10 Step Expert Guide to Blogging Your Personal Brand

January 5, 2009 at 12:15 pm | In Career Development, Personal Branding, Success Strategies, eBrand, marketing, social media | 15 Comments

This is the final post in a series about blogging your personal brand. I’ve written a post for beginners, as well as intermediate and advanced users. Please review those posts before reviewing this one.

1) Podcast your brand on your blog

Whenever I talk about podcasts, I typically think of video, but many bloggers choose to record their voice or an interview through the telephone or a voice recorder and then publish it. You can do the same and there are services that will aid in the publishing process, such as PodBean.com. Audio podcasts are great for people who are scared to show their face or are in situations where they don’t have the necessary equipment to shoot video.

Video is the best way to interact with your audience, especially if you’re charismatic and personable. People can get a sense of you from reading your posts, tweets and social network messages, but when it comes to real interaction and emotional connection, video is king. Purchase a webcam or a video camera and hook it up directly to your computer using a USB connection. If you want to be a professional, and possibly interview other people for an internet type show, then you may want to buy a microphone, a sound amplifier and possibly an HD video camera (they cost less than $1,000 now).

Then you’ll want to get the video on the top video sharing websites in the world. To do this, all you need to do is upload it on TubeMogul, using the name, description and keywords that you feel will be optimize the video for search engines (as well as the video sharing search engines). TubeMogul will put your video on YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, and more.

Finally, you’ll want to use the embed code from the video on either sharing site to use on your blog. You can either post the video as a blog post or decide the transcribe it, in addition to placing the video on the post.

2) Lifecasting

The two best “lifecasting” sharing sites are Qik and UStream.tv. I recommend getting comfortable doing audio or video podcasting before you decide to do live video. When it comes to live video, you have to be authentic, and be cautious as to what you say and do. When you sign-up for one of these services, you are given your own branded web page, where you can use your phone or your webcam to film yourself or other people. While you are lifecasting, people can view this page and see you live, while having the ability to type messages to you. It’s your ability to get to know your audience more and visa versa.

The end result of your time spent lifecasting is a video recording that you can embed on your blog as a post. If you choose to do this, you should give a summary of how your session went!

3) Start your own mailing list

If you want to start a mailing list, then make it different than your blog. A lot of the best bloggers use mailing lists to give their most loyal subscribers additional tips and strategies for signing up. Typically, your readers or viewers that care enough about you and your material will signup for your mailing list to receive more content. Before starting a mailing list, you should think about how busy you are and if you’re able to spend time on such a project. Also, you’ll want to decide how many emails you want to send in a specific period of time and the value that list will receive.

Your mailing list and blog should market each other, which means you’ll want to add links to cross-promote both and any other products or services you want to sell. I recommend the following three email marketing services for your mailing list: iContact, Get Response and Contact Contact. For an example of how a newsletter is attached to a blog, please review Shoemoney’s blog.

4) Place advertisements

There are many different kinds of advertisements you can place on your blog to drive revenue (passive income). Before you start calling, emailing and Facebook’ing possible blog sponsors, you’ll want to create an advertising page on your blog, so people can see the sizes of the ads, what they’ll be receiving in terms of traffic/subscribers and the different options and packages you have.

To find advertisers, you should Google terms relating to your blog and click on company’s that are paying for AdWords. You can also find good sponsors by emailing people who comment on your blog and through natural (organic) search. Email them your pitch and then a link to your advertising page, so they can make a quick decision.

I’ve seen a few different kinds of advertisements on blogs:

  • Text links
  • 125/125 graphic (possibly animated)
  • 468×80 header banner
  • 180×180 single post banner
  • Product / website review posts
  • Sponsored blog posts

You should charge based on your monthly visitor stats, feed subscribers and overall blog credibility and reputation. If you want to see how much traffic you’re bringing in, I recommend Quantcast. Alex Shalman has a great advertising page on his blog if you want an example.

5) Setup an affiliate program

Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. You only get paid for when you people click on advertisements on your site and pay for a company’s products or services.

There are many affiliate programs out there, such as Amazon Associates and Yahoo! Affiliate Programs. Don’t expect huge returns unless you already have a lot of inbound traffic to your website. The money you make from affiliate programs (possibly with other bloggers) will help fund your ongoing blog initiatives and upkeep. If you have deeper interest in affiliate marketing, then you should visit Zach Johnson’s blog.

6) Poll your readers

As a blogger, you should be interested in what your readers think of your blog, the types of posts you’re doing and any topics they would like to learn more about. Also, you may just want to poll them to gather quick feedback, to measure your success or out of curiosity. The best poll service for blogging is Polldaddy, which is actually integrated into WordPress.com now.

7) Build a team blog

A team blog is a blog that has multiple authors. The are a lot of benefits of having multiple contributors to your blog, such as having a variety of voices, more content and saving your time for other purposes, such as marketing the blog. If you’re an expert blogger, you should have a strong network of fellow bloggers to select for your team blog. Using WordPress, you give bloggers permission to write entires and then submit them for your review. You should give them the right to use their avatar, name and a link to their own blog.

I’ve seen team blogs with over 10 authors and they are highly successful. Blogs like Mashable, TechCrunch and The Huffington Post have a lot of bloggers, which allows them to become more of a business media site. You can do the same!

8 ) Use your blog at a platform

A blog can lead to bigger and better things. The most notable are speaking engagements and consulting gigs. By showcasing your interest in receiving those opportunities, you are more likely to garner them. So setup pages with those titles on your blog and if you’ve spoke or consulted in the past, use endorsements, video and a topic outline to show people what you’re made of.

You can also use your blog to sell more of your products, services and introduce people to other sites you own. Your blog will allow you to promote anything you want!

9) Write an eBook / book

After writing hundreds of blog posts, you will naturally want to tie your writings into a book of some sort. Some of you will try and get a literary agent and a publishing deal in order to get your ideas out there, while others will draft an eBook that captures many of your posts. You can sell the eBook and market it on your blog. If you’re interested in having a physical book, you’ll want to have more original content for that, but the eBook doesn’t have to always be original.

10) Start more blogs

When a single blog (or team blog) isn’t enough, you can always start multiple blogs. Obviously, it’s going to take up even more of your time, so think through your current situation before you make the jump. There aren’t too many bloggers who are willing to have yet another blog to build content for. The one’s that do, usually do it on a completely different topic to satisfy their other passion.

The Same Laws Apply For Personal Brands as Any Brand

January 1, 2009 at 11:00 pm | In Book Reviews, Interview, People, Personal Branding, eBrand, marketing | 5 Comments

Today, I spoke with John Gerzema, who is the Chief Insights Officer for Young & Rubicam Group and an author.  We discuss the three main challenges marketers face in today’s marketplace, what the brand bubble is and how to measure it, as well as his five-stage model for brand creativity and change.  John, then gives us his perspective on personal branding.

What challenges do marketers have these days? How are they different than years ago?

Marketing is facing a convergence of forces:

  • First the Fragmentation of everything — of channels, choice, modes and mediums means it’s no longer possible to build a brand on the back of mass media, the way we did in previous decades.
  • Second, because of Social media (collaboration, communication and sharing… social networks, applications and consumer generated media), consumers rely on each other more than brands.
  • And Personalization (products, experiences, mass customization and micro-addressability) means there are no USP’s anymore. A brand has a myriad of potential appeals to be personally relevant.

All of these new phenomena accelerate the decay in brand equity. Consumers are quicker to punish uninteresting brands. Marketing must adapt because brands have nowhere to hide.

What is the Y&R’s Brand Asset Valuator (BAV) and what key research have you found on brands?

BrandAsset Valuator is the world’s largest continuously updated study of brands. We’ve invested over $ 115 million dollars and each year we interview over 500,000 consumers in 44 countries. We’ve tracked consumer perceptions of over 40,000 brands since1993. In fact, we’ve opened up the database for anyone to research hundreds of brands in our study.

What is the brand bubble and why do you think it will burst soon? What can we do today to prepare for it?

“We believe another crisis is brewing on Wall Street: The financial markets think brands are worth more than the consumers who buy them.”

Main Street offers a different view of brands than Wall Street: While brand value increased 80% in three decades, brand awareness declined 20% — brand quality eroded by 24% — trust in brands declined by a staggering 50%. And 85% of brands were either stagnant or declining in brand differentiation.

The first thing we must acknowledge: This is not a brand problem; it’s a business problem.  When consumers fall out of love with brands, shareholder value is at risk. CEO’s are leveraging their brands to make promises of future earnings to shareholders. Today, brands are 30% of the market cap of S&P 500, or almost $ 4 trillion dollars. The 250 most valuable brands are worth $ 2.197 trillion dollars, which exceeds the GDP of France. Even the world’s top 10 most valuable brands are larger than the market capitalization of 70% of U.S. public companies. So we’re advising clients to completely re-think marketing from a cost of doing business, to a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.

The 21st century CEO must be the ‘Brand Manager in Chief’. The best CEO’s think like CMO’s. And the best CMO’s must think like CEO’s. Together, they must bring marketing to the forefront of business strategy in order to access and integrate other functions of the business.

“Marketing isn’t a department, but a way of thinking across the company. Marketing is now everyone’s concern and a business imperative, as important as any strategic function in the enterprise.”

What is your five-stage model for brand creativity and change?

In the book we walk the reader through a five-stage model to drive the brand through their organization and to collaborate from the standpoint of what the consumer wants and what the brand needs. This process involves the entire enterprise recognizing that the brand imperatives are one and the same as the organizational imperatives. Every department and division, including outside vendors, suppliers, partners – everyone in the brand’s value chain – plays a role in fueling the energy of the brand, by contributing creativity and ideas that lead the brand forward. The company has to become what we call an Energy-driven Enterprise, and this especially means that the entire company has to become marketing-led, not just a company with a marketing department.

Most importantly, in developing the process to ignite energy into their brands, we identified what we call the Five Laws of Energy. These five laws now govern the new ConsumerLand, where consumers have new demands and unparalleled power. These five laws help enterprises re-examine how they approach and implement their creativity, their messaging, their flexibility and ability to evolve their brand, their approach to marketing, and their use of strategies and tactics.

Do you have any tips for people wanting to create personal brands? You can use some of the research you’ve already discovered to answer this question.

The same laws apply for personal brands as any brand — Have a unique point of difference (your differentiation) and continuously innovate around it (energy).  Today’s social media and fragmentation described above offer any individual extraordinary opportunity to brand themselves and gain a following quickly. The key as with any brand is to also have integrity and ‘walk your talk’. So the brand promise —the person’s content, delivery and dialogue are all critical factors to providing a brand experience that consumers believe is unique and enduring.

——-
John Gerzema is Chief Insights Officer for Young & Rubicam Group. He is the author of The Brand Bubble.  One of the early founders of account planning in American advertising, John has guided brand strategies to global business and creative acclaim. Previously, John ran Fallon’s international network and founded offices in Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Sao Paulo. He holds a master’s degree in integrated marketing from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and a B.S. in marketing from The Ohio State University.

Road to Me 2.0: The Ultimate Personal Business Card Revealed

January 1, 2009 at 5:43 pm | In Me 2.0, Misc, Personal Branding, marketing | 7 Comments

For the release of my new book and to capture everything I do in the personal branding world, I had new business cards made. It costs about $170 to get 1,000 double-sided, color, 12 pt thick, glossy business card.  One side is the cover of my book and the other has my picture, with my contact information, two media quotes and my title.  From a branding perspective, these business cards will make people remember my face and the book that I have coming out in April.  Whether you’re in college, an entrepreneur or a manager, you should have your own business card.  If you want to learn how to create your own business cards, see my previous post on this topic.

In 2009 Hire People With Large Social Networks For Free Promotion

December 31, 2008 at 2:12 pm | In Employer Branding, Personal Branding, Recruitment, Success Strategies, marketing, social media | 8 Comments

We’ve spoken about how your network will soon be a job qualification back in October. I think it’s even more than that now, taking the economic climate and the rise of social media as a mainstream vehicle into account. Your network, which is naked online and seen by employers and your management, will become one of the most important promotional items for your company or prospective company.

We should all have a marketing mindset now.  If you don’t, it’s time to start reading this blog and acquire one!

3 different perspectives

The corporate perspective

Company’s are going to be cutting back on marketing budgets for 2009. Most company’s already have set their budgets and they are significantly lower than a year ago this time. Also, marketing departments are being downsized, which means there are less people to get the message out. The problem is that they still need to get their brand out there, in order for people to 1) remember them 2) think positively of them 3) have them in their evoked set (a top-of-mind product/service).

The employee perspective

Employees, especially in the marketing department, are in desperate need of support. With a slim budget, they are still forced to see a return on each dollar they invest in their marketing programs. Many employees aren’t accustomed to social media yet and are still resorting to investing every dollar they have into interrupting random people, hoping they decide to, at a minimum, visit their website. Employees are going to be very irritated and shocked that proving ROI next year is going to be difficult. Most have not taken the past year or two to build out their online network by developing lists that they can market to themselves.

The potential hire perspective

Over a million people have laid off, but how many have taken the time to build up their social lists? I bet very few. Most job seekers are still convinced that the old way of job seeking (how to get a job through social media) is the way to go and, sadly, most fail as a result. Sure, they create a LinkedIn profile and submit their resumes to corporate websites and traditional job banks, such as Monster and Careerbuilder, but they don’t understand that we’re almost in 2009! Attraction-based (or inbound) marketing is the best long-term strategy for never applying for jobs and getting job offers on your doorstep. The few potential hires that are socially-connected should be rewarded with job offers.  They do have to fulfill the job requirements and be exceptional.  That will never change.

Employees MUST BE the brand in 2009

There’s no doubt it my mind that each and every employee is a brand ambassador. There aren’t sign-up forms for employees. The second you accept your job offer, you hold the corporate brand for life. Management has to push their vision at you and make you love your work, despite economic uncertainties. If you meet someone for the first time and tell them you work for XYZ company, you better be able to articulate what the company does, what your role is and smile at the same time. If you commit a crime and do something dumb, at some level, it can hurt your corporate brand. This is the reason why company’s don’t like hiring people that have criminal records.

In 2009, you and your company can only succeed if you live and breath the corporate brand.

Benefits of hiring socially-connected employees

  • Marketing from the inside out for free
  • More connections equals higher productivity
  • Stay ontop of trends
  • Save money on hiring employees with quick and trusted referrals
  • Free consulting, tips and resources from people in their network

Layoff marketers who aren’t socially-connected

This might sound harsh and many of you might get upset, but the reality is that there are many more job seekers (3.3) for every job now.  That being said, it’s easy for a company, especially a small company, to add and remove workers on-demand.  Unless the marketer has provided exceptional ROI over a long period of time, their job is in already in jeopardy.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve put in 10 years or even 25 at your company either.

Marketers that are socially-connected can help you market for free, when you have almost no money.  Wouldn’t you rather hire these individuals, than keep those who can’t help you do this?

Are you socially-connected?

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