how academics and researchers can use social media to build collaborative relationships

1. Personal Branding
for Academics
Dr Alan Rae – Managing Partner
www.howtodobusiness.com
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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2. Personal Branding
1. It’s b t
1 It’ about generating opportunities.
ti t iti
2. You need a strong story that connects you to
your peers.
g
3. You have limited time for sales and marketing
– 12 hours are what SME owners do.
4.
4 You can use the internet to develop new
contacts.
5.
5 We can help you achieve this
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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3. What’s your story?
y y
• You need a narrative that connects you to the
people you can work with and motivates them to
collaborate with you. It should be
y
Compelling
– Relate you emotionally to the listener
– Phrased in their language
– Attract them to work with you
• It needs to be absolutely crystal clear and
unambiguous about what you do and why why.
• All our research shows that people work with
p p
people that they know what they do
y y
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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4. Getting your story right
One exercise that I find
useful is to compare our
needs and values with
those of partners
p
This can give us a
framework in which we
can develop compelling
narratives.
ti
This is all about values
and how people think
4
www.synergy-global.com Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010

5. How do I tell it?
• Y can tell i i writing, f
You ll it in i i face to f
face or
online
• For most of us building contacts involves
face to face activity – the action of the
play.
• The scenery is the online / written
collateral
• The next slide shows your options
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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6. Approaches to
pp
Market
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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7. Criteria for spending
much time online
• Balancing on li and offline?
B l i line d ffli ?
• National vs Local?
• Scalable – or not?
• Transactional–
Transactional or relational?
• How much do I believe in chance and
random connections?
d i ?
• Academics are global and non scalable
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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8. On line networks work the
same as face to face ones
• P
People h
l have to lik you and trust you
like d
before they follow and recommend you.
y y
• You need to get to know people first
before you can convince them in a face to
face relational process
• Doing small favours helps.
• The online world works in the same way –
but you have much greater reach
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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9. How
networks
operate
p
Networks are lumpy and uneven. This map of the internet that Lucent p
py p produced in the 90s shows there
are some really dense nodes that have many connections – while most have very few.
Sales agents know lots of people and use their connections to do deals and generate money.
It’s the same on-line – some people are much more known and connected than others. We find the same
patterns occurring in networks, markets and anywhere that people make a free-ish choice about what
they do, read or whom they associate with.It follows a power law.
The second player in a market has half the market share of the number 1 player the third has a third the
player, third,
quarter has a quarter etc. If the leader has a 40% share then the number 2 has 20%, the number 3 has
16% and the number 4 has 10%. . Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
9

10. Branding is about being
noticed by influencers
• Find t h t
Fi d out what conferences they go to and join i
f th t d j i in.
• Work conventional membership organisations
• Write in the right journals and periodicals
• Understand what motivates the influencers,
• If we need to go on-line we can use linked-in,
blogs and follow them on Twitter
• BE CLEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU DO - AND WHY
IT’S IMPORTANT TO THEM
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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11. Developing Trust
• People trust people
• That are clear about what they do
y
• That have a good reputation
–Know their stuff
Know
–Do what they say
–Are likeable or easy to work with
• That get back to them quickly
• That practice “givers gain”
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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12. Exercise – list 10 important
p
contacts in 2 disciplines
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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13. What to do with your
12 hours
• Find
Fi d a peer group t network with
to t k ith
• Be crystal clear about what you do
• Get back to people quickly
• Practice “Givers Gain” – do small favours
Givers Gain
• If you need to build an online presence
– Yo can write one blog article and keep a presence
You rite
on one and a half social networks per week
– Focus on Linked-in then Ecademy which combines on
Linked in
line and offline
• Above all - LISTEN
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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14. You can be referred
or you can be found
• Being found on line means understanding what
people are looking for and using those phrases
– called keywords – to tag online objects.
• Si l you have to research these – you could
Simply h t h th ld
do that by running a Google ad-words campaign
– - or by using twitter
• And then you need to put them in certain specific
places in web sites, in blogs, on photos and
videos etc.
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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15. When they notice you
y y
they check you out
• You need something for them to find
• Stories about you – PR
• Profiles on social media
• 10 things people really ought to know about your
area of expertise
• White papers to demonstrate thought leadership
• Case studies and examples of your work
• Testimonials
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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16. Particularly
y
Testimonials
• In today’s business world people believe their
peers – not the experts - ebay/amazon ratings
• And certainly not the marketers
• So make it easy for people to sa good things
eas say
about you
• Why what you did was worthwhile
• And hand out a few of your own to people you
genuinely rate
• It really does pay to be thoughtful about this
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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17. Many disciplines are
small and traditional
• You need to be known
• You need to have a good reputation
• Your face has to fit
• You need others to speak for you
• This is traditional old boy networking
• Online new girl networking is j
g g just the same
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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18. But you can use Social
Media to speed it all up
• S i l media are online networks
Social di li k
• The same rules apply as in face to face
networks
– Reciprocity
– Listen before you talk
– Be polite
– Be helpful
p
– Be clear about what you do and what you want
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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19. The web runs on words
• So you need to know how the keywords
and tags operate
• A dh
And how t fi d th
to find them and d l th
d deploy them
• And how it all connects together
g
• We call this “Punch above your weight”
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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20. How you do it
• Fi t turn your story into keywords
First t t i t k d
• Test them using Google ad-words
• When you’ve got them put them into
– anchor text
• S ll B i
Small Business M k ti course sits over
Marketing it
• www.1manbrand.co.uk
– Headlines page title keywords metatags
Headlines, title,
– Tags for any online materials you create
• Create additional places you can link from
– Blogs, Social network sites, other people’s sites
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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21. Use them as Meta-tags
g
• Description Tag is key –it s the description of
it’s
your page within the search engine report. If you
don’t have it Google will cobble together some
g g
tosh from the page that you can’t control
• Use most important keywords to make a strong
60 character title tag
• H
Have th most relevant keywords f the page in
the t l tk d for th i
the keywords tag
• And make sure each page is different and
relevant
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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22. Now you’ve got them –
what do you do with them?
• Put them in the anchor text of inbound links from
partners – you may have to negotiate
individually but it’s worth it
y
• Set up an affiliate link programme
• Put them into your email auto signature
y g
• Build them into your auto signature when you’re
blogging or posting where Google will see it
• Use them for brand consistency with your off line
messages
• U th
Use them t Tag your Blogs
to T Bl
• Create your own environments
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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23. Your online toolkit. You can create
structures like this
to get noticed by influencers
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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24. Social Media – Summary
Ecademy Facebook Linked-In
Linked In
Ask to connect if you
Look at profile - ask
p know them. Get
Connection Mechanism to connect Ask to connect introduced if you don't
Can you see profile of
someone you're not connected
with
ith Yes
Y No
N Yes
Y
Primary Use Business + Social Social Business
Typical User Small Business Individual Corporate
y
Connection Style Random Amongst Friends
g Deliberate
Groups and Clubs yes yes Yes
y
Rich Media Friendly A bit Yes No
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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25. Source Media
Blogs, Ecademy, YouTube
• Ecademy
• Ecademy is a smaller networking site but it’s a good place to start –
the subscription is £10 per month. You can network online and
offline with 100,000 other members worldwide. It also lets you
– Create blogs
– Advertise in the Market Place
– Form special interest clubs
p
– Take part in discussions, seek advice from other members or give
advice in response to the posts of others
– If you devote time to learning to use it – it really is a school of online
marketing.
marketing
• 2 unique features make Ecademy important:
• It runs face to face meetings as well as online networking.
• Google l k at it every d and anything you post th
G l looks t day d thi t there, if you use
keywords properly will deliver a search engine linking bonus.
• It definitely has a pivotal role in an online marketing strategy. You
can contact all of your connections once a month
month.
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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26. Source Media
Blogs, Ecademy, YouTube
• Blogs
g
• We standardized on Wordpress because
– It’s easy to use
– It integrates with your own site
– You can build it into a site
– It’s customizable
– The tagging is foolproof
– You can link to other sites via your blog roll.
• There are 2 flavours, .com and .org. The
.com version is hosted by Wordpress, has
everything in it you need and you can just set
up.
• The .org version is downloadable - you have
g y
host it yourself or you can buy a site already
set up via Just Hosts
• It’s very easy to set up and use and will be a
main building block of y
g your on-line activity.
y
• A Blog can be an ideal business tool as long
as you can generate 300 - 400 words of well
written copy every 7-10 days. If you put a
Blog on the front page of Ecademy every
week you’ll b i th t 100 Bl
k ’ll be in the top Bloggers.
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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27. Source Media
Blogs, Ecademy, YouTube
• You-Tube
• YouTube lets you upload short videos.
These can be embedded in web sites
or blog pages or online profiles to
make them more interesting.
• If you embed them in a page you get a
lot of marketing data about who’s
watching it.
• On our Turkish Villa site I’ve
embedded a video about Bodrum
http://www.seaviewturkey.co.uk/gallery_v.html
http://www seaviewturkey co uk/gallery v html
• We can get Google analytics data on
the video but also the demographics
about who’s looking at it. So we can
who s
retag the video with the best keywords
and boost the rankings.
• For business you can create your own
channel about your own offers.
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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28. Carrier Media
Twitter, RSS
• You need to know about twitter –
• Its pure permission marketing. People follow you if what you
say is useful. If you bore them – they’ll abandon you.
y y y y
• You’ve 140 characters to make your point. You can link to
something you want to signpost – a Blog, an event, an offer.
• Be interesting and converse - don’t broadcast
• Tweetdeck helps you sort the conversations out
• H tS it can automate your “business” posts. Chat with
HootSuite t t “b i ” t Ch t ith
colleagues, re-tweet items of interest and use it to inform
and entertain. No more than 15% promotion
p
• Twitterfeed helps you feed material to it.
• Route blogs and other posts via twitter to end user
destinations in Facebook and linked-in.
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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29. Sink Media
Linked-In, Facebook
• LINKED IN
• Most t
M t transactional network
ti l t k
• You can only connect directly if you
already know them via a first circle of
people that you are directly connected toto,
a 2nd circle of their connections and a
3rd circle of their connections. You have
access to these people only by invitation.
p p y y
• To connect to a specific individual I can
search for “Google vice president” I
found one who’s a senior programmer in
Krakow. 14 people who k
K k l h know me k know
someone who knows him. To contact him
I can get a referral
• Good for recruiting or structured selling
particularly into corporates.
• Groups (IOD, CIM, ProMarketing Forum)
help you get known by asking and
answering questions Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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30. Sink Media
Linked-In,
Linked In Facebook
• FaceBook
• I’ts allows 3rd party applications and is
I ts
good at importing pictures and videos
• It blurs boundaries between
‘professional’ and ‘social’ worlds Fine if
professional social worlds.
you live blamelessly.
• Special interest groups can be created
such as ‘Facebook for Business’ or
indeed “How to do Business” which has
acquired 600 members with very little
energy being applied.
• RSS f d can pull i content f
feeds ll in t t from your
blog or other source – Wordpress
widgets or twitter feed.
• Facebook Flyers can be accessed from
the ‘advertisers’ section at the bottom of
your profile page. If you want to reach
p p
people from Generation Y as employees
p y
or customers it may be worth reviewing.
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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31. Branding to do list
• List 50 peop e you need to meet a d how
s people eed o ee and o
– They can find you
– You can get introduced to them
– You can collide with them
• Use social media to create the scenery
– join linkedIn
• Build profile join groups contribute
– Use PR
– Build Collateral library - 7 things you should know – white papers etc
– Create a form for people to sign up for these so you can email them
– Build Social media profiles
– Connect it all together
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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32. What next
• Visit www.howtodobusiness.com for details on the
services we provide.
• If you are interested in Market planning try our free
teleclass http://marketingbasics.eventbrite.com
• If you are interested in Business planning try our free
teleclass http://basicbusiness.eventbrite.com
• Or consider buying one of our e-books at
http://www.howtodobusiness.com/howtodobusiness-e-books.htm
• More information from Alan Rae on 0845 094 0407
alan@howtodobusiness.com
alan@howtodobusiness com
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010
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