I love reading David Armano’s blog because he’s great at distilling complex ideas into very simple terms.
David’s “Brand U.0″ video presentation is required viewing for all you social media commandos. The fact is we as humans now exhibit the same behaviors as brands do. Like David says, we’re self-aware of our own potential to become successful online by tapping into old-school mass media distribution.
But this is the new-school. We don’t all sit around the television to watch one of four network stations.
The new-school is all about profiting from a niche, the way start up guru Guy Kawasaki and wine library TV phenom Gary Vaynerchuck have.
Guy doesn’t possess the reach of a network like CBS — but why would he want it? The passion, no, downright fanaticism of his faithful followers is inspiring to watch (I think there are more than a few who would take a bullet for him).
Let’s discuss how you can build a killer niche brand using the 5 Essential Habits of Internet Famous Micro-Celebrities:
1. Be Ubiquitous
David describes ubiquity, also known as the act of being everywhere at once, in terms of your different ‘lifestreams’ online. These include your updates on Twitter, Facebook posts, and YouTube video presentations. Each of these streams interacts with one another and gives you the chance to be in front of Googlers 24-7.
In our always-on society it’s necessary to be everywhere.
This really isn’t such a hard step, given the availability of free social networking tools and blogging software. In fact setting up these networks is the easy part (what’s it take you to set up a Twitter profile, 5 minutes tops?).
2. Be Social
Being social across all of your profiles is a hell of a lot harder than the setup process, because it requires daily attention. All of those tweets and time dedicated to creating unique content is the sweat equity that every micro-celebrity invests. You can successfully manage all of these streams by focusing on your niche and creating a magnetic broadcast media channel that people are attracted to.
Like so:
Tweets –> Posted to Facebook –> Captured By FriendFeed –> Shared on Your Blog –> Blog Houses UStream Broadcasts –> That Get Syndicated on YouTube
3. Be Interesting
Step three is where the rubber meets the road. What makes you unique and interesting? How can you represent “Brand U.0″ in a way that will resonate with your niche audience? Gary Vaynerchuck accomplishes this by bringing a loud, in-your-face personality to the typically refined and low profile world of wine enthusiasts. It’s different and it works.
4. Be Remarkable
Literally ‘Be Remarkable’, or worthy of comment, for online followers. David is remarkable to people like me because, like I mentioned above, he’s good at distilling big webs of ideas into easily digestible bite-sized terms. Maybe you’ll bring an incredibly outrageous personality to an otherwise boring topic, or help people understand a complicated topic (and encourage remarks by following step two, being social).
5. Be Yourself
All of the previous steps aren’t worth a damn if they come across as fake or manufactured. You can’t have ten different personalities to attract ten different niche markets, you just have to be yourself to reach a targeted audience in an incredibly meaningful way.
Don’t underestimate the importance or difficulty of this step!
I still practice writing from the heart and keeping my message true to who I am, and you should too. Faceless brands don’t inspire positive conversation, and that’s why all these micro-celebrities emerged in the first place. People want to interact with their favorite and most-hated brands in conversation, which people are better at than scripted marketing and advertising.
So that’s the big bad list! If you invest time building an online brand that’s social, genuine, interesting and remarkable, people will find and follow you. Let’s connect the dots one step further to understand the payoff for you (maybe it’s cash or perhaps you just want to bring attention to a worthy cause).
Internet Fame makes a name and a profitable living for people like Robert Scoble, ijustine, and even the YouTube kid who goes by the name of ‘Fred’. The value to companies who may want to hire you shifts from your skills to the audience you command, especially in this world where large networks are becoming less effective at converting audiences into sales for sponsors.
Build an audience, or an ‘online army’, as Chris Brogan calls them, and you’re damn near assured micro-celebrity and profit as a result.