personal branding

This month’s topic over on Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists is an interesting one and one that I voted for in our very democratic way of deciding December’s topic. What have you done to build your brand online?

See where you are online

The first thing I did was go and see what is out there about me on the internet. A quick Google of my name ‘ed walker’ made me realise first of all: a) I have a really common name b) There’s a ‘Sir Edward Walker’ - not me. Having a common name is the first hurdle in building a brand online, because if you’re called Japhael Jiminez - chances are you’re pretty unique.

Start a blog

Starting a blog is a must. This should be the core of your brand online. This is where you live and breath online. If possible try and buy your own domain and a bit of hosting, as having your name as a yourname.com/.co.uk/.net will help massively when it comes to boosting yourself up those all important Google rankings. After starting your blog and making it look pretty, get posting. Post about stuff that matters to you, it’ll probably matter to other people. Your blog should be your living CV, blog about stuff you’re working on, your success’ and even some of your failures. Make sure you’ve got an ace ‘About’ page, so that if people want to know more about you they can find out.

Link to people

You’re not going to build this brand alone. When posting on your blog, link out and link far and wide. If you link to people, they will probably come and look at your blog and see who you are. They might even link back if they like your stuff!

Have a good presence on LinkedIn

Forget Facebook, Bebo, MySpace etc, LinkedIn is the professional networking site and it can be used by potential employers to find you and see who you are and what you do. Ensure your profile is fully filled out, keep it updated reguarly and you’ll be surprised how much traffic it can bring to your blog and also how highly LinkedIn profiles rank in Google and other search engines.

Claim your blog on Technorati

Technorati is the bloggers website. It’s important to claim your blog as this will tell you who is linking to you and give you an authority ranking. As more people link to you, your authority grows.

Listen to those who know

I suggest people like Chris Brogan and Adam Singer, who aren’t journalists, but have built up highly successful blogs and follows online. They have built a brand around themselves online, and as a result have benefitted financially but also in building up a big and useful network of contacts.

Network offline and transfer online

Face to face is still and always will be the most powerful communication tool in the world. Make use of it, at a networking event? At a party? Social media is reasonably in right now and while it may not be the best conversation starter it’s a great conversation finisher. Make sure you leave people you’ve been speaking to with your blog address, or if you’re a guest speaker make sure it’s on your slides.

Twitter and other social media

Make sure you’re using social media such as Twitter to join in the conversation, find and follow relevant people. Give people a reason to follow you by posting regularly and by posting interesting links to Twitter. Don’t tell us what you had for breakfast, that’s what Facebook status updates are for. Make sure all your social media presences link to your blog and that your blog links to all your social media presences. Think of your blog as the continent with lots of little islands around it.

Join relevant networks (like TNTJ!) and get networked

If there’s a network for your industry, join it and meet people. You’ll be surprised how interested they’ll be in what you do and what you may be blogging about.

Image in this post is used under creative commons from flickr user See-Ming Lee

setting up a blog about wine for my dad

My Dad is 56. He works as a field marketing manager for a wine company and has done for about five/six years. He’s got a Mac, loves them. He’s got a great knowledge of wine and often does tastings. I accompanied him to one at Burton on Trent wine society last week and on the drive back to London we got talking about how he loved doing tastings, attending wine events etc but that he lacks a focal point to bring people back to. Sure, he has his business card with an email address and a phone number but nothing to document all the wine knowledge in his head, the tastings he’s done, the massive wine events attended and the trips abroad to see vineyards in action.

My social media brain was whirring and I thought this is a great opportunity. My dad has something interesting to say, a subject he’s passionate about and he does interesting things with that subject. I need to get my old man blogging.

We sat down on Sunday morning with a piece of A4 paper and we planned it. First of all I showed him some blogs and how they worked, he was impressed. Then I asked him a series of questions:

1. What do you want to call the blog?

2. What is it going to be about?

3. How often are you going to update it?

4. What sort of content will you be putting on?

After that we went back to the web and we looked at some other wine blogs to get a feel for what they were doing. Some were really impressive while others seemed very out of date.

Dad decided that he wouldn’t be able to update his blog that often, due to work commitments but that he would have some regular features. We chopped his content up around categories (reds, whites, roset, sparkling, wine of the month, tasting reports, insights) and he started to plan his content for the next month or so.

We got him a wordpress blog to start off with, didn’t buy a domain or hosting as he needs to get used to it all first. He put in his first post about his wine of the month, he cropped a picture and uploaded that. “This is pretty easy”, he said. After that he wrote up a tasting report from the Burton wine society tasting and he learned how to link directly to another website (in this case we were linking directly to Tesco, Laithwaites etc where you can buy the wines that he used for the tastings).

In the first 48 hours of operations the blog has had more than 50 views, Dad was astounded. Also if we put ‘walkers world of wine’ into Google it was in the number one spot. We also got Dad a twitter account and linked it up to his mobile, so now he can twitter about wine or twitter about wine events that he’s at (like all the big trade tastings). 

In the space of a weekend, my Dad now has his own website and can update it easily and regularly. Of course I’ve got a log-in as an admin in case he’s got any problems, but he should be fine. He can start creating content about a subject he loves and sharing it with the world. It made me wonder, how many other experts are there out there who aren’t sharing what they do?

View Walker’s World of Wine blog or follow my old man on twitter

The above was the question posed for the November debate on Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists and I gave my answer as ‘I’d invest it in people’.

The post is here, or you can read it below:

First off, I’d rather have a million pounds (British Sterling) than dollars to save journalism with. But exchange rates aside, let’s get down to business.

My strategy would be to invest in people. Invest in getting journalists to do that saving. You can’t do things alone, you need a good team with good people. I’d probably shed some dead wood from the news room, maybe coax a few people to leave early and get some fresh blood in.

I’d keep the subs, but expand their role to include a lot of backroom stuff - like picture uploading, digital media production, video editing. I’d keep the print edition but I’d make it follow online’s lead. Maybe just have one good strong print edition per day, and throw everything into online.

I’d develop strong supplements based around local issues, and not be afraid of trying something new. I’d link these supplements with mini-sites online built around that issue.

I’d invest in training for my staff, I’d employ the Google technique of 10% time for my reporters. i.e. 10% to go off and cover what YOU want and what YOU think needs covering.

I’d put a bit of money towards having trainees in. Not expecting them to pay for everything. There would be a pot of money so that kids can come in and get experience, learn about being a journalist, in a good environment, and not be skint afterwards. You never know, they might even bring a good story in with them - and that’s got to be worth the money.

I’d invest in a CRM (customer relationship management) system for my newspaper, logging user comments, offering them personalised news updates, and beginning to build an idea of who my readers really are. So I know that Joe Bloggs in the North of the city responds well to this type of news. Then I have something to sell, I’ve got proof of effectiveness, readership and grabbing people’s attention.

So to sum up, good journalists, probably better paid, more of them, getting some 10% time, with a good online setup.

Finally got through my feed reader backlog this evening, here’s a couple of highlights that are leaping out at me right now:

• Your marketing is (most likely) dated

Good call from Adam Singer, and I think we’re reviewing everything we currently do at work and changing tactics pretty soon.

• 25 ways to build your community

Chris Brogan with some great tips on how to build up your blog and build a community around it

• How to launch a group blog project

More from Brogan about a group blog and how to do it. Currently considering something like this to be used at work right now.

Just thought I’d give a shout out to our Give It A Go blog. We’re running our second Give It A Go event at the Students’ Union where I work and back in February we sent Emily Davies, our small but very tough news reporter off to ‘give it all a go’, and now she’s back again for two weeks of fun and frolics, with a few lectures in between.

We think that blogging the two weeks of great activities that happen across the Union is the best way to show off just how much is going on, and allow students the chance to comment on the events and give their reaction. While our official Give It A Go site is more about showcasing the events and providing an events listing of what’s on.

My buddy Dave Lee has been suggesting setting up a blogging network (about journalism) for those under-30. Sounds like a good idea to me. His barriers to entry are:

a) Under 30-years-old. I know there will be a couple of disappointed people out there with this restriction, but without it I feel we lose the point a bit.

b) You blog (or plan to blog) about journalism in some shape or form. Bit of an obvious one, this, but I think it’s important that we’re all coming from the same place here. I’m not bothered what stage of you’re career you’re at, so long as that career’s journalism.

c) You promote the ring! If we all bring attention to this by shouting it from the rooftops, then there’s no reason why this can’t become the best point for young opinion on the media on the web.

Sounds good to me, I fit the criteria and dropped Dave an email - so I await more details with anticipation.

Great post by Adam Singer over on Future Buzz about journalist’s using blogging as an entreprenerial tool. He’s right, blogging is the best platform for people to write about what they care about. Every local newspaper needs to start learning some lessons as local bloggers could technically start covering their ‘patch’ better than the big-boys.

Well, I finally took the plunge and bought some hosting and setup my own little corner of the web. It’s about time. Now, the big challenge. Where to get a decent wordpress theme? I want something that is pretty swish, but easy to manage, install and allows plenty of flexibility. Any ideas? I quite like Mr Dickinson’s style, and Dave Lee’s isn’t bad either.

This wordpress 2.6 is pretty damn good as well.