Personal Branding: You are now a product. Get used to it.

Welcome to the Internet. Welcome to Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter. Welcome to Mixx and Digg and Propeller and MySpace, Bebo, Reddit, YouTube and 1000 others? And you're a personality on every one - did you know that? Do you know that?

Every time you register for a site, you need a nickname or a screen name. Most sites give you an option for a picture, or a lot of pictures - and over time, for as many social networking sites as you might sign up for, you begin to aggregate an image or a series of images. The question over time then becomes, "But, is that a saleable image?" or in many cases "Is that an image I'd want my boss to see?" - or my mother?.

Here's a test for everyone: A while back, I did a post about a new service called Rapportive. Rapportive is a service that collects public data about "you" and then displays it to "me" - on my Gmail sidebar. Go to Rapportive.com and register. Then see how social networks report on you, and what they report. You will definitely be surprised - and maybe not in a pleasant way.

That's an effect of Personal Branding. Or a part of it anyway.

And there are many parts. Is your Screen Name the same on every site you're a member of? Is your photo the same? And is it a good photo? And on Facebook, is there a picture of you in your underwear dancing on a table somewhere? You may not want that. With personal branding, you control the images that people see, and you control the words they read as well - especially on LinkedIn. I can't tell you how many bios I see that simply list everywhere a person has worked and spend little or no time with what they actually accomplished in that position - and that I believe is a selling opportunity missed. Personal branding is being able to manage and direct ones image to be not only positive, but potentially profitable in the long run. And that's a lot more work than people think these days.

For instance: I work my Personal Branding on two fronts. There is the Product Branding I do to promote my book, Wild Wild East - and this blog is part of that. And there is my Personal Branding, in which I am the writer of that book. So, on Facebook, you see my handle as WildWildEast, because that reinforces a personal product - But on LinkedIn, I promote my own name only with little mention of Wild Wild East, except for the link to this blog. The Product Branding supports me, and my Personal Branding supports my professional work as a writer, with only a slight nod to the book. If your an accountant but also publish a knitting blog, that might be something interesting about you personally in terms of a LinkedIn link, but it's doubtful that your knitting blog will get you much accounting work. The important thing is to divide what is personal from what is professional and do that clearly - and then make good branding decisions based on the market you're reaching through the site.

And don't think your boss, can't find your Facebook page. He can.

Feel free to contact me on Personal Branding issues. From writing CVs and structuring the difference between LinkedIn and Facebook presentations, to more complex issues like how to effectively cross-manage 10 social networking sites, whatever you're doing is creating an image. Make sure it's the best it can be. You are now a brand. Get used to it.

Social Media Isn't Social At All, It's "Creative"

I think it's very possible that we have this whole social media thing wrong. I attend conferences with "social media" in the headlines and I even help program content at these events, trying to identify how marketers can use social media properly, but the fact is that social media is just media, plain and simple. The real issue lies not within the media, but within the creative -- so maybe we should be referring to the wave of interest as "social creative" rather than "social media." Social media, no matter how you slice and dice it, is just media and media is nothing more than a distribution platform for messaging. Facebook and MySpace may be very large sites, but they are still just media vehicles. What is of real value is how you harness the power of the audience itself and create or utilize buzz. That is something done by the power of creative, not by the location of the placement on the page. The creative story that needs to unfold is the interesting component of social, which I feel gets overlooked.

Cory Treffiletti of MediaPost pretty much nails it here. In the full story, which you can read by clicking the links above, he comes to the not so astounding idea that if your paid advertising concept is not interesting or significant enough to generate conversation, then your social media efforts will fall flat as well, because basically, nobody cares or talks about boring stuff.

In a recent exchange with someone who works in management consulting, I found that we were not having a "conversation" at all. What was happening was that she was saying what she wanted to say but not responding to my reactions at all - just like advertisers had become accustomed to in the past when people just sat in front of electronic devices and watched or listened. Only this person was doing it in a social context. Definitely old-school.

And old adage comes to mind here. "If you want to bore, talk about yourself. If you want to be a sterling conversationalist, talk about the other person." Good advice for advertisers and people in general in this new "social creative" world.