Mediaboss Marketing

In 2006, I set out to brand myself.I had an idea that I shared with the owner of the small company at which I was employed.I called it Publish or Perish, and despite the lack of originality,the idea was simple, but purposeful: We needed to elevate the name recognition of our company -- quickly.

The company had made a fortune working with a niche client, but unwisely, it chose to fly under the competitions radar. In other words, itdid the opposite of marketing for fear that if competitors knew how much money it was making from this niche client, itwould face stiffer competition. So naturally,after years of this guerilla obfuscation, the niche client business dried up and now left the little-firm-that-couldnt struggling to sell its wares to prospects who knew nothing of our work, history andvalues, or even if we could deliver on our promises.Rapid marketing needed to be done.

With publish or perish, I argued, our team of very talented organizational designers, trainersand safety professionals would publish articles and thus get our name out there toget it associated with expertise in our industry.Well, my idea fell flat.A mousey woman with no actual marketing experience, educationor aptitude had the top dogs ear and whispered sweet gibberish into it.Print publication was dead, she said, so were trade shows. The answer was social media.We needed a Facebook page, but most importantly we needed to blog.

Related:Why Your Small Business Must Start a Blog

I resisted, of course.I had no interest in blogging, which I still hold is, in the majority of cases, self-important dreck and a platform for those whose writing just isnt good enough for publication. (I feel even less beneficenttoward self-published books; if it isnt eligible for academic and literary citation, I dont see any value to it, but hey thats just me.) At this point I mightthrow out a conciliatory there are some top-shelf blogs out thereblah blah blah, but thats not my style. Good bloggers know when their work is good and dont need my validation. As for the rest of you, well if you read my statement about most blogs being dreck and thought I was talking about you, I probably was. Deal with it.

Despite my protestations I was ordered to blog.I fought and threw a tantrum to no avail, so I finally acquiesced, on one condition: I would write what I wanted without anyone else having a say-so.I also managed to convince my leaders to allow me to submit abstracts and begin a public speaking campaign.I soon learned how to become famous for nothing by using social media, key words, the Google Search algorithmand press releases. Quickly I became the Brook Shields of Safety -- shes always been famous andhas big bushy eyebrows, and no one can account for either -- I was famous for no apparent reason.

I quickly learned that the true power of public speaking is the press before the event, promotion during the eventand press after the event.At the time most of the major print magazines were scrambling for online content and had robots or interns using key word searches to get it.The Google algorithm leaned heavily on how many links a given post had (reasoning that the wider the distribution the more reliable and important the content).

By using a free press release site anda handful of key words carefully and artfully woven in -- words like aerospace automotive industry andwell, false modesty prevents me from giving away allmy secrets. Anyway, this site would blast my press release to publications looking for those key words and soon my press releases were on scores of pages, unread and unvetted. I was able to get my press releases, which had usually been run as articles,into minor and major business publications which I wont name because they are competitors of Entrepreneur (which by the way, never fell for this Machiavellian scheme of mine).

Related:4 Simple Steps to Creating Powerful Press Releases

Even today there are news outlets that arent as judicious as they had ought to be.Fox News routinely posted my Entrepreneur articles, assuming that I was a conservative business writer, until someone eventually got around to actually reading my work, and it was unceremoniously removed from the site.

The PR serviceallowed me to Tweet the press release, share it on Facebookand post it to LinkedIn.I used to post the links separately to LinkedIn because that way I could post it as a discussion topic in all 50 groups to which I belonged. For some reason,I keep getting thrown out of the groups on LinkedIn because many are run by the adult equivalent of the uptight high school girl who reached the pinnacle of her life and career by being voted third-runner-up for homecoming queen and alternate on student council. Such peopleain't buying what Im selling.

It wasnt long before I was an annual speaker at the National Safety Council, until I pointed out that in my obnoxious estimation several of their perennial speakers were nothing but snake oil salesmen, an embarrassment to the profession. I dont burn my bridges, I dynamite them and pelt the repaircrew with hot stones as they try to rebuild.

It wasnt long before my blog following grew: Ive always said Im a bit like watching an abandoned warehouse fire. Youre not glad that its burning, but it's fun to watch the spectacle and nobody really gets hurt -- or, if they do get hurt they should have known better than to have been inside itto begin with. I got a notice from http://www.wordpress.com that today is the seventh anniversary of my blog. Its actually olderthan that, but I put it on ice for a while when the owner of my company finally got around to reading it and insisted that I get it approved before publishing. As is my wont, I recommendedhe engage in congress with himself and offered interesting and inventive suggestions of where he might consider sticking his approval. This did not look good on my review.

On WordPress,I have posted in the neighborhood of 364,000 words, plus I have spoken at over a 100 international and local venues,including an address toan International Safety Conference on Mining in the Andes, in Lima, Peru. Thisdespite my only knowledge of mining safety at the time was to stay the hell out of one. I have 167 works in print, and I was named by the largest safety magazine to both its list of The Most Influential People Working in Safetyand The Young (or Relatively Young) Up and Comers in Safety. This despite the factIm not young. (I am often mistaken for being younger than I actually am because of my full head of hair, youthful skinand gross immaturity.)

Related:9 Practices for Achieving Emotional Maturity

The point I am yet again meandering aroundis that people try desperately and pathetically to use just one social network to build their personal brands when the true secret is to use allsocial media outlets as tools to get theirbrand out there, by using them holistically.Oh, and it helps if you can write, if your message and style are distinctive, and if your brand is of interest.Remember, you can lead a horse to water, but you cant make him think.

Phil LaDuke is is a Safety Transformation Architect atEnvironmental Resources Management. An author, he writes about business, worker safety and organizational change topics on hisblog. An avid user of social media for business...

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I Used Social Media and Blogging to Become Famous for Nothing - Entrepreneur