100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media

Chris Brogan, is the man I rely on to give me the latest tips in social media. He released an outstanding article that outlines 100 Tips/Tactics for Personal Branding Using Social media. Branding one’s self in an online environment built on entropy and go-baby-go is difficult at best, and impossible if you forget to take your happy pills. To that end, He’s come up with a quick list of 100 things you might do to help with these efforts. Feel free to add your ideas to the comments section. I would like to list just a few and then you can visit his blog for the rest.

Listening

* Build ego searches using Technorati and Google Blogsearch
* Comment frequently (and meaningfully) on blogs that write about you and your posts
* Don’t forget the conversations hiding in Twitter (use Summize.com) and Friendfeed. Be sure to stay aware of those.
* If you can afford it, buy professional listening tools, like Radian6 or others in that category.
* Use Google Reader to store your ego searches.
* Use Yahoo! Site Explorer to see who’s linking to your site.
* Use heat map tools like CrazyEgg to see how people relate to your site.
* Listen to others in your area of expertise. Learn from them.
* Listen to thought leaders in other areas, and see how their ideas apply to you.
* Don’t forget podcasts. Check out iTunes and see who’s talking about your area of interest.
* Track things like audience/community sentiment (positive/negative) if you want to map effort to results.

Home Base

* Home base is your blog/website. Not everyone needs a blog. But most people who want to develop a personal brand do.
* Buy an easy-to-remember, easy-to-spell, content-appropriate domain name if you can. Don’t be TOO clever.
* A really nice layout doesn’t have to cost a lot, but shows you’re more than a social media dabbler.
* Your “About” page should be about you AND your business, should the blog be professional in nature. At least, it should be about you.
* Make sure it’s easy to comment on your site.
* Make sure it’s easy for people to subscribe to your site’s content.
* Use easy to read fonts and colors.
* A site laden with ads is a site that doesn’t cherish its audience. Be thoughtful.
* Pay attention to which widgets you use in your sidebar. Don’t be frivolous.
* Load time is key. Test your blog when you make changes, and ensure your load times are reasonable.
* Register your site with all the top search engines.
* Claim your site on Technorati.com
* Use WebsiteGrader.com to make sure your site is well built in Google’s eyes.

Passports

* Passports are accounts on other social networks and social media platforms. It’s a good idea to build an account on some of these sites to further extend your personal branding.
* Twitter.com is a must if you have a social media audience. It also connects you to other practitioners.
* Facebook and/or MySpace are useful social networks where you can build outposts (see next list).
* Get a Flickr account for photo sharing.
* Get a YouTube account for video uploading.
* Get a StumbleUpon.com account for voting.
* Get a Digg.com account for voting, as well.
* Get an Upcoming.org account to promote events.
* Get a del.icio.us account for social bookmarking.
* Get a WordPress.com account for its OpenID benefits.
* Get a LinkedIn account for your professional network.
* Take a second look at Plaxo. It’s changed for the better.
* Get a Gmail.com account for use with reader, calendar, docs, and more.

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