Podcasting :: Thinking Home Business | Practical Tips For People Who Work From Home

Image: “Cat out of bag, almost” by Plong, via Flickr: Creative Commons license

Over the weekend I posted a message on the LinkedIn Bloggers group, of which I’m co-moderator, sharing some thoughts about how we could generate wider awareness of the group’s existence and in the process hopefully attract some more people to become members, so that they too can benefit from and contribute to our discussions.

I’d headed the message, whimsically as I thought, “How About We Let More People in on the Secret of LinkedIn Bloggers?” I talked about the fact that LinkedIn Bloggers was not easy to find via online search (we were showing up in only the most oblique fashion) and I invited suggestions about how we might let more people know about the group.

The post has generated some excellent suggestions already. And a surprise.

The surprise was that I discovered that at least a couple of members had the idea that the group was now, or in the past, meant to be kept for practical purposes a secret, or at least not publicized. I would not wish to discount that I may have made some remark in the past that gave rise to such a misapprehension, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what that might have been, or when.

The important thing is to move on.

Our team of moderators is keen to do so and we are looking at ways to share the story of LinkedIn Bloggers.

Some background

LinkedIn Bloggers on Yahoo! Groups is a forum, established early in 2005, for discussing how blogging and related technologies, such as podcasting, video blogging (vlogging) and wikis can support members’ professional networking using the professional social networking platform LinkedIn. The only pre-requisite for membership is to be already, or to become, a member of LinkedIn (basic membership is free).

Note: There is some potential for confusion in the fact that there is also a LinkedIn Bloggers group on the LinkedIn Groups site. Membership of that group is via the original group on Yahoo! Groups. About a sixth of the members of the original group have joined the group on LinkedIn. Currently it is only on the original group, on Yahoo! Groups, that any discussion or information sharing takes place.

On the original LinkedIn Bloggers group we have a broad-ranging membership. We have been fortunate in having been able from the outset to attract people at various levels of knowledge and skill in the broad social media space, from top bloggers, podcasters and video bloggers, leaders in search, providers of corporate blogging services, organizers of major conferences and others, through to people just starting out with blogging and even people just thinking about blogging and other social media.

Given the breadth of membership and our desire to welcome and assist people new to blogging, podcasting and so on, we’ve always had a culture of “there are no dumb questions”: LinkedIn Bloggers continues to be a community where people – and I include myself very definitely – get answers from a range of experts, for questions or issues on which it has proved impossible or difficult to get informed, unbiased advice elsewhere.

At this posting there are 897 members, which is not huge growth in three and a half years. It should be said that the moderator team have never been into growth in numbers as a priority, preferring to put our energy and time into doing what we can to “hold the space” for useful and enjoyable conversation on matters of shared interest.

But knowing that many people find it helpful to belong to the group, we’ve decided to take some concerted action to make the story better known.

The campaign begins

In coming weeks we will develop some initiatives to translate that decision into some practical action.

If you are already a member of LinkedIn Bloggers, I hope you will give some thought to how you can help share the story.

If you are not yet a member and the idea of the group appeals to you – and if you are a member of LinkedIn or happy to join LinkedIn – please think about joining us. If you do that, please read carefully the instructions on the LinkedIn Bloggers home page, especially about sharing with us your LinkedIn profile link.

Note that the url for the group is a .net one: http://www.linkedinbloggers.net

In the second of this short series on Business and Branding, Finding What Works, I mentioned that my core brand these days is effectively my own name, as in the name of my other main blog, Des Walsh dot Com. Another way I could put that is to say that I am practicing “personal branding”. The decision to use my own name as my brand, or as the focus of my brand, was influenced by several factors, including:

flexibility in being able to make the brand refer to what I’m working on now, rather than what I was focused on previously
ability to build on the presence I have established online, especially through the past 4.5 years of blogging and related social media/social networking activities
it doesn’t hurt that there are not, so far as I’ve noticed, namesakes in the business spaces in which I am interested

The Brand YOU concept

As I mentioned in that previous post in the series, I actually started using my own name as a business brand way back in the late 1980s, when I started in business and – like most of the people I knew who established their own consultancies – just took my own name and added “& Associates”. In between then and now, actually just before I started blogging, I became aware of the branding implications, via the “brand you” concept as I learned it from Dave Buck, now CEO of a coaching organisation I belong to, Coachville, who in turn acknowledged the use and promotion of the term by Tom Peters. In the onsite explanation of his program on the Brand YOU topic, Dave says:

Your brand is your trust mark – it distinguishes you from the field. Not like competition, but like uniqueness. As Tom Peters aptly predicts “It’s Brand YOU or canned you; become distinct or extinct”. It makes you a (very well) known entity. It’s how you connect with the people you intend to serve. Speaking of service, that’s the real essence of Brand YOU – making your talents, gifts, experience, knowledge and value adding products so well known, that the people who want and need them can easily find you.

This is not about an ego trip – although I suppose it could be for some people – so much as about using your own name as a business brand. And social media, which by definition is more about people than about companies or other organizations, lends itself to processes of “Brand YOU” marketing.

Nor does that have to be restricted to promoting only the businesses of solopreneurs and other one-person operators.

Personal branding and company promotion

Paul Chaney explains how personal branding can also be used to promote a company brand. He cites some outstanding examples in the social media space, people who have become, in that world, “household names”. He outlines how, by becoming well known and respected, these individuals have helped raise the profile and reputation of the companies employing them.

The question that immediately arises for me, with my coach hat on, is this: assuming a client buys the idea that the CEO or some other person in the firm could be allowed, encouraged even, to build their reputation online as a thought leader in their field via a personally branded blog, with the accompanying/supporting idea that this can only enhance the firm’s reputation as well as the blogger’s, what happens when that person gets a better offer and leaves to work with another firm?

Surely the obverse of the company’s fortunes rising with the blogger’s comes into play, with that blogger’s subscribers and other readers now seeing the blogger’s new firm as the one to consider buying from, hiring, etc.

Could companies being asked to support executives and others blogging require them to sign a “non-compete” document, effectively stopping them blogging for a period once they left the company? Taking “gardening leave” from blogging?* And if so, would that requirement constitute, in some jurisdictions, an unacceptable restraint of trade?

Blogger contracts? Attorneys at twenty paces?

For those of us who are home-based, solopreneurs this is not likely to be a problem. But many of us are also in the business of coaching or consulting to companies, which can be expected to have an interest in the topic. If we encourage them, say, to help one of their key people to build their personal brand as a thought leader, in the expectation or hope that the firm will have an “aura” benefit, what do we say to them about what happens when that person gets a better offer and leaves to go and work for – and perhaps blog for – a rival company? Or at least keep blogging but with people knowing he or she is with the new firm?

*Interestingly, in checking for a link to explain the UK/Australian term “garden leave” or “gardening leave”, I found a link to a recent legal decision in the Supreme Court of Victoria (Australia), in which one of the protagonists was Bearing Point, who from what I’ve read fought their case down to the wire: so who does Paul Dunay, one of the stars in Paul Chaney’s post, work for? Yes, BearingPoint. Small world. And in fairness it should be noted that Paul Dunay has an ‘opinions are my own’ type disclaimer on his personally branded blog, as well as stating his connection with BearingPoint.

What’s your take on the personal branding via social media possibilities? Any drawbacks? And do you buy the argument that personal branding via social media can help the brand of the company which the practitioner – blogger, podcaster, tweeter – works for?

Business and Branding #2: Finding What Works

Business and Branding #4: Online Reputation Management