You are in charge of “Brand You”

by Paul MacPherson on March 9, 2010

Tagged !!!I believe you are in charge of… “Brand You”.

Social media, including sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Brazen Careerist, can help you connect with people who can assist you with growing “Brand You”, broadening your personal and professional reach. However, it works both ways. Social media when used the wrong way can backfire and tarnish “Brand You”. It’s important to be careful and consider what you shouldn’t do, as well as what you should do to perpetuate “Brand You”.
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change the worldI read a post from Dan Schawbel entitled Fake It Till You Make It? .

To quote the meet of his post:

The old saying is that you need to “fake it before you make it.” Do you believe this is even possible in the social media world? Between online and offline connections, don’t you think that people will end up revealing the real brand you anyways? First impressions, and how people are perceived in general, have changed so much in the past few years, that it’s harder to promote yourself as a confident person, when someone might video you or greet you in a public situation. If we’ve learned anything from Mark Zuckerberg, and Gen-Y, it’s that most people have acceptable the end of privacy on the web. People want their network, or fans, to know what they are doing at all times. We get excited at comments because it shows that people care about them and what they have to say. Not everyone has revealed their true identity though, out of fear, and certain insecurities.

The web is a harsh place and you will be judged and ridiculed, whether you like it or not. There are three major concepts you should understand, including paying dues, making it, and faking it till you make it

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Top 3 Fundamental Ways To Make Your Blog More Social.

by Paul MacPherson on March 7, 2010

President Clinton with State Reps Sharon Erickson Ropes, and Tina LieblingOne of the key criteria for success within the social web is to start and sustain dialogue. Thus one of the most important parts of blogging, beyond creating great content and sharable headlines, is making sure that your blog is comment friendly and social. This means that visitors are able to have in-depth discussions through the comments with extra features. After commenting, they are easily able to share a blog post with others on their favorite social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, Delicious and others. And finally, if they are interested in getting to know you better, they can easily find your social profiles.

Here are 3 fundemental ways to make your blog more social.
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The Social Media Landscape

by Paul MacPherson on March 7, 2010

social media landscapeAmongst my colleges and friends one of the questions I always get asked is… how do I know which social media sites to use?

There is no single, magic or easy answer to that question. It all depends on your goals, your resources and your industry. There is no one silver bullet.

However, there’s nothing wrong with a little cheat sheet to help you determine which sites are best for:

  • Customer communication
  • Brand exposure
  • Driving traffic to your site
  • SEO

Which is why the cheat sheet created by CMO.com is so handy. They released a handy landscape that takes a snapshot of the social media landscape designed as a quick heads up of the playing field. It’s not the be all, it does not cover all the places, spaces and platforms – but it is a great start.  It ranks the most popular/used social media sites (from the biggies like Facebook and Digg to the less talked about Reddit and del.icio.us) as good, okay or bad for the four goals above.

You can download a much bigger, easier to read PDF version of it by clicking here.

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Viral Request For A Favor: An experiment in the off beat

by Paul MacPherson on March 4, 2010

I am in the midst of building the marketing and promotion plan for my upcoming book “The Wealthy Blogger”, due out in June. I intend to use social media to promote the book including a Facebook fan (or business page).

To open up some key strategic configuration options for the page, Facebook insists on 100 or more fans before these options become available to the admin.

In an effort to solicit fans, I made a text-to-movie video and have published it both to YouTube and Facebook to see if it can help me in the cause.

You can see the video below.
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