Social Media: Your Brand in Four Words or Less
As a follow up to my post on PR and Cyberbranding post, I wanted to touch on the personal brand as it will be a part of my presentation at the University of Sacred Heart in Puerto Rico.
It used to be the thirty 30 second elevator pitch that would tell someone everything they needed to know about a brand in a quick conscise statement. With social media….how many characters do we have? Is it 140 on Twitter? Or, is it a set number of words? I remember reading that you should be able to say what your brand stands for in 4 words or less. Maybe that’s true. I also believe that you should be able to look at someone’s Twitter profile or an individual’s facebook profile and fan page, and identify in less then a minute the following: a person’s interests, what he/she likes to talk about, and something that stands out with respect to his/her personality.
I conducted an experiment with the head of our accounting office the other day. She is a part of my company, but not involved in the communications, or social media programs or any type branding efforts that we create. I asked her to look at my Twitter page and in less than 30 seconds, give me the first four words that popped into her head. She said:
- PR
- Books
- Communications
- Education
It didn’t take her long at all. I asked her to do the same thing with my Facebook fan page and the first four words out of her mouth (in the same amount of time) were:
- Author
- PR
- Communications
- Professor
Now, you may say that she is a member of my company and knows who I am. So, I’m going to try the same test with individuals who are unrelated to me and not members of my company (to see if they come up with similar are different answers). To sum up my brand, although the words social media and business weren’t mentioned in my little experiment, I would say that my accounting person did a good job.
Try this little exercise on your own and it may prove a few things. First, it could reveal that you are headed in the right direction; building the brand that you want to be. However, it could let you know that what you talk about and how you visually represent yourself is not the brand you want to create. But, hurry, because social media travels quickly and once a brand is embedded in the minds of an audience, it’s difficult to get them to change how they see you, and how they want to interact with you. Let me know how you do!