How will you communicate your personal brand this year?
It’s one thing to put general content out there…it’s another to make it interesting, easily digestible, and tailored to a specific audience in order to make it stand out from everyone else’s.
Draw a Venn diagram. Label one circle: “What my customers care about.” Label the other circle: “What I do differently than everyone else.” Locate the beautiful little sliver in the middle where they overlap–this is what should get you up in the morning. This sliver is where your value proposition is born, and it’s the place that grows effective content and a compelling message.
Once you have that, then it’s time to take advantage of the vehicles that will deliver the message.
If you’re like many people, you may have joined one too many social and business networks. While it’s great–and often necessary–to have a presence within several networks, now is a good time to look at the ones that are most effective to your strategy and build them out with some of the new (and free!) capabilities they offer.
HubSpot has compiled several lists of features and tips that will help you get the most out of your business and social networks. You can visit HubSpot.com to see full lists and explanations, but here are a few to get you started:
Twitter:
- Optimize your profile
- Create a custom background
- Use third-party services to monitor, manage and collaborate
- Add Twitter sharing buttons to your content
- Connect your blog to Twitter
- Schedule tweets in advance
- Host and/or join a Twitter chat
- Use the free tool, “WhoTweetedMe”
- Create and follow lists in your industry
- Favorite customer praise and testimonials
LinkedIn:
- Claim your vanity URL
- Customize your blog and website links within your profile
- Optimize your profile for search engines
- Take advantage of “saved searches”
- Track company buzz
- Use applications
- Use OpenLink
- Export your LinkedIn contacts to a .CSV or .VCF file
- Leverage the power of LinkedIn groups
- Enable company status updates on your company page
Facebook:
- Create a business page (not just a profile)
- Claim your page’s vanity URL
- Auto-publish blog content
- Create custom page tabs
- Create a welcome app
- Use Facebook Insights
- Tag other users and business pages
Once you’ve defined your real value, and have a message built around that value, you are set to deliver your personal brand message across multiple mediums.
