Page 131 - Social Media Marketing

Building a Brand through Shameless Self-Promotion lIS

assistant to go over ideas for designing a web site or blog, attending
community events, and so on.

Note: As a shameless self-promoter, your job is to generate
business and revenue for yourself and all those people you
have to hire to take care of the daily tasks required to run
the business. You are the rainmaker. In other words, your job
is to market yourself, so you had better be prepared to hire
people to take care of the daily chores, as I discuss in Chapter 6,
"Hiring Your First Assistant."

Discovering Your Unique Brand Focus

Close your eyes and imagine the president of the United States or
Martin Luther King Jr. or Donald Trump. You can probably come
up with a clear image of what each of these characters looks like,
because they have attained celebrity or even legendary status. That's
what you want, and proper branding can deliver it; but first, you
need a central brand focus-something unique that is totally you,
and something that will excite you and everyone around you.

A real estate colleague of mine in Montgomery, Alabama, Sandra
Nickel, is known far and wide as the "Hat Lady." She wears a dis-
tinctive hat wherever she goes. Her hat logo appears on her business
card, on all of her correspondence, and even on her web site, Invest
in Montgomery, Alabama (www.investinmontgomeryalabama.
com). Sandra has a solid team of real estate professionals who han-
dle the daily business. She functions as the rainmaker, ensuring
that the phones keep ringing and the Internet remains abuzz with
the voices of interested buyers and sellers. She tells the story of
Midtown, and she volunteers tirelessly to improve the community.
In the process, the Hat Lady attracts a lot of attention and lots of
business.

Several years ago, I decided to form a brand around an 11-foot-
tall, SOD-pound nail. The nail already had some local appeal; in 1998,