So I talked a little about personal branding yesterday. It’s a different concept than Reputation Management. I want to make that utterly clear. Personal branding is representing who you are. Reputation Management is engaging the conversation about yourself, it’s about putting your best foot forward, on purpose, so people see the side of you that best reflects who you want to be.
Reputation Management Vs. Personal Branding
Reputation Management is tactical. Personal Branding is strategic. Both of them start with character management–not being a jackass, and not kicking hornets nets.
So, a while ago, I posted about Westerville Dentist Susan Stalnaker on my personal blog. I was making a riff more or less about the idea that symbols are important. How you’re percieved by your customers. I wanted to know, what it meant when you took the best parking spot with an easily identifiable car with bad vanity plates. How insulted I’d feel as a customer. She seemed to me to be undoing a good career as a dentist by not paying attention to detail, and by not managing the symbols in her business.
What happened then was interesting–now when you google Westerville Dentist Susan Salnaker, or even Susan Stalnaker, my post comes up in the top 3 every time. The other one is my friend, Central PA Webmaster Ryan Hartman. This was not my attempt to assasinate her rep. This was just me riffing on a bad symbol.
Now, what she SHOULD have and COULD have done was preempt this. For just a few bucks, you can control what people say about you on line. If you have the basics, a Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter account, you push the bad stuff down the page. A few articles in some directories, and it helps more.
Action Steps:
1.) Get on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and LinkedIn.
2.) Make a blog at either WordPress.Com or some other spot.
3.) Get on some video site, preferably YouTube or DailyMotion.
4.) Put the links in the posts as soon as you can.
That’s it. Then, no matter what anyone says about you, you’ll be taken care of online. You will have better & older & more authoritative posts on the matter. You will have a platform to spring from, to show up and to tell your story.
The current 2.0 obsession is personal branding. I respect some of the ideas. Make a name for yourself, do what it takes to be known. Get followers. Be a rockstar freelancer. Be buzzworthy. Be an event. Be a micro celebrity. That’s what folks want. Seem to be successful, fake it till you make it. Total Crap.
It’s mostly crap, unless it’s a means to communicate how you serve people.
Sure, being known is important. I get it. But people are focusing on getting known first. Before they have skills. Before they focus on what they are here to give, how they are here t help. “Know me.” is the entitled cry that people have. Things become about people in lieu of ideas, and the man and the work get muddled up so that an attack on the work is an attack on the man. When we are all about us, then what happens is not good.
My Dream Personal Branding Workshop
Instead of a Personal Branding Workshop on how to dress, how to appear, how to be successful, how to look good, I’d change the focus. I want to be known for helping small businesses. I want to be known as the guy that taught small businesses how to make money from their blogs. So, my workshop would focus on this: what are you giving to others.
My agenda:
- Developing a valuable giveaway to be known for.
- Creating usefulness for the public.
- Networking with other people that are giving value away.
- Putting the focus on the people you want to help.
- Creating a mindset of service, and the skillset to serve.
That’s it. Customer focused. I don’t matter to the customer. What I look like doesn’t matter. If I have a dog doesn’t matter. What matters is who I’m here to help, what I’m giving to you, and how I can be of service to you. Focusing on image first, without the heart of service will get some results. Not nearly the results though, that are yours by focusing on how you can help other people.
Personal Branding Tips That Matter
But if you focus on helping others FIRST, if you focus on making it so that people win from working on you…you get more. That’s what’s making me wealthy. When I switched my service from “what can Chris get” to “what can Chris do to help,” the world radically changed for me. That is making me financially secure faster than any skill I’ve ever acquired. My personal branding statement isn’t about me, it’s about what I do to help.
- Focus on caring first. People smell BS.
- Focus on giving more to others.
- Focus on being of service in every way.
- Focus on what service you give to others.
That’s it. The people that do this with the highest level of authority and skill are all about this simple idea are all about this. So ask: is your message making you a star, your content a star, or what you’re here to give a star? What is more attractive to others, your success, or your service?
Personal Branding For Small Business and soloprenuers has to be about what you’re doing for others. Period. I’ll hit this more often and do some case studies as time permits.
Everyone wants to be Darren or Brian Clark or Gary Vee. Twitter does that to you. A lot of my clients want to be a big time social media coach. They want to be problogger. They want to be rich. They want to earn a living just musing and riffing on the internet.
They don’t realize how much work that them there guys put in. I do. I also wanna be rich. Honestly, I do. But that there path is risky. To get to the perch, you have to be great for a long time. You know, your 10,000 hours. And in the middle of all that you’re missing out on acres of diamonds right here. In your existing business.
When I was a Realtor® It was the same deal. Everyone wanted to be a leader, everyone wanted to be a coach. Nobody wanted to lead and coach. They want recognition. Ain’t no short cuts, bunky. Ain’t no path to greatness but to put in the time to make yourself great. Same people that sold three houses in a month suddenly wanted to be on a superstar pannel because the closings got scheduled on the same Friday.
So it brings me to twitter. I have ~2,000 followers at any given time. I want to have about that many. Because I’m familiar with them. I’m connected to them. I know who’s a Realtor, who’s a lawyer, who’s in Portland and who’s in Boca Raton.
I get spammed offering me more followers. What for? If I sell 200 of my followers (10%) that’s not implausible. And that means I make–from twitter $300,000 (average client over a year is worth $1,500 in money and more in friendship and knowledge.) It’s not a numbers game. Well, it is. It’s nubers of people that are really connected to you. It’s numbers of people that like you. It’s numbers of people that dig you.
I don’t have any advice for using twitter better save this: pick up the phone.
The best tools on twitter are @ and D.
And the phone.
Action Steps:
1. Find people that interest you. Use Search.Twitter.com.
2. @ them. Say hi. Call the ones that leave their info out. Introduce yourself.
3. Don’t have an agenda. Don’t sell, just listen and learn as much as you’re able to.
4. Promote them. Retweet the things that they dig first. Give that away.
5. Keep your eyes open for clients of yours that should be clients of theirs.
That’s it. Honest.
