Home » Blog » Author: Lawrence Riddick

The Power of Social Media: The Ted Williams Story

The phenomenal story about Ted Williams has swept the country, making the hardest of hearts soften. Ted a homeless man and once a broadcast hopeful was discovered by a Ohio videographer from the Columbus Dispatch. Ted found on the side of a road got his big break through a viral storm after the videographer posted a video he shot of Ted on YouTube, which has over 8 million views.

So you probably ask, how does a man that assumingly has little to no access to the Internet get 8 million views on YouTube?

He didn’t quit.

You can have all the resources, but if you are not willing to commit to your GRUSTLE, you may not tap into your golden voice. If you tell your story over and over again to enough people, someone is going to listen. I have no doubts that Ted had divine assistance, but I think there are two morals that go to his story. He seemed positive although his circumstance and he kept telling his story.

Ted has single-handedly made it impossible for anybody that has access to the Internet hence social media, to complain that they can’t find (or create) a job or they can’t get readers to their blog or site. While Ted has a unique story and talent, I truly believe this is the case for all of us.

Along with God, Ted has to thank social media, for his new found opportunities.

So as we push on branding ourselves online and being evangelist for social media, just remember, Ted did it without a computer….

» Read more...

Deliver Your Brand

I recently read an article by Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress), which many people like Seth Godin have commented on, that was pretty much dead on when it comes to delivering a product. Here is an excerpt:

Usage is like oxygen for ideas – You can never fully anticipate how an audience is going to react to something you‘ve created until it’s out there. That means every moment you’re working on something without it being in the public it‘s actually dying, deprived of the oxygen of the real world.

I think this applies to personal branding.

Although there are a bunch of us that understand the importance of personal branding, there are droves of our peers out there that are not completely sold on the concept. I believe MOST of that has to do with confidence. What if I am not good enough? What if I am not consistent and compelling? People take themselves right out of the game.

There is a unique paradox in personal branding about being consistent and frequent. I think this is is VERY true, but I do think its more important to be ON TIME, than consistent and frequent. Matt in his article talked about Apple and WordPress dealing with the challenges of delivering product. Apple products many times when released, albeit with ingenuity and gargantuan hype, at times fall short of what pundits say “the customer actually wants.” Much of that is due to the the fact that their philosophy is to deliver great product and develop it to maturity while it is in the market. I believe Apple’s reasoning for this thought process is that they feel many people don’t completely know what they want in a product until they start using it. I tend to agree.

This is the same way with personal branding. Many of us didn’t know what our personal brand was, until we started developing one.

Deliver your brand.

If you know someone who is discouraged by the enormous task of maintaining a personal brand, tell them they have lost until they deliver their brand. You don’t know what you are made of until you get in the game (sports analogy).

I believe it is very important to give your brand oxygen, and if you don’t know what your brand is yet, dig deep inside your heart and create some prototypes. You know the core you, but allow your audience to guide you to where you need to be.

P.S. Deliver Magazine is a great source of information for marketers and small business owners.

» Read more...

Has Social Media Lost it’s Sexy?

Every so often I see a tweet or Facebook post that is along the lines of someone “quitting social media” for a period of time. It almost seems they’ve become fatigued with the heavy lifting of sharing, posting, and the commenting that’s necessary to stay relevant in social media. Relevant being a key word.

If you are anything like me, there are long periods where I do great and then there are times when I have extreme peaks and valleys. At any period of time you can catch me racing - posting here, tweeting there, engaging with people through blog comments over there….and then…it drops. Let me tell you *in Bill Cosby voice*– Do as I say and not as I do.

That is the wrong way to stay RELEVANT.

Our lives are busy and sometimes being active in social media is at the back of our minds and for most of us thats ok. For us trailblazers, we must show the way. Personal branding content sources such as this blog and conferences like BrandCamp 2010 are VERY important for this space. It pushes forward use cases for social media and personal branding using the internet. We are the social authority! Scary? Nah.

Is IT still sexy?
Yes. Social Media as we know it – social networking, blogging, location-based services, and real-time-publishing is definitely still evolving. Meanwhile, us who champion the social media cause, we have significant jobs to do. For our personal benefit and for the community. In order to maintain the social media sexy, we need to be consistent and challenge ourselves to pump out GREAT content.

The Internet is still a teenager, at around 15 years old, it is just coming into its own.

Entrepreneur’s, large organizations, individuals, you are all welcome - join the party. We will be rocking for a while.

» Read more...

Staying Invigorated and Forever Young

Keeping Yourself Young

One of the lessons that I received over the weekend, had to do with keeping your faith young. In most cases when we reach maturity in things we do, we are at our best. However being young in something doesn’t always have to be a direct correlation with immaturity.

I recently came a across a slide show that I put together for a really good friend’s wedding. On the soundtrack is a great song, called Forever Young, by Rod Stewart. Although the lyrics seem to be targeted towards a relationship with a son or daughter, I felt the song generally inspires us to stay young.

I strongly feel this is how we should approach our personal brand. Staying young in heart and mind allows you to stay invigorated, passionate, and most important - teachable. As we mature in life, some of the ways to maintain youth is to continue to learn different things that allow you to sharpen your skills and your knowledge base. Here are a few more things to consider:

Pay Attention to Accidental Inspiration
Although I think it is necessary to be purposeful in everything we do,inspiration and creativity many times is accidental. For instance a combination of experiences allowed for me to be inspired to write this post as explained above. I think it is always good to keep the juices flowing by mixing up the monotony and allowing yourself to be inspired by your experiences. Allowing yourself to be open to different genres and creating new relationships are good ways to mix things up. Just like a fruit smoothie, if you don’t mix it up you will find that all the good stuff is at the bottom.

Be Prepared for a Pivot
Good entrepreneurs are always ready for a potential pivot. Sometimes you start a business or initiative going in a specific direction. However things in the market could change or your customer evolves and you find that you have to take your idea in a different direction. To be prepared for a pivot you have your hand on the pulse of the market and be prepared to make a pivot in another profitable direction. Changing directions sometimes requires energy; it helps to stay young in the mind and be able to learn new things. This can apply to career’s and passion projects as well.

Maintain Momentum
Sometimes it is natural for us to get comfortable and on auto-pilot with our day-to-day responsibilities. Keeping our batteries charged through rest and recuperation, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and constantly staying in practice allows us to keep up with the pace of our purpose in life.

These are things that can edify your day-to-day duties on-the-job or business, relationships with your spouse and kids, and in our friendships. Stay Invigorated and Forever Young.

» Read more...

7-Tips on Being a Valued Curator

Do you want to be influential or are you comfortable with being mediocre? As a personal brand, there is no prerequisite saying that you have to be influential over millions of people. However while maintaining a personal brand online, you are secretly charged with being a curator of content or solutions for the people who follow you. This is the value that you offer to your audience, regardless to if you have 1 million followers or 300.

As a curator, you share the best content or solutions online for your followers and advocates to consume. For years, news organizations, magazine editors, radio disc jockey’s, and fashion stylists have curated pop culture for us and when we sniffed, bit, and accepted what they offered, many brands have reaped major success in return. With social media giving some of that power back to us, we have individually been able to take on the role of civilian editors; sharing and publishing content links. Doing this successfully, can pay considerable dividends for your personal brand. We have 7-Tips, that we think will help you do this effectively to maintain a healthy brand and establish influence with your audience.

Passion
The internet oozes with passionate people. Everyone online usually stakes the house on what they believe in. Passion is necessary in order to get people to believe in you and the things you share. If you recommend content, products, or any type of solution online, you better show them with strong conviction why you think it was great. Otherwise they may perceive your offering as a waste of their time. Inject energy and passion into anything you publish and share.

Don’t Ride the Wave of Fads
Fads come and go like the wind. If you want to have a personal brand that is relevant, make sure your recommendations have substance that transcends fad status. There are also many things you recommend that naturally have short life cycles. So for instance if you recommend the iPhone 3GS and the new iPhone 4 comes out, that is a natural progression in that product. This doesn’t mean they are in fad status and as a curator you have to be able to decipher which is what. For example, Myspace wasn’t necessarily a fad, however the company failed to innovate, which helped it secure it’s approaching spot in oblivion.

Fan-boy-ism is Allowed
Fan-boys and fan-girls are mocked and ridiculed; many times rightful so. Heres the skinny, if you are crazy about a brand or a good piece of published works — sing its praises to the roof tops! However, be able to recognize any faults of a brand you recommend. Don’t be a blind lover, see the truth and the truth only.

Regurgitate Excerpts, But Only With Your Personality
One of the tenets of being a curator of content online is that if you are going to recommend or share existing published works, do so with respect. When you do this, it is good to link back to the source. Regurgitating someone else’s good work, gets your personal brand card revoked real quick. When referencing someone else’s work, point back to that content through linking and give your own personalized twist on why you thought it was a great piece of work.

Quality is King
Museum curators are heralded because of the great body of work they manage to source in their museum. This is no different for your personal brand. Share and present works to your followers that is tasty. It helps if the content or brand you are sharing is relevant and current to the times. Reality is that quality is in the eye of the beholder, but if you have a good handle on who your followers are, you will hit the mark most of the time. Which brings us to our next point…

Know Your Followers
When engaging your followers, its best to know the make up of the group. If you don’t have a connection with many people that are super tech savvy, it wouldn’t be wise to talk about computer motherboards or microprocessors. It’s not relevant to them and the information doesn’t add value to them.

Be Right.
If you say that something is good or encourage people to try a brand, your recommendation has to be right. Are you going to knock it out of the park all the time? Probably not. Will people the click links to every single article you send their way? Probably not. But the higher you’re batting average, the more people will be eager to listen to what you have to say.

Go out and curate, I am looking forward to being influenced by you.

» Read more...