Posts from — March 2008

Yesterday I wrote about the 5 things you should consider when you start using new media to market your business or your career. Well and good, but this blog isn’t so much about getting started as it is about effective strategies to raise your personal and professional visibility and influence. So I thought I would create a second list: 5 strategies that will help you reach and motivate your target audience – be they clients, fellow-members, or general citizens.

1. Have something specific to say, to a specific audience. Something that is interesting. Something that is informative. Something that people will want to hear about. Something that people can’t hear about from anywhere else. AND, know who you want to say it to. Be specific about the people you want to reach. What other things do they read? What industry are they in? What decisions do they make? Where do they live and work?

This strategy is all about differentiation and targeting. You need to be different enough to be noticeable and noticed, so what you say and do needs to be distinct from everybody else that is writing and talking about this same topic. You can take a contrarian view on the topic, or you can focus on a specialized subdiscipline that everyone else has ignored, or you can talk about an new and emerging approach to a old discipline. Any of those will help differentiate you. As for targeting, I’ve mentioned before that targeting the whole world is ineffective. The more specific you are about who you want to reach with your efforts, the better you will be able to find them, meet their needs, and motivate them.

2. Be passionate. It’s not enough to be interesting. You need to feel a passion for what you are writing about. You should burn with a passion that will drive you to keep motivated in the face of adversity and the seeming indifference of the world. A passion that will help you overcome the dread of having to write yet another in a seemingly endless series of blog posts. A passion that carries over into your writing and infects your reader with your enthusiasm.

Is passion a strategy? Most definitely. Choosing to follow a path you feel passionate about is a strategic choice.

3. Do it as a “public service.” I’ve written in Fun With Networking about the Power of the Idea, of getting involved in something larger than yourself. Find an idea that energizes people and enlists them changing the world for the better, and you will have people fighting to help your cause. Mind you, it doesn’t have to be a great social cause, like eliminating world hunger or saving the whales. It can be about finding a better way to work, or a better way to work part-time, or a better way to manage software development projects.

Remember that what you are doing with social media is creating a community, and if you can find a common cause that unites your community, then there will be no stopping you. And, note, this strategy means that your social media network is no longer about you and your needs but rather about the community and its larger cause. If you do it right, you do well by doing good.  Plus, remember what I said about passion.  Find something you and your soon-to-be-growing community can feel passionate about.

4. Find an unmet information need. There are vast numbers of people in this world looking for answers to all sorts of questions. If you have an expertise that can help answer some of these unanswered questions, then the world will beat a path to your door. My Fun With Networking calendar, for example, got started because I couldn’t find a good, centralized source for information on networking events and groups in the Philadelphia area.

Naturally, you will want to pick a topic that showcases your expertise and allows you to build a reputation as the go-to person on the topic.

5. Read and respond to others. This is social media we are talking about, and what you are doing is carrying on a conversation with your readers and with others who have similar blogs and social media profiles. Engage them in a discussion by reading and commenting on their sites. Some people have suggested that you post 3 comments on other blogs and profiles for every posting to your own blog.

Well, this is by no means an exhausting list, but I think it’s a start. In the future, we’ll explore some of these ideas, and others, in more detail.

I just got off the phone with Lisa Haneberg, author of Two Weeks to a Breakthrough, a book I recommend wholeheartedly to anyone looking make a breakthrough in their personal or professional lives. Lisa was interviewing me for her new book on hipness and sageness. During our conversation, Lisa asked me to think of the five things I would tell a “mature professional” who wanted to use new media to market themselves or their business.

Well, I know a good topic for a blog post when I hear one, so here is a first stab at a list. Actually, I’ve worked up two lists, one list for those getting started and another for those looking to drive the effectiveness and visibility of their efforts. Today, I’ll talk about getting started.

Here are five things a mature professional should consider when starting off with using new media to market themselves or their business:

1. Do you really need to do it? It’s one thing to dabble in new media because you think it might be fun on a personal level. It’s quite another to do it to support a professional or business need. I think the decision is driven by the needs of your target customers. Go where your customer are. If they’re online and expect to learn about you and your services and skills online, then you better be online.

2. Just start doing it. Forget theory. There is no substitute for just getting out and doing it yourself. It’s like learning a foreign language – learning it in class seldom works. You have to immerse yourself in it. So, set up your own Facebook page, start you own hosted blog on Blogger or WordPress. They’re all free.

3. Start small and build. You should have a rough idea of what you want to write about in your blog or what you want to put in your profile of Facebook, but don’t try to get it all planned out and perfect before you make your first post. Get it started and then be open to changing your focus as you discover new things you and your readers would like to explore.

4. Keep it short. No one says you have to post long screeds that cover everything anyone might ever want to know about your topic or, in your LinkedIn profile, everything you ever did. In fact, it works better if you keep it short and snappy. Do posts like “Five Things Everyone Should Know About…” Post a couple of sentences about a new web site you just discovered and give people the URL. Just put a few key bullet points in your LinkedIn profile.

5. Keep doing it. Nothing looks more unprofessional than a blog that has been allowed to go stale. Keep posting regularly. Yes, it’s tough. Things happen. You get sick. You get busy. You get writer’s block. Just keep coming back to it and keep it fresh. Note that “fresh” can mean a post every day or every so often. It depends on the topic.

There are lots of other things to consider (Get your own domain name. Learn from the experts. Optimize for search engines.), but this blog really isn’t about technology but rather how to use technology to enhance your visibility.

My next post will focus on what I would say to someone who wants to drive their new media efforts to the next level.

It’s not enough to want to be more visible in this social media world. You need to know why you want to be visible and who you want to notice you. The mass market is dead. You need to target your visibility, and targeting means two things: knowing what you want, and knowing who can help you get it.

Know why you want to get noticed. By that I really mean “what professional or personal goal are you trying to achieve and how can being more visible help you?” That is the knowing what you want part of targeted personal visibility. If you don’t know what you are trying to achieve, then you can’t focus your efforts on the things that will have the greatest impact.

Know who you want to notice you. The other side of targeted personal visibility is knowing who you want to see you. If you say, “everyone,” then you are wasting effort, diluting your message, and flirting with danger. Everyone is just too broad a target, and, frankly, you wouldn’t want all 7 billion people in world calling you up, right? So, who do you want calling you?

Photo uploaded by TJ Scenes

I ran across a cute little tool the other day that helps you calculate your “online identity.”  It turned out to be on the Career Distinction web site, which William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson used to launch their great book on personal branding last year.

The Google Quotient calculation involves going ego-surfing on Google and then counting both the total number of hits you get on the first three pages of results that are about you (rather than someone else) and the number of hits related to the “brand identity” you want to create for yourself.

My Google Quotient was a somewhat acceptable 7.8, with my score reduced by the stretch goals I have in place for developing my own brand identity and by my family history.  I am named for my grandfather and great-grandfather, both of whom were men of distinction who still merit standings in Google searches.

It struck me afterwards that the idea of a Google Quotient is only one minor part of a much larger equation.  Searching on your name and finding you is a great thing, if someone already knows to be looking for you by name!

What about the times when someone is looking for someone just like you, except they don’t know you or your name?  Is your value proposition distinct enough, are your online activities focused enough, are you visible enough to be found by someone who knows nothing about you except that they need someone just like you?

That’s what this blog is all about.

Now, I just need to come up with some whiz-bang online calculator to help you do it.