Personal Branding Weekly
EDITOR’S NOTE: First things first – Happy Veteran’s Day! A veteran is someone who, at one point in their life, made a blank check payable to ‘The United States’ for an amount of ‘up to and including my life’… I’m proud to be an American and to have known some of the greatest Americans who have had that check cashed. Happy Veteran’s Day!
Secondly, I’m thrilled to have presented about “Personal Branding and Social Mediums” this week to the InnoTech Conference in Austin, Texas. I had the great opportunity to share about the amazing professionals and authors I get to work with here at the Personal Branding Blog! I appreciate Dan Schawbel for making that connection for me!
This week Oscar Del Santo continued his popular series on the “Heroes of Personal Branding” – it’s a “must read” series and a great way to learn from other people’s experiences. We even delved into how we could learn some personal branding lessons from Hurricane Sandy; the importance of loving what you do; and how to crisply define success.
- Recipe for Success: Love What You Do! by Deborah Shane
- Branding for A Job Vs Branding for An Opportunity by Phil Rosenberg
- Where Success is Really Hidden by Nance Rosen
- Your Story Creates Success by Elinor Stutz
- Could Your Personal Brand Survive Hurricane, Fire, or Flood? by Roger Parker
- One of the Biggest Mistakes Companies Make by Aaron McDaniel
- Time to Resign NOT When Hiring Manager Offers Job! by Skip Freeman
- Windows 8, Twitter, and Branding Yourself Correctly by Jacob Share
- 3 Personal Branding Surprises Thanks to Sandy by Manoush Zomorodi
- Heroes of Personal Branding (iv): Mago Ben by Oscar Del Santo
- Never Negotiate for Yourself by Jeff Shuey
- Should My Real Name Be My Domain Name? by Erik Deckers
- Job Search Tips for International Students by Michael Spinale
- Positive People Attract People and Breed Successful Careers by Beth Kuhel
- Stand Above the Crowd: 15 Minute Follow-Up by Rebecca Rapple
This week get ready for some fun feedback and insights from the Young Entrepreneurs Council; the best of the best from Glassdoor along with reviewing if you really ARE your last name. Get ready for another practical week of insights for your personal brand!
The Importance of Social Feedback
Anyone can talk in abundance, but that doesn’t mean that others are listening. Social networks aren’t about speaking, rather they are about conversations. It is only through conversation that you can truly develop your online presence and further promote your brand.
What does it take to get the attention of the audience? In principle, you must be able to offer the audience what they want to see and hear. But, how you do this will depend specifically on the nature of your audience. What do they like? What interests do they have? From there, you must be able to connect the dots and familiarize these incentives with your brand.
Pay attention to feedback
Feedback allows you to target specific audience interactions according to posted material, topics, and a methodology that appeals to your audience. But once you have that feedback, what you do with it will ultimately determine your social success.
You must effectively engage the audience, and to do so, you must be able to analyze feedback. Throughout the social world, analytic tools are available through specific sites and even management dashboards. These tools allow you to track your social presence and your audience’s reaction to them.
What does your audience say about you? What doesn’t your audience say about you? Remember that feedback comes in silence as well as the sound of modest appreciation. The last thing you want is for your audience to ignore your brand- which is the most common aspect when a brand presents material that lacks interest. If you can’t develop interest, you can’t engage with the audience and that means you can’t maintain online visibility.
Apply feedback to tune your strategy
Establishing yourself effectively requires that you are able to present brand material that appeals to the audience. Each social site has a unique audience, and thus would require different material with a unique approach. Consider your Linkedin audience, which is primarily business oriented. Here, networking is done amongst personal brands and businesses that are looking for specific characteristics in their network partners. While you may feel compelled to discuss what you enjoy, it is more effective to give the audience what they want to hear and see.
As you tune your social marketing strategies, you will begin developing proof through word of mouth marketing, as the audience will begin interacting with you and promoting you through their own networks. Proof is what an audience appreciates more than anything else- because they are far more incentivized by their peers and networking partners. Proof is established by how your audience reacts to you- and how you engage with them.
By gathering and analyzing networking feedback, your brand will be far more successful when engaging.. Not every social site is the same, and each requires its own unique approach. With the right methods and social marketing strategies, you can provide word of mouth proof that your brand has the answers and expertise to warrant someone’s valuable attention.
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.
