Our Personal Brands Control the Conversation Not Companies

December 16, 2008 at 11:56 pm | In Book Reviews, Futures, Interview, People, Personal Branding, Success Strategies, marketing | 1 Comment

Today, I spoke with Tom Asacker, who is a well-known branding expert, author and speaker. We talked about how conversations have changed over the past few years, how to break through marketing clutter, and some future predictions. As more and more companies are built and destroyed in the next year, marketing and branding still remain an important topic. Now is your chance to be seen, while everyone divests in their marketing budgets.

Tom, how have conversations, branding and marketing changed in the past few years?

That’s a big question, Dan. It would take us a few years to fully examine it, especially when you take the past few months of economic meltdown, and its effect on brands, into consideration. But let’s look at it this way: Branding is accomplished through value-added innovation and marketing that appeals to ones audience. Fundamental outcomes of “branding” are, obviously, behavior, but also conversations; the ones within an organization, between the brand and its audience, amongst audience members, and, most importantly, the ones people have with themselves.

Those conversations used to be controlled and manipulated by the organizations behind the brands; like the Wizard of Oz creating drama with his audience by hiding behind the curtain and manipulating levers. But Toto, Internet-enabled technologies and platforms, has yanked the curtain wide open. The Great and Powerful Oz has been revealed as nothing more (or less) than men and women, like the rest of us. The question now becomes, Can these people help us with our journeys through their creative endeavors, their work? Do they have the wisdom, vision, and courage to inspire, guide and empower us?

You believe (as well as Godin and others) that people have stopped listening to spam and clutter. What do they listen to now and how do we market around it?

Remember, spam is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder, and we’ve always had clutter. So people are really no different today then they’ve always been, in that they selectively choose what to listen to, watch, and read based upon what they desire; what interests them and what they find value in. Today’s marketing challenge is that there are a lot more interesting things for them to choose from.

And Dan? You can not market around this fact. Rather, you must accept it and be driven to continuously reinvent your brand, differentiate and provide superior value for your particular audience. You have to approach it head on, with boldness and daring.

How does this “change in branding” impact the workforce and how they can succeed at work?

I have no idea. Seriously, the workplace is its own ecosystem, where people can succeed in the short term whether customers value their organization and brands or not. Detroit’s big three are on the verge of bankruptcy, yet their CEOs took home tens of millions of dollars last year. Absurd, but a fact of business life.

“That being said, if you work for an enlightened leader, one who places the interests and concerns of his people and customers above his own, then demonstrate how you can help add value and improve people’s lives. Because if you are not adding value in your work, you’re simply consuming resources and taking up space.”

What are 3 strategies that brands can use now to break through the clutter and get their messages across?

  • First, be different in way that asserts your purpose as a business, and that purpose should be about them and not about you and making money. This will gain the attention of your highly skeptical and cynical audience.
  • Next, be desirable in way that appeals to their interests. Most organizations have no idea what their customers are feeling and, thus, what they presently desire in the marketplace.
  • Third, be real. Give people an experience with your brand that reinforces the value that they’ve intuited from their associations with your brand. Don’t try to communicate believability; demonstrate it.
  • And finally, show your audience that you are interested in them by continuing to be interesting. Remember, brand is a verb not a noun.

What do you predict for the future of branding? What trends should we watch out for?

Just like Mr. T predicted in Rocky III, I predict pain! Many organizations, and independent professionals, will collapse during the imminent protracted economic downturn, either because they don’t understand how to build a desirable and profitable entity (a.k.a brand) or because the leaders simply do not want to make the tough decisions and do the hard work necessary to create one. See my 9 predictions for 2009!

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Tom Asacker, was referred to as a marketing guru in Tom Peters’ renowned book, Re-imagine!. More often described as a catalyst and non-conformist and acclaimed for his no-nonsense style, Tom Asacker is the author of A Little Less Conversation and A Clear Eye for Branding, groundbreaking books that redefine business for the new, customer-controlled economy. Tom’s first book, Sandbox Wisdom, a heartwarming story about a CEO’s search for meaning and success in the world of business and work, was a business bestseller in the U.S., and was published in South Korea, India and Estonia to rave reviews.

What Social Media Tool Reveals the Transparent Brand You?

December 16, 2008 at 12:27 pm | In Futures, Personal Branding, Reputation Management, social media | 6 Comments

You might think this is a trick question, but for now, it’s not. I’m the most transparent on Twitter. After Twitter, I reveal more of my personal brand on this blog and then on Facebook. I’m known for different things on different services and manage my brand slightly different right now because the audiences vary. I think it’s important that you know what audience you have on each of these social networks by recognizing commenter’s, wall posters, etc. The more you can identify and send messages to the right audiences, the more success you’ll have. It’s also imperative that you don’t send inappropriate messages to audiences that may include your parents or hiring managers.

How do you brand yourself on each website?

Regardless of which website I’m on, my main brand message is extremely consistent. I brand myself as the leading personal branding expert for Gen-Y and have been for over a year. Every single website you see me on has the same picture (avatar), my name (Dan Schawbel, not Daniel or Danny) and my personal brand statement. What I mean here is the language and type of content I post to each of these websites is slightly different.

My blog: On my blog, I brand myself as a thought leader, personal branding activist and expert, as well as a commentator. I also promote a lot of people constantly, so I’ve been branded as a “giver.” I use my blog to flush out my ideas, get feedback, start conversations and as a marketing tool.

Twitter: On Twitter, I get real intimate with my audience, even though I have thousands of Twitter followers. It’s easier to showcase more for your transparent brand when you are limited to the amount of words you can use. Twitter makes it easier to share quick thoughts or feelings. For instance, I’ve been tweeting about how my grandfather has been really sick, yet I wouldn’t really share this on Facebook or this blog (I just did, but you get the point). I’m also branded as the “quick fact” or “stat” guy on Twitter because I share interesting research I find everyday. I do a lot of Twitter polls as well.

Facebook: I don’t use Facebook much anymore, especially after graduating college a few years ago. The reason is simple: I have a clash in audiences on Facebook. I’m friends with my high school and college friends, summer camp friends, old teachers, family, coworkers, my manager and business contacts. If I were to be completely transparent, such as syndicating my tweets on Facebook, I would be messaging some people who either didn’t care or that would think differently of me or possibly fire me? Facebook has become a global neighborhood for your brand, from birth to death, and it forces you to remain completely transparent to all audiences. Are you ready for that?

LinkedIn: I hardly ever use LinkedIn, except to add new contacts and update my profile to ensure accuracy. Since LinkedIn is strickly for my professional brand, I leave it that way. I don’t share anything outside of my professional life. I have a hunch that this professional network will expand and become more sociable in the future. When this happens, I think we will have a problem much greater than Facebook, which is having employers reject us immediately based on a first impression.  Should be interesting!

YouTube: First, YouTube’s audience enjoys humor or viral videos. My videos aren’t supposed to be funny or viral. Instead, their main purpose is to communicate something emotionally, like I couldn’t do with words on this blog (or through pictures). To me, my YouTube audience is my blog audience because that’s where it’s promoted. People don’t really search for my material on YouTube.

Mashable: I just started as a feature writing for Mashable, which is an excellent source for all of your social networking needs (plug!). I’m a little less revealing when I post on Mashable because their audience demands big ideas and strategies. It’s also important to note that that audience is much larger, and as humans, we will be more careful when we are “performing” to a larger audience.

Our future is hyper-transparent

In the future, transparency will be commonplace and there will be no hiding. People, like you, will be viewed by the internet paparazzi on a reoccurring basis without your permission. Some of you will welcome it, while others of you will feel threatened by it, but there will be no escape. We will all be forced to live on the web, losing the comfort and privacy of having our brand stay secluded in reality.

If we want to be discovered, and reach a mass audience, then the web is the cheapest and most efficient way of doing this. There is an opportunity cost associated with not having your brand rest online. All these social tools will be mixed, mashed, filtered and spread out, so any move you make will be seen by each website your brand lives on.

“In the end, you must be the real you because everyone else is taken and replicas don’t sell for as much. If you ever question anything you do, always revert to being yourself and your transparency will shine through.”

Build Your Company’s Brand and Your Brand Will Reap the Rewards

December 16, 2008 at 12:20 am | In Employer Branding, Interview, People, Personal Branding, Success Strategies, marketing, social media | 8 Comments

Today, I spoke with Mike Volpe, who is a fine example of someone who has built his personal brand and employers brand simultaneously.  His coined term, “inbound marketing,” which reflects how social media can be used to attract opportunities passively, rather than proactively.  Instead of cold calling a customer or applying for a job with a resume, people will come for you after they’ve read your content.  In this way, people want to work for you, interview you or just be apart of what you’re doing, without asking them for help!   Mike spills some of his secrets in this interview :) .  A special thanks to Rebecca Corliss for setting this up and for being an online viral video star!

Mike, you and your team have done an excellent job branding your company as a “cool place to work at.” Can you share some of your employer branding success secrets, while having a somewhat tight budget?

When it comes to branding your company as a “cool place to work”, I think it starts with authenticity. We really do think we’re a cool place to work, and we all like working here. If that is true, the next step is just sharing and publishing. Because we have a lot of fun while we work, we find sharing our passion is easy. We publish lots of things about the company – examples include the photos of the “HubSpot Second Birthday Party” we put on Flickr, or the HubSpot Tech Team posting videos of their foosball games on YouTube.

“We think about all this stuff as “inbound marketing for recruiting”. Just like we use inbound marketing to promote our software, we think about how we can publish and share and engage with people to attract the best candidates to work here.”

For marketing hiring for instance, I already get tons of great resumes from some of the top marketing people out there – people with 5,000 Twitter followers and quite popular blogs are applying to work at HubSpot without me asking them to do so. It’s great! But all of this really starts with having a great team that is passionate about what you’re doing, and we’re lucky to have such a great team at HubSpot.

Most company blogs fail, but your HubSpot blog has succeeded. What have you done differently than other companies to get your subscription count at over 5,000?

Blogging and creating content are critical parts of inbound marketing. Our blog has been both rewarding and a lot of fun. We’re over 8,000 subscribers now if you count both email and RSS, and we’re in the Technorati top 10,000, which is really good for a company blog.

I think most blogs fail for two reasons.

  • First, I think most companies write blog articles that they want people to read, but it’s not what people actually want to read. Their articles read like spec sheets and advertisements. People don’t want to read that. People read blogs that give them useful and interesting information on the topics they like. If you look at the numbers, we seem to be doing a good job at HubSpot of creating content that appeals to our audience. We almost never mention our software.
  • Second, most companies will start a blog for about 3 months and then stop because “it’s not working”. It can take you 3 months to get into a rhythm and start writing decent stuff and build a following. I think most companies quit too early. If you’re starting a blog, I think you need to commit for at least 6 months and publishing 3 times a week. We recently started a video podcast – www.HubSpot.tv – and we didn’t even look at the numbers for the first 3 months. It took us that long to work out all the kinks and get the content and format right. Just now we’re starting to see the returns in terms of subscribers and downloads.

You do a podcast series and have recently released a viral music video. Why are you taking the time to do this, in addition to blogging? Is it worthwhile?

The more content you create, and the more interesting that content is, the more successful your inbound marketing program will be. We’re always experimenting with new types of content. In fact, most of our spending in marketing is on hiring people to create content – not buying advertising. This week on the blog we’re going to try some cartoons, sort of like the New Yorker ones, but of course about marketing. We’ve done about 7 “viral” videos, many didn’t work, but the “Oughta Know Inbound Marketing” one did work, it got 40,000 views in the first week. Not everything works, so with inbound marketing you just experiment a lot, learn from your failures and keep working hard.

“Our co-founder Brian Halligan says “Inbound marketing is about the size of your brain, not the size of your wallet.”

I think companies should rethink every aspect of their marketing and ask why they are paying for advertising and could they build their own channel instead.

HubSpot TV started as an experiment in new content. Not only did we launch the HubSpot TV video podcast I mentioned earlier, but we also broadcast it live as a TV show online. We have hundreds of people who tune in at 4pm EST on Friday to see me and Karen Rubin chat about marketing. They use Twitter to ask questions, it’s a lot of fun. Under the old rules of marketing to get on TV we would have had to buy expensive TV ads.

Today you just start broadcasting your own TV show with a free streaming service and a $70 webcam. Is it worth it? It depends on your goals. HubSpot TV gets thousands of downloads per month, we have hundreds of viewers and hundreds of iTunes subscribers. It takes Karen and I about 3 hours per week, and we have a few hundred bucks worth of equipment. And its growing pretty fast. I think it is a far better ROI than buying print ads in a magazine.

HubSpot released Twitter Grader, Website Grader and Press Release Grader. By unleashing something that individuals could readily use and enjoy, what were the payoffs for HubSpot?

Building tools that attract people into your business is a great inbound marketing technique. The free tools have been really successful. What’s great about the tools is that they are built for our target market and get them to engage with us instantly. And most of the tools diagnose a problem that some part of HubSpot can help solve. Website Grader is like offering free medical exams, but charging for the medicine to solve the problems you find.

People can choose to go to another drug store or make their own medicine, but a lot of people will buy from you because they trust you. We’ve recently put all our free tools on one website Grader.com and I think in the next month or so you’ll see another free tool, and then more a couple months after that.

How have you build your personal brand through your company? How has your company benefited inspite of it?

For me, I think 99% of my personal brand is because of my work at HubSpot. I publish a lot of information about marketing, and nearly all of what I publish has the HubSpot brand on it.

“If you’re doing your job right, as an inbound marketer, you’ll end up building a personal brand naturally as part of promoting your company.”

If you write blog articles, comment on other blogs, get active in social media, record videos and things like that for your company, you can’t help but get known a little bit yourself. Robert Scoble might be the first example of this. His personal brand is because of his blogging about Microsoft.

I do have personal blog, and I use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. But all my best blog articles end up on the HubSpot Blog, because that’s my job. The balance is hard sometimes. For example, I have a personal Twitter account (www.Twitter.com/mvolpe), but we also have a HubSpot Twitter account (www.Twitter.com/HubSpot). And I send lots of messages using my personal account to people about HubSpot and telling people to follow HubSpot on Twitter or attend our webinars.

“Now, if I ever leave HubSpot (maybe a decade from now to teach a marketing class at a business school or something) my personal Twitter account stays with me, but the HubSpot account stays with the company.”

And I contributed a lot to building that company account, so the company got value for the salary they paid me.  So, I don’t think it’s an “either / or” situation.

“I think if you are working hard to promote your company, you’ll end up building a personal brand.”

And any personal brand you build benefits the company too. Just make sure you are also building up a presence (company accounts, company blog, etc.) that can stay with the company and everything doesn’t go with you if you leave. That will reflect pretty poorly on you for your next job.

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Mike Volpe is the Vice President of Marketing at HubSpot, an Internet marketing software startup, where he leads the company’s lead generation and branding strategy through inbound marketing, including blogging, search engine optimization and social media.

Before HubSpot, Mike worked as Director, Marketing Operations at SolidWorks Corp. where he launched a number of inbound marketing initiatives such as SEO, PPC, blogging and podcasting. Mike is an MBA graduate of the MIT Sloan School of Management where he was awarded the Peterson Merit Scholarship and the McGovern Entrepreneurship Award.

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