The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a “name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.”

Wikipedia defines brand as a “name used to identify and distinguish a specific product, service, or business. A legally protected brand name is called a proprietary name.”

Finally, the Brand Channel wrote a “brand is a combination of attributes, communicated through a name, or a symbol, that influences a thought-process in the mind of an audience and creates value. As branding is deeply anchored in psycho-sociology, it takes into account both tangible and intangible attributes, e.g., functional and emotional benefits. Therefore, those attributes compose the beliefs that the brand’s audience recalls when they think about the brand in its context.”

I think branding sometimes gets a bad rap because of the corporate nature it easy take on – corporations have entire teams of people who work on brands and brand strategy. Brand strategy is discovering what the objectives of your brand will be.

In my business, Director of the Luria Library, a considerable amount of what I do is branding and brand strategy – even if I don’t consciously think in those terms. I am always marketing the Luria Library brand to the campus community.

In our learning module, I will assume that we are unlikely to be large corporations and we will therefore focus on small “business” brands and/or personal brands. Also, we’re not going to talk much about logos or colors.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, and especially since I am not a brand expert, I have selected appropriate reading material to guide to understanding. Please review each of the following:

The Bio

A key component to most social media sites is the biography. This is similar to what you wrote on the About Us page on the blog exercise though typically will be considerably shorter. When you register on a social media site, you may have the chance to include a short biography. It is my opinion and experience that it should be clear and concise and convey what you want readers to know about you as a person, an organization, or other entity. A consistent biography is also a big plus and then you don’t have to worry about sending mixed messages across the internet.

I use the same bio on all sites; it reads:

Community College Librarian, Teacher, Peace Lover, Father, Motorcyclist, ordained Buddhist, vegan, social web obsessed

Other examples:

Geek and technology enthusiasm from a blogger who grew up in Silicon Valley.

Editor of Sunday Business section of New York Times. Writing a mystery novel for Random House set during Civil War. Social media, new media votary.

Co-founded EFF, wrote songs for the Dead, ranched in Wyoming for 17 years. A weird father, a good friend, and an excellent ex.

My gig is noises ‘n’ thoughts. Sometimes good, sometimes not. A few make it outside and strive to find ears who’ll love them. For people who want more, I tour.

Artist/designer/photographer/geek. Creative Director for Nine Inch Nails.

Neu Design is an independent, woman-owned, full service advertising and design agency in Fresno, CA.

Recommendation: create a short bio and save it to a file. If you want a shorter and longer one, create both and save in the same file for easy access.

Your Image Toolkit

In addition to your bio, most social media sites also allow for a picture or image to represent. The picture should be clear, unique, and recognizable. The picture should be a close-up if it is a face of any kind. Keep in mind that many social media sites have very small thumbnail images and you don’t want users to be squinting to see what the image represents.

Recommendations:

  • create a folder on your computer with all your social media images.
  • Use the same image everywhere. It should be recognizable as people move from site to site.
  • Alternatively, put all the images online somewhere so you can access them using the web address (URL).
  • Make multiple sizes of the same image to fit the different criteria of social media sites.
  • If you use an iPhone, save a few to your Photos

Here is my image toolkit to meet the needs of the various social media sites. I have one master file that I can modify when I encounter a site with different size requirements and then I add it to my image toolkit.

KN_ALA_200x247

200x247

KN_ALA_Small

Small

KN_ALA_Square

Square

KN_ALA_Thumbnail

Thumbnail

333x500

333x500

Take a picture, create an avatar (try Yahoo! Avatars or dobbleme), or develop a logo and make it your brand. If you are starting with a picture, be sure it is of high quality and then begin adjusting the sizes and saving copies. If you don’t own any photo editing software, you could use the online tool Picnik to upload and modify photos.

The URL

The URL is just as much a part of your brand as the image and the bio.

URL stands for uniform resource locator, but in plain english it is the internet address or domain name. My domain name is kenleyneufeld.com and it might apply to my email address (me@kenleyneufeld.com), my primary web address (http://www.kenleyneufeld.com), or my FTP site (ftp.kenleyneufeld.com).

These three (email, web, ftp) are different functions on the internet and can even happen on different internet servers. For example, my son has his email on Google Apps and his web site on Posterous.

Anyone can buy a domain name that ends in com, org, net, info, me, mobi, us, or biz (just to name a few of the more common). If you are a business, it is usually a good idea to purchases com, org, net, and us though most want com only. The difference is really in cost and what users will remember. Domain names ending in edu and gov are restricted to certain organizations and cannot be purchased.

Most domain names can be purchased for about $10/per year. However, just today I was researching a domain name that ended in ly, but the cost is $75/per year.

If you are thinking about a business or about personal branding then make sure the domain name is available before setting up your internet presence. Search to find out. I believe some companies choose their name based on domain name availability, because it can be quite costly to attempt to purchase a domain name already owned by another person or entity.

Other comments:

  • Pick a domain name that easy to remember
  • Pick a domain name that is easy to spell
  • Don’t use hyphens in the name
  • Consider how it will appear in print
  • Misspelled names (like Flickr) might work but could be risky
  • First/Last Name combinations are good for personal branding
  • Don’t spend more than $10/year on registering a domain name

Closely related to the URL is username selection. In my case, my internet username that is used on all social media sites matches my domain name. However, if you are not going to purchase a domain name then you want to attempt to use the same username across all sites. This vastly simplifies the login process and allows for easy branding across platforms.

For example, I can be found at the following:

I highly recommend that you do the same…pick a name that is unique enough that it can be used across all social media platforms. You can test a username against over 350 social media platforms using KnowEm or namechk.

Tagging – Bonus Topic

This topic is not directly related to branding, but is included here as a bonus topic on the Learning Module.

Tagging is everywhere in social media, but particularly in blogging, image/video sharing, and social bookmarking. Tagging are user generated terms, usually singular terms but sometimes phrases, to describe an object whether that be a blog entry, a picture, a video, a bookmark, etc. When working with social media, it is best to tag frequently and accurately. The more the better.

Related to tags is the “tag cloud” where you can visually see what text is most heavily used. Here is a tag cloud of the last learning module on Keeping Current.

wordle

Image generated by Wordle.

Tags can guide you when using a social media site. For example, when you use a social bookmarking site you could search for all the bookmarks that are tagged as “SBCC” or “Ojai” as a method for building a custom internet search based on users. Further, you can see how many people have bookmarked a particular site.

Read the following: