David Armano Reveals His Personal Branding Secrets

December 30, 2008 at 1:50 am | In Career Development, Interview, People, Personal Branding, Success Strategies, eBrand, marketing, social media | 1 Comment

Today, I spoke with David Armano, who is a well-known blogger and visual expert.  He’s best known for his marketing diagrams and speaks at a lot of industry events.  I spoke to David about how he’s grown his personal brand, what it takes to become known in a cluttered world and tips he has for bloggers who are just starting out.  One of the main themes in our talk was how he separates his personal brand from his employers brand and how he’s able to make both brands mutually benefit over time.  I’m in a similar situation to David, so it was helpful to see how he’s handled it.

David, in terms of the way you branded yourself online, do you feel you owe much of your success to your visual drawing? Was there some sort of viral effect with them that got you noticed?

The visuals absolutely had a great deal to do with the visibility I am fortunate enough to have. My first few blog posts were mostly about user experience and brands. There’s a lot of people talking about these topics. Then one day, I did a visual and I noticed that other blogs started using it on their sites and they would link back to me. And as I did more, I noticed the same pattern. Over time, I started building a reputation for doing this—and I enjoyed dong them. People saw value in the visuals—many use them in their presentations. One visual in particular that I created is called “influence ripples” and it pops up all over the place.

The visuals themselves have helped me to build my personal brand as they are often times immediately recognizable, but what’s more important is that I try to provide value with them. There’s a lot of change going on in the spaces between social media, marketing and even the user experience and what I try to do with my visuals is take something potentially complex and boil it down. Those who find value in this, use what I put out there and in return reward me with their attention and eventually trust. But like any brand it has to happen over time. I’ve done hundreds of visuals and posts over the past 3 years which I hope contribute something to the larger conversation.

How are you able to separate your personal brand from that of Critical Mass, your company? What parts intertwine and has your company benefited from your exposure/visibility/credibility?

On my blog it’s fairly separate as is my personal Twitter account. I make it clear when writing on my blog that it’s my personal opinions. But there is a good deal of intertwining. When I write for Ad Age, it’s predominantly for Critical Mass, but obviously I bring my personality to it. That’s one way the agency benefits from it. I also have relationships with journalists at BusinessWeek and Adweek that were originally initiated from blogging. I see the relationship as mutually beneficial. Whenever I speak at an event, I represent Critical Mass (the name of the agency is on my slides) though I often times get invited to speak because of my personal profile. But in reality, it’s co-branding.

People know me from before I worked with my current employer and that’s just a reality. I get a good deal of leeway in my job and really enjoy the people I work with, so the bottom line is that I try to treat the “co-branding” very respectfully and not take it for granted. If you are going to be in a position like mine, you have to always be looking for opportunities to have your company benefit from your profile. If they are comfortable with it, it can be beneficial to both parties.

What are your top 3 tips for bloggers who want to market their content to the right people?

  • A. Focus on the content
  • B. Play to your strengths
  • C. Get out there in person

First thing for bloggers to realize is that their content has to be solid. They can find an undeserved niche or chime in with the masses, but there has to be something there that gets people coming back. The best marketing for a blogger is the blog itself and what others say about it vs. what they do. People will recommend good bloggers, it’s that simple.

Secondly you have to play to your strengths. Some bloggers are amazingly extroverted and social, they respond to every comment they get and engage people all day long. Others are organized and create useful lists. Still others are great on video. Find out what your strengths are and develop those vs. trying to be like others. And lastly making connections—meeting people in real life is incredibly important.

“Just like with all networking, once you’ve met someone in person it makes a more lasting impression and goes a long way.”

You use “//” and Brogan uses “[ ]” as part of your brand. Why?

I’ve been doing that since long before blogging. Partially it represents the // in Http:// which I think pays homage to my passion for the interactive medium. But also, I just think it looks cool. :-)

What are some personal branding lessons you’ve learned over your career?

Great question. When I first started blogging, I did not feature my photo on my blog, or even on Twitter at first. I wanted to rely on the visual manifestation of my brand (logo, visuals etc.). I was wrong on this. I’ve since changed both and understand the power of a “face”. For a personal brand to be truly effective, people have to feel like there is a “person” behind it. A simple photo helps move you in this direction and it was something I learned on the fly. I’ve also learned that a personal brand can begin by accident, but it takes some work and strategy to have something that really represents something you feel comfortable with. It’s different for everyone and at some point you have to ask yourself “what do I want to be known for”?

So I make fairly calculated efforts in what I talk about and how I talk about them. While I often times talk about social media, user experience and marketing—I also try to communicate visually as much as I can, because my true passion is in the communication. I really enjoy solving problems visually. So I am learning that in order for this to be my “personal brand” I need to be careful not to over indulge on all of the “Web 2.0” talk.

“Lastly I’ve learned that having a personal brand that is sufficiently visible requires working in an environment where your employer not only comfortable with it but want to tap it somehow. This is the best case scenario and can work for everyone if both parties reciprocate.”

———
David Armano has over 14 years experience in the communications industry with the majority of his time spent in digital marketing and experience design. An active thought leader in the industry, David authors the popular Logic + Emotion blog currently ranked in the top 25 of the “Power 150” as listed by Advertising Age. David’s writing and visual thinking has been cited by respected sources such as by Forrester, Crain’s and landed him in BusinessWeek on several occasions including their “Best of 2006”. David leads an interdisciplinary group of designers, writers and content strategists for the Chicago office of Critical Mass, a marketing agency focused on creating extraordinary experiences.

10 Step Advanced Guide to Blogging Your Personal Brand

December 29, 2008 at 11:42 am | In Personal Branding, SEO, Success Strategies, eBrand, marketing, social media | 12 Comments

Personal Branding

This is the third post in a series about blogging your personal brand. I’ve written a post for beginners and one for intermediate users. Please review those posts before indulging in this one.

1) Host your own blog

Instead of borrowing someone else’s space and redirecting your domain name to that space, you have the ability to install WordPress on your own host. In January, I’ll be switching over to PersonalBrandingBlog.com instead of my PersonalBrandingBlog.wordpress.com because I want to own my blog entirely, have more control over the page elements, make money and turn it into a larger property. Advanced personal branding bloggers should strive to make the switch and not freak out about losing content or subscribers. As long as you are using Feedburner.com for your RSS feeds and have exported your content, you should be all set. The only issue you’ll have is that you will lose “Google juice” to your previous site.

For instructions on how to successfully install WordPress on Godaddy, please go here. If you want to save money on your Godaddy domains and host, please go here and remember to choose “Linux” hosting.

2) Select or design a unique theme

There are literally thousands of WordPress themes across the net built by some savvy professional designers and programmers. You might not have the funds or expertise in order to get a custom blog template made, but there are free themes floating around as well. When you start researching and discovering themes that you enjoy, remember that some themes are geared for specific purposes. For instance, there are “magazine themes” for people who have teams of content contributors, covering various categories. You want to not only select the best looking theme, but one that you can handle using.

If you perform a Google search on “top wordpress themes,” you should have more than enough to choose from.

3) Choose plugins

After selecting a theme, you will want to install a few necessary plugins. They will help enable people to share your content (more traffic and subscribers), as well as make your blog more interactive. Here are my favorite plugins:

  • Akismet is a spam filter that checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they are spam or not, also checks the trackbacks for spam.
  • Sociable enables small icons from various social bookmarking sites (like Digg, del.icio.us, reddit, etc) under the posts on many blogs, so people can share your content freely.
  • Get Recent Comments gets the excerpts of the latest comments on your blog and displays them on your sidebar
  • Popularity Contest is a very useful plugin that lets you automatically highlight your best posts to your readers.
  • Related posts generates a list of related posts based on the text of blog entry.
  • Subscribe To Comments allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.
  • Twitter Updater automatically sends a Twitter status update to your Twitter account when you create, publish, or edit your WordPress post.

For more plugins, please go to the WordPress main page.

4) Integrate your social networks

As an advanced user, you better be on social networks. Since everything in social media is considered a list, you’ll want to leverage your blogs success to increase the readership of your other properties. This may include your accounts on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, SlideShare, Upcoming, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Digg, Flickr or FriendFeed. There are thousands more, and you should promote only the top 5-10 that you use the most often. If you include too many, people will completely tune them out and if you include too few, it will seem like you aren’t a power user.

Use either text or graphics to promote these profiles. For icons, please go here.

5) Search engine blog optimization

Search engine optimization for your blog is critical for a number of reasons. First, everyone uses search engines to learn about new things. Second, search engine ranking showcases authority. Finally, having individual posts ranking high can help build the brand of your blog. Your goal is to rank number one for your name, as well as your topic. Think about the keywords that reflect your topic and use them throughout your headline, subheadings and body. Use links within your posts to link to other posts you’ve written and try as hard as you can to write good enough content that people will link to it.

There’s also a WordPress plugin called “All in One SEO Pack,” which will help you optimize your posts for search engines. It helps to own a domain name with the keywords you want to rank high for, as well as a blog title that reflects those same keywords.

6) Try a few different types of posts

There are many different types of posts you can have on your blog. Experimenting with a variety of posts keeps people guessing and interested in your blog. You could scrape the blogosphere or a traditional news site for an interesting fact or article, then quote it and respond to it in a post. You could also email a few bloggers, asking them all the same question, such as “what is your prediction for 2009, and formulate a blog post around their answers. You could become the aggregator of news for a specific topic and links your five favorite blog posts of the week. A series of posts around a theme, such as this post, tends to work well too.

7) Allow someone to guest blog

As an advanced blogger, you are given the right and hopefully the authority, to reach out to other bloggers and give them the opportunity to guest post. As your blog becomes more popular, people may just come to you and ask to guest post, but when you are in infancy, you will have to be pro-active. The benefits of a guest post on your blog are that you save time from writing a post, it’s a great way to network with other bloggers and it’s a new voice on your blog.

8 ) Interview your favorite blogger

I’ve interviewed close to 100 people on this blog. It’s the single best networking tactic I’ve used in my entire life. I couldn’t have done it until I was a more advanced blogger though because I needed a promise of value to other people. You’ll want to interview people who are more successful than you are or that can provide some knowledge in an area where you aren’t an expert. You can do the interviews by either phone, through email or in-person (video). It’s really up to you and depends on your schedules.

9) Get ranked

A great way to gain visibility for your blog is to get ranked. There are a number of different sites that rank blogs out there, such as the AdAge Power 150, the Junta 42, the Viral Garden’s Top 25 Marketing & Social Media Blogs, the 2009 Bloggers Choice Awards, and the Big List of SEO Blogs. There are tons more, but these are the ones I’m most familiar with in the blogosphere. The purpose of submitting your blog to these lists is that you get added visibility and there’s an opportunity cost if your site isn’t on them.

10) Form content partnerships

If you don’t have partnerships with other websites, you are really missing out because your content will be isolated in one specific area. Every time I post, it ends up in Reuters, Hoovers, Chicago Sun-Times, Forbes, Brazen Careerist, CollegeRecruiter.com, HRM Today, Social Media Today, Marcom Professional, Sign-on San Diego, The Examiner, and Packets Online. Obviously forming these relationships took a long time, but they give my blog more credibility and my posts more movement. Just like submitting byline articles to magazines, you want to start small and work your way up. Research your topic area to find websites that might want to syndicate your blog and reach out to them accordingly.

How to Lay the Brand Foundation for a Consulting Business

December 24, 2008 at 6:19 pm | In Corporate Branding, Personal Branding, Success Strategies, eBrand, social media | 4 Comments

Reader question

“I have recently gone solo and started a consulting business (with a handful of employees)… from a social networking branding perspective (i.e. twitter, blog etc.) should I concentrate on building myself or my company brand.  I know the answer is both, but which one first and foremost would you recommend, for example should my blog, facebook page, twitter names be me or my company.  What would you suggest?” – Joe Newbert

My analysis

General branding thoughts

When it comes to consulting, your customers want to deal directly with an individual that they must know, like and trust.  They are paying to work with a company, whose reputation is attached to each individual.  This means that, depending on how the consulting business is laid out, you’ll need each consultant to have the necessary skills (and/or complimentary skills if there are group projects) in order to provide value for each customer.  Hopefully, you’ll be able to over-deliver and get repeat business.  With consulting, you are offering up your expertise, as well as the consultants you hire, and they become your best salespeople for your corporate brand.

Brand strategy recommendations

There are two main things you need to know.  First, you want to protect your personal brand, your corporate brand and the brands of everyone who is working for your consulting company.  Second, you want to focus on personal brands over the corporate brand because, in consulting, transactions and relationships are 100% between people.  Below are some strategies that will help you achieve both of these:

  • Reserve your name, all of your consultants names’ and your corporate name on Twitter.
  • Ensure that everyone you work with has a Facebook page and a LinkedIn profile.
  • Purchase your corporate domain name, as well as your personal domain name (yourname.com) and tell your team to purchase their own as well.
  • Start a team blog under your corporate domain name, while positioning yourself as the top contributor because you are the CEO.  Allow each of your fellow consultants to blog on behalf of your company, while giving them the freedom to start developing their own blogs for individual use.
  • Get a camera and film personal introductions with you and your fellow consultants.  Use these video intros to send to potential clients.  You can even do a holiday greeting video as well!
  • Splatter your pictures across all social media sites and make sure to list your corporate brand name and the area of expertise you/they have.

Verdict

A personal brand is more important than the corporate brand in consulting businesses.  Since your company has more than one personal brand, you have to ensure that each consultant you hire aligns with your corporate brand in order to be successful.  From a social media branding perspective, you should demand that each consultant establishes themself using the tools mentioned above (including you), while tying everything together into a cohesive and impactful website.

How would you handle this situation?

Now is your chance to respond to Joe’s question.  Do you think he should start with the corporate brand first and then work on his personal brand?

Are we connected?

Leo Babauta Helps Us Achieve Personal Branding Zen

December 22, 2008 at 5:52 pm | In Book Reviews, Career Development, Interview, People, Personal Branding, social media | 3 Comments

Today, I spoke with Leo Babauta, who is one of the most well-known and respected bloggers in the world. He blogs at Zenhabits.net and has been writing for decades on work concentration and management. We talk about his success story, why it’s important to work smart (not just hard), how to stay afloat in the bad economy, what it takes to have a killer blog and the steps he’s taken to build his personal brand over time.

A few years ago you quit smoking, lost weight, tripled your income, started a successful eBook company, created an extremely successful blog called Zen Habits, and began to truly enjoy your life. How did you do it?

One thing at a time. :)

Seriously, as I talk about in The Power of Less, I’ve found myself to be much more effective at achieving goals and creating new habits if I focus on one goal or habit at a time, and concentrate the full power of my focus on it. I also used a number of effective habit-change principles that I learned through quitting smoking to create each new habit — to learn more about this, join The Power of Less New Year’s Challenge on thepowerofless.com.

So I focused first on quitting smoking, then on running, then on waking earlier so I could run, then on eating healthier, then on becoming more frugal and eliminating debt, and so on. One habit at a time, then focus on the next thing. Before I knew it, the list of accomplishments was incredibly long — more than I ever dreamed possible within a year or two.

It is possible to do more with less, even under intense corporate pressures and a poor economy?

It’s absolutely possible, as I’ve proven and as many others have shown as well. Not only is it possible, it’s even more imperative with intense corporate pressures and the tough economic times we’re facing.

“If you don’t do more with less, you’re liable to lose your job or go into bankruptcy.”

With intense corporate pressures, you have to learn to focus more, and become more effective with the time that you allocate to work. You can spend that time by being incredibly busy, doing a ton of tasks, but at the end of the day having little to show for all of your busy-ness … or you can spend it by focusing on just a few really important, high-impact tasks that will do a lot for your business in the long run. Which is a better use of your time — the high-volume, low-impact approach, or the low-volume, high-impact approach?

With the tough economy, you will also need to learn to cut back to the essentials, so you are not sacrificing quality of life as you become more frugal. It doesn’t cost much to be happy and live an incredible life if you have the things you really love and value in your life, and cut out the rest. I’ll soon be releasing an ebook companion to The Power of Less, called “Thriving on Less: Simplifying in a Tough Economy”, on my site thepowerofless.com.

How do we break our goals down into manageable tasks?

Start by focusing on one goal at a time. Pick the first goal on your list of goals — the one that will have the most impact, that you can accomplish in the next year — or even better, in the next 1-3 months.

Then, for that one goal, focus on just the next task you have to complete. If it’s a task that will take an entire day or several days, break that task into a smaller task that will only take an hour or less — 10-30 minutes might be even better, but no more than an hour.

Then focus just on that task, clearing away all distractions, until that task is done. Move on to the next task and finish that one, and so on. You can’t do more than one task at a time anyway, so it’s better to stop trying to switch between tasks and focus on one task at a time, and become more effective.

You have around 80,000 RSS subscribers to your blog. For any new blogger starting out, what would you recommend to them?

Start small. Don’t worry about getting thousands of subscribers – just worry about writing your next incredibly useful post. Creating great, useful, valuable content is the only way to get new readers — if your writing is great, you can attract visitors and keep them. Be genuine, write about what you know about, and be passionate in your writing.

Once you have a dozen or more really useful articles, do guest posts on other blogs, as often as possible. Again, write really useful guest posts and you’ll attract readers to your blog.

How have you built your personal brand over time? What do you think people know you the most for?

I started by thinking about my core message — what was I excited to write about, and what desires in my potential audience would that tap into? From these questions I created a message of simplicity, and I’ve tried to stay as consistent about that message in everything I do and create: from the title of the blog, to its design, content, headlines, to guest posts and comments and emails. If you’re not consistent, you will send a mixed message and your branding efforts will be diluted.

I also tried to find my target audience on other blogs and repeat my brand (Zen Habits) and message of simplicity to this target audience as often as possible. Read more about these topics on my blog for writers and bloggers, Write to Done, in an article called “Branding 101.”

———
Leo Babauta, is the famous Zen Habits blogger, which is one of the top blogs in the world and author of The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential…in Business and in Life. He’s been writing for 23 years and served as a staff reporter, newspaper editor, and freelance journalist for 17 of them. He has done freelance for some of the most popular blogs, including Lifehack.org, Dumb Little Man, Web Worker Daily, FreelanceSwitch and others.

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