Personal Branding Online

“Punch Above Your Weight” with Social Media
By Lisa Harris, University of Southampton
13th July 2010
For Guernsey Training Agency

Lisa Harris
Teaches Digital Marketing at the University of Southampton
Programme Director for the MSc in Digital Marketing.
Qualified e-tutor for the University of Liverpool online MBA.
Lisa has run a research project with Alan Rae called ‘Punch Above Your Weight’ which tracks how small firms promote themselves, network and grow their businesses using Web 2.0 technologies.
Running various projects to integrate aspects of open learning into the MSc curriculum at Southampton
Lisa’s current work is investigating the growth of digital presence for career or business development

Objective
This session will demonstrate how you can develop your digital presence in order to stand out from the crowd, by using blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc to build your profile and that of your business.
http://socialnomics.net/2010/05/05/social-media revolution-2-refresh/ (Eric Qualmann update, 4 mins)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8 (Did You Know 4)

How many of these activities are you developing…?

Rationale
Entrepreneurial activity increasingly involves understanding how today’s networks work and how to deploy them effectively, both online and offline.
Building and maintaining a personal brand in this way is becoming a critical aspect of business development
It is essential to make sure that the nature of the information an individual displays online is going to encourage rather than discourage potential customers, partners etc.
This work draws upon the results of an ongoing research project which is investigating the use of new technologies by entrepreneurs to build their personal brands.

“Change we can believe in”
$28m average raised per month in online donations during 2008
92m views of display ads per month
2.2m site visitors per month
9.8m video views on YouTube
5,455,665 supporters of the Obama Facebook Group
285,467 followers on Twitter

Growth of Social Media

“Digital presence” is about branding...
According to Olins (2003), a brand is “a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to a company, product or service”.
Chris Brogan (www.chrisbrogan.com) notes that a strong personal brand is a mix of reputation, trust, attention, and execution:
“A personal brand gives you the ability to stand out in a sea of similar products. In essence, you’re marketing yourself as something different than the rest of the pack.”

Business Networking Trends Survey (UK)
80% of UK entrepreneurs had achieved business wins through social networking sites
LinkedIn was preferred to FB for business networking
92% said that they would recommend networking professionally online to their business contacts
24% of small businesses are now using sites like Twitter for business networking.
More traditional face-to-face networking continues to grow with 36% regularly attending networking meetings.
50% plan to maintain the same levels of F2F networking in 2010, 55% plan to increase the time they networking online.
Source: http://www.b2bm.biz/News/SOCIAL-MEDIA-NEWS-SMEs-shy-away-from-Facebook/ (Jan 2010)

SME use of social media: USA
Facebook ranked as the most beneficial social network for small businesses, followed by LinkedIn and Twitter (Ad-ology survey, US, 11/09)
Benefits of social networking were:
ability to generate leads
keep up with their industry
monitor the online conversation about their business

Functions of current popular tools

Question
What do you consider to be the biggest
a) benefit
b) challenge
in building your brand online?

Crush It

Gary Vaynerchuk
http://www.slideshare.net/hein2006/crushitebook-091020184311-phpapp01
“Crush it” reached top 200 on Amazon.com
Gary’s advice - choose your medium based on your DNA:
Introverted? Start with writing
Extraverted? Try podcasts
Animated? Utilise video

Personal Branding 101
Dan Schawbel is a 26 year old who has carved out his niche as a personal branding expert. Read his introductory guide here: http://mashable.com/2009/02/05/personal-branding-101/
To receive regular updates, you may wish to join him on Facebook, Twitter or another of his many networks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qqZbU8rc6A (Dan, 10 mins)

For a comprehensive set of resources on personal branding:http://www.personalbrandingblog.com

How social media has helped my work
Developing new contacts
Sourcing newly published articles, calls for papers and relevant events to attend
Tracking and commenting on the blogposts of key contributors to the field
Keeping in touch, real time, with project participants and other key contacts
www.lisaharrismarketing.com
www.twitter.com/lisaharris
www.slideshare.net/lisaharris
www.delicious.com/lisaharris1
www.linkedin.com/in/lisajaneharris

Dare you Google yourself...?

Your online portfolio
A blog. Plenty of good advice here: http://www.slideshare.net/demler1/developing-your-personal-brand-through-blogging
Twitter:
guides can be linked from: http://www.twitip.com/personal-brand-how-to-build-yours-in-twitter
www.teachertrainingvideos.com useful beginner guides (by @russell1955)
http://www.slideshare.net/richardsedley/twitter-for-marketing-an-introduction-4639213 (by @richardsedley)
LinkedIn http://www.thewebpitch.com/social-networking/are-you-linking-in/
Slideshare – for presentations (and now video aswell...)
Be creative! See Ed Hamilton’s CV on Google Maps (45,401 views to date) http://tinyurl.com/ycvcfcx and Jay Foreman’s video history of London’s tube stations http://tinyurl.com/36rkt7k

‘Givers gain’
Ask not what the community can do for you, but what you can do for the community…
The best long term way to build brand influence is to be seen as a ‘giver’ of good quality practical information and advice.
An authentic personal brand therefore delivers both a track record and a promise of the ongoing delivery of value.
How exactly will *you* deliver value??

Facebook
25 million UK users as of April 2010 (110M in Europe, 400M worldwide)
To find local users, click the ‘advertising’ button. You can ask FB how many people are registered within a 10 mile radius of a town. The figure will be far higher than local newspaper circulation.
Set up a Fan/Like page:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/TheIntelligentGarden?v=wall&ref=ts
Pull in RSS feeds from your blog or twitter account
Post video and photos

Facebook spreads across the web...

Personal Branding with Twitter
Provide feedback. Become known as a reliable and informative source of help to your network
Get Feedback. Ask for advice and you’ll receive ‘collective intelligence’ from your network
Direct traffic. Include links in a tweet to direct traffic to your blog or to the recommended posts of others.
Read News. subscribe to feeds for specific websites/conferences, or from content providers such as the BBC.
Make New Friends. Twitter allows you to befriend and track the messages of other users.
Network for benefits. Interact with other like-minded people, or experts in your field. Develop relationships for future mutual benefits such as testimonials or peer recommendations.
Find Prospects. Twitter can be used as a means to find potential customers or clients online. Do a search for keywords related to your product on Twitter Search and then follow users.
Provide Live coverage. For example to provide real time coverage of conference keynotes
Set Up Meetings. An informal and casual way of arranging adhoc meetings.

Exponential growth…

Good sharers to follow on Twitter
@davechaffey
@richardsedley
@stevesponder
@grahamjones
@alanrae
@liberatelloyd
@jowyang
@charleneli
@jaybaer

LinkedIn
70 million members in 200 countries worldwide (June 2010)
How does it work? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzT3JVUGUzM
Addition of partner applications such as Slideshare and Wordpress add significant value, see www.linkedin.com/in/lisajaneharris
Increasing importance as a recruitment tool

LinkedIn
Recent timely increase in functionality through partnerships with companies offering Web 2.0 based services:
Work collaboratively by sharing files with your network through private workspaces (Huddle)
Share information and keep up to date – eg what you are reading through the Amazon application and where you are travelling through TripIt.
the Google Docs application allows presentations to be embedded on a profile
SlideShare allows sharing and commenting on presentations within a network
WordPress allows a blog to be showcased.
Company Buzz allows conversations about a prospective employer to be monitored.
By actively updating a LinkedIn profile, the likelihood that people will see that profile displayed when they are searching for someone to hire is increased (Google Juice)
In order to progress job applications to interview stage, a ‘complete’ LinkedIn profile is now a prerequisite for many recruiters, meaning:
a minimum of three testimonials from past employers,
full employment details, affiliations and educational background.

Measuring Success
How can you tell whether your brand building efforts are paying off? Check out these measurement tools:
Google alerts
Twitter alerts
Comment alerts
http://www.davidrisley.com/2009/02/16/3-powerful-tools-for-monitoring-your-brand/

Personal branding challenges
Ongoing time and effort is required to develop and maintain online profiles, learn new tools and ascertain when best to integrate them into the mix.
F2F brand building elements should not be forgotten – Harris and Rae (2009) show that it is not a zero sum game, because good online networkers also tend to be effective communicators offline.
As with most things in life, you get out what you put in, and persistence pays off.
It is critical to be authentic. If personal branding is developed at only a superficial level, for example by basing it simply on ego, spin or piggybacking off the work of others, then it will not be enduring.

Resources on Cloudworks

Action Plan
So what exactly are *you* going to go away and do to develop your personal brand ??????????????
Thank you for participating – I look forward to keeping on touch with you online 

Personal Branding Online

by lisa harris on Jul 13, 2010

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Personal Branding Online — Presentation Transcript