Responses to recent tweets by people about personal branding and Gen-Y, Twitter, presentations and lack of focus.
Taylor B., @thbrogan, twittered: can my personal brand involve not taking twitter too seriously? because i enjoy this option.
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: “Taking Twitter seriously” should mean carefully using Twitter to achieve your personal branding goals (in this case). If the personal brand you’re trying to build is one that’s a little lighthearted, then you can not only joke around on Twitter, you should.
However, if you’re trying to build a brand on a very conservative or weighty topic where your wink-winks are more likely to be frowned upon or just misunderstood, open a separate a Twitter account for professional purposes and keep the first one for happier chatting with friends.
Jeff Bodzewski, @bodzewski, twittered: Starting to develop my guest lectures on personal branding I’ll deliver to business students – any advice out there?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: Sure:
- What is/isn’t personal branding, how it relates to you and your industry (with examples) and the 2 keys to personal branding success
- How to choose your personal branding goals and choose the right personal brand for you: one that will be authentic, that will help you achieve your personal/professional goals, and one whose personal branding goals you will be able to achieve
- How to craft a person branding strategy to reach those goals
- How to execute your personal branding strategy, short-term to long-term: best tools & best practices
Tanya Upthegrove , @tanyaupthegrove, twittered: Question… How are you using Google+ to enhance your personal branding efforts? Does it truly add value or increase visibility? How?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: With the launch of Google’s Search Plus Your World, using Google+ has become a necessity for anyone building their personal brand online. As of this launch, Google’s search results put extra emphasis on information coming from Google+, so even just cross-posting information to your Google+ profile will increase the likelihood of it being found higher or more often in Google SERPs.For other ways of using Google+ to build your brand, check out 3 Ways Google Plus Can Save Your Personal Brand.
Laura La, @laurala, twittered: Is it smart personal brand marketing or just masturbation to use one of your Twitter accounts to give your main account extra Klout points?
Jacob Share, @jacobshare: It all depends to what extreme you want to take this.
If you have a couple of accounts and just ‘tip’ one of them, there’s nothing wrong with that and you can just call it giving yourself a small leg up. Many people do the same, such as Liking their own blog posts.
In a different league though, there are aggressive, black hat marketers out there who plan networks of accounts that they can then use to build the following/Klout points/etc. of a specific account of theirs with a laser-focus, making it look much more credible and popular than it is. That manipulation is obviously wrong and not something an upstanding person would do.
Author:
Jacob Share, a job search expert, is the creator of JobMob, one of the biggest blogs in the world about finding jobs. Follow him on Twitter for job search tips and humor.
