Why Personal branding is your Social Media Hub!!

I stumbled upon an engaging post by Jay Baer @ http://ow.ly/10GdQ
on whether blogs should be at the epicenter of your SM strategy.  He argues yes, and makes some excellent points, but I have a slightly different view.

The real time web/mobile enabled, and various SM channels are exponential reach multipliers. It will be myopic to discard one over the other. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Corporate sites and microsites – all of them need to work in conjunction, but which is the most critical among them?

I say, Personal branding trumps everything else. Whether you are starting your blogging career,  or are an established one, want to create the next big enterprise,  or indeed lucky enough to work on a “national” brand, it all starts with Personal branding.  Engagement, and Dialogue on a one to one basis is at the bottom end of the Influence propagation funnel. It culminates in Trust, and it is easier to trust people than a corporation!!

While personal branding without wide reach is ineffective, so is having a personal brand without influence.  I think Brian Solis makes a great point when he says we are all “brand managers” in this new media.  http://ow.ly/10FgL

So, here is how I would use the following SM channels:

Twitter: For Personal brand building, Influence Propagation, and Driving traffic to blog or web site. Here are the ten commandments of Twitter 🙂 http://johnantonios.com/

Blogs:  For Personal brand building, Influence Reinforcement, Driving traffic to corporate sites, micro sites

Facebook – Good for retention initiatives. It is a closed system, with little scope for exponential influence propagation.

Home page – The moment of truth for a brand. This is where you have brought the “party” to your place (to quote Trey Pennington, in this article http://ow.ly/10FRB). It is your time to bring out the fine china, and impress them.You (homepage) should be so captivating that your audience does not want to leave, or wants to come back every chance they get. In my mind, it is very important to include some “game” or “competition” elements to engage your audience even more, once they are there.  Easy navigation would be the other obvious element to have.

In summary, personal brand building is the foundation, and you have to use a combination of Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and Corporate or Brand site (if applicable) to reinforce and capitalize on the trust that your personal brand has built.

Agree? Disagree? Ambivalent? Would love to know what you think. If nothing else, just a thumbs up or a thumbs down would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Darwinism & Social Media

I was reading an interesting article (http://bit.ly/66HdNo) on how to deal with the information overload that the new era of real time connectivity has wrought upon us. It is not only the volume of the info, but also the velocity with which information is being shared, that makes it seem so unmanageable. So, how do we sort through this clutter, and make sure we rank high on the “influence” scale in the “statusphere”. How can we achieve a high WOM (word of mouse)??

Enter Darwin, and the survival of the fittest –  only the most relevant, only the truly useful information will survive, in fact, excel. The owner of that information will rank high on the “influence” scale, and have the best shot at solving problems, addressing needs, and eventually, monetizing their wares.

Selective retention and absorption also explains how people process information, separate the wheat from the chaff, and ultimately impact influence levels.  We have all been conditioned, very early, to use the least amount of energy for a given task. So, we filter out information we think we don’t need. Hence, in order to be relevant,  you have to disseminate information that is consistent with your overall strategy and objectives, for being in this delightfully weird, wired and empowered world of today.

Finally, TIME. It takes time to  to fully realize the ROI of your efforts with social or civic or dynamic media, whatever you want to call it.  You need to find conversations of relevance, then listen, participate, contribute meaningfully, develop and nurture relationships, and if you have played your cards right, you would be TRUSTED, and  no doubt will generate significant ROI. Remember, it typically starts out with a one to one dialogue. A real human level connection. There is no substitute or shortcut to get you past that stage.

What do you think? Are there any other correlations you can point to?

Join the conversation. Wont you?

Cheers,