Subscribe: If you haven’t subscribed to this blog’s feed, please click here.

Visit the new site: To go to the new website go to http://personalbrandingblog.com.

Blogroll/Links: If you’ve linked to the Personal Branding Blog, we ask that you change your links at this time.

Thank you for all of your support!

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.

Gretchen, for 2008, can you sum up some of your advice on how to live a happy life?

If you want to live a happier life, I’d suggest you start by thinking about the elements of my “First Splendid Truth” – to be happy, you should think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.

• First, ask yourself – what makes me feel good? What brings me joy, energy, enthusiasm, engagement, satisfaction? Ok. What can I do to bring more of this into my life? E.g., you might start a film club with six other movie-crazy friends.
• Second, ask yourself – what makes me feel bad? What brings me anger, resentment, boredom, frustration, guilt, remorse? Ok. What can I do to lessen this in my life? E.g., I have tried very hard to give up gossip.
• Third, ask yourself – do I feel right about my life? Am I leading the life I feel that I’m “supposed” to live? Do my choices reflect my values? Am I heading in the right direction? I switched from law to writing, because although I had a great experience as a lawyer (for instance, I clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor), I felt that I wasn’t doing what I was “supposed” to be doing.
• Fourth, ask yourself – does my life have an atmosphere of growth? What’s changing for the better? In what way am I learning, growing, helping, and making things better? (more on this topic in Question #2)

What are your top 3 suggestions that people can use for living a happier life in 2009?

• First, although happiness seems like a transcendent, abstract principle, start with the physical reality of your own body: work on getting enough sleep, some exercise, and eating healthfully. These habits matter! If this seems overwhelming, start small: turn off the lights 15 minutes earlier each night, take a ten-minute walk outside each day, eat an apple at lunch. You will really see a boost in energy – and energy is a great foundation for happiness.
• Second, ancient philosophers and modern scientists agree that the key to happiness is relationships with other people. Take time to see your friends and family, show up, reach out to new people, try to be helpful, make connections – anything you can do widen and deepen your relationships will boost your happiness.
• Third, one aspect of happiness that I didn’t recognize when I started my research was the importance of a factor that I call “the atmosphere of growth.” We’re all happier when something in our life is changing for the better: we’re learning something new (taking a Photoshop class, working on our golf game); we’re helping something grow (a child, a business, a garden), we improving something flawed (cleaning a messy closet, volunteering to help an organization get its books in order), we see positive change in our life (getting a raise, getting out of debt, starting a new relationship, healing a rift). As that list suggests, there are many ways to foster “an atmosphere of growth.” Make sure your life includes this aspect somewhere. It helps bring you enthusiasm and energy – without it, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, trapped, cramped, stagnant.

Your happiness project consists of twelve commandments.  What are your three favorite and why?

Actually, I think all my commandments could be summed up in two: “Be Gretchen” and “There is only love.” In the end, I’ve found that although it sounds like a cliché, it really is true: as long as I remain faithful to myself (not who I wish I were) and as long as I try to act with love, I have the foundations of a happy life.

As an individual blogger, you’ve succeeded more than almost anyone.  How are you able to stay committed, original, vocal on your blog?  What are your secrets for growing a readership?

Thanks for those nice words about my blog! I’m very lucky, because the topic of happiness is inexhaustible. I never worry about running out of things to write about. I never lose interest in the subject, myself.

I do try to discipline myself to keep things interesting for readers. I ask myself a series of questions when I post: am I being funny? Am I giving good information? Am I tying into recent events? Am I telling stories? Am I providing links to interesting material and highlighting the valuable writing of others? Am I showing what it’s like to live in New York City? Am I being honest about my own nature and perspective? Am I being critical of anyone other than myself? Obviously, I don’t hit each note every time, but I keep those goals in mind.

I also post six days a week – I think that’s important to keep a blog lively.

I try to reach out to other bloggers who write about related subjects. This is good for my blog and also wonderful for me personally – I have lots of new blog friends, some of whom I’ve met, but most of whom I haven’t met – and that has enriched my life tremendously.

Once a week, I write a post in “tips” form, a format that’s very popular on the internet. I think that has helped me get picked up in places that exposed my blog to new readers. I also cross-post twice a week on the Huffington Post, post original content twice a week on RealSimple.com, and starting on January 12, I’ll cross-post on Slate. I love each of these sites, and I’m thrilled that I get a place there myself. And obviously that’s good exposure for my writing.

How have you built your personal brand over time and what’s next for the brand called Gretchen Rubin?

The goal of my book and my blog is to help people understand happiness better and to start their own happiness projects, so that they can help themselves become happier. As such, my brand is to be engaging, informative, accessible, light-hearted, and encouraging.

So, for example, I tell people that if they’d like to see my personal Resolutions Chart, of the resolutions I keep as part of my happiness project, they can email me for a copy (just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. — no need to write anything more than “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line). By sharing my experience, I hope that I can inspire other people to do a happiness project of their own.

I also use Facebook, Twitter (follow me at gretchenrubin), and a monthly newsletter to connect with readers. I love these new tech tools, which weren’t available to me when my other books came out. I try to use my presence there to reinforce my availability, my ability to point people to interesting, useful information, and to connect other people.

Because my book, The Happiness Project, isn’t coming out until December 1, 2009, its publication is what’s next for me.

——-
Gretchen Rubin is a writer working on The Happiness Project—an account of the year she spent test-driving every conceivable principle about how to be happy, from the wisdom of the ages to current scientific studies, from Aristotle to Ben Franklin to Martin Seligman. On her Happiness Project blog, she reports her daily adventures on her way to becoming happier.  Rubin is a graduate of Yale Law School and was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. She was clerking for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when she had the epiphany that she really wanted to be a writer.  Her bestselling Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill and Forty Ways to Look at JFK are succinct, provocative biographies.

The role of a specialist

A specialist aligns their passion with a specific skill set and contrives a personal brand statement from that. Specialists become the go-to-people in and out of the office. Sometimes a specialist is a natural at what they do, while other times, they have to work very hard to perfect their knowledge in a specific area. Malcolm Gladwell states that it takes 10,000 areas to assume mastery over something in his new book, Outliers. Specialists get called upon when a certain opportunity surfaces or when there is a business challenge that can only be handled by someone of that caliber. As a specialist, you may have to learn complimentary skills as well. Earn an MBA online and brand yourself as a specialist.

The role of a generalist

Generalists have to have a good, not perfect, understanding of a broader topic and many topics across a business. Don’t listen to people that say being a generalist is a waste of time. When I was in school, my resume building strategy was 100% focused on being a generalist. I had 8 internships that covered every single area of marketing and a consulting business. I purposely took classes in marketing research, advertising and other marketing disciplines in order to have flexibility and a wider selection of company’s to choose from upon graduation. Behind my generalist cap, it was clear to the hiring managers that my strengths lied in internet marketing, web development and design. A lot of corporate leadership development programs help you become a generalist and give you generalist titles. The higher up the corporate ladder you go, the more of a generalist you have to be.

When both come together

Being a specialist and a generalist simultaneously is the best route to being successful in a good or bad economy, but it 10x more important in a bad one. For instance, let’s say you specialize in social media PR, but generalize in all of marketing. Your company is going to outsource the PR organization, but sees that you can add value in a product marketing or a communications role. Instead of being laid off like your peers, you get a new job. I’ve already heard these stories multiple times since October. You need to start learning other areas of the business, while mastering a specialty. This of course means you have to work much harder!

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.

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.

What can Donald Trump teach us about building a powerful brand (personal/product/corporate)?

Donald Trump is one of the few Americans who has turned his success in the fairly stodgy field of real estate in world-renown brand and persona in the milieu of entertainment, retailing and recreation. And while I am no Trump-a-phile, that is, I have not studied his books nor have I pored over the minutia of his career, I do know this much about him: the guy returns phone calls. Maybe it’s because I work at a newspaper and hold a megaphone that reaches hundreds of thousands of people (though I suspect he’d return phone calls to folks who run newsletters) but this mogul is somebody who tends to his telephone messages.

Why is that important in building brand and what does that teach us about creating a brand? Trump (who, by the way, is Mr. Trump to me since he never played centerfield or was a jockey, according to that Ring Lardner newspaperman’s rule of who gets called by their first name in any conversation) understood early on in his career that people with personal brands have an edge when it comes to negotiations, co-ventures, real estate deals and just about everything else in our society. He must have learned this from his father, a man who cut mega-deals with other real estate moguls in the rarified and cut-throat world of Manhattan real estate.

Trump knows that when somebody with a brand walks into a room or picks up the phone, they carry with them subtle but strong personal packaging.

“Trump has embraced the element of human nature, the tendency to elevate others, into a clear advantage.”

He is never off stage, never out of the limelight, either, and knows that subordinates, peers and colleagues are always watching. In fact, they never stop watching.

And here’s something else. We usually think that somebody with baggage means that they have a hurdle to overcome. But that is not the case when you think of a brand as baggage. In that case baggage has a positive impact on a person’s patina – or brand.  Trump has Gucci baggage.

The first and only time I met Donald Trump face-to-face (although we have spoken several times since then) was in the early 1990s at a Super Bowl when the Bengals narrowly lost to the San Francisco 49ers. My job was to chase quotes from locals from the Cincinnati area, who were at the game, and after one interview, I looked to my left and there was Trump. His hair, I might add, was magnificent. As I slid over to chat with him, there on the 10 yard line (what’s he doing on the 10-yard line, I thought but didn’t ask) my heart was in my throat. I mean, this guy is Donald Trump. But within moments the nervousness went away and my natural interview assurance kicked in. Part of it, I realized later, was the Trump charm. This guy puts other people at ease. That’s the part of the Trump brand that does not resonate in Macy’s commercials for his suits, in his show The Apprentice nor in the magazine covers. He has a calm confidence, yes, but it’s also a confidence that is infectious. He makes others feel at ease.

How does he achieve this? Eye-to-eye and a benign and wry smile work wonders. Practice yours in a mirror. It’s the first step toward a personal brand. Exude confidence and that will instill the same in others. That may not make you a billionaire but it is, assuredly, the first step down that path and may be the most important quality you can develop as you move through your job, career and life. The ability to put others at ease will bring you much in return.

What can P Diddy teach us about constructing an empire from the start to the finish?

“Surround yourself with smart people, listen and weigh what they have to say and then take a risk.”

During my interview with Mr. Combs, I wanted to establish early on that I knew a little about his core competency, which at the time was not Making a Band or discovering singers or writing songs, although he was plenty good enough at all that. I was a business reporter who covered what was then Federated Departments Stores (now Macy’s), and what I needed to know was simply this: how much were the annual sales of Sean Jean apparel. So I threw out a number, something I had independently generated – $450 million annually. It was dead on, he confirmed.

And that meant, roughly, that this entertainment icon was netting probably $90 million annually (give or take 300 percent) from the notion that a generation of Americans wanted to dress like Diddy – have style like Diddy. I pushed it one step further and found out something that I still carry with me today.  Smart people keep lots of other smart people around at all times. I jokingly suggested to him that he didn’t need to give me any “points” for an idea I had, that he should brand a car, that is, create a co-venture with a major auto manufacturer and come out with a Sean Jean SUV. “We’re in negotiations with…..” Diddy calmly replied as he noted that his next step in life was to continue to build the empire.

One question I did not ask was this: why does a guy who has $450 million in annual sales from just one initiative – hundreds of millions more likely come in from his branded TV entertainment efforts – why would that guy, who has no formal theatrical training, risk the wrath of the most vicious scribes on the globe and walk out onto a Broadway stage to offer his portrayal of Raisin in the Sun. I mean, he’s already wealthy beyond imagination. Why take a chance on becoming a laughing stock of the Great White Way. I didn’t ask the question and now regret it but I’m pretty sure we all know the answer. Great things stem from great risk. Personalities who do not seek risk are not likely to build much of a brand and certainly will not build an empire. Mr. Combs was a risk-taker but one who was accustomed to success. Nothing will ever change about that, either. With great risk comes great success. But first you have to embrace risk.

——–
John Eckberg is the author of The Success Effect: Uncommon Conversations with America’s Business Trailblazers.  He is a career journalist with 25 years of experience in the challenging field of daily newspaper reporting. A graduate of Ohio University, he has been a business columnist and business reporter at The Cincinnati Enquirer for more than a decade, where he has covered numerous beats including federal courts, investigative reporter, feature writing, neighborhood columns and urban development. Widely published, his work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, USA Today and many other American print and Web publications. He is the co-author of Road Dog, a true-crime thriller about serial killer Glen Rogers of Hamilton, Ohio.

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?

What are market rebels? Why are they important?

“Market rebels are activists who challenge the status quo and defy conventional wisdom.”

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines a rebel as one who resists “authority, control or convention”. Market rebels are important because they spearhead collective action that takes the form of social movements. In turn, these social movements can either advance a radical innovation or block it. In either case, market rebels construct ‘hot causes’ to harness the attention of distracted audiences and rely on ‘cool’ techniques to mobilize collective action.

For example, the market rebels at the vanguard of the personal computing movement had a ‘hot cause’ – centralized computer and a computer that could only be touched by a priestly class, and a ‘cool’ technique of mobilization – ‘homebrewing’ clubs where people could assemble their own machine and personalize computing and gain autonomy.

They played a crucial role in in spawning new firms that led to the birth of the personal computer industry. Similarly, deaf rights activists challenged producers of cochlear ear implants and thwarted the spread of the technology. Their ‘hot cause’ was the loss of sign language and the demise of a deaf culture, and their cool techniques of mobilization included public marches and destruction of cochlear ear implants, and even litigation.

What are the benefits of market rebels?

Market rebels promote collective goods and play decisive role when normal market incentives do not work. For example, in the early automobile industry, the car was not culturally accepted and was seen as a devilish monstrosity. Advertising by car producers was widely distrusted. In these circumstances, auto enthusiasts banded together into automobile clubs, and lobbied state governments for speed limits and licensing and prevented a maze of local regulations.

They organized reliability races which paved the way for producers to win them and establish reputations. They also lobbied for good roads. All of this made mass production by Henry Ford possible. Market rebels played similar roles in the birth of the microbrewing industry, and the growth of new styles such as nouvelle cuisine. In all of these cases, they advanced radical innovations. But market rebels also play an important role in blocking thwarting radical innovations. For instance, they championed the cause of small stores and sought to stem the advance of chain stores and they organized an anti-biotechnology movement which prevented German pharmaceutical firms from commercializing bio-technology.

Can you name a few market rebels who have helped build our culture/businesses?

In contemporary times, a wide range of market rebels have played important roles in the evolution of industries. The important thing to keep in mind is that they are individuals who submerge their identity in a common cause and so rarely stand out in the public eye. Instead, it is the organizations they build and the collective action they spark that leaves a lasting imprint.

The free software movement, where “free” means “free” as in “free speech” and not “free beer”, played an important role in the spread of Linux – Linus Torvalds comes to mind. In microbrewing, Charles Papazian laid the foundations of the homebrewing movement, and entrepreneurs such as Fritz Maytag played were influential in the growth of small producers who made beer using authentic ingredients and artisanal techniques. On the other side, investor rights activists such as Evelyn Davis and the Gilbert Brothers and Nell Minnow were at the vanguard of the investor rights movement which improved corporate disclosure and monitoring of executive compensation.

What would the world look like without these market rebels?

We would not have the Automobile Association of America – it was started by auto enthusiasts who formed auto clubs all over the country. There would ne no brewpubs or microbrews in grocery store aisles. Organic food would not have taken root in American culture. All of these are cases, where market rebels were the harbingers of social movements that led to radical innovation. But for market rebels, we would have more Walmarts and Big Box stores all over the country. But for the environmental movement there would be no hybrid cars and consumer interest in the electric car.

If you brand yourself as a market rebel, how will it help your career?

Being a market rebel gives you a distinctive identity and visibility as an outsider. But they come at a price – you are more likely to be in small organizations rather than large bureaucracy and not have large financial resources. Which is why rebels exploit ‘hot causes’ and rely on ‘cool mobilization’ techniques to inspire action. In this sense, it is your cause and techniques that brand you.

——–
Hayagreeva Rao is the author of Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations. He is the Atholl McBean Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources at Stanford Business School. He has published widely in the fields of management and sociology and studies the social and cultural causes of organizational change. His research has been published in journals such as the Administrative Science Quarterly, American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science and Strategic Management Journal. He has been a Member of the Organizational Innovation and Change Panel of the National Science Foundation. He is a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science and of the Sociological Research Association. He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management.

Part 1 of the interview:

Part 2 of the interview: