Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

It's surprising that in an industry so enamored with brands many young agency professionals don't think much about building their personal brand. Of course, back in the day when I was starting out, no one talked about personal branding. If you were lucky enough to get on with a good agency, you worked hard, didn't complain and waited for advancement. Those who sought the limelight (what personal branding might have been called 25 years ago) were looked at with skepticism.

Today's young professionals have to work harder than ever just to keep their job in this economic climate. Plus- Millenials need to build personal brands to compete for future opportunities.

The same holds true for everyone in business today. Doing a good job is no longer good enough. To be in control of your professional destiny you need a professional brand that transcends your current job.

There are lots of excuses for not paying attention to your personal brand. It takes time. It requires introspection. For some of us Boomers, the notion of self-promotion is uncomfortable.

Here are six steps to help anyone build a personal brand — from a Millenial just starting out to a Gen-Xer thinking about a mid-career shift.

1. Determine why you are branding. Are you looking for your first job? Trying to switch careers? Angling to get a promotion? Thinking about launching a new venture? Just as with a business, you need to think about your objectives as you shape your brand.
2. Figure out what your brand is. In many ways it's much easier to brand a person than a product. Individuals have the characteristics we ascribe to products — creative, high-energy, smart, trendy. As you determine your brand, think about focus — industries, areas of specialization. Think about what your personal brand is not. For example, I am not creative nor entrepreneurial. In my industry, it'd be beneficial for my brand to be both of those, but it's never been who I am.
3. Identify and study your target markets. Are you building your brand locally, nationally or globally? Are there specific companies that you are targeting? If you are building your brand for advancement within your current company spend some time doing some objective assessment of what the company values and how it works.
4. Determine channels for building your brand. For me those are community and professional organizations, board positions, media relations, speaking engagements, conferences, blogs, awards and recognition, Twitter, LinkedIn. As you determine channels consider how your personal brand will intersect with your current employer. My brand is completely intertwined with Capstrat. Capstrat encourages its employees to be engaged in the outside world, so the link between my brand and Capstrat has been positive. But,
5. Make personal branding a part of your daily routine. I make it a priority to serve on boards, write articles for the Capstrat blog, pursue speaking opportunities, go to networking events http://blog.capstrat.com/articles/networking-lessons/ , collect business cards, invite people to be a part of my LinkedIn and Twitter networks. I am active in social media. This is a big personal commitment, but it's required to build a personal brand. And, it has to happen on top of your general job responsibilities.
6. Determine how you will measure your personal brand. Create specific metrics that align with your brand goals. This may be number of relationships you create, number of blog posts, number of business opportunities, job interviews, etc. You also need to Google yourself http://www.capstrat.com/darticles/darticles-no-5/my-confession/. I have the benefit of having a Web team working to advance the Capstrat search results, but if you Google Karen Albritton, you'll find Twitter, LinkedIn, news stories, blog entries, board positions etc. Find other people who have good personal brands and Google them too. (It's not creepy if you're doing it for business.)

If you have other tips, please share them with me, either by comment below or email to kalbritton@capstrat.com. And, I'd love to connect with anyone reading this post.

Twitter: @kalbritton LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/karenalbritton

I wanted to give a shout out to the podcast Marketing Over Coffee . In this weekly podcast, Christopher Penn and John Wall discuss online marketing, social media and tech trends. The podcasts are short (under 30 minutes) and I always learn something new. I like listening to them on my way to work to help get me mentally pumped for the day.

Are there any marketing podcasts you like to listen to?

“Users don’t come to Web sites for an experience, they come for the content”—that’s a quote from the industry-leading content strategist, Kristina Halvorson. While it was a one-off quip during her presentation at SXSW Interactive, I was left thinking “wait, isn’t it my job to design experiences?” Then it hit me. Users actually come to Web sites to experience the content. My work is to actually make sure that users have a pleasurable experience when finding, consuming and sharing our precious content.

Industry-wide, companies struggle with their Web content—and while this includes video, audio and images, we (as an industry) struggle the most with text. Why is that? Writing is often an afterthought. We know that we need content, but we wait too long to engage our writers. Once they are engaged we give them a stack of documentation like wireframes, sitemaps and design mockups and ask them to sort out the mess. That isn’t fair. We should take more time to carefully plan for our content. After all, it’s what the users want.

At Capstrat we’re not completely guilty of this, but we could do better.

I’m committed to taking a renewed look at content in my next project. I’m going to start by working with our writers to answer the hard questions about content:

1. Why do we need it?
2. What business goal does it support?
3. What do our users expect?
4. What’s driving the client to insist that this be included?
5. Does it support the brand?

Asking these (and more) will lead us to a better understanding of the most important deliverable of any project: the content.

 

Its one thing to charge someone with growing your membership, but quite another to truly understand what it is you're asking.

No one can effectively grow and maintain a community without the resources to make it happen.

What are those resources you might ask?

Well, the most important is time. They need time to nurture the community, seed it with content, create discussions, build relationships and interact with the masses.

But wait!

They can't do any of that if they don't know what the users want. And if you can't tell them then you need to give them more time to figure it out so that the community can thrive and grow.

There is so much competition out there, so your community has to become a destination. It has to fill a need that isn't being met elsewhere. In other words, people need a reason to come.

Sometimes your brand is enough to get them there. But oftentimes it isn't enough to get them to stay.

It is frustrating to see people deem this as an afterthought. If you are building or maintaining a community for a client, you need to be paid for the time it takes to do it. And you need to make sure they understand that this does not happen overnight.

How many ghost towns have you seen lately? How many LinkedIn groups with no discussions, abandoned Twitter accounts and empty Facebook pages have you visited in the last month? (Remember this report released four months ago that found that over a third of all FB fan pages had fewer than 100 fans?)

The problem is everyone wants to be everywhere but they have no strategy for making any of it a success, and that, in my opinion is crazy.

The point here is this: If you have goals related to increasing membership and engagement levels of any online community regardless of the platform, you have a hard job. 

So, you'd better make sure that you aren't the only one aware of that fact.

When it comes to health and fitness I feel comfortable saying I am a tech junkie, and maybe even border line obsessed. I love everything about the fitness world and technology. My latest obsession are the "Snap It" features in this and future months of Selfmagazine. Using a QR code (learn more here, under 10 word definition: a two-dimensional image of a barcode) they have linked my gym time reading directly to my phone. Self is connecting traditional magazine readers back to their mobile devices using the free app http://gettag.mobi (Microsoft). Every few pages you see a barcode related to a story simply take a photo using the Microsoft tag mobile app and boom, you have more information right on your phone.

My trial run with the new app started after reading the article "Meals that melt fat!" great place to start. The barcode encouraged me to "Snap It" so I could download my "get fit" grocery list right to my phone, um yes please. I opened my new Microsoft tag app, went through the initial set up and got to snapping. It was easy, just point and click using my phone camera. I was so excited having no idea where this barcode was going to take me. The barcode directed me to the Self Web site and rendered a mobile friendly version of the shopping list. I am in LOVE, being not only a foodie but also a list maker, this combined two of my favorite things. Now I had the list on my phone so I could take it anywhere.

This is a great move for Self because it not only encouraged me to become more deeply involved in the magazine, but it also connected me to their site. I now have the grocery list on my phone ready for my next trip to the market. I was sucked in and began cruising around their site along with my grocery list I could learn more about that months cardio moves, beauty tips and more. Maybe even while I shopped for my new food to help melt fat.

I can see the possibilities are limitless with this, tags to workout demonstration videos, information on health clubs they feature and even locations of where I can buy the coolest new running sneakers. All right on my phone. I don't think it will replace my love of the physical magazine but it is handy for keeping me organized and on the move.