Internet Tech Blog

Do you have account on some social network site? Social networks where we can meet many people around the world, add them to our friend list, see their profile, and many more. It’s a pride to have many networks on our social network account. We compete to get more and more friends, by add friends or FOF (friend of friend). It is also a pride to have famous persons/groups on our friend list, like actors, singer, or a company.

The social networking is not only for the youth. If you get through some social networks, you will find many famous people and even a president candidate and politicians. The social networks became a potential communication media, that’s why these famous people participate on it. The social networking will make them closer to their target audience.

On the Social networking we allow our personal profile and photos to be accessed by publics, to mention that our personal profile is not privacy anymore. Our profile even will become a marketing tool for ourselves. This indicates that we started to feel of how important to branding ourselves. The info and photos on our social network profile is a tool to impress others and generally we make it as interesting as possible to attract others.

Tom Peters mentioned about the personal branding trends on his article “Fast Company” in 1997. “Not important how old and what is your position, what business do you handle, we all need to understand how important the branding is. We are CEO for our company: Me Inc. To get into the business today, the most important job is to become marketer for a brand named You.” He said.

Many people much more interested about personal branding. This trend become stronger day by day, apart from critics that mention personal branding is just a self-obsession. But “There’s a celebrity inside us”. This words will answered and accommodated with social networking facility.

Personal branding trends maybe connected with reality that the positioning as a brand strategy became more ineffective. Previously, a company can determine, or positioning their brand according to message they extend through media. But today, not the company anymore, but people/users who will determine brand, according to their experience and emotional relationship.

Social networking enables emotional relationship to be tied in, on both real world and cyber world. For example if I add my favorite famous activist and he accept/approve me as his friend list, and then he sends me a short message like “thank you for your attention to our fight for human rights”. Certainly I will very proud and excited. A busy person like him has additional time to send message to me, apart from reality that the message is wrote by his management or team. But I can feel that personal touch, which will add another experience accumulation with the activist.

There is an important feature on social networking, it is testimonial. Testimonial enable us to read how a user in the eyes of his/her friends or family. This testimonial will influence our perspective against that user. In the marketing point of view, testimonial is “product info”. If the “info” is suitable, we will buy the product. If we suitable with info provided on testimonial, possibly we will add the user to our friend list.

The social networking is branding facilitator. Our brand communicated via profile and testimonials from our friends. The supplied personal touch will create and add the experience and emotional relationship with targeted users.