This 12 minute presentation covers immediate steps you can follow to start your business and personal branding online.

It covers how to define what you want want to be known for, evaluating the competition, planning, where to create your online profiles, building your professional networks, participating in online conversations.

This was originally presented to a small business networking group on 04/24/2009.

Did you like this presentation? Was it helpful to you? Have additional tips to share? Then please leave a brief comment on this blog post. Thanks in advance!
-Roland

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• Man’s ‘pants’ password is changed — Interesting issue. If your customer refers to your brand in a disparaging way, do you have the ‘right’ to make unauthorized changes to the customer’s account? I’d say no.
• AMC Asks Twitter to Remove ‘Mad Men’ Accounts — Over the past month I started getting followed on Twitter by Don Draper, Joan Holloway, Peggy Olson and other characters from the great AMC show Mad Men. I explored their profiles, they were having fun banter between them. Seems that AMC didn’t take kindly to fans of the show posing as characters. Sure lawyers must always advise that you protect your copyrights. But putting your foot down on fans leads to damaging your valuable relationship with them.

Brands must proactively recognize the long term harm of their actions. A disagreement with a single person can easily become a PR headache.

There’s a definite message in these examples.

• Do you have a specific policy in place to handle interactions with customers and fans? If so, does your staff/vendors know the course of action to take?
• Decide clearly on what is acceptable use versus infringement.
• Embrace fans who want to promote your message.
• Open dialogue with customers who have are expressing negative opinions.

I hope you find this useful. Please feel free to send me links to relevant articles.

Have a great week!
-Roland

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I’ve created a score of accounts on various sites, under various personalities depending on what I was experimenting with. Here’s just a small portion of my tale:

First Jaiku was great. It aggregated all my feeds into a single stream, but I couldn’t find my “friends” there.

Then I was enthralled by the speed of Twitter, only to be lured away by the fancy features of Pownce.

I became bored and bounced back and forth making “friends” and interacting on Pownce and Twitter until I learned to setup Twitterfeed — then I only had to post on Pownce and my posts would automatically make their way onto Twitter as well.

To combat distraction from refreshing the browsers constantly, I trialed a variety of desktop client apps to alert me with chirps and notifications as the timeline became updated throughout the day.

But I got lazy. Twitter had a mobile client so I went back there so I could read the timeline in the bathroom or in the parking lot. Eventually Pownce became mobile friendly too, but it was too late for me.

I don’t bother with updating my status in AIM, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo, etc. Then came a slew of sites I can barely remember. I skipped over FriendFindr, FindFriendr, FriendMeUpOrIllKickUrButt, blah, blah, blah and moved with the herd over to Plurk. Not satisfied, I found the beta code (pingofpings or pingyoulater) for Ping.fm so now I can post from a single interface to a dozen other sites. I can even email from my mobile phone to my unique Plurk address and get posted all over. Very cool.

The hole I’ve dug myself into is two-fold:

1. I no longer want to add to the noise and clutter. I’m trying to post mainly useful commentary and links to resources.
2. Now how do I interact with all my social network “friends” scattered all across those sites?

Last night, the gang at the New Media in New Jersey meetup were playing with identi.ca. (*sigh*)

So, what’s your story? Are you a microblogging or social junkie? Or do you think it’s all time-wasting rubbish. Please share your thoughts with us.

Oh, and wont you add me as a friend?

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• Digital Radio Platforms More Popular, 33MM Listen to Online Radio Weekly
• Online Radio Reaches 33MM a Week, Listeners Tend to Be Social Networkers
• Americans More Comfortable with Kids’ Social Networking, Chat Room Use

I hope you find this useful. Please feel free to send me links to relevant articles.

Have a great week!
-Roland

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Over the past two decades I’ve read the traditional direct marketing standards — Direct Marketing by Ed Nash, Being Direct by Lester Wunderman, much by Seth Godin, as well as Peppers and Rogers. But nowadays, when I browse the aisles at B&N, I shun the business marketing aisle. Probably because there are too many subject matter experts repeating the same messages again and again. Then there’s Joseph Jaffe.

I’m not exactly sure how I stumbled across his Across the Sound (now Jaffe Juice) podcast last year, but I got instantly hooked. I thought I was listening to a madman. Of course in madness there is often brilliance.

I heard a man shouting to whoever will listen what we all know is true but fail to utter aloud — the traditional marketing models are failing. Whoever doesn’t embrace change will become a dinosour — brands, CEOs, media tycoons, small business owners, agency Creative Directors are all at risk for extinction.

No, it’s not a new message. But it’s becoming more important than ever to experiment liberally and shake budgets free of the outmoded planning process.

I’ve been fortunate to work on many test and learns in the past five years. The justification process is brutal, and usually we get very little to work with and little support from the brand. Some T&Ls utterly failed. Some did mediocre. Some succeeded beyond expectations. But even when we did well, the results are often eyed with suspicion due to old world mentality.

So I am thrilled that someone like Jaffe is out in the field shaking things up.

I’m enjoying the book. I can feel Jaffe’s energy coming through in his words. When I’m done I’ll post a review.

Related Links:
Join the conversation

Join the conversation (Buy via Amazon and Jaffe will donate all proceeds of the affiliate link to charity.)
Life after the 30-second spot (Jaffe’s first book):

Full Disclosure: I volunteered to review this book. I am not being paid for this. My comments and opinions are my own as a courtesy for receiving a copy of the book.

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I was intrigued and clicked through to find photo with 3 or 4 comments layered on it. So I added my own and refreshed the page several times over the next hour to see what others did.

If you mouse over the photo, you’ll reveal the (humorous and snarky) comments. Logged-in Flickr users could add any number of comments anywhere on the photo. This photo was viewed over 200 times and a few dozen comments added to the photo — mostly within the hour after posting the initial message on Twitter. As of now, it’s up to 388 views.

Those numbers might seem low, but think about it. Chris essentially mobilized a “flash mob” to appear at a destination, take action and go back to their own business.

For a brand, we might create a series of photos with very subtle brand references. You can’t control the conversation. But if it doesn’t seem overtly branded, it could be interesting to see the originality of the participants. Could even make a mini-contest to solicit opinions.

Just something to think about.
-Roland

Related Links:

• Flickr example
• Wikipedia – Flash Mob
• ImprovEverywhere — Flash Mobs at Best Buy, Grand Central and more

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Let’s see…

I microblog most using Twitter. But now I’m seriously considering to primarily post to Pownce instead.

Thanks to a tip from Vinny, I now use TwitterFeed in order to post on Pownce and have it update Twitter.

Twitter in turn shows up in the RSS feed for Jaiku along with RSS feeds from the various blogs I publish, plus my Flickr photos and YouTube videos. (I love Jaiku, but my circle of colleagues just isn’t there.)

I also have LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, MyBlogLog, Technorati and more linking or aggregating RSS feeds.

If I wanted to go nuts, I could use Tumblr, Twitku, Twitter Groups, Yahoo! Pipes, TubeMogul and scores more.

That begins to scratch the surface of me online, but you know what? It’s enough.

Before you step into this rat hole, and have to jury rig your online presence, create a sensible plan and stick to it. Know where your audience or circle of colleagues/friends is and be there.

Let me know what you think.
-Roland

[Image source]

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Twitter is simple to post and view messages via Web browser, SMS, IM, client app, widget.

Jaiku expands on the idea and allows you to aggregate RSS feeds and create channels.

Pownce allows you to create groups of friends and push a variety of media to select users depending on the relationship. Imaging sharing audio files privately with select people you know will appreciate it. Pownce definitely takes the best ideas of the existing applications and builds upon them.

Personally, I find it easiest to use Twitter and find people I want to follow or interact with. Jaiku and Pownce are more restrictive in that sense. Pownce (in beta) raised the bar in service offerings.

Will I switch? It’s to early to say. Pownce needs to come out of beta and demonstrate what type of mobile capability they’ll have. I love Jaiku, but Twitter is so darn easy to use. Plus there’s the dilemma of abandoning the current platforms after time spent building relationships there. We need to see what Twitter and Jaiku will do to upgrade and compete.”

Related articles:

Promote your personal brand with Twitter, Tumblr and Jaiku

Resources for your habit

Leo Laporte does a great explanation on the Net@Night podcast episode 27. (Starts at 24 minutes in)

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Here are some helpful resources to fuel your addiction (guess that makes me an enabler) …

• “Refuse to choose!” is the motto for TwitKu. I learned about this from BerniesWorld. You can use TwitKu to monitor your Twitter and Jaiku accounts via a single Web page. Very convenient since there’s no software to install. They even have a mobile-friendly browser version.
• There are a variety of add-ons for the Firefox Web Browser worth looking at. I like Twitbin.
• Twitterrific is a desktop application for Mac OS X users that allows you to monitor and respond to your friends in a very elegant user interface. This is a must have for Mac owners.
• Tweetr is a desktop application for either Windows or Mac users, similar to Twitterrific.
• EmailTwitter allows you to send and receive by email on your phone, helping you avoid incurring SMS charges.

Related Links…

• Use Twitter, Tumblr and Jaiku To Build Your Personal Brand.
• Mashable has a comprehensive list of 19 Cool Jaiku Tools.
• Lifehack.org has a good post called 5 Ways to Use Twitter for Good (Not Evil).
• If your curious about extreme Twitters, check out the top 100 according to Twitterholic.

I hope you find this useful.

Please let me know what your favorite application is:

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These are relatively new social media tools. I informally polled my colleagues to gauge their awareness of these applications.

Sample size (n = 17)

These are three Web applications that are quickly growing in popularity. Essentially, they allow anyone to post thoughts immediately, in real time, and share with a community they associate themselves with. These are supposed to be short posts, typically under 140 characters, to share a thought, observation, learning, news. Some people post what they happen to be doing at the moment. It enables a community to follow a popular person, and create a more intimate relationship/understanding.

Essentially, with one of these accounts you are creating/publishing an RSS feed. The user has a great range of flexibility to publish from a phone, a wireless PDA, an instant messenger application or via a Web page. Likewise, the user can receive posts from others where, when and how he/she wants it.

Tumblr takes Twitter a step further and allows the user to post images and longer test posts on their Tumblog.

Jaiku does the same as Twitter, but the really nice feature is that the user can aggregate all the RSS feeds associated with him/herself into one feed for anyone wanting to follow that user. For example, a user posts on two blogs, publishes a podcast, publishes photos to Flickr, bookmarks favorite videos on YouTube and still posts to Twitter. With Jaiku, others can see every place that user is active online.

From my research/experience, Twitter is the most popular, having been growing in popularity since last year. I find most of the popular personalities in technology, podcasting and social media posting on their Twitter accounts. But they are beginning to migrate to Jaiku, often citing frustrations with Twitter server outages, delays and lost posts.

It can be fun and addicting. There is also a voyeuristic nature to this. It can also be frustrating to see a string of useless posts, such as: “Going to sleep now” or “At home with family.”

So how is this useful from a marketing perspective?

I’ve observed…

• People who are busy building themselves as subject matter experts and personal brands use this to share insights.
• Various software companies creating posts to get news out to the tech/podcasting community.

Would it make sense to have a fictional brand character make friends and post daily? It’s hard to say whether that would be successful or stir backlash. But having a brand’s Ask the Expert feature posting a tip a day or some useful nugget of advice might make sense.

Feel free to check out my Jaiku where I’ve aggregated some feeds together.

You should create your own accounts to test drive for yourself:
www.twitter.com
www.tumblr.com
www.jaiku.com

I hope you find this mini-brief useful.

Please share your thoughts.
Thank you.
-Roland

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