Personal Branding
A few nuggets (with my own twist) from an article (Arruda) about personal branding in the Social Media era, that I thought were valuable, but also apply well to company branding and the basics of marketing.
- Don’t be a fake. Strong brands are about authenticity (value proposition)
- Wishy-washy. Don’t try to be everything to all people (segmentation and targeting)
- Think before you act. Have a plan before you engage with social media (planning is everything, plans are nothing)
- Talk, and more talk. If you have nothing better to do than just re-tweeting everything, just stop
- Quality is better than quantity. Better to have a few right followers / participants / visitors than lots of the wrong ones
- Don’t switch tools all the time. It’s not about the tool. It’s all about the content (the latest hype)
- Don’t forget traditional marketing vehicles (you customers might spend most of their time off line)
- There’s a temptation to do everything cheaply with low quality to save some money, after all the Social Web is all about CGC, but what perception will this portray on your products and company. Don’t confuse amateurs with professionals
- Talk about what you can do for your customers rather than what you do (we, we, versus them)
- Don’t measure anything. Everything can be measured (outcome based marketing)