New Directions - Shawenon Communications Newsletter

SHAWENON COMMUNICATIONS

Effective Messaging

No. 51
June, 2010

Greetings!

Marketing a Company of One: Building an Authentic Personal Brand--my presentation to the NY Capital Region Chapter of the American Marketing Association in Albany was the kickoff to a new business direction. I am focusing on marketing communications consulting and project management for entrepreneurs, professionals, artists and other micro businesses.

You can take advantage of the same offer I made to my audience on May 13th. Do a little homework on your own personal brand and then we can talk for a half hour, no charge. Details to the right.

Here's a little promo from one participant--John Backman:

"Very few people get the idea of branding like Susanna does. Rather than just focus on the externals--like logo, design, or communications--she thoughtfully considers the core of each client's venture and draws it out into a coherent 'personality.' I wish all brand consultants were this thoughtful and this thorough." May 28, 2010

Shawenon Communications' partnership with Constant Contact is growing and thriving as they go in new directions. More about that in the first article.

Our second piece is also about brand. Consider the significance of the how you show up in those first delicate moments of personal encounter. It's been said that we make lifelong decisions about people in the first 30 seconds we spend with them. If so, what should we do about it?

Lots of cards and letters from the last issue, with especial thanks for the information about Web sites to help people communicate in times of illness and family crisis. I had occasion to use CaringBridge and found it perfect for the job. Everything is fine, by the way. Thanks to Barbara Bird for the additional suggestion of Carepages.com.

I'm on Twitter. Follow me.

In This Issue

New Title

Wearing Personal Brand

Web Tips

Personal Brand

New Title

I'm still the Chief Wordsmith at Shawenon Communications, but I'm no longer a Constant Contact Business Partner. I've been promoted. I'm now a Solution Provider.

As a wordsmith, I tend to eschew bringing in new words to say the same old thing. Companies used to have a sales force--now it's business development. But the job hasn't really changed.

And my job as Solution Provider is the same as it's been since I began with Constant Contact in March, 2006. It was always a little awkward explaining that I was a Business Partner. What did that mean? Revenue share for one thing. But what else? I think the new title is more descriptive.

Big Changes

Constant Contact has exploded recently. Not only are they doing radio ads, but they'll soon be on TV, too. And, much to my delight, they're paying more attention to their Business Partners--I mean Solution Providers. Beginning in June, they launched MarketPlace, which showcases the services Constant Contact providers offer. Of course, Shawenon Communications is included. Take a look.

By the way, there are more than 6,200 active partners, so I really appreciate when Constant Contact reaches out to me to attend a briefing, as they did recently. The company provides awesome customer service and their products are great, too, so it's no wonder they sport a revenue growth in excess of 48%.

New Free Product

And just recently they made their first major acquisition--NutshellMail. This free tool aggregates your social media messages into emails. You can select which social media you see in your in box and make other custom adjustments to your account.

This is just the first step in a series of moves the company is making toward embracing social media and helping small businesses keep up with online marketing without losing sight of their core mission.

You don't have to be a Constant Contact customer to give NutshellMail a try. The price is right.

Wearing Personal Brand

I attended a speed networking event last month. You know, the ones where people line up on both sides of a long table and do their elevator speech at each other for 45 seconds.

The sport is not for everyone, but I actually enjoy the process. I usually make some good connections in spite of the rushed circumstances.

As an e-zine publisher, one important mission is to add op-in subscribers to Web Words. I'm marching toward my next big goal of 1,500 subscribers and this event added 23. Welcome new readers.

Showing Up

The speed networking process always gets bogged down as new acquaintances are reluctant to part company with the people they've just met. Since I was on the stationary side, I ended up waiting to begin with the next person. I could see them coming, but I couldn't start networking.

For added entertainment, I started to play a game with myself--"guess the profession." The nattily dressed man--men's clothing? Check. The starched white shirt and conservative tie--financial service. The woman's business suit--banking. So far, so good. Then, the casually elegant woman with a draped look. I didn't get this one, but I should have. Business coach. Then there was cleavage and tattoos. Really.

Nuance

As I continue to develop my specialty of building personal brand, I gain new respect for all the ways in which we present ourselves. The idea of dressing for success isn't new. But what struck me in this exercise was how immediate and visceral a person's presence is on first meeting.

Of course, the clothing isn't everything. We each project our personality--a little fragment of our essence--in all social interactions, whether in person or online. Much of this is unconscious. Making it more conscious is a first step toward understanding personal brand. The way I see it, it's not to affect or change how we appear to others. Rather it's to search for the core of who we are as business people. As we continue to discover what makes us tick, we learn how best to use our special talents in the work world.

Want to learn more about personal brand? You can get the handouts from my recent speech at the New York Capital Region chapter of the American Marketing Association, plus a half hour of free consulting. For details, check out the column on the right.

Web Tips

These days we hear a lot about online privacy--or lack of it. A prime offender is Spokeo.com, whose tag line is "not your grandma's phonebook." Indeed it's not.

Besides address and phone number, it provides age, ethnicity, gender, zodiac, education, offspring, occupation and all kinds of financial information. Of course, it's not all accurate.

Go to the site and see if you're there. We're not, but I've found friends in nearby cities who are. You can remove your listing at www.spokeo.com/privacy. But you're just dealing with this one aggregation of information. The sources from which Spokeo gets the data are still out there. As usual Snopes has a good discussion of the situation.

And Finally . . .

Shawenon Communications collaborates with small businesses, solopreneurs, professionals and not-for-profits to get their messages across in the written word.

We specialize in electronic communications, including e-zines and other forms of email marketing, Web site content and social media. We also ghostwrite articles and other business communications. As a solution provider, we resell Constant Contact's email marketing service.

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