The 7 keys to social branding

Dear sweet merciful Buddha, how I've come to loathe the word "branding". It's not its fault, the poor word. But it's been so abused in the last decade I think it deserves some time left alone on a beach somewhere.

That being said, creative individuals who want to make the transition to being a creative professional need to understand what I call the narrative of professional identity. That's cumbersome, and I should call it something else, but like I said the B word is on holiday and recuperating, send flowers.

Despite lip-service to two-way communication, branding has often been a one-way effort: we decided what we wanted people to think about our companies and designed marketing and communications that made that happen.

Or so we hoped.

But a brand is the collective impression people gain not only from you and your marketing efforts, but from all of their interactions with you—and the interactions others have as well (newly amplified through social media).

That means we need to look at the process of branding in different way: through a social lens.

– Tamsen McMahon (keep reading...)

Hat tip to Anna Pollock