Posts Tagged ‘Laura Fitton’

New Brand World: What’s Your Brand?

January 10th, 2009 by AV Flox in intarwebz, personal brand, social media

I had a friend in high school who dressed a provocatively and was constantly fighting with people about her right to her self-expression. One evening while spending time with her boyfriend, she defended her fashion choices by saying: “just because I dress like a slut doesn’t mean I’m a slut.”

I will never forget his response. There was nothing moral in it, just logic: “if you saw someone walking down the street in a police uniform, would you assume they were a police officer or would you think they were just expressing themselves?”

It reminds me of a saying my mother says to this day: haste fama y échate a la cama, which translated from the Spanish means, “make your fame and lay in bed.”

(It’s a little like the saying “you’ve made your bed, now lie in it,” but it goes further because in this case you don’t have to actually make the bed, you just have to give the impression that you have in order to have to lie in it.)

You can imagine how irritating an adolescent focused on her self-expression and unconcerned with the repercussions of her actions or demeanor found such a saying. If I didn’t learn the lesson well enough then, I am certainly am now: in social media, image is everything. We shape this image by what we say and what we do, but, perhaps more importantly, by how people perceive these things.

Recently, I wrote about Chris Brogan and how the public received his work for Kmart through IZEA. More than what he said or how, the fact that he was working with IZEA for Kmart did a lot to shape the public’s view of who he is.

Image matters. How other people perceive you is as important as what you’re actually doing.

BRAND! BRAND! BRAND!

We’re all brands now, whether we like it or not, and everything we do and say affects the image of this brand. Suddenly, we’re not really making choices based only on the immediate satisfaction of our desires or return on investment, but in terms of how this decision is going to be seen by others.

Recently, at a party with a lot of people in the Los Angeles tech scene, I remember thinking I could use the opportunity to get some fodder for a column I’m writing for BlogHer about how improve one’s sex life in 2009.

Despite being a fun, laid back crowd, a lot of the people I spoke with told me they would be glad to share suggestions on the condition that I did not reveal who they were because discussing sex—anything about it—was not something that they wanted associated with their personal brand.

More recently, my friend and Mashable contributor Atherton Bartelby found that someone had made a fake Twitter account using his first name and photo. It was supposed to be a joke made by a mutual follower, but Bartelby took it very seriously. He didn’t think that the content was conducive to maintaining the sort of image he wants to have online. Fortunately, the person who made that account understood the situation and took it down immediately. But there are people who don’t have such respect for people’s image or reputation.

A case in point are the recent hacks on Twitter. Last weekend, 33 high profile accounts on Twitter were hacked. The Fox News Twitter feed announced that Bill O’Reilly was gay, Barrack Obama’s account had a fake contest with US$500-worth of gasoline as a prize, and Britney Spears’s account updated her 14,075 followers on the size of her vagina.

In regard to the breach, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told Wired over e-mail that the company is addressing the security issues that allowed the breach, and doing “a full security review on all access points to Twitter. More immediately, we’re strengthening the security surrounding sign-in. We’re also further restricting access to the support tools for added security.”

As Problogger and Twitip founder Darren Rowse points out, “Twitter is increasingly being targeted by malicious attacks and should serve as a warning to those using Twitter to expect the unexpected… Twitter does seem to be moving towards a more secure system with an beta test of OAuth scheduled for later this month, but until it goes live (and even after it) be a little more alert than normal.”

Security issues on Twitter may be resolved, but the incident raises red flags: in a world where we’re investing so much time and energy building ourselves, what’s worse than the idea that our personal brands can be so easily compromised?

“Branding is experience in time, and the brand becomes a series of interrelated behaviors,” writes Jonathan Baskin in Branding Only Works on Cattle.

YOUR BRAND IS STICKING OUT

Ages ago, sometime after I started becoming more active on Twitter, I partook in a chat with Laura Fitton’s tribe. I don’t recall exactly what we were talking about, but at one point, I remember Fitton saying to me, “you’re fabulous. I can tell that’s your brand.”

I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, but I took it as a compliment—who doesn’t want to be fabulous?

I thought about this comment again during a conversation about personal brands with social media maven Damien Basile. He commented on how dichotomous I was, pointing out that if someone found me through my blog, they’d be likely to assume I was one more social media commentator, whereas if they looked at my Twitter stream, they’d think I was more focused on relationships and lifestyle.

“You’re a conundrum!” he exclaimed. A fabulous conundrum?

Whereas people are multifaceted, brands that are associated with a clear mission have proved time and time again to have more success than those who don’t. So instead of sitting around looking for resolutions to kick off the year, I decided to do something a little different: write my mission and values and address my personal brand from there.

LABEL ME

“The mission announces exactly where you are going, and the values describe the behaviors that will get you there,” wrote Jack Welch in Winning.

I must have stared at the screen for two hours. Finally—and perhaps more out of exasperation than real inspiration or vision—I typed out the following: “My mission is to become a top commentator on how the internet is shaping our lives. I plan to do this by regularly providing information that is accessible and thought-provoking to readers, despite their level of involvement in web culture.”

The statement is likely to change as I refine it, but that’s OK. The idea is to create something solid on which you can stand, then building on top of that.

What’s your mission? Does your “brand” reflect it?

Further Reading:
5 Steps for Planning the Direction of Your Blog in 2009 by Darren Rowse.
The Thing About Goals by Seth Godin

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Life In The Twitter Village

December 1st, 2008 by AV Flox in Twitter

“When the earthquake July 29th, occurred in L.A., it was on Twitter in about 20 seconds,” says Laura Fitton. “It was on the AP in nine to 11 minutes.”

Fitton, head of Pistachio Consulting and author of Twitter for Dummies was on The Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Jane Norris talking about Twitter this morning.

“I have seen first hand what this can do for people’s lives and what kind of value it can build and I’m a huge fan,” Fitton told listeners after clarifying she’s in no way affiliated with Twitter.

“The thing that’s most worthwhile is to step back and kind of forget that it’s a publishing environment,” she said. “People talk about it being microblogging and, you know, OK, we’re just pushing stuff out there–we’re really having a conversation and what it amounts to is a massive, massive flow of information between all these overlapping networks of loosely connected people all over the globe. And so there is tons of news flowing in there all the time, there’s tons of consumer data, here is tons personality, friends being made, there’s relationships being struck up.”

Fitton has always talked about Twitter as a village. Early this year, she developed the notion on her blog:

For me, connecting on Twitter with someone I’ve just met in person is inviting them to live in “my village.” Follow-up won’t be limited to the “nice meeting you” email cul-de-sac. On Twitter, we’ll cross paths incidentally and without pressure. I may bump into them “around town” for maybe a word or two at the “coffee shop” or “post office.” Over time we may discover common interests (aka social objects) in each others’ tweets, and connect more deeply as neighbors or friends.

For a contrived, weird and techy way to communicate, Twitter’s “passive conversation” fosters very natural, gradual relationship-building. I explained about the village to Dan Bricklin, who immediately connected it to the chapter on “taming” and the Fox in The Little Prince.

“You go back to sociological research on what’s called reciprocity,” Fitton told listeners of Federal News Radio today. “Even all the way back to the 70s–reciprocity is someone’s willingness to engage and help someone else. If you just had a little casual contact with someone, you’re much more likely to step up and engage with them. So we’re all having all this casual contact, constantly on Twitter and it’s really making people engage. And we saw people engage last week during the horror in Mumbai. People really were stepping up trying to help, spreading words, doing what they could–it’s an amazing environment.”

Yet many people still wonder about the usefulness of Twitter. Those of us who have been doing it for a while grasp the immediacy of news, the wealth of consumer data, the vast reach of information, and, above all, the power of connection. I have met more amazing people on Twitter than I have at any other place or through any other thing. But Fitton is right–to go from a ridiculous to amazing, it takes a village, “a critical mass of interesting people–to read and write to.”

“When my brain started to connect with the brains (and hearts) of others, it got really, REALLY cool for me,” Fitton writes on her blog. “You may be looking for like minds, or you may want to be totally shaken up by new ideas. Both work. One day I suddenly realized this was, for me, tribe-finding. For arguably the first time in my life I didn’t feel as weird and different.”

Image of Laura Fitton used with permission. Copyright @wmmarc 2008.

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Twittah, Plz: The Power of the Twitter Community

November 11th, 2008 by AV Flox in Twitter

I have a pretty strict policy when it comes to followers on Twitter. I’d much rather have a low follower count than let spammers perpetuate their practices. If they have no content but a bunch of tweets with the same link, I unhesitatingly block them.

The magical thing about Twitter is that if enough users block an account or notify Twitter that they’re being spammed, the account in question gets suspended.

A lot of times, though, what appears to be a spammer is a well-intentioned user who is so new, that he or she doesn’t understand how the community works and whose only crime is the desire to have their site visited.

This was the case with @lollydaskal. I saw her multiple tweets with the same link in her stream and was about to hit block when I saw her newest one: “new at twitter ….not sure i am doing it right.” I shot her a direct message. “Send me your e-mail address and I’ll help you.”

She did. In the next few minutes, I threw together as many resources and thoughts about how to get a business started on Twitter (her objective) as I could think of and shot her an e-mail.

One of the most important things about using Twitter for business is learning to step out of the old marketing model where you just throw out information about your product into the masses. In today’s world of social media, the relationship between a company and consumers is no longer a one-stop information destination. Web 2.0 is all about the conversation and building a community.

I linked some classics: Chris Brogan’s Twitter for Business, Ogilvy’s Best Practices and Warren Whitlock and Deborah Micek’s Twitter Handbook.

Since she reached out to the community for suggestions on improving her approach on Halloween, @lollydaskal’s gathered a following of 232 people and I am glad to count myself among them.


TWITTER FOR DUMMIES

I remember thinking at the time how wonderful it would be to have all the how-tos in a single place, a catch-basin of quick, easy-to-digest information about how to make the best of Twitter, whether you’re a business or a casual user.

So today, when Laura Fitton, head of Pistachio Consulting, announced she’d signed a contract to write Twitter for Dummies, I was thrilled. Like everything related to the micro-blogging platform, this is a community project. Fitton’s already invited her 8,494 followers to contribute their ideas.

Equally exciting is the recent launch of Twitip by Darren Rowse, of ProBlogger fame.

“TwiTip is about capturing some of the lessons that I’ve been learning about Twitter and how to use it more effectively,” Rowse writes in the blog’s about page. “It will cover Twitter Tips of all varieties including Writing for Twitter, Branding, Growing a Following, Corporate Tweeting and a lot more.”

These two are invaluable resources for the beginner—maybe even the seasoned user.

For example, one of the newer posts on Twitip, by Hugh Briss of Twitter Image, goes into detail about the importance of a Twitter background in establishing brand identity (some great examples of this are available at Mike Smith’s blog—with my friend Atherton Bartelby among them!).

It’s true that space we’re given for bios on Twitter is limited—only 160 characters!—and it’s been the practice for some time now for users to put much of their bios and contact details right on their pages by incorporating them into their background images. While many great people I follow do this, it’s not until now, reading Briss’s post on the topic, that I’ve begun to give it more serious consideration.

But it’s not all brand and business. And another recent post on Twitip touches on how to avoid making your followers feel like they’re overhearing one side of a conversation–I’m quite guilty of it and while for me Twitter is all self-expression, I don’t want to leave anyone out if I can include them in the fun.


TWITTAH PLZ: UR DOIN IT RONG

As more companies jump on the Twitter wagon, the wave of resistance from casual users grows. Not everyone is happy to see all work and no play in their Twitter streams. Just today, blogger Jay Hathaway posted about his displeasure about the wave of business users that Twitter for Dummies would bring about:

Predictably, the book on Twitter isn’t being written by someone funny or entertaining. It’s being written by someone who posts 100 times on a slow day, and talks about things like conversations and communities and branding and … I don’t know, money? This doesn’t seem sustainable to me. Marketers can market to marketers and make friends with marketers and talk about marketing all day, and it’s not particularly interesting to regular people.

So don’t read it, right? I don’t. But a whole lot of other people do, because they’re climbing on top of each other to associate themselves with the people who have the most marketers reading them, so that they can market themselves to still more marketers, and become what I can only guess is called Market King of the Market.

That’s the audience for this book. I’m sure a lot of people will buy it, and it will make some money for the publisher. Good for them! Also, possibly good for the future of Twitter as a business, so that it can continue to exist as a place where I’m allowed to have chuckles and make friends. Fair enough. It’s just sad that a lot more people will be on Twitter, working. No time for dick jokes, ladies, I can’t rest now that I’m in The Market. Got to rack up some more followers, and some of them might even have Secrets of Success!

He’s not alone in that, either. There seems to be a bit of tension between people who use Twitter to further themselves in their industry and those who use Twitter for fun. I have been told a few times by people that they like my blog and wish my tweets were a little more industry-focused: the amount of oversharing and, yes, dick jokes, just isn’t conducive to achieving their goals on Twitter.

I’m not offended–Twitter is all about pulling people around you whose ideas are useful or amusing. Tastes vary and I come with a disclaimer. Just as some choose to further their business on Twitter, some of us choose to have fun and be ourselves in explosions of 140 characters. I do have another account on Twitter (@omgomgomfg), which I, admittedly, greedily grabbed to protect my brand, and which I intend to develop as a catch-basin for more of the web stuff that interests me and many of the readers of this blog. Now and always, my Twitter stream at @avflox is where I let it all hang out.


THE RHYTHM, THE RHYME, THE CULTURE, THE TIME

Regardless of whether Twitter is play or work, it’s never too late to analyze what you’re doing and whether it fits into your goals for social networking. Could you put this magical tool to even better use?

There is always room for improvement, whether you’re looking to get your product out there or pick up a date. And with this in mind, it’s not hard to see how Twitip and even the more rudimentary Twitter for Dummies are going to be valuable resources for many.

The best part is that we can build this together. No matter what our focus, we are the Twitter culture. There is value in what we know and think and this platform allows for us to share it, to reach out to people we may never otherwise have met and connect in a mutually-beneficial way.

So here’s to growth—in terms of reach, yes, but most importantly, in terms of community.

This article was redrafted at 8:15PM MST to include Hathaway’s thoughts on Twitter for Dummies and my personal thoughts on play vs. work. Million thanks to Atherton Bartelby for pointing out the importance of its inclusion in this discussion.

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  • AV Flox writes about web culture; new media’s gradual overthrow of old media; trends in social media; and the complicated entanglements people get themselves into as we venture forth into this new world where, more and more, the analog is colliding with the digital.

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