There are many social sharing sites and if you wanted to count them it may take you all day to finally include each site in your count. Some of them are well known like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, and of course the latest darling of the dance is Google Plus. Social sharing has been evolving as a way to increase page views and cast a wider net to see if you couldn’t create a larger community and get more readers. We use social sharing at Bloggers For Hire as a way to create this very thing. Social sharing has become big business for many and a way to create some dividends in traffic and numbers. The question I have for you is whether your social sharing is properly branded? Let me explain to you, first what I mean about branding, and then I will give you an example.
Branding to me is making sure that at every turn, your community is reminded of your existence, be it your name, a logo, or something that can identify you as the expert in your field, the product that all must have, or a service people should love. We all know when I say Nike, Pepsi, Ford, that all of these bring an image to mind or a thought or something that stirs our brains to think of the company. That is branding. In the sense of the online world, we must always look for ways to have that in place, be it a link, a banner ad, a mention, or in the case of this post, a social share. Making sure your social sharing is also branded where possible is one more way to make sure you are always putting your brand out front.
The example I have seen and been privy to over the last couple of days has been sharing on Twitter. I read a large number of posts daily. I am constantly consuming information and then sharing that information with my community. It helps the person that has produced the content for me to share and it also informs my clients and others with whom I provide the links. It is a win-win for everyone. I also note that when I share information, via the in post applications people use, they have not branded their default settings.
One such instance this morning was sharing a news item from Media Buyer Planner. No I am not picking on them but it was what spurred this post. The have the sharing buttons as everyone on their news item that can be shared via various networks. I hit the Twitter share button and up popped the Twitter window for me to share with my followers, and I saw the title of the post, and the link and then i saw “via @AddThis”. This is the name of the application and not the name of the Twitter handle of the company where I found the article. They have missed an opportunity to brand @MediaBuyer. Many companies don;t put anything in the spot they can for branding. Make sure you are taking every opportunity to brand your company.
I have been keeping ahead of the game of new and shiny objects by trying out the latest and greatest in tools that can be used for social media programs at companies. I have always come back to the main point of view as it relates to tools that work. I was reading
I have been preaching about blogging for a long time. I have been an evangelist and telling companies that they had to blog more they had to have a place for people to "join the conversation" and making it possible for them to connect with their customers. Like some of the preachers of the past, I am my own worst sinner apparently. I was reminded by people in my company that I am the worst person in the world to tell companies that they are not blogging enough or that they are not doing it right.
I have been writing this blog post for the last 5 years. No, I haven’t been actually writing this post for that long, but I have been preparing to write this post for nearly that long. You see I have been a strategist a long time in Internet years. I have put many of those strategies together, and I am happy to say that many of them actually worked, but I must also say unfortunately, some of them and I should say more than I care to admit have probably failed. I tried most of these ideas and “campaigns” on my own company and used myself as the test subject. I have always tried them in my own marketing, advertising and public relations and as I said, some work and some don’t. This post is not about the “try” or “the idea”, but the execution.
I am not yet an expert, but I am trying to learn to be an expert in my area. This is why I read experts. I pay attention to what they are doing and I learn from them. If I listen and store away what they are providing me I garner wisdom. I read people from all walks of life, I read from the marketer, the advertiser, the public relations person and yes, the baker and candlestick maker. All of the people I read and learn from provide me a path to the knowledge about how I can help other businesses.
I have been doing an inordinate amount of reading and testing and looking and feeling and all the other things I try to do to get a handle on the state of the economy and how social media fits in with marketing, advertising, public relations and all of it, and I had in my mind what I would call an epiphany. It may not be that much of a game changer to some, but to me it boiled a large amount of fertilizer into what I would refer to as the heart of the matter. People like 
I have been traveling quite a bit lately and that has caused me to get seriously behind on a large amount of work that I need to accomplish. I have finally caught up with my email inbox which usually hovers around 60 unread messages at any given time, which usually equates to the amount of Twitter bios I need to read to approve or discard. I began digging into the RSS feed readers (yes plural) that I have disregarded that have been so overwhelmed that many of the search feeds I have for the likes of “business blogging” and “social media consulting” are defaulting to the most it will store. In other words, I have much work and little time to get it done. I know I play this off with the idea that I am also the stay at home dad of 4 kids at the ages of 9, 8, 4, and 3, and that has some merit but for the most part I have times when they are sleeping or are not in the picture that I spend catching up but I still think I can be more efficient. I know I need to explain the title of this post. One of the things I need to catch up on that I have not been doing much of lately is finding what my mentors and friends and colleagues are talking about. One of the people I admire and one that I think has his finger on the pulse of my industry is
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