Presence is what brands strive for, presence is what the web offers to all of us not only on a local but also on a global scale. In the past we could only go past our local community through financial investment, now investment is still needed but it is a time investment not a monetary one.

The web allows you to sell your talents across the globe, it allows you to appear locally (on their computer) in order to grow globally.

The web for me is not a marketplace - the web is a channel to a marketplace. The marketplace is now in each persons living room, office or even train - the place they are accessing the internet.

Presence is an important aspect and it is why it is important that whether you are going to be an avid user of a service or not, you at least go and grab your name….go and grab your brand…for two reasons

• To prevent others misrepresenting your brand - be it corporate or personal
• To give a means of connection to the users of those web services.

Social networking is growing in importance within the business world. Emarketer has published social networking research showing that a third of CEO’s are on Facebook, almost a third also see it as important as are using it to build their brands.

There are risks with social networking though as the research shows. Social networking can be bad for your brands health! But I think this happens when companies ignore rather than embrace social networks, when they ban people from using them rather than educating people on the power of the networks on their brands, when companies don’t realise that brand engagement starts with employee engagement - therefore if companies don’t care about their employees, their employees won’t care about the brand.

For me the lesson is  - social networking can be an asset. Any asset which is ignored becomes a liability. Therefore ensure this asset has its very own maintenance program to keep it healthy!

Dell sponsored a social media awards for business and last year the winner of the small company award was Wiggly Wigglers. I find this interesting because they are not the usual small business - they sell worms and other gardening/sustainable living items! The company was founded by an incredible lady called Heather Gorringe who talks you can see talk about social media on this video at the end of the post.
I was lucky enough to ask Heather about networking, small business and branding…

a) Why do you think social media has worked for Wiggly Wigglers?

I think folks are sick of being spoken to and advertised at, social media enables people to have a say and get involved and talk about ideas and inspirations. Wiggly Wigglers fits into this quite nicely - we dont have a simple product or idea, we are selling a way of life - a set of values and this media allows us the opportunity to have a two way conversation on these concepts - such as composting, grow your own and farming.

b) Your podcast is one of the most popular on iTunes, how have you built such a loyal following?

Well, whilst we do not have a podcast formula or necessarily a standard format we do aim to provide the following take homes to our listeners:

Couple of months ago, Geoff Livingston, among many others, including me, waxed philosophically about Personal Brand vs Reputation. There was quite the debate both on Geoff’s site and here. 

I’ve struggled with my own business brand for years, even when I had a strong brand with my PR business. I have always had a billion projects on the go, and they don’t all fit under the umbrella of the PR firm. Some of them downright seem contridictory.

What I ended up doing, was technically, creating a brand for “Colleen Coplick” rather than anything else. I’ve got a site, sure, but much like Rebecca is known as Miss604, I am working on connecting Colleen with MissManifesto, (no, that wasn’t planned, and I just noticed the similarity now!)  which acts as my umbrella brand for all of my projects. There’s a place for all of it under there. 

But then, based on my defintion of personal brand, does that mean I’ve created a brand out of Colleen Coplick, or have I developed my reputation?  

Rick over at EyeCube says that “Brand You” is dead and what’s more important is the brand you build, rather than the brand you are. 

In today’s hyper-connected, no-barrier-to-entry, Consumer-generated-content world it’s hard to escape the cult of Personal Branding. Everyone has a website, blog, Twitter account and Facebook page and they aren’t afraid to use them. But it seems to me we’ve reached an inflection point, and what was once smart move now feels self-congratulatory and driven more by ego than producing value.

I think we as marketers, strategists, consultants and social media participants need to re-think what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. [source]

What I’m wondering is, is this any different than what Geoff and I said initially? At least, I know it’s what I had in mind when I wrote that post. 

I think that the bottom line, no matter who says it, be it me, Geoff, Rick, or even the commentors on Rick’s post (Scott Monty’s stood out to me personally as excellent advice) is that no matter what technology does to our lives, or how it advances, when you work to build a brand, whether it’s your name (ergo, yourself) or your company, it’s not enough to just have a persona. You need to build the brand rather than just be a brand. 

It’s not enough to have thousands of Twitter followers (and it shouldn’t be, as many said, about the numbers. It should be about the relationships you build with those followers), an impressive Linked In account, (”oooh! I’m two degrees away from Bill Gates!” Great, but what can that do for you??) or more friends on Facebook than any of your other friends. 

Create something that other people can get interested, involved and immersed in. What is it about you that someone else can get immersed in?  Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re just not that interesting. What you create is.

Find out what’s important to your audience or community. Put them first - show them (don’t tell them) why they need to be paying attention to whatever it is you’re doing, and what’s in it for them. Your brand has got nothing to do with YOU, it’s got to do with the value you provide to others.

This goes for your personal brand, your company’s brand, or even the brand you work for. Find a way to provide value, or you’re just another “rockstar“.

There’s a ton of posts out there that talk about how social media will change in the upcoming year, what will happen with our communications and predictions for the year to come and looks-back at the year that was.

Me? Sure, I did the ranty (although, perhaps it was a little too ranty!) post the other day about the things that I hoped would just go away in 2009, and I’ve been looking aroung at the posts that try to predict 2009.

Twitter gained a major following this year and started to go mainstream, big time. Growth is off the hook, (I can’t believe I just wrote that in all seriousness. What the hell does that even *mean* anyways?) and I can only imagine that will continue in 2009.

Newspapers and magazines folded, went entirely online and started to get the whole social media thing just a little more. I think that’s only going to continue in 2009. I will be stunned if by this time next year, more mainstream media has adopted some serious social media interaction and tools. If there’s an industry that seems like it should be picking this kind of interaction with readers up quickly, it’s the mainstream media, however they’re one of the industries that seem the most reluctant.

Companies and Brands are starting to get involved in social media… some of them are going it really well and others are …well, not. Here’s to brands and companies getting it more.

Advertising has taken a huge hit for 2009, and I anticipate that will continue… I think that the people are seriously tired of the spin and marketing messages that come with sales and want to know the honest truth about the product or service they’re looking at.

PR is the same as advertising at this point. It’s changing dramatically and people don’t believe the marketing hype of stories like they used to.

Even the way we communicate is changing.  More and more I find I pull away from email, towards SMS (text) messages and twitter, but even more so, if I need more than 140 or 160 characters, I pick up the phone. It’s faster, easier and accomplishes the same thing in minutes rather than hours. Partly, I think we’re moving away from the technology and going back to our “roots” so to speak, and partly I think people want to do things the most efficient way possible.

What do you think is going to come to the forefront for 2009? Are we going to get more simplified or are we going to move towards more and more social media tools and communications?

CyberAlert, Inc, is an online media monitoring company, with several different products to keep an eye on your brand. The two which are of particular importance to social media: Netpinions, consumer discussion, word-of-mouth, buzz monitoring service which monitors 100,000+ online message boards, forums, and Usenet news groups and BlogSquirrel — a blog monitoring service — which monitors 5+ million new postings each day in 25+ million blogs worldwide.

2009 marks the sixth year that CyberAlert will grant a minimum of 15 monitoring packages to not-for-profit organizations. Each grant consists of one full year of free news monitoring / press clipping services, ranging in value from $2,700 to $3,900. Last year, CyberAlert awarded 29 grants in 2008, with a aggregated value of over $275,000 to organizations like the NAACP, the Canadian Breast Cancer Network and America’s Second Harvest.  For a complete list, click here.

All not-for-profit, educational and charitable organizations in the United States and Canada are eligible to apply for the grants, except previous grant recipients. CyberAlert is accepting grant applications until December 31 and will announce the grant recipients in January. More information and a simple and secure grant application is available online.

Eric Rice, a friend on Twitter and other social media sites, as well as all around funny guy, posted a comment on FriendFeed recently:

“You know what job that doesn’t exist that I’d find insane enough to take on? Being the product/brand manager for the person, Robert Scoble.”

Your personal brand is even more important than any brand you represent or work for.

Chris Brogan has a great series of posts on developing your personal brand on his blog and as part of his Social Media 100 series (Chris’ Social Media 100 is a series of posts written about social media and social networking tools).

Now, I have to say, Scoble, I think, has done a really good job at creating the brand that is Robert Scoble. God, everyone knows who he is. What I wonder, is if he’s still got control over it. The brand that Scoble is is kinda all over the place at the moment.

I know that my own personal brand is constantly evolving – I do one of the things that Chris mentioned in his recent post very well, and that’s confidence. It’s sometimes, almost over the top and needs to be dialed back a touch. But, nonetheless, people always know it’s me.

So, give a thought to my comments and Chris’s thoughts and then spend a bit of time thinking about your own personal brand. What do you need to pay attention to? Anything you need to tweak?

(Photo credit, Thomas Hawk on Flickr)