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What I Do: Building a personal brand in social media

August 25, 2014

I was flipping through work notes from my recent Fulbright project in Ethiopia, and the topic of personal branding using social media caught my attention.

Earlier this year, I presented my course “Branding, Content and Social Media” to faculty and staff in two Ethiopian universities.

Daily, I wrote an outline of the topics I expected to cover for each session so I wouldn’t forget anything.

For the personal brand topic, I actually wrote out more of a script. I don’t include this subject in my iTunes U course, but I wanted to emphasize the use of social media in personal branding for my Ethiopian students.

I thought I’d share my notes here:

Branding is not just for your organization. It also applies to you.

Your personal brand is similar to reputation – how others view you and how you show up in your daily life.

Are you a genius? Trustworthy? Responsive?

Do you do what you say you will?

One way to communicate your personal brand is to write a blog about a special project or a cool hobby. Since I work in higher education, I am always looking for faculty who can be thought leaders on an issue of importance.

If that person writes a blog, then we can tweet about it, promote it on our websites, or include it in e-newsletters. Expert blog posts can also be promoted to external media as a possible information source or future interview.

However, having a blog can be a big time commitment. Perhaps your experts can’t invest the time in regularly posting to a blog. One option is to pitch that expert as a guest writer on someone else’s blog. The key is to be a relevant voice and add value to the site’s followers.

What to write about? Perhaps there is a photograph that speaks to your expertise. Writing about the backstory for that image could be a great blog post.

Here’s an example: We have a great photograph of our American students and Ethiopian partners conducting surveys on perceptions related to rabies. Here it is:

The Ethiopian expert in the photo could write a post about what is happening and why, what she was thinking when this was happening, and the challenges of getting to and from the rural location.

Throughout my course, I focus on an organization’s use of brand, content and social media. My point here is that it can also apply to your personal brand.

Thought bubble: On light and thought leaders

August 7, 2014August 7, 2014

by omalley.44@osu.edu at 11:24amAugust 7, 2014

From our recent trip to Hilton Head

I like the light that reflects off the sand at sunset. I like when my porch glows with the indirect light of a summer afternoon, filtered through the tree in my front yard. I even like the soft light of an overcast day.

Photographers know that reflected light can often be more effective than a bright flash. The same can be said for what thought leaders can do for their organizations.

What is a thought leader? I’m going to stick with a very basic definition: A trusted authority who is sought out for her or his expertise.

As communicators, developing your experts into thought leaders can be a successful strategy for promoting your organization.

Social networks, like LinkedIn and Twitter, provide a platform for your expert to bloom into a thought leader, reflecting their light on your organization.

This strategy isn’t without risk. It takes time. Your expert needs to be willing and committed to the work. Once successful, your thought leaders could leave your organization, taking their influence with them. Or she or he could step in a pile and become the source of negative coverage.

That said, the best communications plans have a mix of strategies. The risks of developing thought leaders are not enough to outweigh the potential benefits. We are lucky at Ohio State to have many brilliant experts who are leaders in their field. Our challenge as communicators is how to focus our efforts in a strategic way.

Here are three Ohio State thought leaders I recommend following:

Martha Gulati, College of Medicine professor and cardiologist

Bruce McPheron, dean of College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and an entymologist

Matt Stoltzfus, chemistry teacher in College of Arts and Sciences

The bottom line: Don’t rely on a flash bulb – videos that may or may not go viral, news releases, major events – as your only illumination. Enjoy the reflected glow of your thought leaders. They will help increase exposure of your organization’s ideas and innovations.

Friday links: June 27, 2014

June 27, 2014June 27, 2014

by omalley.44@osu.edu at 10:28amJune 27, 2014

	This had me chuckling out loud. I love it when creative people, current events, and social media crash into each other.
	Wow. Ian Burkhart, a 23-year-old quadriplegic, is the first patient to use an electronic neural bypass for spinal cord injuries. The machine was able to help him move his arm, an arm he hasn’t moved voluntarily in 4 years. The machine reconnects the brain directly to muscles, allowing voluntary and functional control of a paralyzed limb.
	The Amish are now reconsidering vaccination, which they had previously avoided. The largest outbreak of measles in recent U.S. history is underway. Ohio has the majority of these cases. The virus has spread quickly among the largely unvaccinated Amish communities in the center of the state.
	A new study proves that there is no link between vaccines and autism. The myth that vaccines cause autism began in 1998, when a quack doctor published a fraudulent study that showed a link between vaccines and autism. That doctor was found guilty of falsifying the results, and the study was completely retracted by the original journal that published it. Celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, Alicia Silverstone and Kristin Cavalari have advocated against vaccinating children. Now, we have outbreaks like the one described above. This past school year, there was a whooping cough outbreak in my daughter’s elementary school because of families who have opted out of vaccinations. Why do people believe celebrities instead of scientists? But now we have a bigger problem. A study recently published in the journal Pediatrics showed that pro-vaccine information tended to strengthen the beliefs and fears of the anti-vaccine people, especially in the U.S. Our public health professionals have a task before them to develop health messages that encourage positive behavior change without scaring people into the opposite direction.

	The state of Punjab in Pakistan is using smartphones to fight dengue fever. Two sentences that jumped out at me: “Mobile phone penetration in Pakistan is 74 percent today, up from 56 percent in 2007, making the country the fifth largest mobile phone market in Asia. … Smartphones increasingly are being used across the developing world to collect data and improve health outcomes.” This seems very cool, though I do wonder how literacy rates factor into using cell phones and text messages to improve health outcomes.
	Spikes were recently installed outside a luxury apartment building in London. Using Twitter to voice outrage, some call the installation degrading and say the homeless are being treated like “pigeons” or “vermin.”
	Social media prenups are on the rise as couples draw up contracts about what they can and can’t post online. I tend to agree with the statement that if you are fighting over Facebook posts, perhaps you have some bigger issues to address.
	A UK non-profit organized a design competition for a mobile clinic it could use in Cambodia. The winning design is a clinic is repurposed from a shipping container. It sits on a flatbed truck. The whole unit is pre-assembled before transportation. As well as delivering treatment, the clinic also hosts education and community activities.