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Module 6: Personal Branding

And Journalism

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Power is shifting from institutions to the individual journalist

• Readers are gravitating to the work of individual writers and voices, and away somewhat from institutional brand.

• Journalists who have left legacy news organizations are attracting funding to create their own websites and become independent contractors, offering expert coverage to many places.

• Examples: Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Talking Points Memo, GlobalPost, VoiceofSanDiego.org , MinnPost.com, Arizonaguardian.com, ProPublica.org, NewHavenIndependent.org

Source: http://www.stateofthemedia.org, 2009

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Local examples

• MalaysiaKini

• MalaysianInsider

• Malaysia-Today.net

• FreeMalaysiaToday.com

• AgendaDaily.com

• TheNutGraph.com

• MerdekaReview.com

• Individual bloggers: eg: anilnetto.com

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Why personal branding matters

• In print you are a faceless byline. • On the net you are what you share: your

images, your stories, your videos, your resume, your profiles, your comments, your status updates, your tweets, your favourite books, music, movies, links, your bookmarks.

• If you identify yourself as an employee of The Star, you are already a brand ambassador for the company

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Brands permeate every waking moment of our lives

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“The art of marketing is the art of brand-building. If you are not a brand, you are a commodity. Then price is everything and the low-cost producer is the only winner.”

Philip Kotler, marketing guru

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Brands and eggs

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Made in Germany

Made in Japan

Made in Switzerland

Made in Italy

Made in U.S.A

Made in Malaysia

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Brands can dominate a category

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Brands can differentiate within a category: Luxury car versus…

“Engineering excellence”

“High performance”

“Safety”

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Brands = personality

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Your image matters

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Expect to be attacked

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Brands can evolve

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“I wanted the campaign to be very bold, very sensual and very atmospheric. To carry off all these references and all this sophistication, we needed the ultimate performer, and for me, that was Madonna,”

Louis Vuitton designer Marc Jacobs

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“In technoratic and colourless times, brands bring warmth, familiarity and trust.”

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe,

former CEO, Nestle

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Exercise: Personal brand audit

• Search your “full name” (with quotes) or byline on Google, Google Images, Google Blogsearch

• Rate the first page results: positive, negative, neutral, doppelganger?

• Do the results link accurately to your story, your personal website, your blog, your social network profile, your resume, your image?

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Personal audit “wong chun wai”

Google search

Google images

Google Blogsearch

Positive 70 percent 5/18 70 percent

Negative 30 percent 5/18 30 percent

Neutral Nil 3/18 Nil

Doppelganger Nil 5/18 Nil

Note: Based on simple Google audit on Jan 14, 2010

Beta: webmii.com

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Case study:Barack Obama

and Social Media

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Barack Obama: Yes We Can?

• A black guy…

• With a funny name…

• And that notorious middle name…

• Having serious inexperience problems…

• Wearing this outfit….

• Wants to be the next president?

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So what does your personal brand stand for?

accountable accurate adventurous authentic brave bold caring classy cool consistent creative credible curious daring driven dynamic exciting efficient energetic fearless fun futuristic gentle genuine human humble healthy imaginative innovative inspiring intense irreverent joyful jovial kind loving nurturing organised persistent professional powerful passionate provocative reliable radical resolute sensuous sensible sincere smart steady strong sexy soulful technological trustworthy uncommon undaunted unexpected unorthodox unusual unwavering vociferous visionary

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Social media and the banana leaf

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Digital banana leaf

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1st Social Media President

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Obama vs McCain

• Obama web team was led by Blue State Digital formerly from Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign who built the social network My.Barack.Obama.

• Key member who joined team was Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook

• Team posted more varied content in many more online sites. Eg: 1819 videos on YouTube compared to 330 on McCain’s channel.

• He followed everyone who followed him on Twitter.• His emails sounded personal and were crucial in raising over

US$300m of the US$650m he raised

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The stats

Source: Edelman

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Connecting online• Easy: MyBO made it easy to recruit

others, create your own group, organize fundraisers, host an event and get updates.

• Familiar: Online tools used were similar to Facebook, MySpace, Meetup and other popular tools – learning curve was easy.

• Go to the people: Posted content on 15 social networks – fished where the fish were.

• Apps and widgets: Released free iPhone app that gave people up-to-date information on key events in their area.

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Blog

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Facebook and 14 other social networks

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1,800 YouTube videos

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Staying connected in 2010

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Lessons from Obama 08

• Fish where the fish are

• Be transparent and authentic

• Your constituents, fans, followers, readers, viewers, observers expect you to react to their feedback

• A little shameless self-plugging can go a long way

• Show up and engage with them in real life

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Example: Niki Cheong

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The inside story on a blog

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Tweet, status update on Facebook

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Using available platforms

• Sign up with Yahoo or Gmail = Free

• Facebook, LinkedIn (social networks) = Free

• Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr (blogs) = Free

• Twitter (microblogging) = Free

• iTunes (podcasts) = Free

• YouTube (video) = Free

• Picasa or Flickr (photos) = Free (limited)

Do you sense a pattern?Source: Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic

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Best practices: Personal branding• Set up a personal website, or archive your

stories on a blog• Update profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook,

Twitter• Post photos or videos regularly• Post useful tweets, status updates, blog posts

and link to the rest• Become the go-to person of your beat• Contribute ideas to professional groups

MORE: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/100-personal-branding-tactics-using-social-media/

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Your digital neighbourhood matters

300

90,000

27,000,000

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Media brands are increasingly defined more by the community

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hankins/