LookupPage Blog | Professional Web Presence and Visibility

Personal Branding and Business Vulnerability

Personal branding can work wonders for a business as it can create an approachable spokesman or ambassador with which consumers can interact.

Ashton Kutcher, noted as the most followed user on Twitter with over 2.3 million followers, is a prime example of the effect personal branding can have on a business – even an unofficial endorsement.

"I found it astonishing that one person can actually have as big of a voice online as what an entire media company can on Twitter" said Ashton Kutcher in one of his many videos.

The American actor made headlines months ago by challenging CNN.com to a race to 1 million Twitter followers, with others like Oprah Winfrey also accepting the challenge.

Kutcher went on to say, “If I beat CNN to 1 million viewers, then I would ding-dong ditch Ted Turner”.

The micro-blogging funny man volunteered to donate $10 000 towards the fight against malaria if he won. Others, like Oprah publicly matched his contributions regardless of the outcome of the race.

Holding the Business Hostage

This publicity was great for Twitter, as millions flocked the service after hearing about it on the news and in blogs and signed up in order to hear what their favourite celebrities have to say in a casual capacity.

But, being the poster boy for the service, Kutcher caused a ruckus again when rumours surfaced that Twitter had given the green light to the production of a reality TV game show in which users would track down celebrities via their Twitter feed. He and other public figures threatened to abandon the service if it went ahead with the production. Consumer generated media has the potential to bite back if not very carefully monitored!

While a large percentage of Twitter adoption rates can be attributed to Kutcher, Larry King and Oprah Winfrey, it’s interesting to see how these celebrities can cause a stir in the hopes that the public will leave with them if  things became a little too personal – leaving the service extremely vulnerable.

"It's all fun and games until somebody gets stalked," stated one of Kutcher’s tweets.

CEO Brands and the Effect on Investor Confidence

Many brands out there attribute their success, or failings for that matter, to the character and social standing of the CEO - or at least the perceived character. CEOs are often not only the decision making heads of the company – they are also the face of the brand.

While this may work well, especially in certain industries or markets, the risk of damage to one’s reputation can be a double-edged sword. If the company lands up in a bad light, naturally the reputation of the CEO will be tarnished – or, heaven forbid, vice versa.

Highlighting the personality of a CEO can be useful with aspirational brands, or a brand whose leader is naturally interesting, and allows investors to get to know and trust them over time.

Social Networking and CEOs

More and more companies are starting to take notice of the potential of Social Media. Cheap and measurable, social media optimisation (SMO) is leading companies big and small to websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Slideshare.

These types of platforms make it easier to release information, conduct market or brand research (overtly or subtly), relieve pressure from a traditional call centre and streamline customer relationship management (CRM) – this is especially prevalent in Twitter, which allows for real-time interaction.

@RichardBranson of the Virgin Group on Twitter is a great example of a successful CEO brand.

...but there is one crucial ingredient to the success of commercial SMO - transparency. Whether one’s business is a one-man show or a large multinational, the business won’t enjoy optimal success online without a credible image.

Here are some points to help improve transparency and investor confidence by putting a CEO at the Twitter helm:

• Keep it professional. While a human edge is important, maintain the strictest standards on content.
• Maintain a good balance between followers and the number of people you are following.
• Use #hashtags and popular keywords to be found easier.
• Choose who you follow wisely. Not only do you want to portray a professional and well-connected image, but there’s no denying the potential of Twitter feeds. Don’t follow spammers or try to over-inflate the numbers – rather follow those you’d have a genuine interaction with, or receive knowledge from.
• Depending on the industry, you may wish to follow and interact with competitors, adding value to your own field of expertise.
• Good content to tweet could include links to industry articles, staff activities or exciting internal news (greatly improving transparency) and retweets or snippets of industry conversation and interesting thoughts.

Brand Exposure and How to Defend it With LookupPage

The first thing a lot of companies learn when they first start venturing into the online world of brand exposure and online reputation monitoring is the amount of pertinent discussion that is naturally taking place.

It’s important to establish a strong sense of consistency and professionalism if you want to build credibility – and that means considering every aspect of your brand.

Contradicting Identities

Ah, the famous case of Ellen Simonetti, the flight attendant who was fired from her position at Delta Airlines after they claimed her online identity contradicted with that of her employer identity.

While the validity of the dismissal raised a few eyebrows, it illustrates how accessible online content is. Photos on Ellen’s blog, “Diary of a Flight Attendant”, were the main cause of all the trouble, as it showed the attendant reclining across the empty seats of an airplane.

While Ellen might not have considered the photos to be unprofessional at the time, Delta Airlines saw little division between the official Delta online identity and her role as their employee.

Whether you’re a large company like Delta Airlines, or an individual building a professional online identity; one needs to consider a comprehensive, holistic approach if you want to increase your social media transparency, keep on top of your visitors and improve your search engine visibility.

Manage and mould your identity by creating a LookupPage profile and framing the image you’d like to portray:

• Display your information, with photo/logo biography and links.
• View information on your LookupPage profile visitors.
• Display your LookupPage profile at the top of search engine results (LookupPage sponsored result).
• With a professional account, you can personalise your domain name.
• Join the LookupPage index.

Google Wave and You

Whether you’ve already heard a bit of buzz about Google Wave or haven’t yet noticed it online until now – either way, it’s bound to crop up again.

Focusing on real-time communication and online collaboration, Google Wave is poised to create seamless access to and organisation of our online world where multimedia content and real-time conversation is abundant (and will be even more so in the future).

How Can You Use Google Wave?

Officially launched by Google on May 27, 2009, the platform-crossing network is designed to simplify the vast amount of content and contacts of the average web user.

A convenient system for managing your social media profiles, the capabilities of Google Wave are tough to ignore. Here are some of the features and properties:

• Instant messaging
• Built with HTML 5, the latest in web programming
• Document storage and remote access
• Collaborative document editing (like Google Docs or Wikipedia)
• Drag and drop organisation
• Google/Wave name and profile
• Real-time search
• Automated translation between languages
• Switching between public and private conversations within the same thread
• Easy streaming of Twitter, RSS or other feeds
• Rich formatting and multimedia capabilities
• Archiving and recording (view past conversations, actions or waves)
• Elements of one’s Wave can be shared online, and thus indexable by search Engine spiders
• Promotes mashups through open source framework and API

What is a wave? A wave is a thread or conversation, which could be a Facebook interaction, email message, Twitter conversation or practically any other type of engagement.

While Google Wave may not be ready for the mainstream, it is a good hint at what’s to come in the world of multimedia communication and collaboration.

Register with Google Wave to receive more information and to see how you can use it with LookupPage to successfully maintain your online visibility.

Digg as a Social Media / Branding Platform

Social bookmarking, or the activity of highlighting and categorising interesting content for general consumption, has proved extremely popular, especially over the last few years.

Sites such as Digg can be very useful in finding information and even more convenient as a news feed or RSS feed. You are able to customise your favourite topics and enjoy relevant content in your chosen format, whether it be videos/images or written text.

While social bookmarking may still be a strange concept to many, the potential for social engagement and conversation is unavoidable. The communities on sites like Digg not only power the service, but are more active than you may think – sharing links across Twitter, Facebook and various other social media platforms.

The Social Digg Community

The Digg community is convenient when it comes to sharing and discussing links and stories with old friends, or even branching out and finding a new audience. Here are some ways to improve your diggability: 

• Add a Digg favicon to your blog template. This will allow readers to submit your blog or individual posts to Digg and share your content with their social circle and beyond.
• Add a link from your blog, website or LookupPage profile to your Digg profile. Digg have embeddable badges which make it easier for you to be contacted via Digg.
• View your friend’s activities and see how they choose to participate, not only in the Digg environment, but across the entirety of the web – this can be very handy when it comes to understanding your audience and broadening your perspective.
• Click and connect. Easily import your friends from your contact list on other platforms such as Gmail or Outlook, and invite your friends who aren’t yet on Digg.
• Comment on the submissions and listings of others, and spark up interesting conversation or debate to be noticed in the online arena.
• Create your profile with your Personal Branding guidelines in mind, and link between your current social media profiles. Technically, these outgoing links won’t be a vehicle for search engine spiders, but will allow you to be found and contacted easily between social media platforms.

Incentivising Your Marketing Using Twitter

Many people struggle to understand Twitter at first, while many others often don’t use the micro-blogging service to its full potential. Let’s take a look at how you can improve your Twitter impact with incentives and other great practices.

Be the Face

Firstly, it’s important to build credibility if you want to be taken seriously in any online marketing sphere. You can do this by portraying an image of professionalism but with a hint human personality – this trait is becoming common practice for marketers on the web.

Talk the Talk

Join in the conversation and engage. Industry commentary is important, but make sure your input is noticed. Keep your tweets in the appropriate format, use the right keywords and be Twitter-coherent (i.e. release full press releases in 140 character segments and you’ll be the laughing stock of the Internet).

Don’t Repeat Yourself, Be Quoted

Now that you have a bit of micro-blogging leverage with your credible image and complimenting tact, it’s time to get the platform and your followers to work for you.

If you hold competitions or polls, try to keep it relatively casual. Without detracting from the conversation, include the incentivised marketing tweet as part of the discussion rather than an interruption or distraction.

Get others to repeat your username or link by rewarding a limited number with prizes or freebies. This is easy to track, and will have your message (and more importantly your @username) spread far across the Twittersphere.

If prizes or physical incentives are a little out of your bracket, you can add incentives to your marketing messages by simply adding valuable information. Be it an interesting point to ponder, or a link to a multimedia resource such as a YouTube video or ‘how to’ PDF; you can create these resources yourself or simply sniff out the best of the bunch and share the link.

It’s all about getting your name out there. Try to include popular users by tagging them, or get their attention by retweeting one of their relevant messages. Offer an incentive to these popular Twitter users, and ‘piggy back’ on their audience. You’ll soon see your number of followers and/or traffic increasing.

FriendFeed Stats and FeedStats: A New Tool

 

What is FriendFeed? If you think it’s just another social networking site, think again. Those that have ever complained about the many popular social networking and media sites will be happy to know that FriendFeed consolidates these into one organised, legible and manageable feed.

Known as a social aggregator, FriendFeed has been online since 2007 and many users find it convenient to use instead of having to stay on top of multiple individual services such as Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds etc.

What Can You Learn From FeedStats?

FeedStats is a third party tool which allows you to analyse FriendFeed usage. Dynamic results are displayed in convenient graph form – simply insert your username (or your friend and competitors) and submit.

Between FriendFeed and FeedStats, there is much more opportunity for you to understand your personal identity and to learn more about your friends or competitors.

• Track how far your blog posts and tweets spread.
• Easily find new contacts with which to interact.
• Keep an eye out for new social media or networking sites used by your friends.
• View all comments on your posts in one location.
• View at which times and days users post more.
• See which users you are most compatible with and which users comment on your posts most.
• See which interfaces you, your competitors and friends use most.
• Compare your reach (number of contacts etc.) with that of your competitors.

Avoiding Twitter Spam

Tweeples will tell you either how fantastic or fickle Twitter can be – sometimes both. Getting the most out of the service isn’t difficult and you can start by culling any spam from your feed and avoiding it in the future.

Don’t Be Followed by Spammers

Following thousands, speaking in keywords and sporting no followers (except maybe one or two other spammers); it’s quite easy to spot Twitter spammers. Look out for the automatically generated usernames which are often used. For example, “A1C2eQQQ is now following you on Twitter”. Make sure to block these types of accounts as soon as possible so they cannot follow you.

Being followed by one of these accounts doesn’t mean you’ll be seeing their messages, but you don’t want to be retweeted by them or be seen in anyway as an easy target for other spam account holders.

Never retweet a spam message or even tweet the name of a supposed spammer, even in jest – this just makes you easier to find.

Avoid Bad Programs and Money Making Schemes

Make sure you take every step to avoid Twitter spam or malevolent attention. It is important that you never give your Twitter username out on questionable third-party sites. You may be tempted by the ‘triple your followers’ promise, but doing so will inevitably land you on a list of targets.

Don’t use auto-follow bots or any other automated programs. An automated email to new followers can be effective in greeting the masses, but Twitter is all about transparency and real conversations. Leave auto-responders to the spammers.

Websites such as Retweet.it promise you more followers, and may deliver, but the value of your tweets will be watered down and your audience may not appreciate your influence and ‘unfollow’ you.

Choose your tools carefully. There are many programs and services out there, but some hold more water than others. Here are some handy tools to simplify your life:

• TweetDeck – Twitter browser, compatible with Linux, Mac and Windows.
• Twhirl – Desktop client which uses the Adobe AIR platform, compatible with Mac and Windows.
• TwitterFeed – Made to feed blog posts via RSS into Twitter. Very handy for frequent bloggers.
• TwitterFox – A Firefox add-on with popup notifications.
  

Follow us on Twitter:)

The LookupPage Twitter Profile

Like it or not, Twitter isn’t going away anytime soon - many companies and individuals are finding that branding themselves on Twitter isn’t as intimidating as it seems.

Our Twitter profile operates according to a set of guidelines which ensure that the brand position is never compromised. Here’s a bit more about our LookupPage branded Twitter profile and how you can enjoy the same successes.

Blog Teasers and Link Syndication

Our Twitter profile releases links to new blog posts as they are published. As micro-blogging platforms like Twitter are focused on real-time interaction, the LookupPage blog posts can now instantly enjoy increased traffic.

Remember, interaction is key to success. “When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link”, says Chris Brogan, a social networking consultant.

Our blog also features a link to our Twitter profile to cross-pollinate between platforms.

Brand Awareness

By joining Twitter, LookupPage increases web presence and visibility with a well-branded profile (profile image, biography write up and link through to LookupPage account-signup page) and consistent tweet formatting.

At present, our Twitter profile has many followers, ranging from individuals to PR and branding companies eager to learn more. We’re also following the feeds of many industry players such as CEOs and other personalities dabbling in the personal branding sphere.

Online Reputation Management

Twitter is fast becoming one of the most popular social networking tools out there, so simply being registered is important to being in control of one’s reputation.

Even if the account is not frequently used (not recommended), owning your profile increases web visibility (remember to include a link to your primary website or blog) and minimises the chances of someone else commandeering your brand.

LookupPage users on Twitter often tweet links to their respective profiles, or retweet the blog post link if they found the article interesting. With the functionality of Twitter search, we can track our online impact, keep abreast of these mentions and respond to any positive or negative publicity in real-time.

Five Seconds of Fame: Clare Werbeloff

Clare Werbeloff was the cause of much online buzz after the 19 year old Australian girl recently gave a fictitious, but all too convincing witness account of a shooting at King’s Cross.

Also known as Clare the King’s Cross Bogan (bogan being an Australian slang term for lower class), her racial account of the incident, Aussie twang and pretty face sparked much online discussion and debate.

YouTube Views to date: 141,381

Such is the spirit of the Internet; the raw Channel Nine footage of the interview went viral as soon as it hit YouTube, with countless video responses, remixes and parodies being created. Clare, naturally, asserts that her fabrication and choice of words were meant as a joke.

Clare’s Career: Chk-Chk-Boom

BuzzNumbers, an Australian social media monitoring service, said in a blog post about Clare that she’d created $200,000AUD in advertising on Australian websites and social networks alone – after only one week.

Clare’s ad-lib attracted a flurry of public appearances, branded merchandise, job offers and news interviews (the premeditated kind) as well as one more unforgettable meme for online community to share.

Love her or hate her; it seems the public have chosen to put Clare in their spotlight. “I’m not sure what happened, I didn’t see what happened with the shooting,” Clare later stated in an interview on A Current Affair.

From a 19 year old girl – to an Internet sensation overnight, such is the power of the World Wide Web.

Sharing Videos on Twitter

Part of the beauty of Twitter is its simplicity. The streamlined platform has little in the line of multimedia bells and whistles, making it a dependable and stable environment, unaffected by the animated images and quizzes all too frustratingly common on social networks such as MySpace and Facebook.

That said, multimedia sharing is still very important - especially if you’re thinking about better utilising multimedia for your personal branding. Sharing videos on Twitter is possible and rather easy, but it’s finding your preferred method which can be tricky.

You could upload your video to YouTube and then shorten the URL to fit into Twitter’s 140 character requirement. Try TinyURL to allow for more space for those oh-so-important keywords. YouTube does have a Twitter share function, but it basically just gives you the direct URL to copy and paste to Twitter.

If you’d prefer, you could use a dedicated Twitter video service. Much like the popular TwitPic, TwitC is one such platform, but still houses all files externally, meaning it doesn’t drain Twitter’s resources or clutter-up the feed.

Without the need for an additional account (just login with your Twitter details), TwitC is an ideal solution to the microblogging platform’s multimedia concerns. You’re free to upload your own videos (in any of the following formats; QuickTime, WMV, MPEG2 and MPEG4, AVI, H.264, 3GPP, Flash and SWF, Real and DivX) and can also upload pictures, audio files or even videos from YouTube or other sites.

Not only can you categorise your media with keywords, tags and captions – you are also able to organise and archive your videos, photos and audio files for later use. Plus, you can keep track of how many times your files have been viewed and the user commentary below.

Have fun trying it out!

How to Enhance Your Personal Branding Efforts With Twitter

After just 3 years since its creation, Twitter has taken off as one of the most popular social media platforms. Opportunities for personal branding have increased and businesses and individuals are taking advantage of developing mainstream status using this tool. With Twitter, the potential reach of our personal brands is wider, but given its mass use the world over, it is harder to gain recognition.

Ashton Kutcher has proved the power of Twitter as a personal branding tool – as it stands, he has 2 109 454 followers. He constantly updates his status and gives insight into his and his wife, Demi Moore’s life. He even tweeted a picture of the lovely Ms. Moore in her undies – this subsequently went viral on the net and resulted in an increase in followers. He has since spoken on the topic of Twitter on the Oprah Show and in various TV interviews.

Twitter can be whatever YOU want it to be! In his case, Ashton Kutcher needed global popularity to increase his pulling power at the box office. You may, however, want to use Twitter to gain loyal followers who are ready to connect with you, your brand or your knowledge.

You need to decide what you want out of social networking – do you want to increase numbers or further your field of engagement? You then need to decide what kind of presence you would like to establish - whether you are a personal connector or a broadcaster.

Personal branding is all about perception and what people are going to associate with you. Nowadays, with the emergence of social media platforms, people prefer to connect with other people rather than with a corporate brand. Branding is a way to make yourself memorable, whether you are an individual or a company.

When it comes to personal branding on Twitter, there are some things you should keep in mind.

1. Listen to the online conversation and participate – you will be able to use tools like Twitter search to distinguish between the “signal and the noise”. By finding out what the “signals” are, you will find opportunities to engage in the conversations. Another way for companies to encourage participation in this new communication medium is to use Twitter to hold contests.
2. Your content shapes your brand – what you choose to tweet will shape your brand on Twitter. Be aware that once you tweet, your content will be out there for people to find forever.
3. Build a community – just like Mr. Kutcher who found an audience that is interested in what he had to offer through his tweets. The chances are, your market is already out there on Twitter – by building an online presence, you will be able to engage with your niche market.
4. Always look to expand your visibility – you will be able to expand your visibility if you make a conscious effort to make yourself visible to the right group of people and influencers. Twitter is only one channel of social media, tools like LookupPage and Google Profiles can further your audience reach and visibility.
5. Build and nurture relationships – as a broadcasting tool, Twitter is great when it comes to reaching thousands of people in one swoop. It also makes you and your brand more reachable. Engage and respond to tweets directed at you, ask questions and answer them.
   

Twitter is not the only tool that can assist your personal branding efforts – there are various other channels that can help you establish and monitor your online brand identity. By enhancing your personal branding efforts with tools such as LookupPage and Twitter, you will gain a competitive advantage over others who offer similar services and encourage more people to talk about you.

It worked for Ashton Kutcher, now make it work for you.