Personal Branding Weekly
Editor’s Note: We hope you enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday! We are all grateful for you. Taking time to reach and comment means much to each of us – so thank you! We also know that with the busy weekend that you might have missed some great articles. We’ve provided the headline and title so that you can find great strategies, tips and tactics for you to implement before the end of 2012.
We started the week with “Thought Crimes and Your Personal Brand” and brought it to a close with “How Not to be Introduced”. Our author/experts shared valuable insights into what not to say, what to do to really build your personal brand and even personal branding tips from Tim Ferriss – the 4-hour chef.
Here’s what we covered:
- How Thought Crimes Kill Personal Brands by Nance Rosen
- Personal Branding Interview: Tim Ferriss on the 4-Hour Chef by Dan Schawbel
- 3 Ways to Ask for a Job Reference by Heather Huhman
- 5 Strategies to Boost Sales for the New Year by Elinor Stutz
- 5 Writing Tips for Personal Branding Success by Roger Parker
- One Sentence You Should Never Say at Work by Aaron McDaniel
- 2013 Shaping Up as Great Year for Career Move! by Skip Freeman
- Twitter Personal Branding Q + A #17 by Jacob Share
- 7 Tips for Hearing More and Doing More by Jeff Shuey
- Master Google AuthorRank to Improve Personal Search Rankings by Erik Deckers
- With Facebook’s Social Job App, Time to Clean Up by Michael Spinale
- Woman: Get What You Deserve with These Winning Strategies by Beth Kuhel
- How NOT to Introduce Yourself by Pete Leibman
This week you’ll hear from our new contributor, the Daily Muse. There’s also some great article coming up about your chance to get on-camera training, thing that master networkers do and practical online writing tips. We look forward to your feedback on this week’s personal branding articles!
Youtube and Your Personal Brand
YouTube is currently the number one online video platform and has become one of the most desirable outlets for online marketing. It’s faster and more attractive to target audiences because it gets the message across quickly on a popular and established platform that already has a large audience.
But that doesn’t mean that any video posted will be a success. In order to utilize YouTube effectively, to market your personal brand, you must be able to develop appealing content to the right audience. It is only then will you be able to get the desired reaction.
Points to Remember When You Market Your Brand Using YouTube
Content matters the most
You must be able to draw an audience with something they want to see. Your content should have themes. Raising awareness of your personal brand, sharing, promoting, educating, and calling to action can all be accomplished through video, as long as you know how and what to focus on. Keep in mind that video streams can easily be too long or too short for the theme you need to deliver.
So, rather than a certain length or particular theme, a broad range of video themes is far more effective, which will require a broader time frame range. From short and to-the-point-call-to-action videos to in-depth educating-your-audience-about-your-brand videos, your videos should stay focused on one thing at a time. It is preferable to generate multiple inexpensive videos that the audience can select and identify with quickly and efficiently (it is very easy to lose your audience’s attention in the video world) instead of making one large compilation.
Keywords are valuable
To be able to get the audience’s attention in the first place, you must market your video channel effectively. Start by using keywords to target the right audience. This is important because your keywords need to be relatable to your subject. Because YouTube content is searched by word relevance, it is possible to find your video mixed in with the “wrong crowd” if you aren’t careful.
Make the most of your YouTube description by making sure you have at least 100 words in the description. [tweet this].
It’s important that your great videos are found and are associated with your personal brand.
Brand Channel is a must
Developing your own YouTube brand channel is a definite for any brand marketing through video. Be sure that you create a featured playlist of your material for your audience to view. Additionally, be sure that you link to related sites and your YouTube channel through each video description effectively and creatively. Keep in mind that this is a call to action to drive your audience and convert them into followers. You want to build a community around your video content through social sharing, and so you must focus on getting results, not just views. This is where word of mouth marketing turns video into such a viable source – viewers share and rate what intrigues, interests or amuses them.
Marketing your personal brand through YouTube is inexpensive and can be effective, depending on how you invest your time. Focus on creating material that will reach the desired audience so that you can get them to take action with your brand.
Author:
Maria Elena Duron, is managing editor of the Personal Branding Blog, CEO (chief engagement officer) of buzz2bucks.com – a word of mouth marketing firm. She helps create conversation, connection, credibility, community and commerce around your brand. Maria Duron is co-founder and moderator of #brandchat – a weekly Twitter chat focused on every aspect of branding that is recognized by Mashable as one the 15 Essential Twitter Chats for Social Media Marketers.