This is an email I sent to one of my friends help her see how I have been working my social media approach on the net.
I hope you too can benefit from it as well.
How To Make yourself stick as an expert!
Yes its incredible that we live so far apart yet can communicate so fast with each other and other people all over the world. Its incredible!
This is why we need to be real smart so when people accidentally meet us on any social site they can reference us fast and see if we can be of assistance to them or to someone they know.
Now getting back to what you said yesterday how I use social media and what I am doing to get known..
I had a look at the SM guru you mentioned and I am sure he is good and is a great source of inspiration to many people. He is well known and well respected in the world.
Attending Seminars & Reading Books?
I too have attended many seminars and have read many books on the subject and have started to realize that we must build our relationships on the internet as if they were tangible contacts right in front of us. Everything we learn be it from seminars or books is useful. We need to learn, analyze and then implement. Then we need to analyze again and see why some of our applications are not working as fast as we want it to work. We then tweak them and reapply, and repeat the process over and over again. Each repeat takes us closer to our goal.
Failure is the stepping stone to success!
I tried a number of things and have found the best way is take all you can from gurus and then add your style and personality to the mix and you will have the best formula. You must always keep learning so going back to your mentor is always important. Reading the latest books on the subject is also crucial. This is because the social media landscape is changing and evolving too fast to keep up so we must keep learning at the forefront.
This is where personal branding comes in. I am sure you know what that is and I wont spend too much time to explain what branding is about but I will just tell you what I do and how I do it.
Branding yourself | Reaching Out!
I decided sometime ago to brand myself in a way that very few people do right now. I am sure it will catch on as people will get to know about branding as the years go on. Right now most people think of branding being what big companies do.
But branding is for everyone who has a service or product to sell.
I had become a member of most of the social sites and they were all stand alone sites not complimenting each other. I wanted a way to bring them together so I could be seen as an expert and someone who knew where he was going and what message I had for others.
So how did I go about branding myself.
I decided to that I need to have a gateway to everything I do. I needed to have a place I could send people to to reference me fast. Something on the lines “Google me at Claude Fullinfaw“. Try it and you will see what I mean. So this is what I do now to get social influence by just saying the above Google my name. They will find ClaudeFullinfaw.com and from there the “Claude Fullinfaw” world opens up to them.
Do you get the picture. I get them to sell themselves rather than I sell myself to them.
So to get started I…
Create your story! First I would write a very good story about you. This must be very touching as well as portray you as an expert in your field of expertise. Don’t be shy about telling people that you are an expert but don’t come across as proud or too outlandish. I would add snippets of information of you growing up with pictures to make it all interesting. If you have a Flickr account use those pictures as the SEO is great. (I suggest you start to keep a picture album on Flickr.com. Do the same in Google Plus). Add a short YouTube movie to it too.
Once you have created your profile story then next step is to…
Register “Your-Name.com” domain!
You must have a domain that is your-Full_name.com. Host this on Hostgator and then upload WordPress onto your domain. Once you have done that set all the permissions and upload a free theme or buy one. I suggest you buy one as its more presentable. You can always buy one later and change the theme. It will not affect your site at all if you change themes later. I find StudioPress Themes really good.
You can get ideas how to set the layout of your site by copying mine. I am sure there are as good or better examples on the internet so be free to look around. Making it simple and easy to navigate is what counts. ClaudeFullinfaw.com
Connect all your Social sites and other marketing sites to this Site. Here are some ideas of what you may connect.
* Linkedin
* Facebook Fan Page
* Twitter
* Pinterest
* Google Plus
* Youtube
* Foursquare
* Your Blog
* Your business landing page
In addition you need a Privacy Page and a Contact Me page.
PS: I did a search and did not find you on Google with a domain of your own.
Have you got one? If you have not got one, start thinking of getting one immediately.
Tomorrow I will start with how I use Linkedin to grow my contacts and slowly work through the list of Social Media.
I hope you have found this useful.
Thank you for allowing me to share what I know with you too.
