The 3 vertices of your social media presence

If you are looking at branding your strengths, competencies, skills and talents in these times of economic slowdown here are the three vertices on which your personal branding strategy has to rest:

 

1. Blogging: The fact that you are reading this means you get it. However, mere hobby or political or movie blogging (unless you plan to make a career in anything related to politics/movies) is not going to help. Even in India people are getting googled for the traces of their digital past. So blog about your professional passions.

Love to write code? Blog about the cool stuff you’re doing – but be careful not to reveal any company secrets.

Love to sell ? Blog about the latest sales method you employed and how it’s benefiting you.

Blogging as a cornerstone is useful in skills which can be showcased. Linking to news items or commenting your opinion is not enough. Your thinking and skills should be able to come through on your blog.

Love painting? Photography? Then you probably need to use flickr as a blog.

Respond to comments. Write passionately. Keep a deadline for yourself. Connect with other bloggers in your niche and build a community that grows. Participate in the blogging community events. Like this.

2. Social Networks: Depending on who you’re trying to reach out you could try to brand yourself on social networks like Orkut and Facebook. However, you could also choose to keep yourself private. However, if like me you choose to use social networks like a platform, then you’ve got to make sure you take every step by thinking about it – twice! You could also use a page on Facebook to brand yourself. Profiles on Facebook and Linkedin – are searchable by Google. Here are ten ways to use Linkedin (via the Linkedin Blog)

3. Twitter: Slowly but surely Twitter in India is becoming as much a way to increase one’s reach and connect with other passionate people. In a way twitter enables me to connect with people on a more personal level than a blog and have a mix of personal and professional conversations.

Try not to spam people on twitter, so things like Twitterfeed (which publishes my blogs’ feeds) are posted through a different twitter account. There are a lot of bloggers outside my niche with whom I would never have connected if it wasn’t for twitter.

According to my experience Microblogging services like Twitter help one build a breadth of networks while blogging help people build a greater depth in network. Or maybe that’s simplistic. The truth is somewhere in-between.

Twitter also has helped me shorten my earlier long winded statements – 140 characters only forces you to edit yourself ruthlessly.

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