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If you want to reach the Millennial generation, it’s probably a good idea to use the Internet. But according to new research from MTV, companies run the risk of alienating their target audience if they go about social media marketing in the wrong way.
Our online presence defines much of our identity both personally and professionally, especially for web workers. But how much of your online identity is controlled by someone else? The Indie Web movement is primarily about ownership and control over your identity.
Until now, many of us have seen the question of branding as two-dimensional: we have a personal brand, or a business brand. But is that all there is? Would it be possible, for example, for us to use personal brands to enhance the business brand?
Just as astute people-researchers may be viewing your social network activity to get an idea of your true personality, they may also see the Twitter @ replies you’ve received as the clearest indication of what your clients or colleagues think of your work.
A recent Fast Company article highlighted the issues surrounding the language BP has developed in response to its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. That article begs the question: how is your personal brand impacted by the words you use to respond to negative feedback?
If we put all the rhetoric of elevator pitches, unique selling propositions, authenticity, standing out from the crowd and personal branding together, mix it up and boil it down, this is what it comes to: What makes your approach different from anyone else’s?
You may have noticed that WebWorkerDaily now publishes many of its authors’ tweets beside their articles. The syndication of tweets like this is becoming more common as everyone from fitness instructors to real estate agents seeks to take advantage of social media’s personal branding possibilities.
In the “old” days, if something wasn’t going well for us, we’d share our difficulties with our friends and family. Today, with the advent of blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other social tools, we can broadcast our lives to the world. And the world talks back.
Using storytelling techniques to help communicate your personal brand can make for clearer, more consistent, more compelling branding efforts. In this final part of the series, let’s look at the storyteller’s other tools — narrative and description — and see how they fit into the picture.
In my last post, we tossed around the idea that storytelling techniques might be applicable to personal branding, and we looked at one — characterization — that’s obviously key to a personal brand. This time, we’re talking plot.
The catch cry of personal branding experts is “authenticity!” But sometimes it can be hard to know how much information is too much — when authenticity gets a little too true-to-life — in your personal branding efforts.
Making the choice between promoting your business using your own name or that of a company is a very personal decision that…
Two days ago a friend of mine asked me to review her résumé. Since she’s a graphic designer, I wasn’t surprised that…
Recent discussions suggest that we’ve reached that point in the evolution of social media. What point? The point at which social networks…
A good bio shares your experience, builds your credibility, makes a first impression and displays your personality. Having a great Twitter bio is…
The NBA has dramatically updated its mobile offerings for the 2009-10 season, including a new application for the iPhone and Android that…
Facebook gives users many tools for controlling what personal information is displayed to friends and others. But if you have lots of…
Canesta, which makes 3-D image sensors, announced today that it has received $16 million in new funding from returning investors Carlyle Growth…
It’s easier to admit something to your computer screen than to a person’s face. The anonymous world out there behind the monitor…
We don’t often give much thought to our bios, even though they’re actually important and a big part of everything we do…
Facebook has two types of pages. The first is Facebook Pages, which allow public figures, businesses, or brands a space to share…
Using social media to promote yourself seems to be becoming more and more important for web worker, but figuring out the best…
Two years ago I was starting to get conscious about my online presence, so I Googled (s goog) my name. One of…
A common concern among those of us in jobs that put us visible on the web is the challenge of balancing our…
Personal branding reflects how you represent yourself in the digital world from both a personal and business view. I believe that in this social media age everyone — from high school graduates to established professionals — needs to pay attention to his or her personal brand.
Here are some tips for pumping up your image and improving your branding online.
As web workers, we are at the end of a supply line that brings together Internet connections, software, services and operating systems…
You don’t need an expensive marketing firm, or even a friend who works in marketing, to manage your personal brand online. Some…
In discussing personal branding, most people consider how it applies in the online environment, because, after all, it’s the Internet that has given each of us a very public voice, and promoted the “need” for personal brand definition.
Many times, I’ve heard professionals describe personal branding as “essential” for anyone working in the online environment. It’s a “business imperative”. According to many, the global financial crisis has only emphasized the already-accepted truth that personal branding is a necessity in the modern world.
Well, I’d like to confess something right here, right now: I work in the online environment, and I don’t have a personal brand.
We’re living in a social media world, and, like it or not, our avatar is often the first impression others get about…
Personal branding, whether you like the term or not, is something every web worker should consider. Don’t look at it as marketing or packaging yourself, but more as being true to yourself. Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port makes that distinction very well, and the Food Network demonstrates exactly how to make it work for you and your business.
Michael Port’s concept of personal branding starts with his belief that, “when you work with clients you love, you’ll truly enjoy the work you’re doing; you’ll love every minute of it. And when you love every minute of the work you do, you’ll do your best work, which is essential to [booking] yourself solid. Second, because you are your clients; they are an expression and an extension of you.”
The cornerstone of his philosophy is that “the greatest strategy for personal and business development on the planet is bold self-expression,” and many successful personal brands have used this very strategy to rise to the top.
The Food Network is filled with great examples of personal branding success stories using the “bold self-expression” strategy, and while the brands are very unique on their own, they all attract their individual audiences by being exactly one thing – themselves.
Take three of the popular Food Network personal brands, Rachel Ray, Paula Deen, and Emeril Lagasse. They each have individual flare and have used that individuality to create tremendous personal success.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about personal branding and finding myself disagreeing with the idea that it’s something that we should all be concerned with.
While I was reviewing “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Personal Branding”, I read a section about the personal brand extensions achieved by Madonna, implying that she had an affair and subsequent divorce in order to relaunch her waning career. This unnatural behavior embodies most of the reasons why I can’t think of personal branding as a priority.
Personal branding, as Pamela wrote earlier this week, is somewhat inescapable in the days of social media and working online. It really is just a fancy “Web 2.0” term for being aware of, shaping and monitoring your online reputation. And for us web workers, whether we like it or not, our online reputations are often crucial to our abilities to do business and advance our careers.
The thing I personally wrestle with the most about my own personal branding is finding the balance between being transparent and yet protecting my professional reputation and marketability.
“Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online,” by Andy Beal and Dr. Judy Strauss, was recommended to me by several online friends…
In a recent conversation with some Internet pros about different aspects of personal branding, one thing really struck me: we all fell…
Having studied branding very briefly in another life, I was curious about “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Branding Yourself”, by Sherry Beck Paprocki and Ray Paprocki. How would product and service brand theory would be translated to the branding of people? And could a book set an ordinary human being on the path to be the next Steve Irwin/Oprah/Paris Hilton? In terms of structure and coverage, it seemed well planned and, from a glance at the table of contents, comprehensive. This Idiot’s Guide is broken into four parts: What is branding? Launching your personal brand, Branding in the modern world, and Brand extension and evolution. So far, so good. There are twenty chapters, totalling 228 pages, so it’s obvious that they’re going to be pretty easy to get through. Can you sense a “but” coming? Well, here it is…
If you’re like me, you’ve got personal web profiles scattered all across the web. Each time I register with a new service,…
Google (s goog) recently announced that it would start adding profile summaries to the bottom of search result pages when a name…
On a sunny afternoon back in June of 2007, members of the media, academia and the tech industry gathered to watch Google…
As earnings season continues, it’s clear that some in the U.S. have had their fill of broadband. Within the past week AT&T…
Congratulations, founder! You’ve got a functioning site, a splash of capital, and a game plan for revenue — or maybe it’s a…
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. (From a sign hanging in Albert Einstein’s…
