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 was going through my feeds last night and funneling all of my reads as I tend to do in the evenings and sharing some of what I found to be interesting to my community through Twitter. This is becoming more and more of a habit with me as I tend to pour through a lot of data. What I think might be of interest to my followers I share. I am generous that way. Actually it is part of my overall plan to let the blogosphere and other platforms know that I exist—I network therefore I am. I see a t-shirt in the makings here.
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 was just reading this morning on 
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.
There is something to say about getting a handwritten note in the mail. It may go back to the day when I was a young boy and we actually walked a mile to get the mail and it was so rewarding just to find that you had a letter from someone. My mother would read the letter as we walked back home. Or it could be that it is special when someone takes the tie to sit down and labor out a thoughtful note and spend the money and time to make sure you get it. Either way, it is an art I think that is slowly going away with new technology and how we can just update our status or send a quick typed out email with LOL typed into 6 times.
An old friend of mine is stepping down from
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