Tag Archives: Social network

Personal Branding – How-to Avoid Brand Name Confusion

Posted on January 26, 2012 | 5 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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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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Why Should Your Business Care About Social Media?

Posted on October 18, 2010 | 5 Comments

Whether you like it or not, your business (brand) is being talked about … So you might as well join the conversation.

The weight of word-of-mouth marketing is unequivocal; think of social networking as word-of-mouth on steroids! Customers are using social media to discuss, evaluate, and recommend your business. As a business, you must tap into that conversation not as a moderator, but as a participant.

By engaging in social networks, companies can gain insights into the perception of their brand, their competitors, and their industry. On the other hand, not doing so leaves your brand exposed and vulnerable to misinformation and misperception. Social Media gives brands an unprecedented opportunity to communicate and engage with their customers.

Having a corporate website does not qualify as being active in the social media realm. The latter is static, unidirectional, and is not perceived as a trustworthy source of information about your brand. Don’t look surprised; customers tend to search public forums, Twitter, and other social networks to find out what people are saying about your brand and they will only resort to your website to learn the features about your product or service. Think of it from a personal perspective – when you want to buy a product, do you call up the company and ask them if their product is any good, or do you ask friends who have tried the service? Social media allows companies to become that friend!

Some businesses fear getting into social media because it exposes their brand to possibility of negative comments. Here’s a reality check: whether you are there or not, they will comment anyway. However, being part of the conversation gives you a chance to learn about these complaints early on and be proactive about resolving them before they become viral and hurt your overall business.

Here are some other benefits of social media that were shared in a report by MarketingProfs, entitled Research on The Benefits of Social Media Marketing, which you might want to consider:

  1. Generates exposure for your business
  2. Increases traffic to your corporate website
  3. Results in new business partnerships
  4. Helps you rise in search engine rankings
  5. Generate qualified leads
  6. Reduce your overall marketing expenses

Social media (or social networking) has caused a power shift, from suppliers to consumers. Successful brands around the world have embraced this fact and started building communities instead audiences. They are empowering their customers, creating brand ambassadors that share the same values, interests, and beliefs as the brand. Paul Isakson, co-founder of Thinkers & Makers, said, “The best way to get people to do stuff for you, is first join them in what they are doing.”

You might argue that in Egypt, social media is not that big. Here are some facts that might change your mind:

  • Over 17 Million internet users (June 2010)
  • In a survey, entitled MENA Internet Media Habits (July 2010), with more than 69% of the respondents where from Egypt, 79% stated that they spend more than 3 hours a day updating their social networks and 54% use mobile application on a daily bases.
  • Egypt ranks as the 23rd largest community in the world on Facebook with over 4 million users and 60% semi-annual growth rate, with 80% under the age of 30. Over 80% of these users hold at least a graduate degree.

These are only a few facts about the weight and growth rate of social media adoption in Egypt. Therefore, the claim about “not being big enough” stands corrected. You might contest by saying that in a population of 80 million, this does not serve as a critical mass; but it certainly is a niche, described as young, educated, and knowledgeable. This particular niche spends more time online than they do watching TV, listening to the radio, or reading magazines and publications. Think of how your brand can serve that growing niche and profit from it.

Social media is not a trend that is bound to phase out – it is a phenomenon that is completely shifting the way we do business. The figures that I shared with you are growing at exponential rates. There are over 190 active social media networks out there. The development and use of mobile application has made this sharing process even faster. Customers are sharing their experience with your business while having it. It’s a live broadcast that you might to tune into!

So the question is, will you watch the game from the bench, or will you come out play? Think About It!

This post was first published by John Antonios in the Community Times magazine (October 2010 issue) in Egypt. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my friend, Hala Salib, for presenting the opportunity, and Maha el-Gazar, Senior Editor of Community Times magazines,  for catering to it.

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My Answer to Social Media Skeptics

Posted on October 14, 2010 | 9 Comments

On Sunday, October 10, 2010, I was invited by Lilly to attend the Global Work Party to Help Lebanon Go Solar organized by Young Leader Social Media Café (#ymlsc). It is a grassroot campaign that was led by 350.org. On this day, more than 6631 Events in 188 Countries celebrated climate solutions and sent politicians a clear message: “We’re getting to work—what about you?” I had the opportunity to meet very interesting people like Hiba Farhat, the regional coordinator of YLSMC. I also got to meet a couple of social media skeptics – this is where the conversation became even more exciting and this post is based on that conversation.

Skeptic

They believe that Social Media takes you away from the real world! Ironically, it was social media that got me to attend this “physical” meeting in the first place. If I were to summarize my answer to such skepticism, I would suffice by saying: Social Media is as real as it gets!

Here are some of the questions I asked the young skeptics in response to their disbelief:

  • How many of your friends in real life share your beliefs and thoughts?
  • How many of them can you discuss your true passion with?
  • How many add value to you on daily basis?
  • How many of them do you connect with on an intellectual level?
  • How often do you get to have enriching conversations?
  • How many of them are pure intellectual connections free of any bias and prejudice?
  • How much time do you spend wasting your time?
  • How many hours out of the 24 hours in a day are you effectively using?
  • Are you investing in your “sweat equity”?
  • Are you learning something new every day?

Their answer was very few!

Now try to ask the same questions in the social media realm … I have over a thousand Twitter connections and less than 10 are prior friends. This means that there must be something else that brings us together and that is our passions! What can be more real than that? On social media you are judged only by the value you add … not what car you drive, or title you hold, or clothes you wear, or money you have, or religion, or race, or any other societal dysfunction! You are what you give – this is reality!

Things to remember about social media reality:

  • Social Media is only a connection tool – it does not replace the physical reality, it is simply an extension of it
  • Social Media is a think tank of interconnected minds – that is something you rarely find in the physical realm
  • Social Media presents you with infinitely many opportunities – what you decide to do with that is up to YOU
  • Social Media is free – the physical reality you live in comes with a price tag

Are you a skeptic or a believer? Do you think Social Media is a waste of time? Do you think it takes away from your reality? Think About It!

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Social Media Responsibility (SMR)

Posted on September 26, 2010 | 5 Comments

If this sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’re confusing it with CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). However, the subjects might not be that far apart after all. Businesses that get on board the social media bus must understand the level of responsibility that comes with it.

In what seems to be an ancient post now, entitled Social Media Frenzy, I gave a gentle warning to businesses: if you’re not ready for the commitment don’t ride the wave just yet – it’s better to be dubbed as not In (~ the zone) than be dubbed as Out (~ of business). Is that statement too subtle, or do I make it very clear that social media mismanagement can lead you to lose business?

So your business decided to join the racks of many and get onto social media – well it’s free, so it’s not really costing you anything, or is it? Hmmm … how much is a lost customer worth to your business? How much does it cost you to retain a customer? How much does it cost you to get a new customer? Social media mismanagement can do a lot of damage, and that is why it should not be taken lightly.

OK let’s bring this closer to home: Social Media is a communication tool. If you call a certain company up or send them an email, you expect them to reply, and if they don’t, you will probably be upset, and you might relay your dismay to your friends, who will in turn share your negative sentiments vis-à-vis that company based on your experience. Social Media is not different – if you have a Facebook Page, or a Twitter account for your business then you are telling people they can be reached via that medium as well. Failing to do so will result in extremely viral negative feedback. The major difference between traditional forms of communication and Social Media is the speed (with respect to time) in which the message travels and how far it echoes (reach).

In the past, you might have been able to hide behind excuses like: “your email never reached our inbox”, “all our operators were busy (but your call is important to us)” … fortunately for customers, you don’t have that luxury anymore! When I tweet you or write a message on your wall, I have made my complaint public for all to see. At this stage, I’m not the only one expecting a reply from your end; in fact, your fan (followers) base is too! This is what I like to call the unspoken power of customer unity.

Customer Feedback - Ripple vs. Spiral Megaphone Effect

The left upper corner of the above figure describes customer feedback pre-Social Media: basic marketing principles taught us that a disgruntled customer is likely to tell 10 other people about their experience, and in turn some of those would relay the message. Graphically this is described in the actual ripple thickness and color, which signifies the intensity of the message. The distance between each ripple represents the time factor involved. In short, intensity of message is negatively correlated with time, and so is the message reach.

The right lower corner of that figure describes the social media effect on customer feedback: The basic marketing principles still apply. Prior to social media, I used to limit my complaining to a close list of 10 or so friends. Now I have two additional contact points that make all the difference – my personal social network and that of the company. Unlike traditional WOM, Social Media’s effect has much greater magnitude and lasts much longer! This is why I represented it with an expanding spiral megaphone rather than an interrupted ripple. The message on social media grows arms and legs and morphs as more people join their voice to yours.

It is not enough that you join in the different social media networks; what counts is the level of engagement with your customers. Your business will be rewarded or punished accordingly. Remember, the power is no longer in your hands! It is your responsibility to make sure your deliver impeccable customer service on all communication portals.

Here’s what you need to reflect on:

  • Does my business have a static or active online presence?
  • Are my customers satisfied with the services offered via the business’s social networking platforms?
  • Am I conducting the necessary social media audits to see what customers are saying outside my network? What about competitors?

Think About It!

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