I’m a huge planner. I plan out just about everything in advance. You should see my whiteboard—full of to-dos for the day. If my day requires planning, so too should your personal brand.
Set goals for your social media marketing campaign
We all know the Internet is a great place to build your personal brand, and social media is a tool you should effectively harness. First things first with any campaign—you need to set goals. I’m reading this great book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg, which suggests the SMART method of setting goals: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.
Specific: Clearly define what you need to do. Your objectives should be specific so that you will know exactly how (and if) you’ve achieved your goal.
Measurable: You can’t manage something that you can’t measure, and you should establish concrete criteria for measurement. You can establish a benchmark for your desired goal and aim to achieve it over time.
Attainable: Your goals may be lofty, but they should also be attainable. As part of setting attainable goals, you need to have a firm belief that you personally can achieve the goal.
Realistic: Can you establish these goals with the resources at your disposal? Not all attainable goals are realistic. Realistic goals look at what’s available to you today, whereas attainable goals look at what might be possible.
Timely: Give yourself a specific milestone date.
Research your social community
What audience(s) are you trying to reach with your messages? Where do they hang out online? If they are there, you should be, too.
Select your brand ambassadors
Who are the people in your personal and professional lives that will spread the good word about you every chance they get? References and referrals are super powerful—don’t underestimate their importance!
Manage your reputation
Set up Google Alerts for your name so you know how you’re being discussed online. It might be painful sometimes to see negative results, but if you can find them, so too can others. If you come across negative information about you and your brand, try to make contact with the initiator and work things out diplomatically. If the problem cannot be resolved, make sure you are proactively pushing out positive content so the negative content will appear lower in search engine rankings.
Establish yourself as a thought leader
The easiest way to do this? Start a blog. Select a narrow niche about which you are extremely passionate, determine the number of posts you will publish each week, create an editorial calendar for the first 90 days, and write and publish at least 10 posts before promoting your blog to the world.
