Can you Define your Online Style and Still have an Authentic Voice?

It is time to figure my style out. I have a parenting style, a personal style, and a sense of style. I also have an online style made up of things like my netiquette, my likes and reposts, my updates, and my picture posts. I am pretty guarded about the long tail of my online persona, but I do allow a certain amount of genuineness to show through.

Blog posts, like the one you are reading now, are the basis of my professional online style. They inform, educate, entertain and provide value without asking anything in return. They forward me as a thought leader in my field and indicate that I am professional in my pursuits and that I am trustworthy.

The text of my blog postings are just part of my online style, which includes my choice of colour, selection of graphical elements, use of photography and video, and the way that information is conveyed. My style is also affected by my tone of voice, word and grammatical choices, as well as the frequency of my posts and the number of typos that slip through.

How do I want to come across? As intellectual or accessible? How will I know what you think of my posts? Do I ask people what they think after the fact or should I run focus groups ahead of time? Am I hip?

Am I funny? Well, am I?

Do I acknowledge my audience with asides like that one just there? Do I bring personal references into my writing? Do I make obscure cultural references and leave them for you to find like buried treasure?

Well, let me tell you what my style is and hopefully you can ask yourself these questions and figure out an answer for yourself.

My style, and therefore PUBLICITA’s style, is a professional one where I let more than a little of my personality show through. I believe in our business offerings and will assume an educated reader and clientele that understands online media, but doesn’t utilize its full potential. My style is for a local and global audience and is one that will nurture relationships through frequent, valuable and relevant blog posts, shares and ebooks. PUBLICITA will never ask for anything in return, except perhaps an email address. I will target my messages to individuals and never spam you with unwanted information. I will be upfront with my requests and leave little room for ambiguity and misunderstanding.

I will create my own elements where I can instead of buying them. I will never steal anyone else’s work and claim it as my own. I will use my authentic voice as best as I am able and I will always try to entertain and inform at the same time.

I will try to keep my posts short and employ an editor to help keep my writing crisp and clear. I will use plenty of white space. I will listen to your feedback.

I will know when to stop talking.

Who Are You Calling a Twit?

While it is correct that this post is about Twitter customization and not "twits", aligning my title with the hilarious sketch masters Monty Python was just too obvious a leap for me not to take it. To make up for my lack of judgement, here is the full version of the Upper-Class Twit of the Year, by Monty Python for your viewing pleasure.

Me? I am a first-class twit, which brings me to Tweets and Twitter. If you are not on twitter, I wonder what reasons there are for that? Do you feel that there isn't enough time? Are you making all the connections you want from your other social media sites? Do you have difficulty expressing yourself in 140 characters or less?

All good reasons I am sure, but since you can sync up your other feeds to twitter, you can save time. And since twitter is the playground of the chattering classes, you might find friends in the press to retweet you or better write about you. And as for the 140 characters, I don't think I am the right one to advise you on being succinct. do you?

When you decide to go on Twitter, make sure you brand your account. Your site is actually a landing page and you want to pay attention to a few things. Make sure your profile has keyword relevant to your interests. Choose an appropriate avatar (get rid of that egg) and think about the resolution of your readers screens when picking a background graphic. Do you want it 200px wide? 500? Making a customize look and feel is worth it. I have just used my logo to start but have made a note to revisit when developing my website to pull elements from that.

Make sure like any landing page you have a call to action and a link to your website.

As I go will build a following on Twitter by following other people (some will follow back), I will be tweeting awesome things that followers retweet, and tweeting things found via search.

While in twitter I also created a widget that I can paste into my website that will show my twitter feed. That is important for a couple reasons. Least of all is not to create some dynamism on the page, which encourages viewers to come back and can also prompt for "following" and retweeting.

I will also revisit the widgets at a future date to select more customized displays if they are appropriate.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a race to officiate.

I have 2000 "friends" and I only need 30 of them to like me.

Social capital is a key driver for online marketing success. Is what I write interesting enough for readers to "like" and "share"? To completely take advantage of social media I set up a company page in LinkedIn, a fan page on Facebook and a new account on twitter. All of them branded like this blog is branded. I will get more into what my online style is all about later but the task at hand is to alert and gather my contacts around and ask for their support.

It took longer than a couple hours to personally reach out to all my contacts. I could have taken advantage of the services provided by these sites to send messages but they would not have been personalized nor would they get into the inboxes as I wanted them to.

In a few days I'll avail myself of those tools as a reminder, but for now, all the messages have been sent and even as I was completing the task the likes and shares were staring to come in from those that were hovering around their computers.

Here's what I did to make the task of sending individual emails less time consuming.

In LinkedIn I went to my contacts and selected each contact one at a time. Then I right clicked on "send a message" and "open in a new tab" I could easily open 30 or 40 tabs at once. After that I pasted my message into the text field and subject field, personalised the greeting adding a personal note on top of some and sent them.

I sent about 100 per hour. Even before I had finished I had 9 followers.

For Facebook, I went to my friends list hovered over their names and clicked on "Message". When the "message"box came up the cursor was in the send field so I simply pasted and hit enter to complete the task. That was about 200 per hour.

(Knowing your shortcut keys sure helps :)

Before I finished I had 20 likes on my Facebook Fan page.

Go ahead to “PUBLICITA Online Marketing” on LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/company/publicita-actcetera/

and PUBLICITA on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/publicita.online.marketing

To see what the counts are now and see for your self how effective this is.

(Don't forget to "LIKE" or "FOLLOW" while you are there.)

Now you may ask why I did this?

First, there are some thresholds that one needs to meet before stats are available to use. Seeding the page will quickly allow me to get the stats and use them for building an audience.

Also, I want to know if my content is relevant to people and be able to modify to their needs. To get feed back I need an audience. Providing that audience with information that is relevant, interesting and valuable will increase my social capital, and position me as a thought leader in Online Marketing.

Want to know more? Make sure you "Like" and "Folllow" because as I go forward marketing PUBLICITA online, I will be giving away all my secrets.

You can have them for free or you can contract me for assistance.

Either way, leave a comment or question below, then back away from the computer and go outside for some fresh air, will ya? It's nice out today.