Viral communication spreads your message faster than swine flu is able to infect us. Are you controlling your message? Or is someone else?

Branding, especially personal branding, is rapidly moving to the top of my interest list (which includes transparency and security both on and off line). Feeling secure online is impacted by how you brand yourself – how you control the messages about you and your company.

Your blog is an extension of your personality. A consistent message, written in your voice, is your brand. Be yourself. And follow a few simple steps to provide your readers a YOU-nique experience. You’ve heard these before, but they are worth repeating.

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Viral communication spreads your message faster than swine flu is able to infect us. Are you controlling your message? Or is someone else?

Branding, especially personal branding, is rapidly moving to the top of my interest list (which includes transparency and security both on and off line). Feeling secure online is impacted by how you brand yourself – how you control the messages about you and your company.

Your blog is an extension of your personality. A consistent message, written in your voice, is your brand. Be yourself. And follow a few simple steps to provide your readers a YOU-nique experience. You’ve heard these before, but they are worth repeating.

1. Name. Your name is a reflection of your message. If you are not using your own name, select a name that is YOU-nique, and at the same time is short, easy to remember and spell, does not inadvertently spell, sound or look like something you don’t intend when the words are written without spaces – and most importantly will separate your message from those of the vast number of bloggers competing for attention against you.
2. Focus. Define your blog’s purpose. Stay focused. Use your about page (the most read page on a blog) to go into detail about what readers will find and why they should return. If you have multiple personalities, create separate blogs for each.
3. Visual Imagery. Brand yourself with color, logo design, fonts, style. And use these every time you create a marketing piece. This is a strong visual part of your brand. I have a client who coaches couples. Her visual brand is a red heart. She always wears something red, even if only a scarf or bracelet, usually with a heart design included. When people think of you, they should have an immediate visual image also.
4. Identity. If I don’t know who you are, how will I find you? Build brand awareness with publicity. Link to others and ask them to reciprocate. Join social media and networking groups where your message is needed and where your peers are. Comment on other blogs, adding your blog’s name in your comment with a link if possible.
5. Socnet (social networking). As much as possible, customize your profiles at every socnet site in which you participate.
6. Transparency. Consistency, your true voice, no hard sell, valuable content, all build from the real you.

This is transparency at is best: building your brand by being yourself.

For more ideas and links, check out ChrisG’s Branding Blog Post Round Up.

Gayley Knight is a guest blogger for GMI. She is Founder/Principal of Business Her Way (a social media management company). Delighting in opening the technology world for your company, Gayley draws on her extensive network and personal business experience to simplify your online world. Showing you best social business practices and simple tech tools designed to increase your business visibility brings social media into perspective, saving you time and money. You can contact her directly at http://www.businessherway.net or via email at gayley@mothergeek.com.

Tags: General, Social Media Capital

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 12:00 AM by Wendy Troupe and is filed under Wendy Troupe's Perspectives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.