes to: What makes your approach different from anyone else’s?

What’s Your Answer?

My initial reaction, when I asked myself the question, was to scoff. Why would my approach be so different from anyone else’s? It seemed presumptuous to think that, less than fifteen years into my “career”, I’d have developed a unique approach to what I do.

But this question isn’t about ego, it’s about experience. Look at Levy’s answer:

“I designed stages for 15 years … In the theater, people can be born or disappear. They can be in a fire or a storm. But we accept this is all happening in the same space. The theater is a location where you free the viewer from the world, where they accept what’s coming. I try to create theater in the same way, in objects. If I design something that looks like a cat, you can imagine it walking even though it can’t walk. If I can create something that taps your memories of other things, it can be something more than itself.”

The thing that makes your approach different from anyone else’s is your unique interpretation of your work and personal history, and your colleagues, challenges, and education. It’s your unique perception that precipitates possibilities for you that others can’t see.

What Does it Mean?

The way Levy answers this question is much more than an elevator pitch, a statement of brand, a USP, a philosophy, a mission statement, or a modus operandi. It’s all these things, as well as an insight into this person’s purpose.

His answer ties together his history, his personal interpretation of that past, and the product of that interpretive process. To be able to put words around something so personal, so integral that it’s subconscious for most of us, can be extremely helpful.

It can give us guidelines for perceiving opportunities within our working lives — a solid sense of what will work for us, and what we can make work, and why.

It can also help us communicate ourselves, and our ideas, more clearly to others. For those of us communicating ideas using email, blogs, instant message, status updates, multi-party chat, and web or phone conferences, having an objective understanding of the way we operate — of what makes our approach different — can be useful in solving issues of understanding, building rapport and camaraderie, and working closely from a distance.

Finally, having this professional/personal self-knowledge can encourage us to put ourselves aside as we work with others. Instead of spending time trying to work out why something a colleague or client does unnerves us or makes life difficult, instead we can focus on the colleague or client, using our instincts and self-knowledge to devise solutions that work for them as well as ourselves. “Understanding my needs” is, after all, the thing most of us think we want from the professionals we work with, whether they’re contractors, freelancers, or permanent team members.

So, what makes your approach different from anyone else’s?

Image by stock.xchng user geoX.

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If your tweets haven’t been syndicated yet, that day may not be far away. When it comes, you’ll probably need to decide whether you’re going to self-censor for the benefit of whoever’s paying your invoices. What will you do?

A Matter of Perspective

One thing that can definitely be said for social media is that they allow users to express themselves freely, and as users, we relish such unrestricted opportunities. For many, social networks may provide the only opportunity to engage online with a broader “public” completely as ourselves.

The problem is that those who want to syndicate your tweets — to give you wider exposure, to help you engage with their company’s clients or customers, and to promote you as an expert — may not appreciate the degree of personalization and even personality that comes through in your tweets.

The appropriateness of a tweet depends on the context in which it’s read and the audience that reads it. That fascination you have with your cat, religion, politics, margaritas, and/or Elvis may be at odds with the thrust of your employer’s broader marketing efforts. The  occasional swearword or politically incorrect comment — no matter how tongue-in-cheek — may see you lose your chance for syndication instantly. You don’t need to have made the inappropriate comments in the last five minutes, either. Companies considering whether to syndicate your Twitter feed may look back over months of your activity — or longer.

Does the prospect of a client or employer syndicating your tweets fill you with excitement or dread? If they syndicated your tweets, would you change the way you presented yourself through social media?

Expecting Exposure?

The issues of syndication are really a question of audience. If you haven’t been expecting your tweets to be broadcast in a corporate arena, it’s time to accept that the possibility is real. Smart employers looking to harness social media may be asking to use your tweets soon.

Those who set out to create a professional online brand for themselves are likely to shape their engagement with social media accordingly, and may have no problems when their boss or client asks to syndicate their tweets.

But many of us love to merge the personal with the professional through social media. The question is: if you’re yourself on Twitter, will your tweets be fit for a client’s or employer’s Twitter stream? If not, would you change the way you tweet? The things you say? The topics you discuss?

If you don’t think your tweets would be suitable for corporate consumption, you may face a moral struggle when someone asks to syndicate your tweets — especially if you’d enjoy the extra exposure.

Even if you don’t think you’d change the way you interact through social media, the knowledge that your tweets are to be syndicated on a company web site may make you feel uneasy posting things you never thought twice about before. All the pundits’ harping about “authenticity” may fall very flat when you spot your latest tweet about Fluffy’s mouse-chasing antics on the homepage of your employer’s web site.

In these kinds of situations, you may self-censor without seeing the act as a negative. You may even do it without making a conscious change in your behavior. But self-censorship may reduce your enjoyment of social media, decrease your sense of freedom and self-expression, and undermine your self-confidence online.

A Solution in Segmentation

My solution to this quandary has been to approach social media — Twitter in particular — from a perspective of segmentation. Each social network tool I use reaches a reasonably discrete audience “segment,” and I target my communication accordingly.

For example, I use Twitter predominantly for professional purposes, and I tailor my tweets to those needs. This is not to say my tweets are stiff and impersonal, but it does mean that I don’t discuss my cute pets, vegetable garden or wacky family holidays on Twitter. However, interested contacts can access updates on these exciting matters through the other social networking sites I use.

This segmented approach works for me — when clients ask to syndicate my Twitter feed on their company sites, I’m happy for them to go ahead.

How will you respond when someone wants to syndicate your tweets? And are you preparing for that eventuality now?

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Photo by stock.xchng user nkzs.

I returned from ten days at SXSW to find that our family dog is dying. In the past, I might have shared this news with my family and my friends. This week, I blogged about it, then shared the news with my Twitter friends. The outpouring of advice, sympathy and love I received within minutes of my tweet was staggering.

This kind of sharing isn’t new. When I learned that my Dad was about to have open-heart surgery back in the 90s, I mentioned my fears in a forum on a service called Women’s Wire. The messages of love and support blew me away. I read every single one of them to him when he was recovering, and we were both overcome with emotion. How could these total strangers really care that much? But they did. I can’t even imagine how much bigger that support would be if I announced the same thing on my blog and on Twitter today. Dozens of messages could become hundreds.

Social-Powered Personal Support

My experience of the last 24 hours demonstrates the kind of intense and turbo-powered support that people around the world can tap into every day, thanks to the tools at our fingertips.

I marvel at the way we humans can truly “be there” for each other. Don’t know what I mean? Look at the blogosphere and Twittersphere buzz around Annisa Means Mayhew or Friends of Maddie or MckMama. There are very personal life experiences being shared online.

Too Much Information?

What are the downsides of sharing your grief online? Are there potential repercussions of this kind social sharing? Here are some of the things I’ve been thinking about and I welcome your thoughts:

1. Your reputation could be affected. While in our moments of life’s difficulties, we aren’t thinking about much other than our emotions and our loved ones. When we share the ultra-personal sides of ourselves in social spaces online, it inevitably affects our image and reputation. If you use social media to build a certain professional image, revealing your private life could change that image. Personally, I don’t think that is a bad thing — I am more drawn to the businesspeople who don’t shy away from “getting real,” but not everyone is comfortable with this kind of sharing.
2. You could get distracted. Many of the people who have shared intensely personal struggles get caught up in a movement; a cause. Take Drew Olanoff, for example. His work has shifted dramatically from being “just another guy working hard in social media” to someone who lives and breathes his fight against cancer publicly with Blame Drew’s Cancer. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing in my opinion.
3. You will always be reminded. Whatever we publish into the social mediasphere is not only near-permanent, but often scattered throughout the web, so that even if we were to pull down our emotional blog post, the retweets and reblogs and the rest of the amplification of our woes will still be there, and could continue to multiply. There may be things we don’t want to remember or relive. There may be some of us who want to move on, but get reminded of our personal pain when we least expect it.

What do you think? Are there potential repercussions of this kind emotional social sharing?
Photo by stock.xchng user leovdworp

What is Narrative?

Narration is the telling of a story, and narrative is the way you tell stories. It’s the glue that ties your characters to the plot events in your story. As well as elements like scene setting, narrative includes description, so we’ll deal with these aspects together.

A storyteller uses narrative to tell the story — to relate what’s happening, give a point of view, and explain events, characters’ responses, and so on. Narrative exists above and beyond the plot and characters, though — in a film or novel, for example, narrative can tell us things that the characters themselves do not know.

Narrative and Personal Branding

You are the key narrator in your own personal branding story, though other characters may have a part in narrating from time to time (for example, a guest blogger narrates part of your brand story while you’re on vacation, or away at a conference).

Since you’re the narrator, the way you tell your story will be driven largely by your character. The channels you choose, and how effectively you use them to narrate your story, will also depend on your character.

A friend of mine who’s an interface designer and early adopter was one of the first of my contacts to give Google Buzz a try, with a post that began “Must be my turn for a Buzz” and mentioned some of the things he liked about its interface and interactivity. Since then, he’s been one of the more prolific of my Buzz contacts, pulling in a range of relevant information from other social networks he uses, but also posting event (plot) and opinion (character) information specifically on Buzz.

In this way, he’s made Buzz central to the communication of his narrative. I know I can rely on his Buzz account to provide a slightly cut-down version of his overall story, and that I can use it to access more information in any of the subplots — family, his social life, his interests — in his life.

Like many social networks, Buzz allows me to observe his interactions with his other contacts. Importantly, these interactions adds an extra layer of narration to our stories. Not only do your contacts get to experience your own narration through your exchanges with other contacts, but those other contacts’ voices also combine to help to tell small parts of your story. These other perspectives can add a real richness to your story, and help to cement an authentic personal brand, so if you’re not making the most of opportunities to engage publicly with others, you’re missing out.

Some of my contacts choose to narrate their stories in real time whenever that’s appropriate. In my last post, I mentioned a friend whose social life is easy — and entertaining — to follow on social networks as well as in real life. He updates his status on various networks as an evening, weekend, or week progresses, which provides for suspense and enjoyment and ensures the continuity of his story’s narration.

As this contact’s example suggests, one of the keys to effective narration lies in plot — in the events and information you choose to relate to your contacts, as well as when you choose to tell them. If you choose content that you’re passionate about, that enthusiasm will come through in your narration. The things you have to say will likely be more considered, your descriptions will be more engaging, and your character will come across more effectively than if you waste time trying to talk energetically about something that doesn’t really set your world on fire.

So don’t get stuck in a rut, or wind up becoming a caricature of yourself. Let your character, plot, and narrative evolve with each day. And perhaps thinking about the storytelling concepts of character, plot and narrative will help you communicate your personal brand more coherently.

Can you see any opportunities for using narrative to support your personal brand?

Photo by stock.xchng user Lens.

What is Plot?

The plot is the course your story takes — the events that happen within it. Last time, I suggested that every day is a new adventure in your life. I know: you thought that was corny. But if you think of your life as a story, then each day is a new adventure. So each day may form the next section in your plot.

You may want to communicate multiple plotlines through your personal brand — one of the friends I mentioned last time is a freelance designer, a dad and a band member, so he has a lot of story arcs happening at once. We all do. Depending on how you’ve decided to build yourself as a character through personal branding, you might choose to focus on particular plotlines and leave others out. But let’s start at the start: what is plot in our daily lives?

Your Plot is Your News

In a personal branding story, plot is news and events. If each day is an adventure in the story of your life, then each event has the potential to form part of the plot.

Storytellers leave certain aspects out of plot (no one uses the bathroom in a movie, for example, unless something crucial to the storyline happens in there). They do this because some events are irrelevant to the story they’re telling. Those events waste time and distract the audience from the critical pieces of the story.

So for you as an individual trying to build a personal brand, your plotline is your news: what happens every day, and what it means to you. If you have multiple plotlines (reflecting different facets of your life), those events may have a range of impacts on your life. Which parts you choose to communicate, and the ways in which you communicate them, is up to you as the storyteller.

Characters and plot interact. One other thing that every storyteller knows is that their character and plot have to coincide — they have to justify one another. Sure, amazing things can happen in your plotline, but for the character to fit believably into those scenes, they have to be presented as someone who the audience could see responding to plot twists in the way they do. So the character’s reactions to the plot twists must be appropriate — authentic — to that character.

This becomes even more important when we realize that often, a character’s response to a plot event alters the course of the plot, or sets off a given chain of events. For those trying to build their personal brand, being able to identify plot twists that matter (and may matter in future) is important. Appropriately communicating your responses to those twists takes skill and practice, and, again, will depend on the channels you use and the kind of character you’re building.

A final key element of plot is suspense. I have a contact on Twitter who’s a freelance journalist and frequently asks his followers for help with articles: requesting contact from anyone within a certain industry, for example, or asking for suggestions of cultural nuances that we think fit a certain mold. He tags these requests with “#foranarticle,” which achieves two goals.

Firstly, it inspires you to try to respond, since article-writing is his livelihood. But more than that, it creates curiosity. The “#foranarticle” tag is like a preview of next week’s show — it’s a flag that tells you to keep your eyes out for the results of this event. In short, it creates suspense. The kind of suspense that keeps my eyes on this journalist’s Twitter feed and online folio of work, as well as the publications he writes for, so I can see just what became of my responses to his comments. That really seals the deal in terms of audience involvement: I’m following this journalist’s work because, in part, it’s a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure novel: I’m impacting on his storyline. I’m shaping his plot in some way. I’m an audience member, but I have some stake in the story itself.

Once you’ve identified an important plot twist, it’s important to follow up with the denouement, so that your audience has a sense that the plot has been carried through, that they’ve been satisfied, and that you deliver as a storyteller.

Communicating Plot

We see people communicating plot all the time through social networks: they’ll invite us to a party through Facebook and post the photos a few days later, perhaps pulling them in from a Flickr feed that presents photos from other story arcs (their daughter’s third birthday; their last art show opening, etc.).

Perhaps you’ll go further: you’ll preempt the event by sending invitations through a social network (or email), and communicate your anticipation through your status updates and in calls and emails with friends. On the day, you might provide real-time updates, including photos or videos. Later, you might refer to the event, mention how you felt about it on reflection, and publish all 75 of your event photos to the web.

One friend of mine is very good at communicating plot through Twitter: I know where he is every Friday night (thanks to Foursquare), who he’s with (he links photos to his tweets), and if it’s a big night, what time he gets home. Usually, I also have some idea of how hung over he is the next day. All in all, it makes for very entertaining reading — another wacky adventure in The Life of My Friend.

Stay tuned — tomorrow, we’ll look at the final piece of the puzzle: Narrative.

How do you communicate plot through your personal branding activities?

Photo by stock.xchng user hbrinkman.