Connie Bensen

Peter Kim’s post today reminded me of something that I think about every day: my brand, my company’s brand and how they’re interwoven.

As a community manager it is your job to uplift the brand. Do you have the right to uplift your own brand?  Peter framed his post around concern that people are building their personal brands in social media in the guise of building a corporate brand.

Stepping back I think the bigger question is what if your brand is strong and built of your own accord. How much value does that provide your company (and their brand)? Doesn’t that indicate that you have some successful brand building skills?

My bigger concern are all of the people that are claiming to be social media experts based on self proclaimed skills and that haven’t been involved in building a corporate brand. And my favorite is when a conference organizer invites me to speak at an event & then rescinds it because I’m not an independent consultant. (Yes, I do work for a brand and I believe in being a practitioner as much as contributing to the industry in a greater sense.)

Peter Kim asks these two questions:

Are you represented by a carefully crafted digital presence?

Or are you the sum of who other people say you are?

If you focus on branding then you have a long term plan, but I think that it’s important to evolve with your brand (whether personal or corporate). So the ‘careful’ part needs to include flexibility so that you don’t get stale & boring. I personally push myself to grow and learn but intertwine that with my brand in a consistent way.

And I am the sum of who I am + what I’m striving to be + what others perceive me to be.

That last piece is what keeps me humble. Generally when I read someone’s perception of my work or sense it when I meet them in person  I’m reminded how important my community is and that I always need to be giving back.

I believe that we must build our individual brand as well as uplifting that of our corporate brand. If you’re going to build community then you’re building equity on both accounts. That’s supposed to be your specialty as a community person so you may as well shine at it!

Am I all wrong on this?

When I think of viral, the first thing I think of is YouTube. In particular the WillItBlend videos. But YouTube isn’t for everyone. I have the capability to make live videos and screencasts, but umm I’m not compelled to do so. I’ll leave that to a master like Gary V.

Two days ago Slideshare sent me an email about my Case Study for using Twitter for Lead Gen:

Your presentation is currently being featured on the SlideShare homepage by our editorial team.

Today I received another email that said:

"Twitter: a Case for Lead Generation" is being tweeted more than any other document on SlideShare right now. So we’ve put it on the homepage of SlideShare.net (in the "Hot on Twitter" section).

It was odd because I had tweeted a link, but Twitter was quiet (or so I thought…). In looking at the stat’s on Slideshare I saw that SocialMediaToday and it’s sister site, MyVenturePad had published my blog post and were receiving a LOT of traffic. There were almost 1500 views between them. Next question, what was driving the traffic? A quick search for the phrase, “Twitter Engagement”, that’s a part of my blog title showed that there was some serious retweeting happening on Twitter!

Slideshare is an active community with great shareable features

For the past three years I’ve been studying why things happen in social networks. Then I unravel them and share the steps so that you can apply them to your situations. And this one is easy to replicate. It will work for YouTube as much as Slideshare too!

First, a quick explanation of Slideshare. Skip this if you’re familiar with it.

Slideshare is a free site where you can host your powerpoint decks. It’s a really active community. They totally understand the concept of ‘shareable’ which is so imperative for word of mouth (some call it viral). (This is one of the main principles that Andy Sernovitz asserts and I highly recommend that you read his book, Word of Mouth Marketing.)

The secret sauce is that it allows you to embed your presentation in your post and others can download it and also embed it. They also offer a nice widget that I’ve put on the side of my blog AND are integrated into Facebook and LinkedIn so my friends there can see my newest decks.  It can grow legs! and Slideshare keeps track of the number of views. The community in Slideshare can favorite presentations and comment on them. So Slideshare has done a great job of helping their users connect!

How can you make Slideshare + SocialMediaToday + Twitter = Viral

I’ll list the steps. You provide the ideas

1. Create your content and post on a shareable site such as Slideshare or YouTube
2. Write a blog post and embed the content
3. Syndicate your blog to great communities like SocialMediaToday.com, MyVenturePad.com, etc
4. They and many others tweeted the link x 180 + times!
5. Engage with the communities on Slideshare, Socialmediatoday & Twitter. Here’s an article I wrote on syndicating your blog. (That post is how I got my job at Techrigy)
6. Watch the ripple effect afterwards and thank those that blog about it and further share my content.

Here’s the stat’s on this adventure 24 hours after publishing my blog post:

On Slideshare.net (note that it’s been downloaded 48 times)

SocialMediaToday.com – 1529 views

MyVenturePad.com – 1147 views

Tonite I was asked a question. Will this work for a company and their brand? Of course! I realized yesterday that Dell had followed me on Slideshare. And their decks are quite interesting! Check out the So So Social Media Strategy. (Note that my deck is also branded & has my contact info.)

Another point is that you don’t need the reason of speaking at events to create and post slide decks. There are also people in Slideshare community that have never posted a deck (but what fun is that?!)

So what are you waiting for? Get busy, and make a slide deck. Link it up here. Need ideas? Go explore the decks in Slideshare.

Special thanks go to Beth Harte & Ann Handley for inviting us to share Techrigy’s story in Marketing Prof’s Twitter Success Case Studies and again at their virtual event! (It forced me to make the slide deck!)

And thanks to Adam Helweh @SecretSushi for his thumbs down on my first draft. You can thank him for his honesty & for pushing me to be more creative!

Now I want to see your work!

This week at Marketing Prof’s Digital virtual marketing conference, I presented a case study of Techrigy’s use of Twitter for lead generation. Many question the value of spending time on Twitter, but it has proven to be invaluable for the growth of our startup! Here’s our story. I started with the numbers first.

Here’s some additional commentary to go with the slides:

One year ago I was contracted for a few hours a week. Two months later I went full time. As a community manager, I relied on social media marketing. We had an ambitious team of 5 and no marketing budget. (I learned new words like ‘boot strapping’).

When I started demo’ing SM2 there was a huge learning curve if the attendee didn’t know about wikis, twitter, etc. So, after doing some ‘listening’ I realized that people on Twitter were early adopters and had achieved a certain level. In addition many were asking, ‘What should we be using for social media monitoring?’, How do you do it?, and the pro’s and con’s are debated.

Twitter was ideal because users are:

• early adopters & understand the basics of social media
• actively seeking information and options
• specifically interested in our service
• happy to share information with others which builds word of mouth
• very happy to see a listening tool actively engaged

To use Twitter for lead generation, listen for people expressing a need for your product or service. In our case I monitor for the phrase “social media monitoring”. If you’re a financial institution, then you may want to monitor for “mortgage calculator”. And a photography software company may monitor for “taking photos” and join the conversation.

After the presentation I hung out on Twitter and chatted. I saw my colleague, Jim Reynolds, confirm that we quit cold calling. He joined Techrigy two weeks after I did and is avidly involved in the conversation on Twitter.

And I caught this testimonial by @GavinThomas. Our goal is to provide value and we’ve made a lot of friends there. This underlines the idea that people don’t mind the connection on Twitter.

The whole Marketing Prof’s conference is available for 90 days. Enjoy!

At the end of the presentation I listed a number of business objectives that can be realized using Twitter. What have you found effective?

The fall conference season is upon us and I’m looking forward to meeting friends at BlogWorld. And I’m excited about doing a workshop at Enterprise 2.0 again!

Here are three common misconceptions about speaking:

1. Speakers are well paid
2. Speaking is easy
3. Speakers are chosen on their merits

Misconception #1 – Speakers are well paid

I always cringe when people assume that speaking is a profitable thing.

The majority of events that I speak at don’t provide travel/housing reimbursement. So it’s an expensive venture. But it’s great for brand building and networking. And if you’re consulting then those are good expenses when it comes tax time.

There are some that don’t believe people should agree to speak for free. They feel that that undermines our professional standing. I guess that I disagree. The industry is very young and sharing your knowledge doesn’t translate into being compensated. I appreciate the opportunity to attend the show and network. Event organizers are always so appreciative and have limited funds. (Putting on an event has to be an amazing effort).

Misconception #2 – Speaking is easy

I tend to put a fair amount of time into my slide decks. I put a few hours into the one for the 10 minute case study for Marketing Prof’s. The outline always takes a bit to work through. And then translating that to a slide deck is another process. And the delivery requires a lot of energy. (I don’t want the attendees falling asleep!) I’m generally drained after a workshop. For panels I’ve been taking my netbook with me and interacting with the audience as well as participating in the Twitter stream. I’m not sure how many etiquette rules I’m breaking in doing that, but it adds a nice twist!

Misconception #3 – Speakers are chosen on their merits

This is a sticking point for me. I see some conference organizers that fill speaking slots from the sponsor list. I understand why it’s done. And in working for a vendor I’ve been pitched at too. Sure, we have a speaking slot for you… if you sponsor. I guess my question is, “Are the attendees getting a revised version of the exhibit area?”

What misconceptions have you realized that people have about speakers?

If you would like to speak, start local. Check with your Chamber of Commerce or university. What organizations would be interested in social media? You may even end up with some consulting! And definitely submit you ideas to conferences: Writing a Session Proposal for a Conference