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Amber: Elements of Branding & Blogging Q&A

I want you guys to for a moment, think of your business, not as a business. I want you to think of it as a movement because every watching night talks, I love them. Um, ignite talks for like, five minutes in length. And they are. They're done all over the ignite events are done all over the world world. But there amazing ideas, large and small, that get presented in these five minute Tunks. What I think is so fascinating about them, what they've built with Ted, what they've built with all these kinds of things. It's it's about starting a movement. It's not just about building a company or business, it's about igniting something bigger. And I know that when I talk about strategy and tactics and stuff, this is like that, that fuzzy thing that nobody quite knows what to do with. But I really think that in a world where we have everything is moving in real time and so fast and we have so much information, what we need to be building are not just companies that have profit and loss. They're...

not just companies that have brands and products and services. We need to ignite movements. People something for people toe latch onto and believe in. And I think every business has this. They have a story to tell. They have a purpose that drives them, and it doesn't have to be world changing. But it's world changing for someone you know. It's not always about curing everything a huge sometimes it's about making a difference in one person's world. Now, in a lot of ways, you could look at my firm and say It's completely unsexy. We're consultants. We worked with big, lumbering businesses and we I mean, we sit in meetings and do workshops and talk to executives. But I believe that we are truly in the business of helping companies transform themselves into something new. That's a movement, because when I sit in an office with somebody and try to explain why I do what I dio, they can latch on to that because it has a bigger calling. When you build a social platform, have a movement, believe in something that you want to ignite, that people can say I want to be part of that. I want to be part of that. It's sort of like creating the exciting Cool Kids Club, where it's not exclusive and annoying, and about what kind of jeans you're wearing. It's really about belonging to something bigger. I know what each one of you in this room it does at this point, and each one of you has something amazing to ignite. So it's not just about building your Twitter presence or your YouTube channel. It's about how do all of these things work in concert to create a movement that I want people to get behind? Imagine your company out on Fifth Avenue in New York, with thousands of people walking behind you, saying I believe in this. That's what your social platform should be about because it isn't it isn't Twitter or YouTube or Facebook or Google. Plus, it's about having something important to say. All of the tools are just how you get there, but you really need to ignite something ferocious in order for people to pay attention. Now it is we have way too much information coming at us. We really need you to be a voice of something that we can believe in care about and invest in, and your social platform is just the means. This is the reason why is that all? Makes cool sense. Get lots of Notting yet ladies over there. How is the Internet? Do we have questions? The Internet is great, and I just want to say we we credible I've actually broadcast photographers. Ignite November is something that Kevin, Cambodia, our friend Kevin Cambodia, one of the instructors here does. And they do it. WPP I but we broadcast that last year, and one of my co host, Susan and I spoke. We spoke about letting go and holding on. So overcoming fears and topic. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's like that's about something I can identify with and believe in, right. And I feel like we get so mired in the tools and the tactics, and the day to day ends an ounce of all this stuff that we forget that there was. There's a reason we want people to hear us to begin with. And it's not just because we want to market them something. People are our core. Humans want tohave a purpose. We want to believe we're here for a reason that we can make a difference, that we can do something interesting and social platform. There is no more powerful thing in the world. Watch what happened in the Middle East. Watch what's happened all around the world. Thanks to people, people being able to connect, talk and share ideas on social media. You know, this isn't just about hawking, you know, dog treats. It's much bigger than that. You have a purpose because you love animal rescue. That is a big thing. And that should drive your social platform, Not whether you made 10 or 12 posts to Twitter today. Yeah, OK, so you know how you talked about at the same time you said that if we have, ah, our own platform for the blawg. So we're using, like a WordPress based, but it's linked with our own domain and hosting. So what about the community? Like, right now, I'm developing a platform for the nannies and baby sitters for the basin in community of the Bay Area. So I am developing my own community platform. Should I be looking at something like a Google community and then link it with my website, or should I just developed my own entire thing? That's that's a really complex question. And, um, there's no straight answer to that. What I'll say is there's a couple of things to consider. One is again, back to the whole houses on rented land thing. There's there's some value in building something of your own. However, in the case of if you have a site and a blogger already and that is serving as your home base, people like Google and Facebook have invested an awful lot of money in time and building out the infrastructure for these communities. And you also have some baked an audience because you've got a lot of people on Facebook that already there that use it. It's very native to their world already, so it's become very natural for them to use. So on the one hand, there could be an advantage to building a community somewhere like that. But making sure that you always have tethers and ties back to your to your own community in building a community platform is an undertaking of epic proportions. So I would I would only caution that if you're going to do that, you have to realize that you're starting from ground zero, so building that community to something where people are going to be willing toe add. Yet another destination on the Web is a dicey proposition, and it might not be something you want to do early in your business. It might be something you want to wait to develop some momentum on Facebook or Google and see how that goes. And use that as a two seed ah community that you might build. That's independent later on. So you know you don't have to do everything yourself. You have to make sure something is your own. Does that make sense? Yes, that makes complete sense. Thank you. Say Cheese has asked, saying, I find it hard to distinguish what to share on my Facebook or my blawg on. And then further, when we're talking about the issue of sharing others content, is it appropriate to share other people's content on your own? Blawg as a wedding photographer and want to share things were lead to my industry. Say wedding stationery. Should this go on your Facebook page or your blog's to Dr Rupel? Their thoughts about that. So I tend to use blog's as more of my long form thought content. Um, so my blog's for me is the place where I establish my expertise of leadership, and I use a lot of Twitter and Facebook and other things to share a lot of other people's stuff. So that's how my balance goes is that my block is a lot of my world, very self centered and self oriented. And then Facebook and Twitter and all those satellite communities become the places I share a lot of other people's stuff. Now, if you want to mix that up, that's totally great. If you wanna have in the world of photography that there's kind of the whole copyright issue, and I think it's really important to acknowledge that the Web is not exempt from that sort of thing. So you don't It's really not cool to just go and lift somebody's content and posted on your block without any sort of attribution or permission. So went in doubt. I would always reach out to the owner of that content to begin with and say, Are you comfortable? I'd like to share this. I'd like to feature you on my blog's. Is that cool with you? Most people will fall over themselves to say, Of course that's amazing, but it's always important to say this is somebody else's stuff. Here's a link to their site. Here's who this belongs. Teoh, Credit and attribution are really important. And, of course, in terms of intellectual property or creative property like photography. And what have you got to be very conscious of other people's copyright? A lot of people are not real cool with having their content just, you know, plunked on somebody else's site without proper attribution. Um, there's a nifty little tool online called Creative Commons, which is basically kind of an honor system built around sharing rights. So if I put a Creative Commons license on my E book, I can choose whether I can say you can share this literally, or you can share it as long as you don't change anything or you can only share. If you give me credit and don't change anything Or I can say you may not share those on any commercial sites whatsoever, So I think it's important if you're in a creative industry to be very explicit about your expectations for what other people are going to do with your content, and if you're in a sector where you might be sharing a lot of other people's stuff, Always better to reach out and ask what their preferences are before you just borrow it. Now, if somebody else has posted, let's say they put their video up on Facebook. I would feel totally comfortable re sharing that because it's originally their content. I'm just perpetuating it. So that's totally different than borrowing it. And giving it out there is my own. So that's the line. I think to me, that's important to keep in mind. I'm involved in two companies. One is my wife and I's company. That's a relatively established company. We kind of have a style defined product. But we don't really have a block. Not we don't really have. We don't have a blood eso should we and then get on The other company is a company that I'm trying to start up That, uh, that doesn't have hasn't hasn't been started yet. Okay, Okay. I'm going to start. So, in the first case with the blawg, is it better to wait with the defined company and concept to start blogging with a a focused message? Or is it okay in that case to find your synthesized as you go along? And then in the second case, is it better to await until I have a synthesized message before I start posting? And so that my post are relatively consistent? Does that makes it s Are you considering having a blogger for your video business? Yes. Yeah, if you I say go for it. Look, you got to start somewhere just to do it. Just do it and I'm not Actually, A lot of people will say, Just do it it In a lot of cases, I'm not a fan of that because I really think you want to be thoughtful and methodical. But the Onley really true way to find a strong voice and platform with a blogger is to blogged. It's really the only way to get there. So you're it's never going to be perfect. You're never gonna be able to refine it offline because the beauty of a block is actually that you can build it, get real time iterated feedback on it and improve it as you go. So as long as you're somewhere in the ballpark of what you think you want the block to be about and centered around, I think it's great to get out there and just start posting and let people talk to you and let people see it. And be proud of the fact that your it's just starting. Now, as for the second company, and are you still refining the concept of the company itself? No. Okay, just about what I'm gonna be blogging about specifically or other. I would say that if you're it, blogging is something you want to do and you're committed to doing it. Start, I think my brass tacks thinking block has kind of shifted direction at least four or five times over the last few years. And I do that very openly and unapologetically on the block. I'll say to people, You know, I am sort of feeling like I'm gonna write more about this and not so much about this. And so if that disappoints you and you don't want to subscribe anymore, that's totally cool. But if do you think this is awesome, please share it with people who you think it would be awesome for. And I just do that out in the open. So I think it's totally fine to start a block and say, Hey, I haven't quite figured out what this blog's should be about yet. So why don't you help me figure it out? And people can contribute their own ideas and thoughts about what that block could mean to them. So I would say Get out there and just start doing it. There's a block post isn't isn't really you know, it's not hard to undo if you need to. So I'd say Just get in there and do it. Thank you. Could I ask a question? That's a little off tangent. So it's about the Creative Commons that you were mentioning. What? How do we deal with it if in places where they're not recognized, like in countries, but they're not recognize? If, well, it's not really it's not really a legal system like I mean, it's more about communicating your intent with your content to give you some we way. If somebody could have overstepped the line, the best thing to do is go to creative commons dot or go and have a look at it and you can see all of their guidelines. I think the most important thing about content is recognized to things on the Web. One is that content is going to get lifted, stolen, borrowed, plagiarized. It's goingto happen just because of the nature of the Web. It happens on my posts. Segments of my book are all over the Web in various Pirated forms, and it becomes a matter of picking your battles. Like how much do I really want a rial against the guy who sort of borrowed most of my block post for something like, Is it really harming me or my business? Not really. And he probably didn't mean it in any kind of malicious way. So whatever. Now there's a whole big difference of copyright infringement or intellectual property theft, that in a consulting business, we take that very seriously. If somebody you know Bogart's our stuff and goes and puts it out somewhere else, I'm gonna have an issue with that. That's what attorneys air for. So when it comes down to it, I think you really have to be comfortable with the idea that if you're putting out content that you expect to be respected and not, um, not borrowed. I think you be very explicit about that when you publish those things. But for the most part, what you want is for people to share your content. So what, You want to encourage them to do a share it liberally and give them lots of ways to share it. So in an e book, you can put all the little here's how to share it here. Here's how to share it there. We just ask that you don't alter the contents, and people the most part will respect that because they don't really want to steal your stuff. They just want to learn. Um, but give people lots of avenues to share it, and they'll feel less inclined to borrow it in other ways. Yeah, thank you. And could I make a comment? Sure. I don't own a business as if now I am planning to create and future. Yeah, and most of what you have been saying about social media, I am like, you know, this is something I can actually apply to a business. If I own, like, good deal tonight, then that's good. That's good. I hope you're finding it worth your while. Good. Excellent. Thank you. John Elway would like to know how important were passed social luminaries when building your expertise and how important is mentorship or standing on the shoulders of giants, so to speak, for expertise. That's a great question. I think they were very important to me. Coming up through the ranks. I had really good. I mean, Jaber and I were friends for a long time and sort of came up through the ranks together. But I met great people like Chris Broken and David Merriman, Scott and some of those guys early in my career, and they were very kind to me and Brian Clark again. I met early on, and he was really nice to me and like to my stuff and shared it. So absolutely. I think that sense of community, especially through people who were coming up through a very nascent, messy industry, and we we still don't have a whole lot of direction is a social media industry we're getting there were maturing a bit, but those people were critical Teoh learning my voice and observing what they were doing and how they conducted themselves, because you learn both what you want to do and what you don't want to dio, because there's some people who you don't dig their style or you don't dig on the way that they present themselves. And so you make decisions about how you want to craft your own social platforms. So they were very critical to me at first, and I never would have been able to publish a book without the help and recommendations and encouragement of friends who had been through the process. My friend Julien Smith was one of the ones that kicked me in the butt and said, You have to go do this and help to make some introductions. So community is everything to me, and I try very hard to give back to it as time goes on and make sure that I spend time mentoring and sharing with people who want to learn because I didn't come by all this knowledge accidentally, you know, people were kind enough to share it with me and give me their time and expertise. And so I tried toe. I try to do that in return as much as I can. Um, what I'm capable of it, building upon kind of what we were talking about earlier. Yes, and girl. And this is similar to what Susan and I talked about in that ignite talk. Yeah, I have my own site, and I want it to be perfect on that Boggs mean down? Yeah. Any behavior? Our advice, behavioral modification advice to just let it go. Let it go. Eso I'm that way too. And I can relate, especially with I am not a graphic designer by any stretch of the imagination. And I'm not a developer, so I know enough code to break my sight over and over again and then call my developer and ask him to fix it. Um, so I always want my site to be perfect to, but there's a couple of things to recognize, sort of like we all have our insecurities about our appearance that we notice that nobody else is. So all of those little imperfections on your site or that that block isn't perfect the way I wanted or this e book could have been better, or you're always gonna find something to improve. And the truth of the matter is, the world doesn't stop to wait for us to be perfect. And the world isn't gonna stop to wait for me to tweak those three things on my website that I think are so mission critical now I will say it's okay to be perfectionistic about big things. You know you want big things. If you're If you're doing e commerce on your site, it better work. Yeah, that's pretty important. But when it costs two things that air personality related or stylistic preferences you can't sweat the details. And I think part of it is try it, put stuff out there and be willing to realize that the world does not fall apart when your E book cover is not quite the cover color you wanted it to be. You know, I go back and read my book right now, and there's parts of it. I'm like, Oh, where was my editor? Because I'm not. There's parts of it that I wish I could rewrite. So no matter how great and awesome and successful and perfect your site is, you're always gonna find something else to improve. So I say, Get it out in the world. Nobody notices those kinds of little things but you, Another question coming in it involved involved with content. Do you think that creative writing classes or tutoring would be would help greatly and becoming a ah blogger having a stronger voice any great sites as well. I want to hug that person so something we'll talk about in the content segment that will be coming up in one of the most underrated skills in social platform development in business. This writing writing now, because we do so much of our communication via text based media writing is so important. We're all writers now, to a certain extent, and we have to sort of get comfortable with the written word because it's so much of the way that we do business now. I encourage everybody to hone their writing skills as much as you possibly can. I think the difference between a good block and a great blawg is good writing because I can read all kinds of great information. But great information presented well, is that much better? One of the reasons that Copy Blogger is so successful is because Brian is an amazing writer, amazing. It's engaging, and he works with people on his team that are amazing writers. So the content sucks you in and you can't help but want to read it cause it's really well written. There's amazing blog's out there that are poorly written but have really rich information and they're not nearly a successful. So I would say absolutely invest in writing because it is a huge, huge thing. Cool. Yeah, I did want to point out, however, that we do have way. Have workshop coming up in August, August 19th. Actually. Ah, powerful communication owns the room by Bill Hooked up. Excellent. This one is gonna be awesome as well. It's not just about about the written form of communication, just as you're saying it all communicate every day all day up. But you own this room. You have a very strong presence. And not all of us feel that way or in public. Speaking is just a scary as you know, as maybe more scary than writing, which was really interesting. I was, ah, music performance major in college, and I was so I had such bad stage fright for my senior fleet recital that I think I threw up twice beforehand. So performing terrifies me, but you could put me in a room full of 5000 people and to speak no problem whatsoever. So we all have our petrifying like put it out. Their fears on and writing is an oddly weird one for a lot of people because I think it's very exposing because you have to use language to express thoughts in writing, and it exposes so many things. That is a very vulnerable form of communication. But I swear the companies that have mastered 140 characters worth of amazing content on Twitter stand out because one of my pet peeves is when people use really crummy grammar and really lousy punctuation and text abbreviated everything. We are communicators. All of us have to be communicators and the essence of a social platforms communication. Take the time to spell out why. Oh, you like I get that you're saving characters with you. But But really, I feel like communication is is really coming back into importance more than it has in a really long time, and the written word is evolving, but it's incredibly valuable to get to get done Well, so I Now I I have to go see that because I want to catch that course. And maybe we can have you come back and teaches about social media writing because seriously, right, it would be any knows, getting those 140 characters. That's where I think a lot of people's fear. I have this fear when I'm using any kind of social media is that in using humor and showing your personality, you're gonna use humor that somebody else doesn't get taken the wrong way and when, right and then you're, you know, maybe maybe showing yourself in a in a manner that you didn't mean to. Yes, I understand. And I think, and that does happen. You know, I have a bit of a quirky sense of humor, and I have offended people unintentionally. You know, I've said things that I wish I could un se. And again, I just use the power of apology where I say, I'm really sorry. That wasn't my intent. I didn't. You know, I didn't mean it to come off that way. Um, but absolutely. When you're communicating in 100 and 40 character bursts, that leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and it's not easy to stone nuance. Er, you know any of those kind of subtle things, but I really think that is why it's so important to work on our written communication skills because it we don't do this as much anymore. So we miss body language. We miss nuance. We miss facial expression and those things matter. So now we have to figure out how to do it in writing just a 11 thing we learned yesterday from Kim, which I wasn't aware of, was on Facebook, that I forget what the percentage was but said percentage higher, that if there was a Facebook post with characters or less that they were liked or whatever, it was more so. That's not very many characters with Gets Your Facebook. So I gotta cut mind. Yeah, but here's here's what I'll tell you about that. And statistics like that are both really enlightening and also, I think, something to be wary of, because you can also read a lot of stuff like the best time to tweet is Thursday at 2 p.m. And the reality is that that's going to be totally different for all of us in our communities. I have a lot of people in my communities that hang out on Sunday evenings. So a really good time for me to write and publish. There's a Sunday Nights because my folks read it then that could be totally different that if you work in the bar and nightclub industry Sunday night, probably not a good one. So it's all relative, and I write tomes on Facebook like paragraphs full of stuff. So maybe I should try it less than 80. I really I mean, I think those things are important to be aware of, and I like the idea of being concise and simplicity. But I don't always think that those rules apply hard and fast to everyone. How important is getting a logo on Web themes for branding and showing your own voice on social platforms? So So, in other words, like on your profile pictures and all that kind of I like, I guess the good corporate girl in me says that you should at least make an effort. Teoh have some consistent branding in visuals because on Social Platform was only half from one to the next. If we go from Facebook to Google, plus to Twitter, if I see the same images and profile images and a certain cohesion visually, at least now I'm talking to the same person. When it comes to official corporate stuff, I think it's actually more important because there's lots of kind of imitator sites that prop up or fan sites. And being able to distinguish the official version from the not so official version can be can be important. Um, I, the brass tacks thinking brand I deliberately chose because I wanted the brand to be beyond me. And that's one consideration. I think, for people that do that are building a social platform is that I have my amber Naslund dot com domain. But that's not a brand that Aiken build that somebody would buy that that a company would invest in because it's just me. You can't replicate me. So I think it's really a secret trick to building a Social platforms to build one that has its own kind of independent brand that's not reliant upon you to always carry it, because if your business grows if you build, if you expand. If you're the only person that identifies with that brand, and all they ever see is your picture, um, then you can't expand and grow because they're always gonna be waiting to talk to Kelly. You know, you've got to be able to expand beyond that, so I think, from a visual perspective. It's good for cohesion. But I think branding is actually a bigger consideration. Um, just in terms of how you put your platform out to the world, because growth depends on a certain amount of autonomy and you can't do that if it's all about you. That's why I have an issue with the personal branding thing that we hear so much about. So I've hinted it content a lot of times today and what makes it compelling. But we're actually gonna go through the steps of what makes content outstanding and hopefully walk, give you some ideas, Teoh. Take back for how you can create content for yourselves.