On Feb. 26-28, Best Practice Media presented the Social Media Week Austin (#SMWATX) conference with innovative professionals in digital careers. This was the second year Austin has held one of the many Social Media Week conferences, which are also held in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Chicago, with the theme of celebrating human connectivity and the power technology. With various professionals from big-name companies to startup tech companies, Social Media Week Austin successfully created a safe open discussion place and noteworthy networking opportunities for panelists and attendees.
This year’s scheduled sessions included panels such as “How to Build a Killer Social Landing Page Using Science,” “The Power of LinkedIn and Social Selling,” “Visual Marketing: Creating Catchy Content,” and “Create a Client Attraction Machine with Facebook Live and Messenger Bots.” There were opportunities for companies and personal media professionals to take note and discuss what can be done to improve their digital strategy or brand.
One of the speaker sessions to highlight was the “Personal Branding through Social Media” with Jenny Newman, Global Social Media Strategist for Dell, and Sean Carey, Sr. Manager of Social Media for Charles Schwab. Their panel highlighted how to create and discover what professionals want as their “personal brand.” They defined someones personal brand for any digital professional as what they want their online reputation to be.
Reputation, it’s not a magic bullet – Sean Carey, Sr. Manager of Social Media for Charles Schwab
There are three key points to achieve a personal brand and online reputation. First, be active and set expectations, and be patient. Second is a network which means being authentic; this leads to seeing a sense of value. Lastly, have a body of work to show your credibility and capability.
Jenny and Sean continue their session with a new perspective of breaking down what makes up a personal brand. This is broken into personal and professional. Both of these aspects will help bring brand image a wholesomeness that will leave a mark on the online community.
The combination of both personal and professional makeup is defined by what Jenny and Sean call your “constellation.” This simply means things that you love, things that you know, your interests and what makes you, you. Then, take these attributes and form them to your image (constellation of your brand). In doing this and connecting all the attributes and making them align, then one can find their brand image. Jenny calls her constellation a Valkyrie because it makes up her created brand image. As a professional, she is an expert in social media training. However, her personal side that makes up the rest of her image is powerful. She describes herself as “bombastic,” what you see is what you get, which means bright colors, talking about comics, podcasting and pop culture.
Sean describes his constellation to be the Cheshire Cat. He says that professionally he knew what he wanted to be known for, which was social media, social selling, and helping people with their brand. Personally, for the other half to his constellation, he describes himself to be eclectic, unorthodox, sarcastic and laughing. He wants to be the person who is there to help someone’s success but also not be there and allow others to shine through on their own. He might be on your social media timeline in and out, but that is how he describes what he created for his brand image.
After finding your brand image, it then leads to questions such as does your constellation show through your brand? What brand image are you leaving behind as your legacy? What do you want to be remembered by? What is your brand at the core? Having built a constellation of what your brand image is will then lead to building your social presence.
What do I want people to see? It is living by design and not default – Jenny Newman, Global Social Media Strategist for Dell
While this was only one of the fantastic panels to listen to at Social Media Week Austin, the conference brought not only professionals to present but also allowed other media professionals to network and talk about improving digital/social media careers. This conference was an excellent opener for the upcoming week’s SXSW Conference which will also include more media panels and speakers to listen in on.
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Featured image: Capital Factory