Let's Get Soci@l: Your Brand And Online Image
WOW this is so much better than the one I wrote!!
Over the past two weeks I have been reading an e-book called Soci@l: Attract Friends, Followers and Connections To Your Business. I was a bit skeptical at first, thinking that this may be another 12-step program to supposed greatness, but I was wrong. Seriously wrong.
Not only did I find this e-book hard to put down, I read it from cover to cover (busted, I printed it out) ... twice. Soci@l jogged some thoughts I have had in the back of my mind, but I just hadn't quite thought them all the way through. The second chapter, Your Brand And Online Image, is the one where the brightest light bulb went off. You could say I had an AHA moment.
Forty plus years ago, there was a Real Estate brand which is still in existence today. All of their agents wore gold colored coats. When you thought of real estate, those gold coats were always in mind. They dominated the ads on TV and took advantage of the fact that more and more households now had color televisions.
Fifteen years ago when a potential buyer or seller wanted to talk to an agent, they looked up a familiar brand's phone number in the yellow pages. If this person was serious about buying or selling real estate, then whomever was on floor duty and answered the call had a very lucky day. Today, those front desk phones aren't ringing any longer. Your buyers and sellers are on the Internet, reading everything you type.
Five years ago if you asked me what a brand was I would have said a logo, a slogan or a color. Who doesn't know what the Coca Cola logo looks like? Who doesn't know what color UPS trucks are? But now with social media, your brand is how you present yourself online. Do you brag? Do you cuss? Do you tout your baseball team, your religion or your favorite TV reality show? Guess what, that's your new brand.
Your brand is your name, your personality, your attitude and how you treat others. The Internet is public and the public is reading everything you are writing. This includes your comments on other agents blogs. The first page of this chapter includes the saying "Always Be Your Word". Your word in the social world is your profile, your blog, your tweets, your photos.
Serious buyers and sellers are going to choose to work with you if they like you, trust you and respect you. In the end, that will ultimately happen when they meet you face to face and work with you for a day. If they find a different person than the one they "met" online, you just got busted. You were not the real you, you were not transparent, you were not telling the truth. Does this sound like an online dating service? Well it pretty much is.
One of the most important messages from this chapter is to monitor your online brand. Google yourself. Find out what people are saying about you. If you have a common name like mine, make sure you are not negatively affected by what the other same name person is doing online.
All in all, Soci@l is a great book. I recommend it most enthusiastically.
This blog post is a review of Soci@l: Attract Friends, Followers and Connections to Your Business. Soci@l is a free download written by Ben Kinney in conjunction with ActiveRain and Jay Papasan. In exchange for downloading the free copy of Soci@l and writing this review, I have a chance to win a free iPad and I'm getting 2000 ActiveRain points.
Download a free copy of Social here and find out how you can have a chance to win an iPad and be guaranteed 2000 ActiveRain points.
© Copyright 2010, Cynthia Larsen, Let's Get Soci@l: Your Brand And Online Image
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