12

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Virtual Branding

Using the Web to Bolster Your Personal Brand

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I TRUST YOU’RE familiar with some of the more high-profile social media sites and how they’ve revolutionized and democratized communication on the web. There are now myriad opportunities to enhance one’s reputation and personal brand online.

Before Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites, brand management involved unleashing top marketing professionals onto a product or service (I include “branded” personalities in the product category here, such as American Idol winners, top athletes, authors, and business personalities like Sheryl Sandberg). The purpose, of course, was to furnish that product or service with a distinct identity, one designed to increase its perceived value and appeal to the end user.

Fortunately for those of us who don’t command a marketing army, the rules of engagement have now changed. Social media has made it easier than ever before to connect with people who want to buy what you’re selling. Here are the basics of this new, democratic opportunity to create an online brand.

Reach Through the Web

In the first edition of this book, I discussed the comedian Dane Cook, whose practice of engaging personally with his growing fan base served as a powerful example of how social media can be leveraged to build a successful personal brand. Since then, professionals from all walks of life have used LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter to build relationships with their audience and increase their reach. It’s now become somewhat common practice for a growing number of CEOs to communicate directly with customers, for authors to engage with their readers, and for artists to have conversations with their fans. As a result, entire communities have sprung up around both people and products. Apple fans are among the most (in)famous for their brand loyalty, eagerly sharing rumors about the latest version of the iPhone, while controversial tech icon Elon Musk has drawn a loyal group of supporters to defend and promote both himself and his company, Tesla. And there’s nothing better for a fan than to get a “like” or a retweet from a favorite celebrity.

The term that best describes this model of online brand management is “tribe management,” a definition widely attributed to marketing guru and blogger Seth Godin, who wrote a book on the topic titled Tribes.

Think of Harley-Davidson and the tribes that have clustered around that powerful brand. It may be fun to ride a “Fat Boy” Softail around town by oneself, but it doesn’t compare with the thrill of connecting with other riders and touring several states together or congregating by the thousand in Sturgis, South Dakota, every year. The true definition of a tribe, Harley-Davidson fans express themselves and show their tribal affiliation with their black leather gear, Harley-Davidson’s orange logo, and their bandannas, sunglasses, and other markings. They are bartenders, accountants, pet-shop owners, financial analysts, truck drivers, and lawyers—people of all different backgrounds and socioeconomic levels, but all are members of this brand-created tribe.

It follows that such people love hearing from the company or the person—the brand—because it underlines that they are part of a community or tribe. They know that love of the brand binds them together, spurring them to chat, gossip, exchange stories, share ideas, and generally build lasting relationships that reward them with more than they could receive without being part of the tribe. What’s true for Harley-Davidson’s tribe is equally true of many other brands’ tribes, such as those of the TV series Game of Thrones, billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, the TED conference, NASCAR, the Boston Red Sox, Oprah, Beyoncé, and many more.

Your challenge in creating a personal brand that grows through social media is to position yourself, and your wares, in a way that inspires and engages people and establishes an open line of communication. When it works, those people will be eager to share the experience with others, and with some added finesse, you’ll develop a loyal following in the process. Give people real value and a visceral experience, and you’ll keep their attention. Bore them, however, and your brand will have the life span of a Snapchat picture.

Online Generations: A Quick Overview

For those of us looking to expand our personal brand online, social media is both exciting and exasperating. There’s always something new, but just as you get used to writing a regular blogpost on your site, you learn that posting your articles on LinkedIn would get you more exposure. The good news is that to keep track of who’s paying attention, you just pull out your smartphone. Just as the Internet made information available with a few clicks of a keyboard, smartphones now bring all that information to your pocket or purse. In fact, cyberspace is now with us everywhere we go, not just with our smartphones but with our smart homes and Bluetooth-enabled cars, all of them accessible with just a few finger taps or simple voice commands. You can be as connected as you want to be—as long as you keep up with the changes.

The Pew Research Center has been tracking social media trends in the United States since 2012, and its latest 2018 studies estimate that a majority of Americans now use social media, with Facebook (68 percent) and YouTube (73 percent) in the lead. For those who are crafting a personal online brand targeted at certain demographic groups, the following data may be useful: Among 50- to 64-year-olds, 68 percent use social media, as opposed to 78 percent of those 30 to 49 and 88 percent of those 18 to 29. It is only among those 65 or older that social media use falls below 50 percent. There are also wide demographic variations in what sites are popular. While those younger than 30, along with everyone else, favor Facebook (81 percent) and YouTube (91 percent), they are also more likely to visit sites such as Instagram and Snapchat. Breaking down the under-30 group even further, Pew notes that while a bare majority (54 percent) of those 25 to 29 use Instagram and Snapchat, roughly three-quarters of those 18 to 25 visit those sites—71 percent use Instagram, and almost as many use Snapchat (78 percent) as Facebook (80 percent).

These demographic data lead to valuable conclusions. If you’d like to reach generation Z, for instance, your efforts are best expended posting videos where gen Zers tend to hang out—YouTube.

Of course, it isn’t just millennials and gen Z that use social media. While they are greater consumers than other age groups, gen X and boomers are major users, too. Nonetheless, those who grew up with social media, the so-called digital natives, are far more likely to experiment with new apps than those of us who grew up with landlines and newspaper delivery.

And while it’s been reported that millennials and gen Z are abandoning social media in droves, I hardly think they’ll return to smoke signals. While some millennials and other consumers say they could drop out of social media, these tools are such an integral part of the communications landscape that any such change is likely to be a long time coming.

What’s more likely is that as millennials and gen Z age, the tools and apps they use will change. Some evidence exists that teenagers and the youngest adults are moving away from Facebook and hopping onto other sites. Another study, by the American Press Institute, notes, “Younger Millennials are even more likely to use a wider mix of social networks for news than older members of this generation. The average 18-to-21-year-old uses 3.7 social networks out of seven platforms asked about in the survey. For the average older Millennials age 30–34, that decreases to 2.9.”

Even social media usage of the youngest users evolves. One participant in the API study, age 19, went so far as to delete his Facebook account, explaining that “I stopped using it because there are other things to use.” Still, most young adults do use Facebook, relying on it to be entertained, to share content, and, especially, to stay on top of what’s happening with their friends. And while Twitter use lags behind Facebook’s, young adults turn to it more often to find out what’s trending.

The upshot of all of this is that social media is massive, enduring, and evolving. Facebook both has become an institution and routinely introduces new features to keep users within its universe, adding Instagram and WhatsApp and even venturing into content production. Children whose lives were documented online have become adults comfortable with surfing across the cyberverse in search of the next new thing, and people of all ages have become increasingly adept at curating their online experiences. These stats make it very clear that a personal brand that isn’t online is akin to the proverbial tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it. Does your brand make a sound?

Ride the Social Media Wave

One constant in these turbulent tides is people’s desire for connection. People want to connect to friends and family; they want to connect with their favorite thought leaders and artists; and they want to connect to the world to see what others are up to.

Even if you don’t have a Facebook page, or a Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube account, you’ve almost certainly seen the tweets, posts, and videos and listened to the podcasts that others have created. You may be far from a pro with thousands of engaged followers, but you likely know your way around the basics of social media.

On the off chance that you don’t, however, I strongly encourage you to dive in. Most sites make it easy to join, and once you’ve gotten the hang of posting your content or following a few favorites, you can quickly master more advanced features. For your questions, check out the FAQ pages, and if the answers aren’t sufficient, a quick Google search will get you the information you need. Follow people you admire and see how they manage their brands, i.e., what type of content they post, how often they post, and how they engage their followers. Also pay attention to those who start popping up in your timeline, and gauge why everyone’s suddenly talking about them. In other words, learn what gets you noticed, and notice what works.

The important thing is to stay true to the brand you’ve built offline. A Jekyll and Hyde strategy for offline-online branding can tarnish your reputation. For instance, if you’ve built a name as a thoughtful, soft-spoken sage, don’t fill your Twitter account with biting sarcasm or ad hominem attacks. Similarly, if your reputation is that of the Zen master, posts in which you whine about slow service or the malfunctioning Wi-Fi on your flight will knock a few points off your brand quotient.

Be aware that the default setting of almost all social media is for content to be available to everyone 24/7. You have the option to change those settings and make your profile private or require that people ask for access before they can see your tweets or posts. Keep in mind, however, that building an online presence requires a certain amount of visibility and willingness to open up. You might have some longstanding accounts, such as Facebook, in which you interact primarily with friends and family and which may include some exchanges that you both cherish and don’t want strangers to see. In that case, it might make sense to keep your personal account private and create a business “page” outside that account. However, it clearly makes little sense to lock down a professional networking account like LinkedIn if you’re hoping to promote your brand across that platform.

How to Keep Your Brand Humming Online

Your brand lives by the attention it gets and the reputation it garners online. It’s noisier than ever on the web—from advertisements for the latest fads, to a slew of pitches in annoying pop-ups, to news and blogs from thousands of channels. Add the hundreds of e-mails that people must plow through after a busy day of meetings away from the computer, and you’ll appreciate how difficult it is to draw online attention to your personal brand.

To be heard above the cacophony, keep these basic principles in mind:

Present Well

Your website or portal or whatever the first stop is in your online home should be spectacular. I don’t mean spectacular like your neighbor’s Christmas display, which could power the Chrysler Building. It should be spectacular as in simple, elegant, and ultra-user-friendly: easy to navigate, easy to understand, and easy to find things. One very spectacular site under this definition is Apple.com. It’s one of many examples of uncluttered, friendly sites that offer the online equivalent of a firm handshake and a smile. Unfortunately, however, there are thousands that are the cyber equivalent of a burp in the face and a grunted “Yeah?” In rare instances that reception is intentional, such as with a punk rock band. But if you’ve never heard of the Ramones and this description sounds like your site, remember this: Your brand lives online 24/7, and each visitor who comes to your site will walk away with an impression of whether the relationship has potential.

Innovation Matters

“Always be closing!” That’s a famous line from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, and it can be nicely adapted to your online brand like this: “Always be innovating!” Your competitors and rivals will always have new ideas, new articles, or new books popping up in others’ timelines. If you think you’ve made your mark and proceed to settle into your recliner, be prepared to be unsettled—or “disrupted.” For the stark reality is that the competition doesn’t sleep. Steve Jobs understood this, and so should you. The Apple impresario kept the buzz going about new developments in the iPhone, the iPod, and those famous laptops that are thinner than a slice of cheese. He did this by consistently coming up with unexpected new product features and designs. The resulting chatter kept Jobs in the conversation, and even after his death, his successor Tim Cook has used these same techniques to keep Apple in the black.

Given modern society’s fleeting attention spans and fickle tastes, we must do the same with our brands. Never rest; always think about ways to innovate and develop buzzworthy conversation starters. Participate in LinkedIn groups or online forums like Reddit or Quora to share your knowledge and demonstrate your expertise. Podcasts are also a great way to go deep. At the more topical level, keeping tabs on the latest hashtags can loop you into the latest topics. If your fans, customers, followers, and clients aren’t excited about you anymore, they’ll stop talking about you. Putting all your creative energy into improving what was hot about you yesterday—or five minutes ago, in Internet time—will pay off when you’re the topic of discussion again today.

Accept the Invitation

Once you make it to the C-level, you have a head start because people want to hear from you. According to research conducted by Burson-Marsteller, a global public relations and communications firm that tracks participation in executive forums among C-level executives, CEOs are flooded with invitations to speak at conferences, receiving an average of 175 requests a year. Most of these high-profile events are covered by industry organs and often by national media, all of which can boost your online executive presence with their digital subscribers and visitors. So when the time comes, carefully sift through that pile of invitations on your desk and decide which ones give you the biggest return on investment. After all, you’ll have a company to run.

Keep Talking

You want the world to talk about you, so you have got to talk a lot yourself. It’s called a conversation, and who better to tell your raving fans you want to hear from them than you, the brand? The Internet’s hierarchy is flat, and people don’t care that much to engage with marketing or customer service or some other hired gun who speaks for you. Get on the other side of the monitor, cut out the person in the middle, and start talking to your customers. It’s time-consuming and fraught with risk—you may be asked some uncomfortable questions—but the fewer layers that people have to wade through to hear directly from the horse’s mouth, the less BS and spin they feel they’re getting. Entrepreneurs and CEOs who have gained the respect of their tribes and strengthened their executive presence by being chief communicators for their brands include Zappo.com’s Tony Hsieh, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. They tweet, they blog, they talk to their fans, and that’s the way you keep the relationship fresh and your brand in the minds of your customers.

Put Your Name on Something

You may not have the spare change to put your name on a major sports center or arena, which can cost between $3 million and $10 million per year, with contracts up to 30 years. Having a law school named after you is not much cheaper, with the price of legacy, as it was referred to in the National Law Journal, being somewhere between $3 million for Nova Southwestern University to an asking price of $100 million for the University of Minnesota Law School. Deeper pockets still are needed for medical schools. For the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, for instance, the movie mogul paid a handsome $200 million in 2002.

More realistically, however, you could name an award, a charity you started, a scholarship you could award every year, or an annual event you sponsor. You could promote it on your website, share it on your social media profiles, and post videos on YouTube to let your followers know it’s not just a gimmick but a real effort to bring value to a group of people. The bigger the event and the more people who are affected, the more likely it is that you’ll create an online buzz that elevates your personal brand above the noise.

Keep the Brand Alive

Once you’ve established your online presence and developed relationships with your followers, you need to maintain those relationships. If you become known for red-hot takes on emerging markets or your in-depth assessments of the latest tech products, you have to reliably deliver those takes. If you trained people to expect your weekly podcast with interviews of other thought leaders, don’t surprise them with unexpected gaps in your schedule. There may be times when you want or need to step back, but if you keep your followers in the loop about why you’re taking a break, they’ll welcome you back when you do return. Just don’t stay away too long, or you’ll find yourself starting over in a whole new world.

In Chapter 13 you’ll learn how, in this era of transparency and technology, your reputation is unavoidably tethered to Google and other search engines. We will explore how, if trouble arises, you can avoid sabotaging the public perceptions you’ve worked hard to create.