Are You Using The Right Words For Your Brand?

Are you using the right words to build your personal brand in your resume, marketing materials, and social media updates?

Often, there’s a disconnect, or gap, between the words used in resumes, marketing materials, & day-to-day social marketing, and the personal brand an individual is trying to build.

Personal brand building is impossible if you’re not using the right words!

To make sure that you’re using the right words, I’d like to share a free online tool you can use to visually display the contents of your resume, marketing materials, and social media marketing articles and updates.

Word clouds & word frequency

Wordle.net is a free online software application that creates word clouds, like the example shown, that you can use to make sure you’re using the right words to build your personal brand.

The idea behind word clouds is very simple: the more frequently a word appears in a resume, one sheet, or blog post, the larger the word appears!

Thus, at a glance, you can see if the words you’re using are in alignment with your personal brand and the idea you’re trying to communicate in your resume, blog post, or other marketing project.

Word clouds permit you to do, in seconds, what would otherwise take a lot of tedious time.

Putting Wordle to work

There are several ways you can generate a Wordle word cloud.

Start by selecting the Create tab from the menu at the top of Wordle.net’s home page. Then, choose from among 3 options:

• Copy & Paste. The easiest way to create a word cloud of the words used in a resume, one sheet, or blog post is to simply copy and paste the text into the text box found on Wordle.net’s Create page.
• Enter a URL. Another option is to simply enter the URL of any blog, or blog post, that has an Atom or RSS feed.
• Del.icio.us tags. You can also enter a del.icio.us user’s name to create a word cloud of their tags.

Analyzing word clouds

What I like best about word clouds created with Wordle.net is their immediacy; they instantly appear after you press Go or Submit.

More important, you don’t have to “study” the word clouds to know whether or not you’re using the right words to build your personal brand. The words are either there, or they’re not there!

On the other hand, there are some lessons you can draw from comparing word clouds of different blog posts and marketing projects. For example:

• Noticeable contrast. When you look at a word cloud, the key ideas should appear noticeably larger than the supporting words.  The hierarchy of ideas should be obvious. You should be immediately able to pick out the main points. When most of words used appear the same size on a word cloud, however, it may be a sign that your page lacks a clear focus or structure.
• Alignment. The largest words in a word cloud, or series of word clouds, should support your personal brand. If you print out word clouds for the Pages of your WordPress blog, for example, each word cloud should emphasize the key words you want associated with your personal brand. Likewise, if you create word clouds of your blog posts, or newsletters, for the previous month, the majority should emphasize your key personal branding terms.

Tips for working with Wordle

The easiest way to work with Wordle.net is to immediately print each word cloud. The best way to do this is to use 3-hole paper, so you can save your word clouds in a 3-ring binder.

The reason to immediately print each Wordle.net word cloud is  because you cannot save them to your hard drive or to a private folder online. The only way you can save your Wordle word clouds is save them in Wordle.net’s public folder. This may, or may not, be appropriate.

Bear in mind that, once posted, you cannot return and search for your previously-created word clouds. Nor can you delete a Wordle graphic.

But, remember, we’re talking about a free, no registration, online software application!

Workaround, if you regularly work with a screen capture program, like TechSmith’s Camtasia, of course, you can easily create and save as many word clouds as desired on your computer.

Are you using the right words to build your personal brand?

With little effort and no cost, Wordle.net lets you see–at a glance–whether or not the words you’re using in your resume, marketing materials, and social media updates are the right ones to build your personal brand. Do you use Wordle.net, or a similar resource, to check the words you’re using to build your brand? Share your experiences, as comments, below.

Author:

Roger C. Parker is an author, book coach, designer, consultant who works with authors, marketers, & business professionals to achieve success with brand-building books & practical marketing strategy. He helps create successful marketing materials that look great & get results, and can turn any complex marketing or writing task into baby steps. Visit his blog to learn more or ask a question.