The Email Wars

About your personal brand in social media.

Interesting that the whole panel started with asking everyone to submit questions to the panel via twitter. What an interesting way to bring in the audience prior to starting your panel. Love it, but then I am a Twitter maniac, as was EVERYONE at SXSW.

Steve Ganz: Linkedin
Steve Smith: Ordered List

What is social networking?
Any time two people connect. Can be over twitter, linked in, myspace, fbook, flickr, email, im, etc.

Ways to use personal brand
Wanted to promote services and knowledge as web designers. Used the main person to sell design and services. Use social networking as a sales tool

Gina: Sushi and Robots:
Her brands is energetic and young. USes that in all of her writing. She uses SM to get speaking and writing opps

What else besides blogging etc? New real time networking tools.

(side note we got a beta invite to socialthing.com, and they threw a good party at SXSW, but it allows you to aggregate 10 social media platforms into one UI. Love it so far.)

Story from Gina: Addicted to Social Networking. Used something obscure to create the brand, sushi and robots. But using her real name makes more sense. She has used multiple screen names and using her own works better. She said that her changing her avatar and screen name does create issues.

Steve Smith had another challenge. His name was too normal and does not stand out. HE had to go pick up something unique or memorable. Once he picked it he had to stick with it. Does cause a little confusion at times in public events.

Your name can be an issue. With your brand and name, there could be 2 to 100’s of others online indexed. It is a challenge with social media and search engines.

Your avatar (the photo or image you use to mark yourself online) is important as well. It can brand you visually. Photos of yourself are better to use rather than an image of something. It helps to connect online. People feel as if they know who you are. Avatar consistency is important. Did I really just type that? Avatar consistency? Wow need to get my avatar a new shirt and a hair cut….

Getting involved:
When you comment or post to a blog or Social Media site, you need to make sure that your frequency AND your relevancy is solid. Just jabbering away can reduce brand.

If people thought about themselves in from an offline persona instead of an online, they would be able to act as if they were having a real conversation, face to face, with others. Be who you really are.

If you are posting ALL your stuff out into the public stream you need to be very aware of what is out there. When you live publicly things can be fed into the stream.

Google yourself: Really? I personally think vanity searching is odd. BUT if you are living on a public plane, you need to know what is out there.

Think about how you use these tools. Twitter is one that is so easy to say something and share it, but there are not any “take backs or unpublish” with twitter. Your persona can be shaped by those that are following you.

Is there any rules around accepting people to follow and network with you? Not really yet, they are shaping, but isn’t it odd sometime that people you don’t know AT ALL follow you on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, podcasts etc?