Personal Branding through Social Media
Today I spoke at the Living Arts College @ School of Communication Arts in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was great to speak with students who are learning their digital skills and get them thinking about creating an online personal brand.
The presentation below covers the following topics. Note that the presentation only features images and screenshots. There is not a bullet point or even text throughout the presentation.
- Introduction to Brand and Personal Brand
- The Importance of Owning Your Name as a Domain
- Why You Need to Pick One Appropriate Photo and Stick With It for All Profiles
- Creating Social Profiles
- Time for Content
- What to Blog About
Spam Comments That Have Amused Me
Across the several blogs I publish, along with events that are managed using Wordpress, we get a lot of spam. I generally like that we get spam, provided the spam filters are cranked way up so nothing gets published, because it means that sites are well-indexed by Google and found by the spammers as being worth their time leave a little garbed comment with a link. Some have disagreed with me, but I’m sticking to it. I also always go through my spam comments to make sure nothing erroneous got caught in the net.
Below I have collected some spam comments that have amused me. Many appear to be written by non-English speakers, so there is amusement in that, but some of them are so off topic of social media, wine or local Raleigh-area events, that I chuckle at them. Enjoy, and let me know your favorite spam comments… in the comments.
Loved your latest post, by the way.
emm.. informative..
As we know, posts are playing vital role for conveying messages to the Internet World. So bloggers be ready to celebrate and convey the message of greatness.
Rather interesting. Has few times re-read for this purpose to remember. Thanks for interesting article. Waiting for trackback
Hey, ok, I get it, I guess – but does this really work?
nice! i’m gonna make my own blog
Thank you! You often write very interesting articles. You improved my mood.
Thank you very much for that dazzling article
I really like your blog and i respect your work. I’ll be a frequent visitor.
In truth, immediately i didn’t understand the essence. But after re-reading all at once became clear.
Thanks for article. Everytime like to read you.
Hmm… I read blogs on a similar topic, but i never visited your blog. I added it to favorites and i’ll be your constant reader.
I really like your blog and i respect your work. I’ll be a frequent visitor.
Thank you for your article! I hope the author do not mind, if I use it for their course.
Good post! Podcherpnul a lot of new and interesting! I’ll go give a friend in ICQ:).
A case of you do not manage blogs on related topics? Do you have excellent and a lot of hits, I’m Watching.
It is a pleasure to sit at work. Escape from this boring work. Relax, and read the information written here:).
Hell! Cool yourself otvetili.Beru in tsitnik! The meaning of life and everything else. Resheno.Bez jokes..
Apologize for my bad english, I think its a precarious piece of your writing. Kind-heartedly I be suffering with faced alot of difficulties in this condition but your article determination definately escape me in future. Offer You
I read and I feel like home. Thanks to the creators for the good life!.
Cool:) You can say it blew up my brain!
Thank you for the great quality of your website, every time i come here, i’m amazed.
decided to help and sent a post in the social. Bookmarks. I hope to rise in popularity..
Good time of day! I do not see the conditions of use. Can I copy your text written on your site, if you put a link to this page?.
It’s very simple in words but in fact, much nesootvetsvuet, not all cheerfully!.
I also occasionally see this, but as it has not previously been attached to this value.
At root, I logs, we got the news.
Purely my IMHO – you can not make the choice. Good luck, think about it.
Yes! fully endorse the article interesting.
Already, too, you say thank you.
Just wanted to say HI. I found your blog a few days ago on Technorati and have been reading it over the past few days.
The Internet is written with a capital letter inside, if that. And no hundredths of a point and a semicolon. This is standard. And so all good, just veri Good!.
Nice content indeed! i will visit as often as i can.
I would like to take this time to tell you all about my recent experiences with this cream I found.
Can you recommend a good disco?
Write a post on the floor, there are pages and no reply? Normal.
Spasibochki:) Cool topic, please contact the bowl – you get excellent:).
I wrote something similar, but you issue more deeply exposed.
Yeah … Here people used to say: ABC teach – in all hut shout:).
If you should see her…
Do you understand me?
You ought to take more exercises.
I’d like a packet of biscuits, please.
Properly optimizing your pages to make them “search engine friendly” can greatly increase your search engine rankings, traffic levels, and potential earnings from your website.
Wow! Thank you! I always wanted to write in my site something like that. Can I take part of your post to my blog?
Hi there,
Not sure that this is true:), but thanks for a post.
I agree with you him, her,
I’m in oil.
Please, leave me alone.
I’m sorry, I can’t.
I wouldn’t do it.
A mere online presence won’t serve the purpose of reaching out and impressing your target audience, to beat the competition you need a well designed website with a good search rank and for that you need help of companies which provide complete solutions in website designing and development and search engine optimization.
I’d like to visit the flower market.
Thanks.what a lengthy and in depth article but full of useful information
Hey I felt lyk being random but also I do totally agree with what all those people have been saying!!! Lol….. xx
Hello, I found your blog in a new directory of blogs. I dont know how your blog came up, must have been a typo, Your blog looks good. Have a nice day.
Inga said “what a load of crap!” just for the sake of irony, but I’ll refrain
Intimately, the article is actually the sweetest on this notable topic. I harmonise with your conclusions and will eagerly look forward to your next updates. Saying thanks will not just be adequate, for the tremendous clarity in your writing. I will directly grab your rss feed to stay informed of any updates. Gratifying work and much success in your business endeavors!
Hello,thanks you for this fantastic blogg, i really find much new things on it and i really loved the design of the blogg. I found it on bing. I also want to wish you a happy new year.
Happy New Years!! To my favorite blog, hopefully no tactical body armor is required with all those idiots shooting their pistols along busy streets.
Haha, your site formats perfectly on my new iPhone, didnt look quite right on my old phone
My son bought a brand new one for my home. Except I am running into some trouble and I could use some help.
Oh I love this as a birthday cake idea! Might have to use it!
My Brand Identity was used as a Noun
Years ago when I named my blog Digital Papercuts, I didn’t really think about it as a brand. When I joined Twitter two years ago, the ideas of social media authenticity and online identities were still based on anonymity, so I did not use my real name. My profile is @dgtlpapercuts, based on my blog name. Well, today I discovered a Twitter conversation that used my online identity, my brand as a noun. That means I made it, right?
Social Media in the Classroom
I recently had the opportunity to speak to a Social Media class for MBA students at NC State. The 2nd year class is taught by Claudia Kimbrough and she worked with Chris Moody to arrange an awesome lineup of guest lecturers. I was excited to be included on a syllabus that included Joseph Jaffe, Andy Beal, Wayne Sutton, Katie Morse and Camden Watts.
I arrived at the class on a particularly busy day, between final preparations for our business conference the next day and heading to the State Fair for a Tweetup. I was asked about slides or presentation, and I replied that I didn’t have any. Some people call this “going rogue,” but I just call it speaking. All I needed was an internet browser to show examples.
My general topic was using social media to build community around a business or organization. I talked about various projects that I am working on, as well as answering questions along the way. Claudia took great notes and posted them on the class blog. The high level takeaways are listed below. Read the blog for the detail under these points.
- Figure out who and WHERE your customers and prospects are
- Content is still King
- Use Google Analytics and some other cool tools
- RSS feeds are inherent to blogs
- Start a blog for Personal Branding
It was fun to speak to a class about social media, because these are the next group of business leaders. Everyone assumes that the digital generation knows all about social media, but that’s really not true. They understand it as a personal communication tool, but there’s a big leap transfering that knowledge to business applications.
Guy Kawasaki On Twitter Strategies For Building A Huge Following
From Marketing Voices:
The legendary Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, author and Twitter aficionado talks about the strategies he uses for gaining incredible numbers of people following him on twitter. More than 180,000 people are reading his tweets as of October 2009. He talks about how there is no correct or incorrect way to use Twitter despite the challenging criticisms he gets from his followers on his strategy. He uses Twitter mostly promotionally just to build Alltop, a company he co-founded and loves dearly. Guy talks about how he is a broadcast network—more like PBS– as he educates his readers with his content-rich tweets. He uses ghost writers and discusses his transparency and tricks-of-the-trade.
Twitter Lists and What Others Think of Me
If you are part of the social media world, and especially the Twitterverse, you know that Twitter recently added a list feature so Twitter users can now organize the people they follow into smaller, more manageable groups and view their timelines together. While this makes Twitter more usable for users who are following a lot of people, it also provides a bit of insight into what people think of you, or in this case me.
As of this moment, I am on 58 lists. That seems like a large number, but not really when it is compared to the 2128 people who follow me. Does that mean that 2070 who follow me and didn’t put me on a list don’t care about my tweets? I wouldn’t go that far, but I am sure some of them don’t. I am more interested in what the people who took the time to put me on a list think of me. I’ve divided the lists into categories below and have examples of the list names.
Professional Lists (34%)
These people are interested in viewing my Twitter stream along with others tweeting about B2B, marketing or social media.
b2b-marketers
b2b-thinkers
social-media
social-media-b2b
marketing-tweeps
marcomm-advertising
industry-professionals
Local Area (34%)
The next category is of people who have grouped me with others in the Triangle region of central North Carolina
nc-neighbors
triangle-nc
raleigh
raleigh-durham
triangle-tweeple
Event Speakers (12%)
I have spoken at several recent events and a few people have categorized me related to those events.
speakers
socialfresh
smbf
A Lonely Category
Only one person has categorized me as a photographer. This is not surprising as I don’t tweet about photography or share my real photos that much. Mobile phones have made everyone an online photographer.
photographers
Huh?
These three people created lists that I don’t understand. I do know all of them, but am a bit boggled by the names. Teneighty? Information? What else are you getting on Twitter? And blinkers? All of this person’s lists rhyme, but I don’t know what it means.
teneighty
information
blinkers
It Could Go to My Head
I am both humbled and jazzed to be on the following lists. They show that I have made a real impact on people and they value my thoughts, opinions, and even friendship. Thanks. You guys are very cool.
smart-people
rockstars
thoughtleaders
smartncooltweeps
top-b2b-influentials
a-list
friends
worlddomination
What is the best list that you are on?
Need Permission for Social Media Monitoring?
Depending on how traditional your organization is and their reluctance to adopt social media practices, it can’t be worse than this video. Here’s an extreme example from the pharmaceutical industry where the legal adviser cannot even authorize listening in the social media space. Show it to your boss next time they tell you that you can’t do something.
Buick Tweetup in Greensboro
On Friday night I drove to Greensboro to attend a Tweetup sponsored by Buick. It was at a cool restaurant called Liberty Oak. We were upstairs on a loft overlooking the dining room. Some of their social media team and designers were in the area for the High Point Furniture Market. They are thinking about the design of the interior of their cars in new ways that relate to home design, and were looking for feedback and input from other designers. Since they were in the area, they also wanted to connect with Twitter users and other social media types.
I was the lone Triangle representative in attendance. I saw my friend Adam, who i met last year at Startup Weekend, and have seen many times as he joins us for social media events in the Triangle. I met several people that I knew from Twitter, but have never met in person, including Danielle and Tammy, who is a fan of North Carolina Wine TV. I also met Brandon, Jon and Sarah, among others.
The gathering was hosted by Lish (from Buick’s agency) and Robert (Buick’s social media manager). Robert was the one who showed me the 2010 Buick Lacrosse pictured above. That picture was taken with my dSLR, and the dashboard picture and these others were taken with my iphone. They say the camera you have with you is the best camera, but if I am carrying both cameras, my dSLR is better. I talked to both of them about social media and showed Robert some of the things that I can do with my iphone. He captured some video with his Flip of me explaining my posterous blog as seen on my iphone.
I also had the chance to speak with Alexandra, the woman responsible for the interior design of the car I sat in. She was interested in my perceptions of American cars and what can change those perceptions. We talked about one of the main differences between buying living room furniture and buying a car. A car is one thing and you are probably not going to go too far out in left field with your car choice. If you pick something trendy because you are trying to be cool, like the Nissan Cube, you will probably regret it in a couple of years. If you buy a standard living room furniture set, you can add a funky chair to the mix to accent your style. And in a couple of years, if it feels dated, you can just replace that one piece. It’s also like painting one wall of a room a funky color, rather than the whole room. A car doesn’t have that ability to upgrade, or change the style, if you tire of it. That’s why people make conservative choices. So car designers can only push the envelope so far.
One of the cool interior touches was recessed lighting throughout the interior. The technology included satellite radio, a backup camera with directional indicators based on how you turn the steering wheel, and an auxiliary jack to plug in your mp3 player along with a usb port to charge it, both located in the center console. There was also a light in the console so you could find these plugs.
It was a fun time and I made some new connections, new friends, and learned a little bit about a new car from Detroit and some of the thought behind it.
Lish and Robert at the Buick Tweetup at Liberty Oak in Greensboro NC
My Media Exposure Continues: Interviewed about Foursquare Launch in Raleigh
Yesterday I was contacted by Tyler Dukes from News 14 Carolina, our local cable news channel, requesting an interview about the launch a Foursquare, a location-based social network. The program has rolled out in a number of larger cities, and just added Raleigh to its roster of nearly 40 cities. Here’s the text of the complete article below, and here’s the link to read it in context. And, yes, they did call me Jeffrey, but I told them to, and that’s a different story.
RALEIGH – Jeffrey Cohen was surprised to learn that the social media application Foursquare was launching in the Raleigh-Durham area Thursday.
Just two days earlier, Cohen had been selected as one of five beta testers for the application, which combines elements of social networking and friendly competition to help users explore their cities.
After downloading Foursquare on their smartphones, users can search for anything from restaurants to entertainment venues, then “check-in” when they visit using their built-in GPS. That information is passed along to the user’s friends, along with any reviews or recommendations they might have.
“It is essentially a location-based social network,” Cohen, a marketing and social media strategist based in Durham, said.
But in a phone interview Thursday, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley said the lead time for the beta testers shouldn’t have been too shocking, given the size of his team.
“It’s four guys sitting around a table,” Crowley said with a laugh. “It’s less formal than you’d think.”
After starting with an initial list of places, Foursquare depends on users like Cohen to add to its local directory, essentially creating a crowdsourced database of — ideally — every business in the area.
“Once we have enough content, the users fill in the blanks,” Crowley said.
Users have already begun this process in 23 cities around the world, from Atlanta to Amsterdam. But Thursday, the start-up firm announced it was expanding the service to 15 additional places, with Raleigh-Durham among them. The service adds cities based on user feedback on its Web site.
Location-based social networks aren’t necessarily anything new. Services like BrightKite and Loopt allow users to share things like photos or places they’ve visited. The microblogging service Twitter recently announced it would add location services as well.
But for Cohen, the defining feature of Foursquare is the competitive element. Every time users check in with the service, whether at a bar or a city park, they receive points. Those points are compared to other users who visit the same place, creating a virtual hierarchy.
“It actually has a leaderboard,” Cohen said. “The more times you check in, the more time it accumulates.”
The user with the most points — or “mayor” in Foursquare parlance — is selected for each location every week. Users can even cash in their titles at participating businesses for freebies or discounts.
“Today I became mayor of Open-Eye Cafe of Carrboro,” Cohen said. “The leaderboard is one of the key things. It adds a competitive element to it.”
Crowley said points can also earn users specialized badges created by Foursquare programmers and often recommended by users.
For example, he said, “if you’ve been to too many karaoke bars, you get the Don’t Stop Believin’ badge.”
The element of competition and the chance for reward has so far kept users coming back.
“It’s really sticky,” Crowley said. “Once you start using it, you get addicted to it.”
And Cohen can attest to that.
“I feel like I need to drive around and go to places to check in to be on the leaderboard,” he said.
But Cohen points out that the service is mostly limited to smartphone users. Although users can access Foursquare on the Web, it has limited functionality compared to the mobile version. Crowley said that’s intentional.
“What we do is build things for phones to make cities easier to use,” Crowley said.
As with all location-aware programs, Cohen said a lot of people are hesitant to broadcast their whereabouts to a large audience. Often, he said, some of the same concerns come up.
“Do you really want people to know where you are every minute?” Cohen said. “If you check in at a coffee shop, people will know you’re not home.”
But he points out that users control what information they put out and who will see it.
Crowley said that control is important to users, and his small team has focused on this element since they first began Foursquare in 12 cities back in March.
“You don’t want everyone to know where you are all the time. You want some of your friends to know where you are some of the time,” Crowley said. “That’s what we’re trying to help you do.”
Quoted in News & Observer about Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup
Today’s Raleigh News & Observer features an article about the upcoming NC State Fair and the Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup that my business partners and I helped organize.
Even if you don’t play the plastic guitar or send text messages to your BFFs, you’ll be welcome at the first Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup, an event organized with OurHashtag, a Triangle-based social media group.
The group tries to host tweetups each quarter, said Jeffrey L. Cohen, a partner in OurHashtag. Tweetups allow people who know each other from Twitter, the microblogging site, to meet in person and share ideas about online communication.
“It’s a way to get together to put a face with a Twitter name,” Cohen said.
The first Triangle tweetup in 2007 attracted five people to a coffee shop. The group’s 2009 spring get-together attracted 250 people.
Attendees at the fair tweetup will be able to sample some of the fair’s deep-fried offerings, interact with fair entertainers and participate in a scavenger hunt using Twitter.
While most of these competitions are aimed at young people, [state fair spokesman Brian] Long hopes they don’t spend all their time in the gaming tent.
“If we can get young people in and still use the fair to educate them about the importance of agriculture, that’s a good thing.”