Brand Yourself…

The quote “Better to bend than to break.” has been attributed to many different authors.  Social Media is a lot like that.  If you don’t believe me, look at how I seemingly lost 1,000 fans the other night, but I keep on going.  What appears to have happened is this…I checked my FB fan page admin stats right as they were apparently rolling out the “Call to Action” button on my page that I have been waiting on.  So I got the button…but somehow a glitch lost me a few fans.  Since I really wanted this button and sometimes get in on a few beta testing opportunities, I don’t mind because it sends the fans over here to sign up for the blog.  On my Vitalize You page, I was given the button even earlier and I set it up as a direct shopping cart for those of you who want to know what products I am using.  See the tab Vitalize You up top here for more.

Next, I am in this beta testing group for Pinterest ads and promoting your pins.  Now when Pinterest first started, way back when, I was a newbie and I made all my own pins from scratch.  I created what I wanted the look of my boards to be at first and didn’t re-pin.  I know, it sounds like I didn’t get it, but I actually wanted my own content to be the foundation of my boards.  I wanted to see what happened.  I remember my first “Geek” board as no one else seemed to have thought of that and my geeky pins were getting really popular.  Next, my inspiring words board still to this day has my most popular viral pin ever and gets pinned all the time.  Finally, I found out people like smoothies…particularly this one I found and wanted to try as “paleo”.  So what it taught me were that there were a few or 10,000 or so people out there like me.

Recently I began doing a lot of research for a company that had not yet hired me.  I like to know who I am going to be working with and what help they might need.  They needed quite a bit of help in the social media department and I had some good ideas, but I don’t think they really understood the value of what social media can do for their business.  I looked deeply at their Twitter, FB fan page, and website and everything was erm old.  Stale.  The links took me to last year’s events.  The FB page actually had some ummm bad spam that I reported to the “FB police”.  And Twitter was vastly, vastly underutilized.  I Googled them.  I spent lots of time studying ways they needed to move forward.  They needed a total social media plan and package.  As I sat shivering through an interview that was nearing 2.5 hours, I could tell they did not quite see the value of spending time interacting with your “fans” on social media.  The story you pitch to others is not just a way to make money, get donors, or help your business grow.  It is in fact, part of who you are.  If we can’t connect to you, as an individual person, if we think you just want our money, then you have, quite simply, lost us.

So when we were nearing the end of this process, I was listening to one of the directors speak about not changing the name, which I strongly agreed with because that’s the “brand” people associate you with…but then she went in another direction about the color.  She didn’t want to be associated with a certain color and I was told to notice that they didn’t have it everywhere.  The problem is, the color is everywhere on the marketing materials…and their page…and their website.  In fact, this color evokes such strong feelings of support that it could actually be part of their current success without her realizing it.

So I didn’t quite understand, and happened to have a few brochures that used this color from her business, and that’s when I knew I definitely lost them…as much as they lost me.  I was no longer interested in this job at all.  Because you see, it was the color pink.  This color represents compassion, nurturing and love. It relates to unconditional love and understanding, and the giving and receiving of nurturing…which in fact happens when you are supporting others who have been diagnosed with breast cancer.  They had even cleverly used the pink ribbon in their materials…and merchandise.  So clearly I didn’t see their vision if this color was something that they really didn’t want to be associated with.  So trust me when I say brand yourself and tell your story.

right_people

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