A social media strategy for your personal brand
By now many of you know that I take my personal brand very seriously, especially when it comes to interacting, connecting and building relationships with new connections and networks around the world. In my opinion, a personal brand is a commodity you can leverage during an interview, sales pitch or while integrating yourself into a new online community. It’s everyones responsibility to monitor their own personal brand and react when someone posts erroneous information or actively acknowledges them in a post, tweet or comment. Just like Fortune 500 companies, whom have processes for handling and nurturing their brand in social media, we must also have a strategy in place with different scenarios. Keeping this in mind, I created a flowchart (aka a strategy) for how you should respond after discovering either a positive or negative comment about your personal brand. Below is the flowchart I created.
Note: This flowchart is meant to spark a conversation on creating a strategy for your personal brand. I’m not a social media or personal brand expert. However, I’m curious to hear your reactions to my flowchart. What changes or additions would you make? Would you use this strategy or do you use a similar strategy when approaching your personal brand? I’d really like to hear your insights or if you have even thought about your personal brand.
For those interested, you can find a copy of the PDF file of this flowchart here.
Five things Old Spice reminds digital PR people
This past week, we witnessed one of the most popular viral campaign’s in history. Old Spice and their new advertising gem, Isaiah Mustafa, have turned a lot of heads and set a new precedent for future viral ad campaigns. You may have noticed that every popular social network. news aggregator or Twitter feed was talking about the Old Spice guy and the humorous videos he was in that responded to various Twitter replies. People were posting these videos on what it seemed like every network. The video below was by far my favorite:
The best part about the campaign is that Old Spice knew exactly when to quit, on a high note of course, which sometimes is hard to determine. This well orchestrated and executed plan was developed by Old Spice’s agency, Wieden + Kennedy. Read Write Web had a great blog post covering how the agency executed this campaign.
But, I think as digital PR and social media strategists start dissecting the Old Spice campaign, they’ll begin to understand that this campaign was very basic. As Iain Tait, Global Interactive Creative Director at Wieden, said, “In a way there’s nothing magical that we’ve done here. We just brought a character to life using the social channels we all [social media geeks] use every day.” If you think about it, Ian is absolutely correct.
The reason for my blog post, is to uncover five things all digital PR and social media strategists should be reminded by from this historical campaign. These fundamentals are basics we may take for granted, like the air we breath in this industry, but I think they are important and the reasons for Old Spice’s recent success.
- Content, content and content - We all know one of the most fundamental things to driving traffic, creating links and potential new sales is content. Whether it’s breaking news about your company or competitor, industry trends, professional advice or some unrelated topic that gets picked up. Content is what I like to call the bait, which attracts new visitors and generates exposure for your company. In this case, Old Spice decided to create and distribute content in real-time, in the form of short HD commercials seen on Youtube. It was astonishing they reached close to 6 million views and 22,500 comments with their content.
- All channels of social media are important – When social media strategists for this campaign were releasing these videos and trying to get as much exposure as possible, they attacked nearly every network and posted and shared their videos. They even used 4chan, an aggregator I had never heard of till this campaign started being covered. This just goes to show you that every network can become a gem for your content. But, since the nature of the commercials appealed to such a board target, this strategy was most appropriate. I guess what I’m trying to say is picking and choosing the right network to broadcast your content is as important as the content itself.
- Personalization is a key factor to driving attention – You may have noticed by watching a few videos of Isaiah, that they were first humorous and second personal. Even though he was directing his witty comments to a specific Twitter user, you felt as if he was talking and addressing you. Old Spice crafted their videos, as if the 5.9 million that viewed them, felt a connection with Isaiah. Maybe this is why so many people shared their videos so rapidly and without hesitation.
- Capitalizing on your client’s strengths – Instead of trying to change something or add something that doesn’t reflect Old Spice’s brand, Wieden + Kennedy capitalized on what Old Spice already had, Isaiah. They capitalized at the right moment and seized the opportunity of something that was right in front of their eyes. I’m sure they did some research on consumer reactions/attitudes, which showed Isaiah and Old Spice had a positive correlation between him and the brand.
- KISS IT - (Keep it simple stupid) This may be the most obvious, but sometimes we forget this simp
le phrase. Old Spice and their agency did exactly this, they kept it simple. They created short and funny HD videos, uploaded them on Youtube, and integrated them in high traffic networks in order to earn exposure. Youtube was probably the best choice because of the simplicity they allow their users to share videos online. In addition, realizing the short attention span their target market has when it comes to online videos, they created videos no longer than a minute, some even 30 seconds in length.
Although Old Spice opened up the doors for new innovative marketing, that I’m sure we will see again very soon, they really didn’t do anything new. Yes, the whole real-time response commercials to Twitter questions was a great idea, but if you think about it, they stuck to the fundamentals. The idea was genuinely new, however the foundations and principles have always been the same. Maybe that is exactly what we forget sometimes as social media strategists? Maybe we forget to stick to the basics when building exposure and campaigns to our brand’s or client.
My guess is that Domino’s new “Show us your pizza” campaign will be highly praised by social media strategists for their high customer involvement, yet simplistic marketing idea. What do you think?
My syllabus says to use Twitter
As I am thinking about different ways social media may be implemented in the classroom, one common tool always comes to mind, Twitter. That wonderful blue bird makes me think how its popularity can be a helpful resource in the classroom and for professors.
Here is how I imagine Twitter being used in the classroom.
First of all, the professor has to set up an account for his or her class. During class, the professor can ask his or her students to send them a tweet if they come up with a certain question about the topic discussed during lecture. The professor doesn’t necessarily have to have Twitter up during class, but can check if any questions come in for that lecture and answer them the proper way. The professor can either respond to each question by sending a mass email to the class or tweeting a response. Also, the professor can have a fundamental understanding of how their students are doing in the course and what topics they need to primarily focus on.
This has two advantages for the student. One is, if the student is shy or maybe he or she doesn’t have the courage to ask a question in a 200+ person class, they have the ability to tweet it directly to the professor. Secondly, students with similar questions can find their answers tweeted by the professor, so tedious emails aren’t filling up everyone’s Inbox, especially before a test. Another advantage for using Twitter, is that classmates can easily communicate with one another about class projects, lectures, assignments, or homework. Twitter, in essence, forces students to start talking to each other in order to find a solution to their problems and not automatically running straight to the professor for answers.
Another important part of Twitter, is the use of hash tags. The same way hash tags are currently used to indicate an event or memory; the same philosophy can transpire to an individual class. For example, if a student was frustrated with a certain homework assignment, they may add #ut #fin320f to the end of their tweet. Like this example: 
Breaking it down to school and specific class will help others locate each other and hopefully help one another out. Now, you would probably want to tell your classmates what hash tags you use so they can search for them, but again this could also decrease email clutter and become a helpful source to those students in the same classroom. In addition, this could be a way for those students thinking about taking a certain class to see exactly what kind of workload it has and what it would take to make a decent grade.
Do you think Twitter would help you in a certain course, or if you’ve graduated, would it have been a useful resource?
Man I wish I thought of this sooner!
[blip.tv ?posts_id=3227858&dest=-1] After weeks of waiting the anticipation is finally over, Glass has been released. You’re probably still wondering what the heck it is, but I think I have figured out a way to explain it to you. Glass is sort of like taking a highlighter and scribbling all of over a web page, but not tampering with the content on the page. Think about the last time you saw something interesting on the Internet and wanted to share it immediately. Or the last time you were on a web page and you had a great idea! Like many others you probably posted a link to your Facebook or Twitter statuses. But, what if you wanted to share something immediately with your friends you know would enjoy the content. I bet you will not send a mass email to all your friends about what you found.
Enter Glass.
Imagine the number of emails it could decrease in your Inbox!
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Although, it is important to note that Glass is still in Beta so we are trying to figure out all the kinks and adding features to make it better. So obviously, feedback is essential. If you’re interested let me know and I’ll hook you up with an invite!
Check our Catalysts Facebook Fan Page! I have to say we kind of rock!
Being a Campus Catalyst & Glass
For the past month now, I have been tweeting about a new product called Glass (a collaborative add-on to your web-browser, still in production but will be released soon). As mentioned in my “About” section, I recently acquired an internship with BorderStylo as a campus catalyst helping to get the name out about Glass. The company has hired 16 other interns from other colleges across the United States; all with the same mission and objective. The challenging part about this internship is that it is a remote internship, because the company is based in Los Angelos, California. But, I see this to 
be more of an opportunity than a challenge. I think this is a great opportunity for me to use the different tools I already use in order to build relationships with people I may likely never meet in real life. For example, I plan to use social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Gchat, and this blog to connect with people using Glass. My goal is to use the different tools to share ideas, problems, and methods with the other catalysts. In addition, I want to use these tools to build a two-way communication channel between those using Glass (our customers) and me (the company representative). The other catalyst and I have already started communicating and throwing around ideas about promoting Glass on our campuses by using Facebook groups, Gmail chat, and a Twitter list. We are not only conversing about our new job but we’re creating friendships along the way. We really couldn’t ignore these channels because from the start we had to use them to locate one another. For example, our first task was to identify the other catalysts around the nation. Here is a great description about Task 1 from one of the catalyst at Tufts University, Jenn Bollenbacher.
The best part about the internship is getting a chance to learn the business benefits of Facebook and Twitter, and not just the leisure side of these social networks.
Now, the company has been a little secretive about the product, but they have been slipping some hints about its functionality and uses. I see nothing wrong with this because the high-level of competition tech companies engage in. But, they have recently released a sneak peak of Glass. I wasn’t able to embed a video from Vimeo, but please click on the link and watch the short video (less than a minute). I would be interested to here your responses about the application and if you think you would ever use it (Please let me know if you know how to embed a video from Vimeo to WordPress.)
I personally am looking forward to using Glass and writing a review about it soon.
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