Personal Branding Weekly
No matter the job or the tragedy you can build or rebuild your personal brand. That seemed to be our theme this last week as many still recovering from Hurricane Sandy are still dealing with the destruction and getting their bearing on their life, home and career.
The Young Entrepreneurs Council also weighed in on how you recover from bad publicity or the ‘halo effect’ of associating with a bad brand. Nance Rosen also took a very interesting look into someone selling their last name! Did you miss any of these? Here they are so you can find them straight away:
- Network and Link Up, Link In and Link Out! by Deborah Shane
- Are You Your Last Name? by Nance Rosen
- Career Takeaways from Lance Armstrong by Heather Huhman
- 5 Strategies to Sell Well by Elinor Stutz
- 10 Tips for Reacting (or Not!) to Bad Brand Publicity by the Young Entrepreneurs Council
- Two Excellent ‘Job Finalists’, But Only ONE Gets the Job by Skip Freeman
- Don’t Let a Storm Ruin Your Personal Branding Efforts by Kristen Fischer
- How to Target Recruiters Scanning Online Professional Profiles by Glassdoor.com
- The New Era of Personal Marketing 2.0 by Oscar Del Santo
- What Have You Been Doing While I was Gone by Jeff Shuey
- No Matter the Job, You Can Build Your Brand by Michael Spinale
- Hurricanes, Destruction and Rebuilding: The Only Constant is Change! by Beth Kuhel
- Jump Over the Biggest Job Search Hurdle by Rebecca Rapple
- The Power of Being Vulnerable by Pete Leibman
For this week, watch for some more great posts from the Young Entrepreneurs Council and our newest partner, The Daily Muse. From writing tips to one sentence you should never say at work, stay tuned with us to keep your brand fine tuned, relevant and communicating it effectively.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours! We are most grateful for the caliber of authors that we have the honor of working with every single day. We are equally grateful for you to spend your most valuable time to read, comment and share your personal brand experience. May you take a few moments to say thank you to those who matter most in your life!
What Are Social Calls to Action?
When it comes to social networks, posting, tweeting, and blogging to exhibit your brand’s advantages are effective methods to gaining your audience’s attention. However, getting their attention isn’t simply enough.
Have you ever seen a commercial that got you thinking you should try it, or buy the product the next time you were at the supermarket? We all have, and they rate as the most successful. This is because they have a simple trick up their sleeves: the most important, and effective, element of the commercial is left for last- the call to action.
What is a call to action? Basically, it is the summation of your topic that incentivizes the audience to interact with you. It serves as the rallying cry for your audience to get up and take action. The call to action comes in many forms, all of which have their own unique situation and target audience. The following are some of them explained.
–Promote
The promotional call to action is utilized to improve traffic and is commonly used on social networks. An example, “There is a sale coming up, ‘Like’ this page to get a discount”. Promotion is the simplest of all calls to action, but is not always applicable to all brands.
–Join
Another call to action is the request to join. It is usually an urge to become part of a group, or mailing list, for example, “Enter contact info so that we can share with you our newsletters, RSS feeds for blogs, and associated subscriptions”.
–Share
This call to action comes in the form of mentions, shares, and hashtags in the social media world.It is one of the simplest and most appreciated by users worldwide. It’s easy and always available at the click of a button. Whether you’re utilizing Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Linkedin, requesting that others simply interact or share your brand through word of mouth is effective and easy to accomplish.
–Discuss
This is the most common, and has been around for a long time, even before the social media craze. It comes in the form of,“Please share with us your comments and feedback regarding our product …” Posting content on your websites and blogs is good, but if you don’t call the audience to action, they won’t feel any obligation to share their opinions, praise, or facts with you.
It all comes down to context
While there are different types of calls to action you can use, it is just as good to include the importance of taking action. Imply a sense of urgency e.g.“Do it today!” A social call to action should incentivize your audience to interact at that particular time – and that doing it later would be too late.
To do this, you must always maintain clear and concise language and application. The call to action should be easy to accomplish so that it can be done right now. “Share with your friends!” is perfect, but if your audience has to travel between sites or pages to share, they may not feel that it’s worth it and you would lose potential audience interaction.
It is possible to track your call to action methods by studying analytics through social networks. Google’s analytics software is commonly used for such purposes. A social dashboard is also effective. Topsy.com is a great place to review your mentions or a good bit.ly or ow.ly link will help with actually tracking of clicks and actions. Study what practices work and what call to action methods are most effective for your target audience.
Quality material and trending topics are great for social topics, but you must always be sure to include a call to action. Only then will your audience be able to truly interact with your brand and share what you have to say with others.
SHARE this article with people you know utilizing social networks as an important part of their personal brand communication.
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.
