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Personal Branding – How-to Avoid Brand Name Confusion

Posted on January 26, 2012 | 4 Comments

Personal Branding is all about earning your brand the attention it deserves; but what if your brand shares the spotlight with someone else? In other words, what if you have a common name?

If the next employer, or client, or contact googles your name up to learn more about you after that brief encounter at the business cocktail you attended last week, will they find you, or someone else with your name. What if that person they found has digital dirt, how does that affect the future of your relationship? You might lose the job, or the business, or that opportunity …

Let’s take an example … two of my students introduced themselves as Ahmed Kamal. I found 447 results on LinkedIn called Ahmed Kamal! Now what are the odds of anyone finding you amongst that list? Let’s just be optimistic and say VERY SLIM!

John Antonios - How-to Avoid Brand Confusion Image

John Antonios - Brand Confusion - (Photographer: Astrid Challita)

You need to make sure your brand name is not confused with someone else’s and here’s how you go about doing that:

Change THE NAME

Chances are Ahmed Kamal won’t go to the official register and change his name … so that’s not the change I’m talking about here. I’m talking about adding uniqueness to your name. Here are some options:

  1. Add a key identifying factor: Associate your name with a title, an adjective, a profession; for example: Ahmed Kamal, MD or Ahmed Kamal, The Painter or The Great Ahmed Kamal … ok maybe you shouldn’t consider that last option, it might be attributed to a narcissistic tendency, unless that’s how you’d like to brand yourself, then by all means, go ahead!
  2. Nicknames: I never understood why everyone in Egypt had a nickname, but then I realized that this is the only way people can identify who they were referring to, since they all share very common first and last names. A tip on using a nickname though, make sure it’s not offensive in any circle. I have a friend that I’ve always known as Moë Ash – I recently tried to add him to my LinkedIn professional network, and I couldn’t find him. Then I discovered that his real name is Mohammed Reda … so when I conducted the search on that name on LinkedIn, as expected, I found one too many results. So my advice to him was to add his nickname to his real name, and introduce himself in any network as Mohammed Reda better known (or also known) as Moë Ash.
  3. Mix it up with initials: Sometimes all you need to do is use initials – A great example on that front is my friend Christine L Bowen, who uses CLB as an acronym for her name and she also translates that into her brand attribute (Create, Live, Be).

COMMUNIcate the same brand name

Regardless of the option you end up choosing for making your brand unique, make sure you communicate that same brand name across all platforms, online and offline.

  1. Own the name – or what I like to refer to as e-real-estate. Purchase your brand name url … www.yourbrandname.com 
  2. Social Networks synergy - use the same brand name on all your social networks – have a look at this free tool www.namechk.com – it allows you to check the dominance of your chosen brand name (which should be your username) on multiple networks.
  3. Offline Material – be it your business card, your CV, or your signature, or any other kind of introduction (even an oral one) … make sure you communicate your brand name as you would like the receiver to remember it and search for it (for further reference)

drown the competition

You can never delete a search result from Google, but you can certainly drown it. In other words, you can make sure that result, which you want to hide, does not show up in the first three pages of Google. That can be achieved by owning your online brand name, as explained in the above section, and by being active in the different platforms and adding valuable content.

Here are some ways you can do that:

  1. Blog & Share: if you want to get noticed by your next employer or client, you need to make you are share you knowledge, thoughts, reviews about the industry (brand or product) on your blog. You need to make sure that the keywords you wanted to be associated with are frequently used on your blog.
    Needless to say, I’m talking about blogging, as a certain prerequisite to any online brand. Think of the blog as your main brand communication hub, which can be reached at www.yourbrandname.com
  2. Commenting on high traffic blogs: A great way to get noticed in the online community is to leave smart comments on high traffic  blogs. Notice, I said “smart” comments … you want to make sure the comments you leave behind arouse the interest of the reader enough from him or her to link back to you and check your profile, or blog … technically, you rank higher in Google when you have more incoming links. All comments will be signed off with your brand name
  3. Brand it: sign everything you share online with your brand name. If you upload a picture or an infographic that you created, make sure your brand name is there on the image, and in the name of the file you upload.

Now go on, google your name? are you happy with the results? how many you’s are there? Does your name appear in the first 3 results? How many time does  your brand name recur on the first 3 pages? now be honest, if you didn’t know you, could you tell which you is YOU? Confusing, I know, this is exactly how those seeking you out feel! Think About It! 

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Posted in Branding, How-to, Personal Branding, Social Media Marketing

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KLOUT – Measuring Your Personal Branding Influence & Style

Posted on January 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

There are thousands of Social Media monitoring tools out there that should certainly be used to measure the effectiveness of your branding activities. This here is the first in a series of posts that will be introducing how to make the best use of these tools. In today’s post, I’ll be talking about the benefits of Klout and why I believe it’s an indispensable personal branding monitoring tool.

PS. Before you go on with this post, make sure you signup for Klout using your twitter account, and have it open in a separate window, as I will be reverting to it several times during the course of this post.

What is Klout?

In short, Klout is tool used to measure and leverage your online influence based on your use of social media communication tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Google+. Wherever you have an online presence, you have the opportunity to influence people by creating or sharing content that inspires actions such as likes, retweets, shares, comments and more. The more engagement your posts receive, the more influential you are. Tracking this influence overtime, allows you to understand your brand resonance further, and basically, highlights what you should continue you doing, and what you should refrain from exploring.

What does you Klout score measure?

John Antonios - Understanding Klout - Score

Figure 1 - Klout Score

Klout gives your influence a score from 1 to 100. This score is calculated based the level of your social media engagement, so make sure you connect all your social networks and use them properly to score higher. Here are some attributes that go into the calculation of your score:

  • Facebook – likes, comments
  • Twitter – retweets, mentions
  • LinkedIn – comments, likes
  • Foursquare – tips, to-dos, done
  • Google+ – comments, re-shares, +1

It’s also important to mention that the average Klout score is 20 (not 50). The higher you score, the more difficult it becomes to add points to your score.

The score itself is not as important as the trend presented by the historical data. In Figure 1, you’ll notice that my current Klout score is approximately 56. The drops showcased in the graph highlight my period of extended inactivity. Note that this score is updated on a daily basis based on your activity. You should aim at having a positive sloped graph.

Having a large number of followers or likes or whatnot is not what counts towards your Klout score – it’s the level of engagement with your audience that matters. So basically, it’s not the size of your network, but how you use it to inflict action!

What are you influential about?

This feature of Klout is of utmost importance.

According to William Arruda, the 3Cs of Personal Branding are Clarity, Consistency, and Constancy. Being a Jack-of-all-trades is not exactly the best approach to personal branding – in fact, I’d highly advise against being one. Your aim is to be known for something not everything. Gone are the days where a generic approach is plausible; you should aim at developing a certain level of expertise, and target a specific audience!

Klout monitors your social media activity and analyzes what topics you’re most influential about. In Figure 2 – you’ll notice that I’m personally influential about Personal Branding and Social Media – this is perfectly aligned with Personal Brand objectives.

John Antonios - Understanding Klout - Influential Topics

Figure 2 - Klout - Influential Topics

Have a look at your influential topics, are the top 5 topics analyzed by Klout representative of your brand? If the answer is “No”, then you might want to reconsider what you’re putting out there!

What is your Klout Style?

This is by far my favorite Klout feature!

Klout has developed a great matrix to help you understand your social networking style. This complex matrix measures your style of engagement (Listening, Participating, Sharing, and Creating) and your content (Broad, Focused, Consistent, and Casual). This in turn forms 16 different styles as depicted in Figure 3. For further description about each style, make sure you look at this interactive graph (just hover the different section of the matrix and learn about each style).

Klout Style Matrix

Figure 3 - Klout Style Matrix

You want to completely avoid being in the lower left quadrant! If your personal brand lies in that corner of the Klout matrix, you should start engaging with your social network and be more active. Depending on your brand attributes, you might choose to go towards the right of this graph by being more focused in terms of topics discussed, and consistent in delivering it. Or you may choose to move vertically up if you are more in the spirit of sharing information you come across with your followers. Finally, you may choose to move diagonally upwards, which more often than not requires of you to have an pre-existing imposing brand (like a celebrity would). People like Lady Gaga & Barak Obama occupy the celebrity corner – basically, what this entails is an audience that hangs on every word and probably retweets the hell out of anything they post, but they (Gaga & Obama) rarely (more like never) make it a two-way conversation.

However, I strongly recommend you focus on having your personal brand in the lower right quadrant of the Klout matrix. Being a specialist means that within  your area of expertise your opinion is second to none. Your provide focused content around a specific topic or industry and share it with a highly engaged audience. This is the kind of fame you need to attract towards your brand – “earned fame” not a bought one!

Additional klout features

Aside from all the great features discussed above, Klout scores your:

  • Amplification – how much you influence people
  • True Reach – the number of people you influence, both within your immediate network, and across their extended networks.
  • Network – how influential is your network

Klout also allows you to compare your different scores – this feature allows you to benchmark your social media engagement against your competition and therefore enhance your online performance.

This brings us to the end of our Klout discussion for this post. Whatever you are doing to communicate your brand, make sure you are measuring your progress and setting goals, otherwise, your efforts might go unnoticed, and that would be a shame. Think About It!

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I will be publishing a series of articles to help you better manage your personal brand – so make sure you subscribe to my blog or to my RSS feed (http://johnantonios.com/feed) to your favorite reader (eg. Google Reader)

Do you use other tools to monitor your personal brand? If so, why don’t you share them in the comment section below …

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Posted in Branding, How-to, Monitoring Tools, Personal Branding, Social Media Marketing

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The Success behind the Social Media Revolution – Focus #Egypt

Posted on February 11, 2011 | 7 Comments

To write today’s post, I had to look up successful social media campaigns from around the world and try to understand what they have in common. What made them successful? How was this success measured? And much more …

Social Media Examiner featured an article entitled “Top 10 Facebook Pages and Why They’re Successful” written by Amy Porterfield. In her post, Amy examines top brands from around the world and highlights what made their Facebook page stand out from the crowd. These are the tips, I’ve extracted from this great article:

  • Invest in Creativity & Design
  • Highlight Product/Service Uniqueness
  • Engage the audience through Sweepstakes & Competitions
  • Incorporated customer support
  • Create direct purchase opportunities
  • Keep things simple
  • Build a personal connection
  • Create different engagement platforms
  • Start discussion streams

Amy gives clear examples of how brands from around the world have used these techniques to create successful Facebook pages. I was also interested in learning what some of the top brands on Facebook are.

  • YouTube     26.9 Million
  • Coca Cola     22.3 Million
  • Starbucks    19.5 Million
  • Disney        16.8 Million
  • Oreo        16.6 Million
  • Red Bull    15.1 Million
  • Skittles        15.0 Million
  • Converse    12.6 Million

All the success factors, mentioned Amy’s post, are present in these top pages on Facebook. Another factor that plays a huge role in the popularity of these pages is the actual offline fame of the brand itself. Let’s not forget that there’s a lot of money supporting these brands and their social media development.

In my previous post, I showcased the role of social media in the Egyptian Uprise of January 25, 2010. The logical question to follow is WHY?

Was the success of the Egyptian Revolution on Social Media attributed to the common factors present in the top Facebook pages? No!

The social media revolution in Egypt was created by the people for the people. The twitter streams, the YouTube videos shared, and the Facebook pages created all had one thing in common – PASSION! Coca Cola might have 22.3 million Likes; on the other hand, We Are All Khaled Said only has 696 thousand Likes, but each comment posted on their wall has on average 4500 likes and thousands and thousands of comments in reply (one of the comments actually had 14,696 likes and 49,675 comments – WOW!). If the purpose of social media is to engage with your audience, given the figures I just shared with you, which of the two “brands” is more successful? The answer to that is easy!

So how does a multibillion dollar brand come second in terms of engagement? The more appropriate question is what does We Are All Khaled Said have that Coca Cola doesn’t? A: Pure unsolicited Love!

The audience wasn’t lured in by great design & graphics, or coupons, or competitions, or promises, or any of the other reasons that make other pages successful – they were driven by an internal need. The marketing lesson behind all this is that a brand’s success lies in its ability to genuinely cater to that need. This way it guarantees the birth of advocates not just likes.

In developing your social media platforms, the key is understanding your target audience and delivering a platform where they can express their views freely about the brand. So many social media campaigns fail (or only experience a short term success) because they deliver off the shelf solutions. I see hundreds of Facebook pages offering the same thing – no wonder they end up failing. When I’m invited to “Like” someone’s social network, they have to give me a very good reason to do so! I’m not a “Like” collector, nor am I interested in following a million people, I want value for my very limited time. Remember that tip when developing your social media strategy.

Are you just another brand on the social media train, or do you make a difference? Think About It!

PS. In closing, I would like to congratulate the Egyptian population on pursuing their passion and cashing in on it!

BRANDING UPDATE (Feb 13, 2011): I did some further research and I was able to find the technical word behind the success of the Social Media Revolution in Egypt – they had an Emotional Selling Proposition (ESP). The whole branding of the Revolution 2.0 was perceived differently primarily because of emotional attachment. (source: Brand Sense by Martin Lindstorm)


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The Social Media Revolution – Spotlight on Egypt

Posted on February 3, 2011 | 4 Comments

I’m not sure where or how to start this post, but I will suffice by saying “YOU CAN’T SILENCE FREEDOM”. This post might lead to banning me from Egypt or worse, but this is my contribution to a country I love dearly. I dedicate this post to Egypt.

Censorship is not new to Egypt! In fact, people have been silenced, one way or another, for the mere thought of opposing the ruling regime. This post is certainly not intended to be a political one, nor am I fond of the subject; this is simply a showcase of the role of social media in the Uprising in Egypt (January 25, 2011).

The voice of the Egyptian people was never louder – thanks to social media!

On January 25, 2011, the Egyptian people took the streets in protest of the ruling regime. Social Media channels (including Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, and blogs) were used to organize this revolution and as a platform of voicing the people’s frustration to the world and earn their attention.

A couple of Dedicated Twitter Accounts:

  • @25Egypt – Followers: 3,427 / Tweets: 2,664 / Created: Sun, Jan 23, 2011
  • @Jan25voices – Followers: 6,412 / Tweets: 579 / Created: Fri, Jan 28, 2011

Some Dedicated Facebook Pages:

Needless to say, that these are dedicated channels following up on the Egyptian Revolution. Let’s have a quick look at some random statistics:

WOW – No wonder they were very keen in shutting down all internet communication – the figures are scary, especially if they’re trying to hide something. You can run, but you can’t hide! Think About It!

In reply to the internet blackout, Google launched a service called “Speak2Tweet” Monday, January 27, 2011, giving Egyptians the option to call an international phone number (+97316199855)

and tweet via voicemail. After one day of complete communication blackout (including mobile networks and internet service providers), they reinstated the mobile connection and people of Egypt called in their tweets using this service.

How was social media used in this revolution?

  • Organizing Protests – Social media was used as a megaphone on steroids to spread the word about the demonstrations on January 25
  • Advice & Tips – Demonstrators were guiding others on what routes to avoid, what clothes to wear, what supplies to keep on hand – the international realm was giving tips on how to wash tear gas from their faces, etc …
  • Storytelling – Someone had to tell the real story since the local TV channels didn’t – filtering what’s real and what’s exaggerated was left to the reader, but it wasn’t hard, since the mass amount of videos, pictures, and articles helped paint a very clear picture.
  • Inducing Pressure on International Politics – Egypt is not alone; it doesn’t exist on an isolated planet with no connection to earth. So someone has to answer to all that has and is happening. The cry of the people on social media was too loud to be ignored by the international community. They earned the attention!

In closing, I would like to share with you a picture that was taken by a friend of mine, Beco G., who took part in the protests in Tahrir Square.

You Can't Silence FREEDOM

You Can't Silence FREEDOM - By Beco G.

In my next post, we’ll be looking at the social media lessons learned from the Egyptian Revolution 2011. Till then, I ask you to send your love and prayers to Egypt.

UPDATE – February 13, 2011: Dearest Readers, the different figures showcased in the this post were collected on the 3rd of February – I invite you to click on the different links for more updated figures, see the incredible growth rate to-date.

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Social Media – The NEW Customer Comment Card

Posted on September 22, 2010 | 27 Comments

“Excuse me, but do you mind filling our customer comment card”, said the waiter as he handed me the check. “Certainly”, I replied but what I should have said was, “Are you kidding? I already Foursqaured it, tweeted about it, and Facebooked it …”

Social Media - The NEW Customer Comment Card (John Antonios)

Why should I fill out a customer comment card when I have already expressed what I thought about the food, the service, the lighting, the menu choice, and much more with millions of people online? Besides, what will you do with my comment card? You’re probably going to hide it away in a box, until you have enough in there to go through them, and when you actually do, you realize that I hated your food and I said I will never come to your restaurant again, and it took you a month to realize that! In the world of NOW – where every second counts, you are ancient history in my book!

I conducted a very small experiment – I looked up on Twitter (using Hootsuite) the words “Restaurant + Bad”, and below is a screen shot of what I got. I deleted the handle names for privacy purposes, but made sure to reflect that @K’s message was re-tweeted with comments – this points out the viral nature of customer feedback online. Try it for your other brand, I gave McDonald’s, SUBWAY, Burger King a shot – you’d be surprised at the enormous amount of feedback out there (both positive and negative).

Bad Mexican Restaurant - Twitter Stream

NEW Facts to remember about customer feedback:

  • Customers are not waiting for you to solicit their opinion about your service or product
  • Customers are sharing their feedback about your service or product pre/during/and post their experience
  • Customer’s voice is bolder and louder than ever, and echoes very far, and for very long

Drop the comment card and the tips below to better navigate your brand in this new era of engagement:

  • Create a brand listening station to monitor what is being said about your brand
  • Listen to what they’re saying about your competitors
  • Location based social media networks (like Foursquare, Facebook Places, … etc.) allow you to locate and champion your brand ambassadors

During my work at SUBWAY®, management expressed their desire to be on social media but they also expressed their fear of losing control if they do! One thing companies do not seem to understand about social media is that empowerment of your customer is not something that belonged to you for you to give up. Customers are in control of your brand, and they can make it or break it. Cliché but true: “if you can’t beat them, join them”. Your brand is being dissected online whether you like it or not, and ignoring that will not make it go away. Think About It!

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