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Filed under: personal branding

Are you ready for Twitter?

Are you really ready for Twitter?

Your friends just signed up for Twitter. Since then, they started doing practically everything there--exchange gossips, share stories, links, and others and you feel left out most of the time. And now they are even following your favorite celeb hotties. So you go to Twitter.com and you click the Sign up now tab. If the above scenario seems familiar to you, then you are one of the many people (and even businesses!) who sign up for Twitter and other similar sites due to "fear factor" .

This is not good because maintaining an online account is like having a pet bird (lovebird, cockatoo, parrot, whatever!). You cannot just take one at home and expect it to  grow on its own.

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  • You can leave it once in a while but you definitely have to feed it (with your updates) or it will die.
  • It won't bug you if you haven't fed it for days, but it will surely die a slow and sad death.
  • If you want it to be healthy, you have to feed it well (with quality, relevant, and useful updates).

This is why even when all your friends have their own pets already, you can't just dive into the same thing just so you can relate. You need something more than peer pressure for you to sustain whatever online account that you will start. So here's a rundown of things that you need to ask if you are in doubt about signing up for Twitter:

1. Do you have a lot of useful information to share to the world?

2. Are the people you want to share those information with on Twitter?

3. Are the people in #2 unreachable in other platforms (like IM, Gtalk, or Facebook)?

4. Do you really want the world to share what you are doing every time (even where your location is) to quite a number of people?

5. Do you really want to know about what other people are doing/up to in real time (as they update)?

6. Do you have a big, diverse, and scattered network such that friends from the same group/organization/school/company cannot be reached in the same site?

7. Do you want to establish your online presence in different platforms as a way of building and maintaining your online reputation?

8. Are you open minded and can you take comments or criticisms lightly and positively?

9. Are you capable of dropping constructive comments to other people as well?

10. Do you know how to manage your time well?

If you answered mostly yes, then go ahead and click here to sign up. I am almost sure that Twitter will be of help to you.

If you answered mostly no, then your time is better off spent somewhere else. You surely don't need another distraction to keep you from finishing your tasks.

I hope you find the above list helpful. :)

If I Were A Brand

What is my brand? What brand am I? I am not sure if these two are the same question only stated in different manner so by default I only need to provide just one answer. Just the same, I am still at the point of exploring the possibilities. I have been asking myself this question for days now after reading an article somewhere, discussing the importance of personal branding. And as barrycade would put it, there is a sea of penguins (out there in the Arctic!!) that is vying for readers’/clients’/customers’/employers’ attention. How can I possibly stick out? The potential of new media as an avenue to make yourself (or your brand) popular or accessible (at least), or to generate income, is just so overwhelming.

Two-pieced attempt

Blogging.

There is an array of platforms that you can use to host your blog. Some are free, but if you want to get premium features, you will have to pay for it. Now what exactly do you blog about? It can be anything that interests you, but make sure you retain a unique voice that will serve as your selling proposition because surely, someone out there is going to talk about the same thing that you are tackling. As for me, I only maintain this communication blog and another personal blog, making me a journal blogger (without any pressure at all). When you start writing for the money, investing on your domain, then it becomes a different issue.

Social networking sites (SNS).

As of now, I only have two social networking accounts—Facebook and Multiply—that I manage to update monthly, if not weekly. For other people, though, the frequency may be higher. Good for them. The fact that our connections define how well we get to fare in the business will see these networking sites as really helpful tools. These sites also serve to reinforce whatever it is that you blogged about. It can make you gain more readerships because options like linking your blog to your SNS accounts gives you more ways to direct people to where your humble abode is. As you go drafting your blog entries or creating your SNS accounts, I am sure you think about what image to portray exactly, what voice to use consistently. I find answering those questions difficult because it is very much like asking me to define myself right now (and I will have to stick with what I will be saying for the rest of my life).

Apparently, it is not anymore just the business of companies to create a good branding for their products in their attempt to generate good, stable shares. All of us who, in a way, are utilizing the Web is actually encouraged to have our own personal brand because it is the only way by which we can stick out. We have changing roles after all. Today we are mere consumers, tomorrow we are the dragon producers.

Why do I put a lot of pressure on it now? I came across a statistic lately that is quite daunting: Only 1 out of 100 Filipinos will become wealthy. So with so much people in the Philippines (and the world), all trying to max out the potentials of new social media, I should get going now in my attempt to live a comfortable life in the future. What better time to start than now? :-)

Selling Noemi Stephannie Guerrero

Do I have to sell myself? This question may seem odd but I think that yes, I have actually been doing it subconsciously.

1)      I recently created my Google profile so that people will find me easier; so that my future employer will find me and the things that are related to me easier. That way, I can also control the information that they will see initially. I tried googling my name and it annoys me that my communication blog is nowhere in the first three pages of search results. There are so much clutter that I need to exert conscious effort to actually optimize the results.

2)      I try to stick with just one username in the Web. It will probably take me some more time before I actually get to create a uniform identity online, but it is good to know that I am on my way there. I used to have just noemi717 as my username in any site. But now I am also ilovemobility, pearglace, noenoenoe, and guerreronoemi. Now who won’t get confused? In the same way that message consistency is a key to better communication, I think I will have to apply the same principle when establishing my identity. Good thing there are sites like Ping or HelloTxt, which can make updating all your SNS accounts a breeze, no matter how different your usernames may be. It goes without saying, then, that neither facelessness nor having multi-personality in the online world is something that should not be tolerated. If you want to enjoy the benefits and convenience that the new media can afford you, you will have to have that single branding that is unique to you. And with this, I return to the spirit of this entry. What brand am I exactly? Having a unique, recallable and single name does not suffice, I think. There is always more to the name after all. I guess I still need to figure out what that something is.