Social Media and Personal Branding: Best Practices

Carol, the first question is right on. And I totally agree that the answers with negative marks are examples of personal branding. Frankly I think they are examples of how you can present your company in a way that people don't appreciate.

I think that when you determine what your brand is you then have to determine what the messaging is so that people can hear it without feeling like you are selling all of the time and are only interested in yourself and your business. I think business owners owe it to themselves to craft their brand in a way that speaks to the value to the client. Answering questions as they are asked, without the pitch, is a way to show this, in my opinion.

Patrick,

You can start by re-purposing many of the same best-practices that corporations use. You will need to determine who your audience is, what value you will be providing to them, how you will provide this value, what do you expect the audience to do, and most importantly how to measure your campaign success (determining the value you will receive). Of course this is not an all-inclusive list but it's enough to get you started by asking the right questions. Before you invest any time into your campaign, you'll need to start with planning.

My company recently posted a blog that describes many of the pitfalls you can avoid when social networking, I'll share the first point with you:

"Failure to properly plan." The 5 Ps of Success, “Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance”, perfectly applies to any social media strategy. Consider the primary goal you’d like your social media strategy to achieve. Then consider how the success of your social media strategy will be measured. What type of tools will be required? Who will be primarily responsible for executing and managing the strategy? Select you’re your social media channels: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flikr, a blog, etc. Who will be in charge of crafting the content? How will your content approval process work? Which members of your team will play a supporting role? How will your social media strategy be integrated into your other initiatives? What type of technology will be required? What outside resources will you need?

You can read and benefit from the rest of the list here: http://goo.gl/QhFC
If you find that it's on target, please share it...perhaps it could even be your first post.

Identify where you should be appearing and what the messaging should be. If you share information that maps with your brand - even if it isn't yours - you'll develop a following and people will start seeing you as your brand.

Repost through Twitter items you read that track with your brand. You can sprinkle in your own items but self-promotion is frowned upon. And remember, you don't want your brand to be that you are all about you.

Pick some topics that you want to share with others and start blogging. Also, commenting on other people's blogs in the same industry space gives you exposure to their network.

Stick to your knitting. Don't veer off of your path when you see something interesting. The biggest part of branding in the social media sphere, in my opinion, is consistency.