Who Are You?

Branding is something we often think about as part of our marketing and communications work:
are we adhering to national branding guidelines? Are we using the right logo? At the right size? And the correct font? And the perfect shade of red (Pantone 485)?

But what about your personal brand? Like it or not -- or even know it or not -- we all have one. The guy withe the unkempt hair, t-shirt, board shorts and flip flops has one brand while the woman in the black suit with heels and a perfectly coiffed 'do has another.

What's your brand? Read more about it in this article from Fast Company to find out more about The Brand Called You.

Who pays attention to your personal brand? Just about everyone makes snap judgements based on other's appearances. But what about making decisions about a person's brand based on his or her online brand? Take a look at this article from Sunday's Austin American-Statesman that explores the ways the legal system considers your online presence.

Twitter, tweeting, tweetup, etc

All,
On Sunday, the Austin American-Statesman ran a story about Twitter, including a "starter pack" of Austin-area Tweeters. Also, here's a great USA Today article from a couple of weeks ago.

No time to read? Okay, here's Twitter in Plain English:




The story was followed on Monday by a real-time chat with a variety of Tweeters and the Statesman's expert, Omar Gallaga (@omarg). Some good stuff is coming out of this -- I'm learning a lot and suggest you go on line and read the transcript when you have time.

In the interim, here are my Twitter Cliff Notes:

• A site listing newspapers that Tweet
• Texas Media Guide (@TXMediaGuide)
• Oklahoma Media Guide
• Etiquette: you don't have to follow everyone who follows you
• FailWhale is the cute cartoon whale image you get when something goes wrong/the site is down
  
• When Tweeple meet in RL (real life) it's called a Tweet Up. Here's a video from an Austin TweetUp blood drive. Ask me about Uli's adventures in donating blood.

While I'm in a video frame of mind (video? frame? get it? I crack me up!), here's a great gag looking at the present/future of the advertiser/consumer relationship.