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Personal Branding In the Web 2.0 World
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Transcript of Personal Branding In the Web 2.0 World
www.theSEOmethod2.com 1
WEB 2.0 MARKETING
The future is coming.
In this session we’re going to be talking about web 2.0 marketing and how I employ my
strategies for the way I build my own personal brand and how that then feeds into my
different businesses.
Branding on the cheap
When I think about web 2.0, I see it as a little bit
more of, and I’m not talking about web 2.0 like
in the SEO method where I’m using it for
generating links, we’re talking more about
branding now. I’ve got my own profile set up
where I post my own content to engage my
users and get them interested in what it is that
I’m doing, then filter it back to the site.
I feel like it is a little bit cheaper than traditional branding. When you think of branding and
when people talk in terms of branding, we’re talking Coca Cola will drop $200,000,000 on
an advertising campaign with no real direct result because they are just looking to build up
their campaign. Coming from old school direct response things, I first got interested in the
Dan Kennedys and Jay Abrahams and these guys who talked about long form sales copy
and the idea of making sure that every advertising publication that you put out there, you
have a very clear call to action at the end of that publication that gets them back to the
website and gets them to take a specific action.
I always thought branding was something that I never paid much attention to because I’ve
thought more about this direct response. Recently I’m starting to appreciate it even more.
Ben’s helped with this as far as molding the way that we do branding of our videos and
bringing that branding element into the website. When you go to Melbourne SEO Services,
you’ll notice I look a little bit like a Wiggle in some of the videos because I’m wearing these
different coloured tops. But those coloured tops match the different stages in the SEO
campaign that we do for the client. Those colours also match the wheel and the logo for
the Melbourne SEO.
www.theSEOmethod2.com 2
It’s like building this brand, this nice package that I think people don’t necessarily, if you
consciously thought about it and I pointed it out to you now, you’re aware of it. But these
other things happen on a subtle level and it’s one of those things that just builds the
rapport with me even more, and you’re not even sure why.
I think that’s the way I try and use web 2.0. It’s more to build that rapport and it’s the cheap
way of building the branding. So rather than having to go and drop $200,000 or whatever
on an advertising campaign, you can just do a little bit more. When we talk about the web
2.0., this is something that you might look at incorporating into your business either for
your own personal brand like the David Jenyns brand or the Ben McEwing brand or the Ian
Howard brand or whatever the brand is, that is your own name as the brand, or it can be
building up the brand for your company.
Become a market leader
As well, it shows that you’re very much on
the cutting edge when it comes to what is
coming down the pipe. On radio, people
mentioning Twitter and Facebook and
you’re seeing it in the media, these things
are everywhere now. If you engage in this, it
puts you on the front foot because still a lot
of businesses, especially local businesses still aren’t implementing this. If you think from a
local point of view how many small businesses have their own Twitter profile or Facebook
profile or Posterous account?
Obviously you have to put your own mix on it and your own spin on it to make sure it fits
in and meshes in with the business that you’re doing. But I see it as a way to make sure
that you’re cutting edge. It’s a way to distribute content as soon as possible.
What I’m learning now is the importance of, when you consume information you need to
repackage or repurpose that and get that information straight back out again to your
clients. So if you’ve got a small business and you’re interested in paint protection for your
car, you should be trying to find out what is the industry news and what information you
can find out in reference to paint protection for your car and then using these web 2.0
channels. As you read them you publish them back out.
www.theSEOmethod2.com 3
If there’s no news, you’re working for a particular client, you take a photo on your iPhone
of the work that you just did for them and then you upload it to Twitter or Facebook or
something like that. It gives the ability for your users to connect with you at a new level. So
I see it for distributing content as quickly as possible and engaging with clients on a lot
more personal basis.
When people comment on my Facebook page or when they direct comment me through
Twitter, it’s a lot more personal. They’re getting me, it’s me giving back. I think the level at
which you engage with your clients will endear them to you even more.
With web 2.0 and the way that everything is being catalogued as well, it’s really important
that you be one hundred percent transparent, a hundred percent real. Don’t try and hide
anything. Don’t try and be something that you’re not. When you’re taking on these
personas either for your company or for your own personal brand, be as real and authentic
as possible.
You and I know if we come up against something that just feels like it is advertising or
marketing. We know, we can sniff that sort of thing out a mile away. We can tell if
someone’s being dodgy or we can tell if someone’s not who they say they are or whatever.
You can sniff it out. We’re not stupid, so make sure that you are a hundred percent
transparent, a hundred percent honest and make sure that is the way you operate.
This material as well on the web 2.0 space, if you tarnish your brand, and you do
something wrong, that will last for eternity. Now things stay on YouTube forever. It is going
to be on your Twitter account. If people type in your name, ‘scam’ or your name whatever,
and they get back some bad information, that’s out there forever. So it is really important
that you actively manage that brand yourself.
Watch without watching
How do I keep on top of everything that is going on?
I don’t know which of you follow me on Twitter or if
you’re friends with me on Facebook but as I’m
reading different content, I’m distributing it straight
out. I’m going to show you what it is that I do. Then
what I want you to do is, you sit there and say, in my
own particular situation how can I apply this to what
it is that I’m doing to whatever level?
www.theSEOmethod2.com 4
So the first thing I do, I sign up to a thing called Google Reader. Has anyone used Google
Reader? Ok, so a few people. Google Reader just enables you to read what is called an RSS
feed. Real Simple Syndication is what it stands for. All it is, is a way to make sure that you
get almost like a direct feed from a website into one place. So you can identify what your
top ten competitors are, and if they’ve got blogs. Maybe you do a few different searches
and I will talk about Google Alerts in a moment. But you can analyze what your
competition is doing, you can sign up to their blogs.
You basically take this XML feed, it’s just a feed, you
copy and paste straight into Google Reader and
then as they update their websites, you’ve got one
place you can go to and you can read about what is
news, what’s going on in your particular industry. I
think it’s probably easier if I jump in and show you my Google Reader. I always log
everything in through Gmail.
If you have a look down here, you can add a
subscription, copy and paste the feed in of whatever
the RSS feed is of the particular website. If you don’t
know what an RSS feed is, all it is, whenever you go to
a website, have a look around for anything that looks
like RSS or a little orange button and you can just go
ahead, copy that link and then you can go ahead and
just drop it into your add subscription here, paste.
Now if I have a look down here, I’ve got all of these little categories that I can sort things
into, all my different subscriptions. I’ve got an SEO subscription here. Here are all of the
SEO blogs that I subscribe to. I now keep up to date with what’s going on, on all of those
websites. I log into this one account to see whatever the most relevant news is.
Then I use my iPhone, which, using something called NetNewsWire enables me to read
those RSS feeds on the train, while I’m waiting for someone, whatever. So I’m constantly
consuming the information to keep up to date as to what’s happening in my industry. That
way I can then comment and using the NetNewsWire I’ll retweet things, I’ll pass that
information out.
www.theSEOmethod2.com 5
It’s good for if you’re about to do press releases. If you’re up to date on what’s happening
as it’s happening, you write a press release based on whatever is most new and current.
This is the best way to do it. You can keep a pulse. Rather than having to go back and visit
each one of these websites, you can then keep abreast with what is happening.
So in your particular industry you should think, right, to become a market leader, because
that is really what you should be striving for, you want to lead the field in your particular
industry, you should find out who are the other leaders in the field. You should keep an
eye on what it is that they are doing, you should subscribe to their blog through the RSS
Reader. You should keep an eye as the content comes out, if something is good, retweet it
or send it over to your users and your followers. It shows that you are on the cutting edge
and it shows that you’re actively being engaged.
Another way to keep on top of things is to use
Google Alerts. With Google Alerts basically you are
able to log into here and here are a couple of alerts.
Here are some keywords that I’m watching. So any
time my name is mentioned on Google and Google
indexes something, I’ll get an email at the end of the day, here are all the times that your
name has been mentioned. Melbourne SEO Service here.
What does this allow me to do? This allows me to get notification and I will see that hey,
Ryan just made a post on his blog about something that I did. Then what do I do? I will
head over to Ryan’s blog and I make a comment, I engage with the other person. Imagine
starting to engage with your users at that level and the other people who are creating
content.
Question: Just a comment. I use Google Alerts also to monitor my clients’ sites for spam keywords, so I can pick up if someone has put up a porn or a Viagra spam comment on
their blog. You just do a site URL and the terms.
Answer: Yes, that way you can see where the site’s been indexed and coming up. That’s an
excellent idea. There are so many different ways you can use Google Alerts and if you’re
not using Google Alerts now, you should be. That way you can keep on the pulse of what’s
happening in your community and then you can then feed that information back to them.
That’s ultimately how you position yourself as an expert.
www.theSEOmethod2.com 6
So I’m constantly consuming information through Google Reader, Google Alerts and
engaging by making comments. Then industry podcasts as well, that’s another way I try
and keep in touch with everything. What is a good one I’m listening to at the moment?
‘This Week in Tech’ is a good one for technology.
How I do it
So this is how I actually do it though. Firstly I
use Twitter for up to the minute, here’s
exactly what I’m doing. This is something I
learned from Perry Belcher. He talks about
the idea of, in social media, you want to
approach it like the party principle. Social
media, these are social places where people
are going to gather. You don’t want to go there and hard sell people in this social media
space. You’ll get backlash and that’s not what they’re there for, it’s engaging.
So I use it for up to the minute things. I probably should be using it more but I didn’t want
to get fined $100 so we had it off up the back. At lunch or the next break I’ll take a photo
of you guys and I’ll post it on my Twitter and then that’ll get fed through to all of my other
web 2.0 things. So that is for up to the minute material.
What I’m looking at is free material, if I’ve got any free books, audios, anything like that I’ll
post that on Twitter and really soft sell material. If you’re going to do anything on Twitter,
it should be really soft sell. You need to give things away, don’t sit there and say, hey,
here’s a new sales letter of mine, whatever.
Follow those I’m interested in. This is something I picked up from Ed Dale. I only follow
those who I am following. I almost want someone to come to my Twitter and see, ok, here
are the people who David is following. I actually use it to keep abreast of what it is that
they’re doing. In the industry in search and so on, I’ll keep an eye on what they’re up to
and through Twitter I’ll keep up to date on what is going on. I’m not one to auto follow
every person who follows me. That’s really not my strategy because I actually use Twitter to
try and keep updated with what is going on.
www.theSEOmethod2.com 7
You’ll see me retweet people and things like that. If I had accepted everybody who has
befriended me, I’ve only started Twitter a little while ago so I haven’t got that many friends
yet but I’ll probably have another twenty shortly. With that Twitter, I’ll retweet those out to
my followers as well. I’ll talk about how it all integrates together because I’m all about
keeping things as leveraged as possible and making one post here and then having it
pushed out to all of the different web 2.0 networks.
So Twitter then gets pushed over to Facebook. There’s a very easy way you can have the
two integrated. So whenever I make a Tweet it then gets posted over into Facebook and
you’ll see it as a status update. Some of my friends get a little bit frustrated because they
just feel like I’m constantly spamming them because I’m appearing up in their little news
feed.
I try to help them understand my Facebook is not so much about my friend network as it is
more so for my clients. So I’ve got a lot more of a following in Facebook than I do on
Twitter because I’ve been doing it for a little bit longer. But I do that so my clients can
connect with me and realize that I’m a real person. I’ll post photos of me on holiday, I’ll do
things that I’m involved in and I’ll engage with them as well. It’s an opportunity for them to
connect with me on a more social level.
So I use Twitter, here’s what I’m doing, up to date to the minute. Then I use Facebook more
as I’m a real person, get to know me. I’m not hiding behind anything, this is the world of
web 2.0, let’s have an open, transparent book.
Can you have too many friends? This is the idea again, that is coming back to something
Ed Dale talked about. He said the idea that should you limit the number of friends because
he found he was just accepting everybody to be his friend. As a result it meant that he
wasn’t able to keep up with what his friends were doing in the news feed because he’s got
three thousand friends and it all gets muddied up because you’ve got all these friends and
you can never tell what your real friends are actually doing. So he’s using it for a different
reason.
Facebook then evolved and set up fan pages to try and combat this issue. I still haven’t
swapped over to fan pages. Once we get up to five thousand friends, then we’ll probably
swap over to a fan page, but at the moment, I use my Facebook page to connect with
people, they can see what I’m doing and put the photos there and that sort of thing. That’s
how we use Twitter and Facebook.
www.theSEOmethod2.com 8
Be in many places
The next one that I use is one called
Posterous. Posterous is a fantastic service
that enables you to send an email attaching
any kind of multi media. On my iPhone I
might take a photo of something or I might
record an audio in my car or I might take a
short little video. Then using Posterous I’ll
email that, I’m on the 3g network so I can email small files and I’ll email it to
[email protected] and then that will automatically get pushed over to my Posterous
account. I don’t have to do anything. I write the subject and that becomes the subject of
the post and it automatically uploads it.
So it is a way for me to easily create content. I talked about how important it is to make
sure you’re continually putting out content. That’s what market leaders do, they generate
this new content. So for you to generate that new content, you want to make it as easy as
possible. That’s why I use my mobile phone, I’ll record different things and then I’ll post
them up using my Posterous account, using my iPhone.
I’ll just show you one at davidjenyns.posterous. Just
recently I was thinking I might start to answer a
whole lot of SEO questions on my Posterous account.
Here I am sitting in my car on Chapel Street,
listening to a particular audio and I thought, yes,
that’s a good question that people would have:
should you build links from only on topic and relevant websites? So I recorded this in my
car: whether or not it’s important when building links to have those links coming from
relevant, on topic websites? Then it’s just a two or three minute audio that I create and
then I can send it through to this Posterous account. It’s really easy, you just send an email
through and then it’s a way for me to generate content.
What are we going to do with these audios? Then we’ll pass them off to another assistant.
That assistant will create, in fact Ryan’s done quite a few of these PowerPoint presentations
of audios that I’ve done. He’ll create a PowerPoint presentation to match an audio
interview that I’ve done and then that way we create a video where previously I only had
an audio. Then we cut that video up into pieces and we end up posting that on YouTube.
www.theSEOmethod2.com 9
So all of these little questions, these are questions people are having in my industry so I’m
going to start recording these and then shortly we’ll start to create videos to complement
them which will just be short little slide shows that will create new content and that will
get distributed out. It’s all about ways that you can multiply whatever it is that you’re
already doing. You need ways to push that content out and make it as easy as possible for
you to do. So that is how I use Posterous.
Posterous also pushes to Twitter. So I’ve got Posterous to automatically post. Once I make a
post, I send an email on my iPhone, then that post gets posted on Posterous. Posterous
automatically sends a ping over to Twitter and it automatically gets posted in Twitter. This
happens all automatically. Then Twitter automatically pushes it over to Facebook. So I
record one little audio and it gets posted on Facebook, Twitter and Posterous. It just gets
automatically distributed out.
The final piece of the puzzle is something I use called Ping.fm and Ping.fm is a service if
you imagine it’s like the Directory Maximizer or the second tier article directories submitter
like Content Crooner. All it is, is a service where you submit something once and then it will
automatically get distributed out to multiple different web 2.0 sites. So I’ve got my own set
of web 2.0 sites and this is all personal branding work. We’ve got twenty-three different
websites that have joined up to these web 2.0 things and you’ll see the content, and I’ve
got a map that explains exactly the workflow on how this all gets pushed around. A few
feeds then get pushed into Ping.fm and then Ping.fm republishes that to all these second
tier web 2.0 directories.
We probably log in once a month or every blue moon. Franz does this, he’ll log in just to
make sure and I’ll approve friend requests and he’ll approve comments and things like that
just to engage with them but it is something that we don’t actively monitor very often.
We’ll do it once in a blue moon.
www.theSEOmethod2.com 10
Bringing it together
Also there is another piece of the puzzle
called twitterfeed. Twitterfeed is a service
that you will basically enter in RSS feed, any
RSS feed that you like and then any time
any new information is added to those RSS
feeds, those RSS feeds are then pushed over
to Ping.fm. So basically I’ve taken the feed
from my blog, I’ve taken the feed from my Twitter, I’ve taken the feed from Melbourne
SEO, just the XML feed, and I have all of those feeds automatically push over to Ping.fm.
Under twitterfeed you can add any RSS you want. Grab you RSS feed from your
EzineArticles. Imagine taking your RSS feed from EzineArticles, putting it into here, then it
gets pushed out to twenty-three other web 2.0 properties all with inbound links back to
your website.
That is a quick way to get some inbound links and some quick attention. Sometimes they
do run it through things like bit.ly which is a URL shortener, so you might not necessarily
get all the benefit. I can log in and look at the stats and I know people are clicking my links
because twitterfeed logs all the clicks that you get. I know people are clicking through
them from my other web 2.0 properties. So people are watching them.
It’s no skin off my nose. The only thing I’m doing is, I’m recording content on my iPhone,
I’m publishing it to Posterous and I’m also doing status updates and things like that on
Twitter. That’s my main place where I focus: Posterous, Twitter and occasionally, probably a
little bit more than I should, I log into Facebook and I will reply to comments and things
like that.
I’ll just draw it all together just so you know
exactly how it works just to explain it a little
bit more. We’ll start off with Twitter. So I’ve
got my Twitter account here. That is
something that I’m actually updating on my
phone. So that Twitter account automatically
pushes over to my Facebook account. So I make a post here, that becomes a status update
over here. Hands off, I don’t have to do any of that.
www.theSEOmethod2.com 11
The other thing we’ve got as well is YouTube which we haven’t talked too much about. I’ve
got an option to have my YouTube videos automatically pushed to Facebook as well. So
any time that we post a video on YouTube it automatically gets pushed to Facebook. So
I’m getting all these status updates on my Facebook page of all of the different things that
I’m doing. YouTube is something we actively manage, Ben does the majority of that for us.
Then we’ve got Posterous. Posterous is another area that I create content for. Posterous I’ll
be doing things on my iPhone, recording the audio, multi media, anything like that. The
reason I use Posterous for that is it just makes it so easy for embedding multi media, video,
pictures, etc.
Then we go to twitterfeed. Twitterfeed is
this little program that will take all of the
RSS feeds. Over here we’ve got Melbourne
SEO which is our blog and then we’ve got
the davidjenyns.com blog. Those RSS feeds
automatically get pulled into the twitterfeed.
Then you want to make sure you don’t get
any duplicate content because if you get it wrong you might end up posting something
and then if you did it on Posterous, Posterous can also post over to Twitter and you’d end
up getting double feeds, so you just want to make sure you map it out correctly otherwise
you don’t want to get double posting on things.
That goes down to twitterfeed and then we’ve got Ping.fm. Then twitterfeed filters down
to Ping.fm and then we have all those other little web 2.0 websites and that gets
automatically pushed out. So I generate content in Twitter every now and then and that’s
where I will be monitoring what’s going on in my community, this is how I keep up to date.
I use Facebook and I’ll log in every now and then to approve comments but most of the
content is already filtered in from these other sources. YouTube we generate content from
and then Posterous we talked about and then it kind of all filters out.
Like I said, you can plug other things in here as well. This is by no means a perfect map and
this is cutting edge work. Not many people are talking about doing this level of strategy
just yet, so we’re still evolving it and it’s something that we’re going to look at but it is
trying to engage in web 2.0 in the most automated fashion that we can.
www.theSEOmethod2.com 12
Fortuneteller Dave
Fortuneteller Dave. What are some things
I’m going to tell you? Go out and get the
book Socialnomics. It’s an excellent book. I
just did an interview with a guy called Eric
Qualman who is the author. We talked
about some different insights and the
biggest thing that he is understanding is
that Google wants to get on board with this whole web 2.0 thing. We just saw it recently
with the launch of Buzz and they’re starting to get you to enter in all of your other web 2.0
accounts so that they can monitor what it is that you’re doing.
Facebook just overtook Google in traffic recently because people find it is a safer
community. A lot of people, not we internet marketers, a lot of people load up the internet
and they go straight to Facebook and that is where they engage. Google is obviously
wanting to make sure that they don’t miss out on this. That’s why they launched Buzz and
they forced you to do it when you signed up because you’ve got a Gmail account and they
would put it right in front of you.
I think the way the future is heading, and this is mentioned in Socialnomics, is the idea that
search engine results are going to get a lot more customized. When you’re logged into
your Google account, when you search something on Google the results are tailored to you.
I log in, and if I’m logged into my account, davidjenyns.com comes up higher for words,
Melbourne SEO comes up higher for words because Google is watching what I’m doing,
realizing that I’m clicking those sites, therefore it is of interest to me, therefore it’s pushing
them higher up the search engines.
I think Google will be starting to monitor a lot of things going on in web 2.0 and it will start
to monitor things like, what do your friends say in part of your social network? Ok, well,
Dave is friends with Ian Howard, and Ian Howard said that he just went on a holiday to
Europe. Now I’m on Google, I’m logged into my Google account. I type into Google
European holiday accommodation, it knows that I’m friends with Ian, scours his website
and then says, oh, Ian has just been to Europe and here are some photos that he took
when he was in Europe. Here’s where he stayed because this is what his review that he
posted on TripAdvisor, any one of those where you can log reviews of accommodation and
things like that. Then it will say, oh, that is obviously of importance and relevance to me.
www.theSEOmethod2.com 13
I think that is the way things are evolving so it’s really important that you start to engage in
this web 2.0 space. Things are also getting even more local. All you have to do is look at
Foursquare which is just exploding.
If you haven’t had a look at Foursquare, at the moment I don’t know if they’ve really got an
idea of how they’re going to commercialize it but that is coming. What it is, is people
checking in on their mobile phones when they’re out and about to log where they are. You
can see where your friends are and you can see what your friends have recommended, hey
you should check out the Corner Hotel, the parmas are really good there. It will be able to
tell me that because I’ve got my little phone and it knows where I’m checked in. That’s the
future of where things are heading. The same is with the evolution of Google Maps.
80/20 rule
We’re into the final part here. The best thing
you can do is get into web 2.0. At the
moment, the SEO things, that is cutting
edge. This is bleeding edge work. Don’t feel
the need to implement these things right
away but have it in the back of your mind,
that’s the way things are going and if you
want to stay ahead of the curve, start to implement this as soon as you can. Start to build
your own brand. It’s really important, your own name is important. Register whatever your
name is.com. Start to build that personality because people want to deal with people.
That’s what all web 2.0 material is about. It’s about this community thing, they want to
connect with individuals, so start to build your own personal brand. Follow the party
principle which is, anywhere social, be cool, don’t try to sell things. Try and do that. The
other thing is be careful what you put on web 2.0 properties because people will be able to
look back in years to come and catalogue what it is that you did in your life, based on the
twitterfeed that you had, based on you Facebook account.
If you think about in twenty years time, when they want to do a bio on someone, you can
just dig into all those web 2.0 properties and you’ll get so much tremendous insight. What
were they thinking, what were they reading, what were they doing? So just be careful what
you do. The last thing is I’ll have questions and then I’ll pass it over to Ben.
Any questions on web 2.0?
www.theSEOmethod2.com 14
Question: It’s not actually a question but just a comment on Twitter. Being a little older than a lot of the guys in the room, I think Twitter is a waste of time. However, I recently went to Epilepsy Foundation, an invite by them to have a discussion about it and also the Make A Wish Foundation. They’re both using Twitter quite heavily basically as you
mentioned, to get information out there quickly and to get it to their group of followers. So though you might think Twitter seems to be a waste of time, for the younger
generation from a marketing point of view it seems to be becoming very important.
Answer: Agreed.
Question: About Twitter, I think I mentioned to you before, one of the ways I found it really good to use it as well was to find out what is the conversation in your marketplace. You could do it with Facebook as well too. But at the moment if you have a group of people
on Twitter talking about golden retriever Labradors and they all have a problem about the left hind leg goes and you can get the language and that so you can identify a problem in the marketplace really quickly and then take that back to however you want to solve
that problem. That was quite an ingenious way to use it. Do you use Google Buzz in any of this?
Answer: I signed up for Google Buzz. I’ve got about ten friends and they automatically
matched me up with just by analyzing my Google Buzz account. I don’t use it. I entered in
all my material, entered in my web 2.0 profile and it’s feeding in there. How many people
are actually looking at it and if it’s worthwhile, that’s another question. But it’s automated,
so I might as well.
Question: The reason I asked is, I tried putting the links in there as well and it didn’t recognize it and then I found a couple of guys from the UK who I was obviously on their list and they were getting their feeds from their blog through and the links were actually showing up at the bottom on the page. So that is why I asked integrating into this, it was
coming through into their Google Buzz but with the full link and the anchor text, I thought that was pretty wild.
Answer: It’s worth investigating. Anything where you can get an inbound link with very
little effort, it’s worthwhile, even if it’s no followed. If it takes no effort then you might as
well do it.
Question: It was on the Google page, Google Dreamer.
Answer: Ok, last question and then we’ve got to move onto the next session.
Question: David, I just wanted to ask about building your own personal brand in conjunction with building your company brand. Obviously Virgin is a very strong brand. Richard Branson is very well known but he is not building richardbranson.com, he builds Virgin. Similarly Russell Brunson builds DotCom Secrets. Are you making it more difficult to ultimately sell your company in generic terms if you are so strongly identified with it
that if you’re not there, then it loses its value?
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Answer: Yes, so the way that I handle that is, when you think of Melbourne SEO Services,
that’s why we branded it as a separate company. When Richard Branson puts his thumb on
anything, it automatically gets a boost because it’s got the Richard Branson name attached
to it. I do it the same way where my business is set up as separate, Melbourne SEO Services,
even though I am involved, if it comes time to actually sell, my name isn’t so entrenched in
it. I could rip it off and put someone else’s details in there.
I agree if you were just building a business solely off your blog, it’s probably not the wisest
decision because, as I talked about, the place that you’ll make the best money or the
biggest money is when you cash out.
Question: That is actually a good example anyhow because Richard Branson sold on Virgin Music and was that intertwined, as part of the purchase? Not really, but it had that halo
effect just by previous associations.
Question: I noticed the Yellow Pages video that you put out, what you share on your personal blog, maybe it was on the SEO Services as well, I just wonder how you decide when you’ve got a bit of content, whether you’re going to put it under your own name
or both?
Answer: I put it in as many different places as I can and I’ll create unique content around it.
The more that you can get it out there, the better. I just use it as another website in my
network to build links from.
Question: It’s actually just about the way that you work, Dave. The one thing that you actually notice with Dave anyhow with the Melbourne SEO Services is that Dave is not the only person there. He actually exposes the rest of his staff, so all of them actually have a personal profile on the site. You’ll also notice if you go to foursquare.com pretty much every person who is involved with that business is profiled and all their blog sites and everything like that is all revealed, so you can actually have a personal connection and
communication with each of the staff.
In terms of intertwining the business and wrapping it up, I don’t think you’ve fallen for that
trap because Ben has a pretty good profile on there and all that sort of thing.
Answer: Excellent, good feedback. Alright, we might wrap it up.