What we all love about celebrities is that we believe they live a lifestyle that mere morals only dreamed of? People desire the allure of fame and notoriety neither of which means satisfaction or fulfillment in what you do, but carries with it a lot responsibility. In the age of the social web quote unquote celebrities are popping up everyday. As a personal brand strategist, I am a strong believer in substance and value and that personal brands should be built authentically that package and expose your true DNA.
The New Celebrities
Case Studies, Gary Vaynerchuk (@GaryVee) and Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) are a growing example of the new celebrity. They are larger than life personalities that have cut their teeth online and through shear sweat equity, passion, free social media tools, and a loyal online following have created incredible opportunities for themselves. Thought leaders, Techies, and creatives are the new black and provide regular people with a ray of hope of creating a message for the world that leaves them wanting more.
Basics of The New Celebrities
- Exposing your Genius – Your genius is what you makes you special. It is the intersection between your passion, the problem you solve, and the process (business model) you use. With all the noise and information flowing online it will be important to expose your Genius.
- Tell your Personal Brand Story – You need to know who you are and be prepared to tell your face-to-face and online. A personal brand story is not a resume or a list of bullets but a short story that is digestible without chocking people with useless ego chatter.
- Create Hubs and Use Amplifiers – Social media is an amplifier it doesn’t solve world peace or cure world hunger, it amplifies who and what you are. A hub is a centralized, online digital destination that aggregates your content (i.e. Facebook Fan Page or a Blog.) These public domains are brand building mechanism that empowers your community (fan base) to share and consume your content.
- Be your own Paparazzi: Establish a social presence with some of the popular social network, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitter to name a few.
- Create Scarcity – The goal of Celebritism is to create scarcity. Social Networks are great platforms or funnels to offer free shareable content that will allow you to take people up your funnel. The great thing about celebrities is that people are willing to pay more for a different level of exposure or experience. For example I love Malcolm Gladwell books and his other written work, I would be willing to pay more to hear him speak because there are limited opportunities.
- Follow the Leaders - Look at what the real life celebrities are doing and take a page out of their book: Vin Diesel has 6.7 millions friends on his Facebook fan page, MCHammer has 1.6 million followers on Twitter, and Shaq has 2.4 million followers on Twitter.
The power has shifted to any person with a laptop, iPhone, and an internet connection to connect their passion to the world. The true celebrities have found away to authentically connect people to who they are their passion. I believe the goal is to create scarcity.
