Workshops

SOCIAL MEDIA WORKSHOP

Five Benefits of Personal Branding

1) Promotions: Anyone who is ambitious and works at a company will want to move up. By building your personal brand, you become the best choice for a promotion.

 2) Happiness: By aligning who you are with what you do and appending goals to it, you can turn “work” into a “hobby.” You can position yourself on a topic you love, so you get paid to do what you would count as a hobby.

 3) Compensation: Personal brands command premium prices. Just like Apple and Gillette can charge more for products you can get for less, you can do the same.

 4) Business: People want to purchase from other people who they know, like, trust. When you make those people happy that they chose you, by giving them great results, they will refer you to even more people.

 5) Perks: Strong brands get perks. For instance, I get free books from authors and other bloggers get free products, such as limited edition Pepsi cans. Celebrities, like Halley Berry, don’t have to pay for anything because of who they are.

 The Personal Branding Process (DCCM)

1) Discover: The first thing you need to do is to figure out who you are, what you want to do in life, while focusing on your strengths, passions and goals. After that, you should create a development plan that aligns your short-term and long-term goals and, finally, a personal marketing plan.

 2) Create: There are traditional and non-traditional ways to create your personal brand. The traditional ways include: a business card, professional portfolio, resume, cover letter and references document. The non-traditional ways include: a video resume, LinkedIn profile, blog, Twitter and your existence on the various other social networks. While you create your brand, ensure that the content, including pictures and text, are concise, compelling and consistent with how you want to represent yourself.

 3) Communicate: After you’ve created your brand, it is only natural (and human instinct) that you want people to see what you’ve done. Depending on your audience (hiring manager, teacher, clients), you may want to tweak your materials accordingly. To properly communicate your brand through self-promotion you need to have your story down pat and find the right sources that would be interested in what you have to say.

 4) Maintain: As you grow, the brand people see has to grow at the same time. For every new job, award, press article, and client victory (to name a few), everything you have created has to reflect that. The reason is simple: You want to use what you did in the past to get what you want in the future. Also, as you become more popular, your reputation will be knocked around and tossed throughout the web, from blog post, to tweet, to video, and more. You’ll want to keep a close eye on where your name is. To do this, try setting up a google alert for your name.

 Three Phases for Leveraging Twitter to Enhance Your Personal Brand

Phase 1: Getting started on Twitter.

1) Set up a Twitter account using your real name. Don’t try any funny nicknames because it makes it harder for people to find you and it brands you as someone who is less serious about their online identity. Use a nice, professional picture of yourself as well. It’s a tiny photo, so a headshot of you smiling is the way to go. Finally, pick a standard background. You’ll have a chance to customize it later on.

2) Don’t post (a.k.a. tweet) anything yet! Your time to tweet will come.

3) Find 10 top Twitters in your field of interest and/or who provide general quality news and start following them. Many people start with CNN, their local newspaper and then top Tweeters in their field aka advertising professionals. Then, retweet (RT – tweeting someone else’s tweet) any of their posts that you think are particularly valuable for others to know about. This ensures your Twitter feed has solid content from the beginning. So, people who check you out will be more likely to follow you.

4) Do a keyword search in Twitter and look at the tweets. Start to follow individuals who you feel are contributing strongly to the conversation. Again, RT several of their posts. Retweeting is even more powerful in catching the attention of people on Twitter than commenting. It’s a sign of respect. And, most polite Twitters will direct message (DM – a message to someone who is following you that only they can see) you a ‘thank you’ for the retweet, which then gives you the chance to connect with them one-on-one.

5) Finally, on Fridays, use the #followfriday tweet (put #followfriday at the beginning of a tweet and then list all the twitternames of folks you admire like this i.e. #followfriday @thompulliam, @ugaadclub) to list all the people you are following that you feel have been tweeting the best advice.

6) After doing these steps consistently for a while (1-2 weeks with daily usage), you should have enough followers and Twitter usage that you can effectively use tools like Mr.Tweet, to search and find more people who you should be following.
 

Phase 2: Adding your own personal tweets in addition to RTs.
7) Start complimenting people you follow for particularly good tweets via DMs – they are a great way to connect privately. It will also open the door for you to DM them a career question.

8) Research and start to add your own tweets with links to online content. BE CAREFUL. Remember that ‘people hear what they see’ and you’ve got only 140 characters to say what you mean. Keep it interesting but don’t make the mistake of being boastful, rude, or mean. These kinds of tweets leave a lasting, negative impression! Also, please be careful of ‘drunken’ tweets. People have a tendency to fall in love with Twitter and log on after a night out on the town. Avoid the urge to tweet under the influence.

Phase 3: Twitter image maintenance and active professional networking.
9) Go back through all of the people you are following, and if after 2 weeks someone you are following isn’t following you, consider unfollowing them. Unless of course they provide you with such great content for RTs that you need to follow them. The goal should be to keep your follower and following numbers relatively close. If you are following double the amount of people who are following you, you’ll be seen as someone not as valuable to follow. 

10) Consider creating a custom background using one of the free tools like Twitbacks. There are also free Powerpoint templates you can download and customize. You can list your skill summary and contact info. Just be sure it is professional and simple. Again, ‘people hear what they see’ – so have some trusted colleagues take a look and get their feedback before you leave it up permanently.

11) Start to ask question via DMs to the Tweeters who you feel have been the best mentors to you via Twitter. If you’ve been RTing their work, they’ll be familiar with you and more open to answering your questions about career.

12) Start to post questions about job search. Something like, “Looking for new ways to connect with architects in San Fran area. Any suggestions?” Be sure to DM a thank you to anyone who replies.

13) As you find companies that you want to work for, be sure to search them as a keyword and find/follow anyone who is connected to the organization. By now, if they look at your feed, you’ll have an impressive one and they’ll most likely follow you back!

 Social Media and Personal Branding Resources:

• Me 2.0 by Dan Schawbel ISBN: 978-1427798206
• www.personalbrandingblog.com
• www.careerealism.com
• www.blog.linkedin.com
• www.grader.com
• http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/
• http://adgadget.tumblr.com/post/148325966

Worksheets are adapted from www.personalbrandingblog.com and www.careerealism.com