There’s lots of talk today about personal branding. Personal branding is also inextricably linked to social media.
Social media choices are vast and it can be a bit confusing in a busy life as to where to concentrate your efforts and which technology to use.
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Can I suggest a four pronged approach.
1) Start a Facebook page that is separate from your personal account. Form relationships through groups that discuss work/business issues you are interested in. If you are in sales for example find the appropriate sales or marketing groups to join with a view to making a contribution and of course networking. Do some research on relevant topics and add value to the groups by posting useful articles to your timeline.
2) Start a Twitter stream and only tweet on your professional interest. Be careful with the name you set up with. If you are say a graphic designer, try to get that fact in your Twitter name. e.g. BillsGraphicDesign For research on your topics you can use “Google Alerts”, this can take much of the hard work out of the research for your tweets.
3) Write a blog. Warning writing a blog is lots of work and if you can’t consistently write on a topic you’re passionate about don’t start. As a bare minimum you will need to post one 600 word article a week. Again you can use Google to do your research. For your blog WordPress seems to have a little more credibility however Blogger (blogspot) can have ads and activity can be monitored through Google.
4) Build your profile on Linkedin and again join discussion groups and befriend others in your area of expertise or in similar careers.
You can automatically link/publish both your blogs and twitter streams to Facebook and your Linkedin profiles.
Finally what programs/widgets to use. This of course is primarily for Twitter and Facebook. I suggest you use Tweet Deck to manage your posts and TweetAdder3 to manage your audience/followers. I also recommend you start with both programs from day one. One is free and the one advertised above and below has a free demo to try it out.
3 comments
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October 5, 2010 at 1:01 am (UTC 0)
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Melanie says:
October 5, 2010 at 4:07 am (UTC 0)
Using social media sites are not just following and to be followed or posting to fan pages, yes I agree you’ve got to be quick and have the right initiative to take the 2nd step to go further and to be successful. Getting started is very difficult and hardwork and right capital must be established solidly. The [most important] thing in online marketing is the diligent and hard work to pursue what you’ve started. As I based on my experience, it’s really difficult on the very beginning of your business but it gets easier if you already had a good technique.
Melanie of http://cintamedia.com a social media site.
rictownsend says:
October 5, 2010 at 6:15 pm (UTC 0)
Thanks Melanie your points are well made, however sensible use of technology to help you build a following is a wise idea. The greater presence you have on the web the better(I believe) Ric