Madison Who’s Who Blog

Network strategies that employ blogs in building connections and community can provide an unanticipated boon for your personal brand. Who’s who in your online network? Are you? Do you want to be?

Darren Rowe at ProBlogger has several suggestions on how to promote your personal brand through your blog.

• build trust - increasingly marketers are finding that people want to know and be in some sort of trusting relationship with those that they buy products or services from. This is particularly true for a personal service like consulting…..
• be personal - building on the last point - one way to make a deeper connection with potential clients is to show something of who you are. This doesn’t mean blogging about your personal life, but show you’re human injecting humor, a photo or two of yourself and showing your personality.
• use story - I find readers respond very well to story on blogs. Stories of my own experience, stories of other clients (shared with permission as case studies) etc. Using relevant stories can help build credibility in your niche.

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To read the piece in it’s entirety, follow the link above - and bookmark it if you are developing a blog. You’ll find it a good resource.

Effective global marketing is increasingly involving the use of blogs. Many corporations are hesitant to join in, concerned about allowing consumers to freely comment on their product or service. If transparency is a concern, blogging may not be the best marketing tool to employ. As with all of th new technology, there are pros and cons.

“When a company opens a blog, it opens its corporate front door to anyone who wants to enter. Sometimes, these people don’t like you. Some of them are cyber-whiners, those odd little folk who just want a forum to blow off steam and spread their message, regardless of whether or not it belongs on your blog. Sometimes, they really don’t like what your company does or stands for.

So I advise clients to sit back and think, really think about why they should blog. And I strongly urge them not to make the biggest blog mistake of all: leaving their blog unattended. A watched blog can be a successful way of communicating and even selling to your audience. An unmonitored blog can become either a waste of your message or an open invitation to trouble. Did you know that the vast majority of blogs are abandoned within 30 days of their inception?”
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Which brings up another obstacle for some companies wishing to blog. If you do not have a person on staff who is a good writer and willing to commit the time to create good engaging content, then you will have to factor in the cost of out sourcing the content of your blog.

IT pro Ted Demopoulos, author of two books on business blogging, cites two extremely effective and often overlooked methods of peer to peer networking; volunteering and blogging. Citing three different business projects that came his way through blogging, he also goes on to advise that anytime your expertise can be freely given away - via consulting or perhaps offering to speak to various groups - the benefits can return in unexpected ways, citing the “The Theory of Karma as Applied to Business”.

“Networking is about giving. Giving is usually very easy — it costs nothing to arrange an introduction or recommend a book for example. People you help will remember you, and if one in twenty has an opportunity to help you in the future your investment is easily repaid.”

Here are the three most common networking mistakes:

• Not networking until you need something. That does not qualify as networking, and also doesn’t work!
• Simply shaking hands and handing out/collecting business cards. Merely going through the motions does not qualify as networking!
• Not offering value. Whenever I meet someone, whether electronically or in person, if I’m able to provide them with some value, e.g. through a connection I can offer, advice on a topic I’m knowledgeable on, by recommending a book, article, or Web site, I always do.

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You hear about them all the time and you darn well might just be sick of hearing about them all the time but blogs are likely here to stay.

Perhaps if they had remained dormant in their original incarnation as a humble “web log”, they would disappear with all other fads.

But blogs never were a fad. Blogs are a content management system (CMS) with a clumsy name. Because they have always had practical utility, not just a means to air a melancholy writer’s thoughts, they have rightfully progressed in excelling at their function - which is disseminating information to an unlimited amount of people.

Blogs are read by your peer network, potential customers, and these days, employers might be looking for that information as they review your potential hire.

“Employers regularly Google prospective employees to learn more about them. Blogging gives you a way to control what employers see, because Google’s system works in such a way that blogs that are heavily networked with others come up high in Google searches.

And coming up high is good: “People who are more visible and have a reputation and stand for something do better than people who are invisible…”

The writer of the above quote lays out 8 reasons why blogging is a career booster. Below are the bones and you can find the meat of the argument at the Brazen Careerist.

1. Blogging creates a network.
2. Blogging can get you a job.
3. Blogging is great training.
4. Blogging helps you move up quickly.
5. Blogging makes self-employment easier.
6. Blogging provides more opportunities.
7. Blogging could be your big break.
8. Blogging makes the world a better place.