Sep 20, 2007 | blog
There are many good social networks to be a part of, but as I delve deeper into social media and personal branding I’m coming to the conclusion that your blog is becoming more important.
On your blog, you have a direct feed to your readers. Those readers can be friends as much as it can be potential employers or business contacts. Your blog can take on more of your characteristics, from the way you write to the theme that presents the information to your readers.
A blog can interact with other social networks, augmented with whatever tools you choose to bring into your branding strategy. Adding additional communications, video, audio and so on adds more value to your ability to network and share with your community.
The one big thing about viewing your blog as a social network is to remember the social aspect, which infers the interaction in a community. A blog’s comment system is there to enable the conversation, you are there to help drive the conversation. If you’re disabling comments because you don’t like some criticism, you may want to take another look. That feedback could help you grow in ways that aren’t readily apparent.
Also, your blog is your online hub. Use it to send information to other social networks that you frequent. It’s also the one place on the Internet that you can make sure people find out about YOU. You can make sure to let them know how to find you, to find your profiles and networks that you have left profiles, feedback, and articles on throughout the Internet. From your blog people can download a copy of your resume, talk about your latest work, and so on. Don’t forget that you can have an easier to remember URL to get to your blog than your profile on any service or social network.
Overall, the advantages of having a blog that you can interact with others is a statement about you. You took the initiative, you are reaching out, you are placing your ideas in a public forum, you are inviting feedback. Don’t get me wrong; in phrasing it that way it sounds like The Great You Show – but it doesn’t have to be. It’s up to you to be able to show it’s really about conversations.
On your blog, and through your interests and reading habits, you will find other bloggers in the same genre and begin to share links and comments with. This is one of the best ways to grow your network. No, it’s not like getting 250 ‘friends’ on Facebook in a weekend, but that’s because it’s more valuable. Having two or three blogging friends is more valuable and powerful than large numbers elsewhere. Your interaction in the blogosphere with others is what builds that value. It’s more than any number can represent because it’s real exchange of ideas, real interaction. And that my friend is social networking.
So what else am I missing? What else helps make your blog your entry point to social networking?
Aug 17, 2007 | blog
Are you positioning yourself for growth? How much buzz surrounds your personal brand? Wonder what you could do to change that?
Well, one way to start giving people another facet of you is to leverage Social Media. Social Media is made up of many types of tools that can help you not only work to enhance your brand, but also start connecting with people in new ways.
From Wikipedia:
Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media themselves.
Social media can be more than the sum of its parts; blogs, wikis, social networks, presence applications, lifecasting and video are just tools and methods to enrich interactions with your connections. While broadcasting your every move (lifecasting) may not seem like a wise move to most of us, it’s one example of gaining exposure for your idea (i.e. justin.tv).
However, social media also includes ideas and things that have become common, even mainstream – take blogging for example. Blogs are becoming ubiquitous in communicating, sharing ideas, reporting, and personal branding. Blogs are really your own social network in their own right (but hey, that’s another post) because they allow you to do so much more.
From your personal blog, you can talk about your own ideas, topics, perspectives, and most importantly – set your own agenda. From your blog, you can launch into podcasting, video posts, host your own OpenID, host a PDF of your resume, and link to all your online resources.
Some of those resources should be a social network. For nearly any professional, a service like LinkedIn is a great place to start. Yes, it’s an online social network, but it is tailored to professionals connecting with professionals in a controlled environment. It’s really an organized, standardized way to host a copy of your resume, allow people to search resumes, gain authority (via recommendations which are like references), post & search jobs, and accept/deny invitations to “connect” with peers as you see fit.
Some more socially adept individuals will point out that LinkedIn is deficient in many interactive social aspects, such as being able to share pictures, status updates, funny icons, favorites lists (movies, music, etc), and the like. The good part is that none of this clouds the primary purpose of LinkedIn: to network with like-minded professionals.
Now for the more adventurous, there is Facebook where many professionals are starting to leverage the advanced features, using them to better understand their contacts and communicate with them around the world in real time.
Another quickly growing tool in social media is a micro-blogging/presence application such as Twitter. The speed with with you can communicate, share information, get updates, news, and the like is incredible. The important thing to remember about Twitter (and similar services) is to not judge it by it’s original purpose. The Twitter question “What are you doing?” was just a launchpad. In 140 characters or less, you can communicate a status, a thought, a question, a frustration, a plea, a thank you… Twitter is just another view of the online community that you build.
I guess the point of this is that online communities, be they blogs, social networks or IM are only as good as the effort you put into them. Just like in offline relationships, the effort to understand, learn and grow is crucial to succeeding and gaining benefit for you – and your network!
Technorati tags: Social Media, Social Networking, LinkedIn
May 4, 2007 | blog
So many times when I was in the corporate world, several co-workers and associates would tease me about my blog. Or mention as a point of humor about how you can Google my name and all the results are about me. For quite awhile I didn’t really know how to answer these folks or how best to describe why I blogged.
What I’ve figured out is that most people are still afraid of the Internet. More specifically, that their personal information may get distributed on the Internet. The reality of course is that for a small fee, anyone can get all the background information we want or need on anyone else.
The hardest part for me was to overcome my fear of having the world know who I am. I had gotten past that stumbling block before I consciously knew it – seriously, if you go back and read my two early blogs (I don’t count MSN Spaces), you’ll see that I really hadn’t an idea of what I was getting into.
So here are some reasons I blog:
- My personal space on the global stage
- A platform for voicing my opinions, viewpoints, ideas, thoughts
- A place to get feedback from anyone in the world (I don’t delete negative comments – only inappropriate ones)
- A place where people can always find me – from new contacts to old friends (my email address and phone number are always here)
- A portal into everything that I am – from here you can find my resume, my consulting company, my online professional links, my social networks and more
- A permanent place for all the search engines to find me (yes I want that)
At any rate, the main thing I’ve learned is that you can’t be afraid of people learning who you are. With a blog, you have some control of that, you have the ability to craft your personal brand which is much more than just your reputation.
By the way, today I found another tool to promote myself (or yourself – way wait?), called Ziki that is kind of an online self-promotion aggregator. It looks like a fairly interesting site for combining your important online bits and getting them rated higher in Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
