Having to run a business can take someone through the mufti-tasking Olympics on top of being an emotional roller coaster. How do you stay on top of all the marketing you’re doing?
I hope you’re measuring your marketing.
Be it for yourself as a personal brand or for your small business which is often an extension of your personal brand, it is important to target, measure and adjust your marketing.
Just to be clear, I use this marketing definition:
Marketing is creating a positive environment for exchange. It takes a message targeted to a specific audience to elicit a physical and measurable response.
As a personal brand, how can you make sure you network well using your online and offline resources?
This post will talk about how you can do that online – next post will cover the face-to-face interactions – both are important.
- Set up a Twitter account and follow people who provide great information for your industry or interest areas.
Get knowledgeable on Twitter lists and follow Twitter lists that people who’ve provided value to you in your interest or industry area have created.
Twitter is a great traffic driver and wonderful research tool. Utilize the power of “the bird” to keep you on the cutting edge of information and in a perfect position to help those who have helped you. If someone’s helped you, saying thank you is a wonderful way to differentiate yourself (sadly, most people don’t say thank you) and even helping or assisting them in a question or endeavor is a two-fold thank you that really stands out as remarkable in someone’s mind and can get you some great visibility and even some credibility (if your generosity is sincere).
- Tweet or provide status updates about information that’s interesting to people connected to you.
Where many brands fail, is they use social media to mean “mass media” and they broadcast as if they were running an ad on the Super Bowl. Social media is social and to broadcast your latest offer or newest product is more like you stepping into a large networking event and shouting at the top of your lungs what you’re hawking.
In social media you converse and all communication is a two way street. So, if you’re hogging the road – perhaps it’s time to slow down and see what skills you need to become good at social interaction. This skill will help you in your offline connections as well.
- Become a really good listener.
It’s amazing what people will tell you if you listen. The problem is most of us listen with the intent of “jumping in” to share what we want to share or say. Look at your tweet to retweet ratio and your at replies.
In fact, look at:
- Your replies to
- Who you retweet
That will be a great statistic that will tell you if you are doing a good job “showing how much you care”.
If you really are serious about making sure you are doing this well online, then I wrote a post about “how to” set this up that goes into great detail. If you go to this post, set it up and find it valuable, please be sure to make a comment. Feedback is always appreciated!
