Here is this week’s most oft-asked question:

“In social media, how do you separate your personal life from your professional life?”

photo credit: Kelly Hau Photography

The questioners explain that they thought LinkedIn was professional and FaceBook was personal — but now that people are using FaceBook for professional reasons — what is one to do? (And what about separating Twitter accounts: one for personal, one for professional?)

The answer: Think in terms of your “personal brand.”

What is your brand personality? Quick! Name your three personal brand attributes. Don’t know what they are? Find your personal brand attributes with an easy exercise! In branding exercises, we know that “your brand is what people say it is.” Find out what your customers, prospects, and markets are saying about you — that’s your personal brand. Balance this with the image you’d like to project to the world.

When you know your personal brand attributes cold, go to FaceBook. (Or LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, your blog, et. al.)

Before you post hastily, ask yourself,

“Is the content I’m about to post consistent with my personal brand attributes?”

If it isn’t, don’t post!

Your brand is what people say it is. You may not like it, but when you participate in social media, you have a personal brand.

Choose to present your brand wisely! Future employers are listening. Your customers are listening. Your prospects are listening.

Represent!

Be yourself!

Be your best self.

I’ve been noodling with the delightful Wordle.net application for a few months now. Initially, I used Wordle to create word clouds that I use as art in PowerPoint presentations.

For example, I entered my opening remarks on a presentation about Social Media for Business, and Wordle generated a unique and relevant welcome slide image. The main subject of the presentation “pops” — with supporting words adding meaningful visual subtext.

Two More Reasons Web Marketers Will Love Wordle. Since my initial Wordle experiment, I’ve managed to find two other terrific web marketing uses for this simply delicious product:

1. Try the Eye-Popping Web Copy Exercise. On occasion, prospects will call to tell me that they’re all about “enter product / service here“. When I go to visit their websites, however — I often struggle to find any words that support their claims! So, when I enter web page copy into Wordle — and the name of the product doesn’t “pop” — I have a visual demonstration of a potential copy writing problem that may be damaging to web marketing success. Try this exercise with your own website!
2. Dig the Most Amazing Brand Exercise Ever. Ah, the pricey “brand brainstorming” mission. Ad agencies generate Scotch-fueled words to present as your new corporate “vision and values statement” or “the cornerstone of brand messaging”. Rubbish. Instead of disconnecting from your customers, use your customers’ very words to discover your REAL brand image, as it exists today. Pump your latest testimonials and product reviews into Wordle. Which words pop? (That’s your real brand, not something made-up and wildly out-of-touch with reality.)

Brand Reality Check. As a personal example, I popped in my LinkedIn recommendations and a few offline testimonials I’ve received for my own, personal “Laura Bergells Brand” reality check. You can see the results below. I’m a smidge dismayed by the hugeness of the word “work”. I always thought my work product appeared playful and effortless.

Turns out, I’m delusional.

I’m also alarmed that the word “creative” is absent — but the words “hand” and “months” are in there — eh? It appears I have some work to do on my image!

Sales psychology 101. If you use your customers’ words in your messaging, you’re more likely to resonate positively with your audience. You’ll be in harmony. You’ll also appear more authentic and credible. Trustworthy.

All these qualities are important for online marketing!

What creative uses have you found for using Wordle? If you have a Wordle brand exercise or other creative use you’d like to share, point me to it!

Entering your speech notes into Wordle can create a relevant Welcome slide for your next PowerPoint presentation.

I’m working on a presentation about Social Media, so I enter in my introductory notes. Here’s what Wordle delivered –

Fun Stuff! If you were greeted with this slide upon entering a meeting, would you have clue about what the discussion might entail?

Glance up at the address bar. You’ll see a date in this blog’s lengthy URL.

If I had it to do all over again — I would not put dates in my blog URL. It’s too late for me now — too much work to go back and 301 re-direct 100′s of pages. But when I start new blogs: I cannot recommend putting dates in the URL.

Aaron Wall, author of the extremely helpful SEOBook writes an article for Search Engine Land , explaining the four reasons why he doesn’t like dates in URLs. I agree wholeheartedly. Better looking. Better search…

Not that I have regrets or anything: but if you’re starting a new blog, skip the dates. 

The saddest part of our digital world has got to be the demise of the beloved album cover. Many album covers served as art — a joy to look at.

By contrast, CD covers are mostly small and sad. And now, with MP3 downloads, the art of the package seems to be gone forever. No more lookie, no more touchie. (Looking and touching a little plastic iPod fails to excite.)

However, not all album covers were of, uh, Sgt. Pepper quality!

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I know –I promised “no more embeds” — but I’m trashing that promise. This slideshow from Slideshare just makes me giggle.

(Oh, it’s 3 degrees outside. Give me a break — I need to warm myself up from within!)

Now, let me ask you — what’s your vote for best — and worst — album cover ever?

This year, I talked to two successful business owners who manufacture terrific products.

For decades, each manufacturer has been successfully selling their products in bulk to wholesalers. The wholesalers, of course, sell the product to retailers. The retailers sell the product to the end customer. This traditional approach has been working well for each manufacturer for years.

Enter the internet. Now, the two manufacturers see retailers selling their products online and think, “Hey — if they’re selling my products online, why shouldn’t I?” So each manufacturer builds a quickie e-commerce site. They think they’re going to make tons of money, because when an end customer buys from them online, they’re making a much bigger margin than their retailers.

The problems: The manufacturers now view their retailers and wholesalers as competition! So instead of valuing their past, current, and future business relationships, the manufacturers try to be sneaky. They launch their website as if they weren’t a manufacturer. They pick a new domain name. They offer no background or competitive advantage. They pose online as a brand new e-retailer for their own product. And because they’re afraid that their retailers or wholesalers might call, they offer no live customer support.

And then the manufacturer wonders: “Why isn’t anybody buying? Where’s that web traffic? Hey, I maybe it’s the price! I can afford to undercut my ‘competition’, so I’ll lower prices!”

Uh-oh! Even with lower prices, there’s still no online buyers. At this point, the two manufacturers called me to “help” them market their internet site.

Don’t call me! If you’re a manufacturer, and you want me to “help” you sneak around on your valued business partners — please don’t call me! If you don’t value the business partners that made you successful, I have a pretty good idea that you’re not going to show me any respect, either!

Putting the “Brand” into Brand-New. It’s clear that these two manufacturers don’t value the enormous effort that their partners put into consumer marketing. There is much more to successful marketing than sticking up a website with low prices. With no trust factors — who is going to buy these products online?

Value your relationships. Your business partners help make you a success. One reason that they are successful is because they have a laser-focus on marketing products to the end-customers. Retailers put effort into building trust with their customers.

A better approach? Help retailers sell your product! Trust sells. Sneaky doesn’t. Value your relationships.

PS – Oh, and by the way — it’s the internet, where research is inevitable. You’re going to get caught. So how will you handle it when you do?

The fall TV season will soon be upon us. I have a rule. I call it:

“Three Dudes and I’m Out.”

Here’s how it works:

If I hear the word “dude” uttered by any of the main characters in the new show — and I hear it 3 times — I’m out. I turn off the program, never to return.

Last year, I tuned out of at least 5 shows. Within the first 7 minutes. Never to return.

Most of the shows were cancelled. One remains, but appears to be struggling.

Too many dudes = bad writing.

This is what happens when 40-something writers sit in a bullpen and try to write dialog for 20-something characters. Hint: twenty year old men usually overuse the word “dude” to annoy their 40-something fathers. Please make a note of it.

Lose the “dude”.

ps – “dawg” is also highly suspect.

If you are on the web marketing team for a large corporation…

…and your company makes a product that appeals to upper income, highly educated, 40+ women…

…how much sense does it make to have a web copy review committee comprised solely of 20-30 something middle income males? (And how much sense does it make to review the copy by committee, anyway?)

Come on, guys. Get some upper income women on the team.

No excuses! Especially not “it’s hard to find upper income, highly educated females to hire…”

Are you freaking kidding me!!!! Just pay ‘em what they’re worth! That’s how they get to be upper income!

Duh.

(Oh, you know who you are…)

Next Friday, I’m going to meet some of the greatest artists in the world. You can, too.

They’re going to be right here, in downtown Grand Rapids, at the Eyekons Gallery.

You can meet (most of) them personally and see their latest works.

So who are these dudes?

• Armand Merizon had a movie made about his life in art.
• Chris Stoffel Overvoorde paints mesmerizing landscapes.
• Larry Blovitz is a highly decorated pastel and portrait artist.
• Jack Brouwer is a master of transparent watercolor techniques.
• Jon McDonald watercolors ae feature famous blues musicians.
• Jim Markle paints en plein air throughout Europe and the US.
• Collin Fry creates magical landscapes in both pastels and oils.
• Carl Forslund is in the Masters Circle of the International Association of Pastel Societies.

And they’re all in Grand Rapids. Hey, even Harry Connick Junior knows that building a community among generations of artists is important work. Music, writing, sculpture, painting — it doesn’t matter which medium. As cartoonist Hugh McLeod notes in his excellent GapingVoid blog,

Art is simply using the tools at hand to ask the question, “What is possible?”

So what’s at hand — and what’s possible? Visit your local galleries and find out! Discover and learn from masters, as well as newer generations of fine artists. Grow.

Art isn’t just a New York thing. Music isn’t just a New Orleans thing. You can find an abundance of beauty and possibilites in your own community. 

See you next Friday! I’m the tall redhead…

What’s that file with the .ppa extension?

Why, it’s a Microsoft PowerPoint Add-In file, of course!

But how would you know that…along with any hundreds of other strange or mysterious file extensions that you might find on your computer?

Visit Almost every file format in the world to discover what the heck that vexing extension you found on your computer is supposed to be.