Is social media killing your career brand?

There is a new dynamic in the marketing world and it’s called social media. We bombarded on a daily basis with new social technologies, applications and platforms.

Just as you start to feel you are getting to grips with one platform, a new essential application makes the news. You may already have spent time preparing and tweaking your LinkedIn profile, designing and adding content to your personal website and blog and collecting enough followers on Twitter to make you feel relevant, but then you need to make sure you have a full complement of friends on Facebook, be up to date with all the news on Digg and be telling everyone where you are through Foursquare.

You get the picture. It would be easy to fill another couple of pages listing the numerous sites and services that you need to keep up to date with if you are going to be serious about social media.

But what is social media? Is all this effort really worthwhile? Will it help you build your personal brand? Because, in the end, isn’t that what it’s all about?

Best practice advice today is that to succeed you need a personal brand. Because people hire people that they know like and trust, a strong brand will always win over strong talent. We are advised that we need to get exposure, join the conversation and set ourselves apart from the crowd.

We need to establish and demonstrate our value to potential clients, employers and partners and make a memorable impression and that clearly describes your unique value promise (or UVP). Unique, because you deliver results, no-one else can deliver; Valuable because the solutions you bring, deliver to the bottom line of the business and there is the promise that you will consistently deliver.

Social media, through any combination of networks and channels has become the default market place for achieving these aims and we are all spending an increasing amount of time moulding our on line presence in support of developing our personal brands.

There is no doubt that social media has a part to play in career branding, however, I suggest that the importance of social media in this context has been overplayed. For some reason the status of social media has been elevated. In these situations, social media has become more than a must have part of the marketing mix, it has become the marketing mix – to the detriment of other tactical tools and opportunities – and more importantly at the cost of strategy and positioning.

This is no proposal to disregard the potential of social media, simply a reminder that social media should be part of an integrated plan and be included in the marketing mix, rather than the whole of the plan.

The principal function of social media as a channel is that it enables you to be found. If you are effective in utilizing what this channel has to offer you will also be able to demonstrate personal attributes that a resume cannot, like passion, enthusiasm, likeability and your intelligence.

This is the great gift of the internet. Anyone can get exposure in ways that 20 years ago were inconceivable. The rub is that small word ‘can’.

It is true that there is no more effective way to get exposure to such a large audience as through the World Wide Web, but it is equally true that no matter how active you are all your efforts can easily be ignored on the web.

Just because you post on the internet and develop profiles for networking sites this does not imply that you are entitled to attention. Just because you make a connection on LinkedIn, it does not mean that your new connection cares about your brand. Following someone on Twitter does not require their reciprocation. Just because someone reads your blog, it does not necessarily mean that they agree with your views or find you likeable or trustworthy.

The point is that for all of your social media interactions to have any enduring meaning you have to move beyond the initial virtual handshake. Why? Because there is no inherent value in a superficial connection, but only in how that relationship develops. To develop those relationships, you have to move away from social media and back to real world interactions.

Once you are back in the real world, it’s there that a clear personal brand positioning strategy will play a critical role, or all that effort to get noticed will be wasted.

That brand positioning strategy should be thought through before starting any social media campaign. Often, it is an afterthought. The result is that you are less effective in converting awareness and social media interactions into something more meaningful.

Use of social media is very alluring as a marketing tactic. Here’s a few reasons why:

• You can do it any time. The internet is up, running and available 24/7, 365 days of the year.
• It’s easy to get involved. The barriers to entry are low. There is a platform available for anyone to express their opinion on just about anything.
• We see immediate results. It makes us feel like we have been very busy and productive when we see our comment, blog or Tweet published for the world to see.
• There is a very limited risk of refusal. Especially if we are populating our own blog
• Every little helps. The more presence and content we have, the better we feel.

Despite all of these advantages, the web is not a democracy, nor an egalitarian society. In the same way that it works in the real world, there are some people who know how to use the system and are more effective at making contacts both on and off the web.

How can you improve your chances of success? How can you build a stronger personal brand? By making sure that your social media interactions are driven by a personal brand positioning strategy. Having this sort of strategy in place will better focus your efforts and enable the people with whom you need to be interacting to more easily identify the value you can bring to them.

Developing the strategy does not need to be a lengthy process. It’s more than OK to use the 80/20 rule here – after all, the majority of your competition is probably not doing this at all. The elements you want to include in this strategy will be:

• Target market: As stated above, the internet is a big, big place. If you can identify your target it means you can be sure to be interacting in the places where your target visits. The more specific the better. Ideally you want to identify a target market of as few people as possible. One of the biggest mistakes many businesses make is failing to narrow down the market to find the most likely prospects. Don’t fall into this trap and be very selective about where and which forums you interact.
• Competitive framework: You will need both a literal and conceptual framework. If you are an executive looking for a new challenge, the literal framework might well be other candidates in the selection pool. You might also want to think through competition from alternative perspectives such as what other routes might your target look to satisfy their needs. If you can find a novel approach to solution delivery that no other competitor has identified because they approached this the traditional route, you’ll be at a great advantage.
• Solution set: Everyone buys solutions. This might be trite, but it’s also true. If I am to appeal to my target market within my competitive subset, I need to communicate to them that I can solve the problem that they are facing today. You need to be able to explain the benefits of working with you in a compelling way – which will be by demonstrating your understanding of the problem and how you (and only you) can solve it.
• Reinforcement strategy: Here’s where using social media as a tactic can be very compelling. If your highly targeted prospect identifies that you understand the problem and can offer a solution, it’s likely they will want some evidence that what you say is true. Here’s where blogging, answering questions, recommendations on your profile and all the social media effort can really pay off.

If you have your strategy in place, you are much more likely to be able to convert your on-line interactions into meaningful relationships much more quickly. Your personal brand can then become the centre of a web of interested and interactive players which will enable you to unlock the enormous transformative potential of your own brand.

The truth is, however, whether you are using smoke signals or the newest social media platforms to talk to your audience what really matters is what you do, or can do for them that matters. That is going to be why they will choose to interact with you, or not. In the long run it is also why they will be loyal to your brand, or not.

Succeeding in the virtual world may bring you hits, intent and a fantastic image, but it is succeeding in the real world that wins loyalty, trust and most importantly business.