No matter what, you are in the marketing business. You are always marketing something about yourself whether or not you own a business or work for one. Anytime you interact with other people you are marketing something to them. Most of the time what you project towards others goes unnoticed and passes without any concern, but it doesn’t mean your brand can’t be tarnished in a matter of minutes.

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffett

Marketing Yourself

“Missy is still going to be Missy. Whatever I get on, it’s still me. If I do a record with Madonna or Mariah Carey, even if I did a record with Faith Hill, it’s still going to be a Missy record.” – Missy Elliott

You always have to be yourself and be completely forward with others. People will accept you for who you are as long as it is the real you. As Internet marketing continues to expand and grow, more and more people will begin their journey into the world of digital interaction. I have people that work with me on various different projects who I have never met before in person and this trend is going to continue for not just me but many others.

Like I mentioned earlier, it only takes a few minutes to ruin your reputation among your peers, associates, aquatints or business partners. Often times it is hard to not let emotion into daily interactions and by all accounts, it isn’t always preventable. The most important thing anyone can take away from this is just to know that everything you do can and will be used against you, unlike our justice system which believes you are innocent until proven guilty. All you can do is be conscious about your decisions and always strive to do your best.

“My thoughts are to go out there and try to pitch the best I can every time I get the ball. Those decisions aren’t up to me. After that, I don’t see much sense in worrying about what’s going to happen.” – Aaron Heilman

Marketing Your Brand

In the digital 3.0 world your brand isn’t defined by you or your branding team anymore. Your brand is determined by how you interact with others on a day to day basis. Now more than ever, one customer has a huge impact on your brand. Look at Al Capone and the Thompson Submachine Gun. That one gun has been forever deemed the gangsters gun because of one person’s action with another person’s brand. In the web 3.0 world that revolves around social interaction and communication, it is very important to influence your brand perception, but not dictate it. What do I mean by that?

The day of old where companies could buy enough TV / Radio ads to influence the masses to accept their brand as the “authority” is gone. Now a blogger with a couple thousand followers can influence your brand perception quicker and much cheaper than any marketing department can dream of. The only option big companies are left with is the ability to influence the conversation and interact with their customer base. More often than not, things can be resolved quickly and easily by joining the conversation vs. manipulating it.

Marketing your brand involves joining and guiding the conversations around you and your business, not dictating them. It also involves giving people a place to talk about your brand that you can get involved with. If you see that people are talking on a forum about your company, start your own company forum and encourage those people to join you there. Don’t rule over people with the iron fist of Stalin but rather allow these places to be a fair and open discussion about all things surrounding your brand. Leaving the negative comments in place and having reasonable responses following them says more about you and your brand than anything. It shows that you are willing to accept responsibility to negative criticism and address the issue at heart.

Do you have any brand success or failure stories?