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

Seemed to be a trend over the last few days as some great posts popped up about what the US election and in particular the Obama campaign means for marketing professionals, charities and nonprofit organisations. Here’s the best:

Seth Godin kicks off with a great take on what the elections meant for marketing professionals. He definitely believes that online is the place to be for campaigning.

Kivi was quick off the mark with what nonprofit organisations can learn marketing wise from the election. She focuses on the ability of the Obama to fundraise from a whole spectrum of people, small amounts building to one huge total. She also links through to the Getting Attention blog which has a good piece about what the election taught us about email marketing.

The Charity Place has a piece about what nonprofits can learn from the Obama campaign, and it’s more of the same. Engagement, make friends first and then ask for money - not the other way round. I think that’s an important one, build a connection and then ask for the money.

Been watching the twitter voter report tick over, it’s incredible. So much data. Will we see anything like this in the UK when the next general election rolls around? You can’t beat it for that ‘being there at the polls’ feeling.

A few I’ve been reading today:

• You can’t just have peanut butter

How do you measure social media success?

• Obama - the revolution will be televised

Short piece about how if Obama does win next week, it could cause a lot of people to start re-write the politics marketing books. He’s shown how online can connect with the grassroots but that you can’t just be online, you have to be everywhere.

• The nostalgia of the hyperlocal

Nigel Barlow points me in the direction of Andrew Grant-Adamson who makes some interesting points about whether online could be the future of hyperlocal. With local newspapers across the country in huge decline, could online present a return to the local, local, news agenda? I think it’s all a question of resources.

What I’ve been reading today:

• Compared with what?

Post about the modern marketing mix, where does social media fit into it and how or indeed can you measure the return on investment?

• In defense of raising money: a manifesto for nonprofit CEOs

I sent this to my CEO, if you work for a nonprofit then you should to. Some good points made by Sasha and thanks to Seth Godin for the heads up.

Dave Lee asked earlier today why is it that unlike other social media and web 2.0 tools RSS enjoys relatively low appreciation. It’s used by ‘early adopters’ or geek as they are otherwise known but it hasn’t tipped into the mainstream like say YouTube, Facebook or Flickr. Dave reckons it’s because of the name and that people aren’t used to ‘feeds’ and that ’subscribing’ sounds too much like paying money.

Perhaps what RSS needs it a branding exercise to make it appeal to the masses. I suggested ‘news for you’ as a cheesey brand that a newspaper could use, but it’s along those lines - RSS provides the news that you want smack into an easily digestiable format.

Dave goes a step further and says that media outlets themselves should be creating and delivering their own RSS readers and branding these up for readers. This seems like a great idea and perhaps these RSS readers could come pre-packaged with already interesting feeds built-in. For example if I subscribed to The Guardian environment news RSS feed it might already have RSS feeds to relevant charities, NGOs, and government about environment issues. A great way of making your reader more informed about a topic.

But how to let the masses know about RSS? It needs an equivalent push to what we see in newspapers these days ‘check it online, read it online, watch it online’ is what normally accompanies any story. There needs to be advertising in both the print and online editions of media saying ‘try our own reader’, or ‘be your own reader’. The personalisation of news moves a step closer.

They could also do with embedding this great video by Common Craft explaining RSS in plain English, or produce something like it (I’d like to see The Sun’s version!): (thanks to Chris Brogan for his great post about using social media as outposts for this one)

Had a read of Chris Brogan’s excellent post about how business’ need to start sharing or they are going to be in trouble.

He’s right, everything needs to be accessible and the old barriers within business’ need to disappear or it will be the business’ themselves who disappear. The very nature of the web is to share, I’m writing this blog post now and I’m sharing something with you. Someone tags this in delicious and shares it with their network, someone else emails it to a friend. It’s easy to share online.

That’s why it’s important that organisations, even the smaller ones like I work for, get their house in order and get everyone sharing. The flow of information around an organisation is almost as important as the flow of information from the organisation. I work for an organisation, a Students’ Union, who are a very sharing and caring kind of organisation, but there has to be a putting aside of old issues and a realisation that if the organisation is to move forward then information, best practice and most importantly ideas are not discussed behind closed doors but are passed around to be added to, taken away and made better.

While people hide behind job titles, department names and bottom lines then nothing will move forward. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, if you’re not sharing with your colleagues ideas then things won’t happen. For public organisations there are definitely loads of ideas floating around about how to make things better, how to improve what’s already there - I’ve had many of them while developing the Union’s new website - but they never go anywhere other than into a pad to be thought about next year. What if that pad was online? You scribble a note, and everyone can see it an contribute. The staff intranet shouldn’t be a boring list of when the next fire inspection is, it should be a buzzing community of everyone having their say about the next big idea.

And if there’s not enough people to fulfil all the ideas, as inevitably with public organisations there aren’t, then share them with others. You’re not in competition, you’re all working towards a common goal. As Chris Brogan says:

Sharing is a new business tool. And it’s not really obvious. You have to think about the ways you can share, the ways you can’t. You have to weigh whether you’re giving away the best part, or if there’s plenty to go around (so often, the answer is B).

So there we go, how is this sharing going to happen? If the people at the top see the possibilities that social media can have the opportunities for innovation that are bubbling underneath them.

Two more that I’ve been reading, apologies for the lack of posting. Been up to my eyeballs in trying to secure the deal on our house, but it’s all bottomed out.

• The price of property: Jon Henley on Britain’s attitudes to their homes

Made for interesting reading while rushing between the solicitor and the bank. He’s right, maybe we’ve only got ourselves to blame?

• Learning to listen: how PR can join the social media conversation

Not just PR, this should apply to everything. Great presentation.

Been reading a lot of Chris Brogan and Adam Singer recently, all about building your own brand online. I guess that was part of the reason for creating this blog, giving myself the opportunity to explore what I’m working on in more detail and blog about the industry(ies) that I am in.

Brogan posted about how to make the most of your LinkedIn profile and he’s spot on. LinkedIn is far more valuable than facebook. I see facebook as something social, something for keeping in touch but LinkedIn is a professional network. One of the things I picked up from some training last month that the future will involve those who are good and want to be leaders in business, or anything else for that matter, people who are able to build and manage a network.

Networks are even easier to build now thanks to online and social media tools. Make use of them and keep building a network, I know I will be as a I progress through my career. You never know when these people are going to come in useful.

Been catching up on my feeds at the moment (on a new look Bloglines):

• Steal this idea: Creating your own mini-Digg

Definitely something that all websites should consider doing, especially those creating content and that are news based.

• The myth of the creative class

This is really important, that everyone can now be creative or find a way of publishing THEIR content and find an audience. Some find an audience of 10, others find one of 10,000. But there are more and more channels available.

• Creativity in a digital world

Following on from Jeff Jarvis, on a similar theme, is the explosion of web & information creativity.

• Twelve ways to sell social media to your boss

Good list on how social media can help all organisations.

• Does size matter

Explains how mass emails work and how to write an effective e-newsletter.