Style guide when sharing on Third Party Content

Creating content is very difficult. I'm not talking about  writing content only, but pictures, infography, guides, slides, compositions, sounds, etc.

Part of being social is sharing content from others. So it’s utterly important to follow some rules when sharing from a third party. Do it well and you will create a win-win situation.

Why these 5 rules?

1. Be sure information can be shared

This is very useful when sharing content from friends. Ask them before sharing: "Can I share your content?" Maybe it's a picture, a phrase or an opinion they only want to share with friends, not with the general public.

2. Name the author and the source

Always be clear with your audience and tell them where you got that information/post/picture... etc.

The sources matter... A good source is updated, relevant and reliable. The better sources you get, the better the information you give.

3. Use sharing buttons.

Use the share button when you copy an image (or download it to load it after), even if the image has the logo and the website. The reason is simple: SEO is based on links.

The more links an author gets to their content, the more relevant it becomes and the better position it has (SEO).

When you copy and paste into your own post, you are killing the link to the author, and stealing his positionation. So please, use share buttons. It’s what Google does care about!

You share the information; the author gets a better SEO! It's a win-win! If you don't do it, you improve the SEO of the picture but not the author. That means, people will find the picture from your website, not from the author's website.

What you have done is steal their visitors! Not good at all!

4. Link to the original publication.

If what you want to share is a part of a whole publication, or that publication does not have sharing buttons (but you have permission from the author to publish it), you can provide a link to the original publication. It's a web reference and will help the author to get a better rank.

5. Don't share if you can cause economic harm.

Sometimes, an author can have an agreement with a company to publish only on his website. If that content gets in your lap, please, don't share it; tell the author (if possible) where you found it.  Be responsible.

How to use assertiveness to persuade your client

"It's not bad, but I would like it to be more like this" 

If you work in marketing (doesn't matter traditional or modern), tell me, how many times have you heart something like that? And it's very frustrating, because you know your client is forgetting something very important: you don't conduct a marketing campaign for him, but for his clients!

The same occurs when you translate it to a personal or SME social branding strategy. You will realize that it's very difficult to make them trust in you at the beginning. And even, after gaining their trust, eventually, they can have doubts. It's a hard situation, because you know what's better for them (you are a professional in social marketing; they are professionals in other areas). If you push too hard, you will lose your client (don't forget he needs to like what he is selling!). If you agree with every change (even if it's wrong), your client will lose money and customers, and you will eventually lose him.

Look, most of the time, the person you have to deal with, it's not like his target (customers). He knows it, but it's very hard to make him change his minds. Not just him, we all have the same problem: we don't like to delegate. We don't fully trust that another person is going to put the same passion and commitment as we are going to. 

Assertiveness: The most powerful skill you have to develop

Good morning,

I want to share with you one section of my book "Selling the Moto". It's about interpersonal skills, concretely about assertiveness.

Hope you like it.

Assertiveness is the art of denay giving the reason to the other. Let me place you an example:

David goes with Carla (his girlfriend) to an expensive restaurant. It’s a big night for him, he is going to propose her. For main dish, he orders a steak, but when the waiter serves it, it’s crude. So David asks him to take back the steak and cook it a little bit.

But, the waiter says:

Don't bug me! The steak is perfectly cooked.

Now, what will David do?

What's wrong with this new generation?

A couple of days ago, I was talking with a student of the Universidad de Almería (he was studying "Grado de Marketing e Investigación de Mercados"). I realized how things haven't changed in 10 years.

Marketing is not a science

When I studied Management at Seville, I remember the Marketing we had, was traditional. Stupid gurus pretending that marketing was a scientific subject, with "parking problems", worthless SWOTs (we never saw a numeric swot, just the traditional ones) and all kind of stupid "mathematical problems" far away from reality. 

Are we missing something with the Personal Branding?

Last week I was in Barcelona, for the Experimedia General Meeting. The Company I work for is an experimenter, so I had to go, to present it, meet other people involved and conduct a demonstration.

It's also an opportunity to do networking.

In one of the breaks, I started to talk to a person (I had briefly met before in Leuven) and I have to say, the more I listened to her, the more surprise I got.

She surprised me... a lot. In 2012, she started an online company about corporate criminal law dissemination and courses in Netherlands. To start, she has an online “news website” that publishes relevant news for people that work in the area of corporate criminal law. I asked her about the visitors... 7.000-8.000 unique visitors monthly. A website in Dutch. In order to really generate revenue, she also started an educational institute for lawyers with specialized courses on corporate criminal law. And also, they recently published a legal journal, in paper! 

I was curious, so I searched her in Google, also in Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. And of course, she had a good professional profile, a very good one indeed. What I didn't realize it was just the top of the iceberg!

She doesn’t have an active self marketing strategy, not blog, or too many followers in twitter, and no references at all that she was the founder in the company's website (just a writter). So, I asked her "why don't you follow a personal marketing strategy? It's you the creator all of this, it's your baby". 

And she told me: "I wanted to know if my product was good enough without people knowing who was behind it, just by itself".

And it was. Well, it still is. I always believed that companies do business with other companies not because they have to, but because they want to. According to that, companies need to be social and people must know who is behind it. If you are the CEO, you should represent your company and be social, very social.

But, she didn't need that. The product was good enough to live without her help. Astonishing!  

She has all qualities to be more than outstanding, to achieve greatness (but like no one I've meet before): humble, smart, hard worker, entrepreneur, charm, easy to talk with, young, good presence, inspires confidence... a brilliant person.

So it made me ask to myself: maybe we are missing something?

We get too much time to get value to our brands, our products or ourselves, worry too much. But if the content is honest and the product is good and, most important, if the customers want it... does out product or service need us to survive by its own? 

I have thought it a lot. 

I do believe in engagement and to create it, I used to believe it was very important to tell people that there are people behind the company. So, interact with them, a P2P (person to person) relationship). Give them part of yourself in order to gain truth and confidence. 

Funny egg-chicken situation. You want to offer a service, you want to tell the others it's different, it better, it's outstanding. But... it's you who stand out your product, or is it that stands out you?

Thanks to this person, I have learnt something very important: that it's also about not losing the perspective. Don't sell yourself, sell your work, because if it's good, it’s going to sell itself. Your product or service can be as important (or even more) as you.

Let your product talks about you. 

Because of that, I wanted to thank you, Joyce. It’s been you who told me about all of this and made me think. I learnt a lot from you. 

I don’t have to wish you luck, you don’t need it. Winners don’t need luck, they just win!

Why Spain will never win Eurovision again!

Yesterday I was driving back to home, listening music (great songs by the way) and suddenly I remembered about the past Eurovision.
It got me thinking: "why Spain never wins Eurovision? We have had some really good songs, fine singers and staging. On paper, we should win."

Please...

Yes, on paper we should. But that's the problem, we don't analyse what eurofans look for! We are so focus on our song and our artist that we do not realize if it the good one for the show.

We just believe our song is the best and people will love it, period. Does it sounds familiar? Don't? Well, It's the traditional marketing thought!

TOP 5 Stupid Topics about Personal Branding

Recently, I was on the phone with a good friend of mine who works as Community Manager. He is one of the few people I know I can talk about self-marketing; so I enjoy every single conversation I have with him.

At certain point last night, we hit something: how many times we find people talking about the most obvious and stupid topics of the Personal Branding. Seems like the most they want to differentiate themselves, the more similar to the others they get.

After that conversation, I came up with this post:

THE TOP 5 IDIOTIC TOPICS ABOUT PERSONAL BRANDING

Here is my favourite top 5. I don't say all these topics below are wrong or stupid, but it is the way to deal with them. It's quite easy to say (and intuitive) that you must be on LinkedIn or Twitter. Even easier to talk about absurd topics like Online Personal Branding, 2.0 or analyse yourself. 

I just don't understand why to talk about something is you are not going to be proactive. Why just copy and paste? How can that be self-marketing?

Now, without further delay, the top 5:

Number 5: Always create a blog: the way to position and make yourself known in your expertise field.

That's true, but NOT if you are going to write about already written things. Forget about it! It's better not to have a blog than having one and look like you are a "copy-paste" mater and commander. A blog is good when you can argue, share new material or give a fresh and different version of something old.

Number 4: Google yourself: Google is our best ally and also our worst enemy

Plan your personal branding strategy. If you are up to what Google says, you are a reactive person, more concern about what they talk about me than what you really have to say. And you are only one step closer to be the kind of person that gives a polite opinion, without taking part. 

Learn this very one dogma: 

"When creating your Personal Branding; if you try to be loved by all, you will be despised and ignored rather than respected"

Number 3: Create a SWOT matrix about yourself
Shut up and take my money! Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats about myself? Right now, and let's use words instead numbers. Come on, the chart is so beautiful!
Analyse yourself, your public, what you want and what you have. Please, do not get sick by remembering and analysing your worst weaknesses, focus on your best skills and all the talent inside you. Share it!

Number 2: Use social networks (like LinkedIn or Twitter).

Well, it's like saying: "how to drive from Boston to California. First step: get a car (followed by put some petrol on it)".

Come on, be original, 

And here we go! Number 1 of the most idiotic topics of Personal Branding!

Number 1: Personal Branding 2.0

Was there a Personal Branding 1.0? Maybe a beta or an alpha version? When did the Release Candidate get away? What the heck are they talking about?

Personal Branding is not a website. A website can be called 2.0, but not a person! Talking about PB 2.0 it's a pig in a poke! If you hear someone using it, run!