In this article I will review the book Hoe je goed gevonden wordt – Profileer jezelf met social media“, the latest book of Tom Scholte and Joris Coppes.

Hoe je goed gevonden wordt / How you are being found well online

Scholte & Coppes start the book with building the theoretical basics like the definition of a brand.

“A brand is a collection of associations that people have with a certain brand.”

I like the simplicity of the definition, however have a look at Seth Godin’s brand definition as well. A company behind such a brand carefully builds and maintains a so called brand experience.  This brand experience focuses on three feelings:

1. Creating a positive experience (a certain brand gives you a good feeling)
2. A specific emotion (happyness, tropical)
3. A feeling of “no alternative” option

Why does somebody drive a Porsche Carrerra GT3 (and nothing else)? Or why does someone buy a specific smartphone brand like Nokia? It is interesting to look at those brands with the three feelings in mind.

 

Look at yourself as a brand

Scholte & Coppes provide examples of personal brands, like Ruud Gullit or Linda de Mol. By looking at yourself as a brand and start to think about positioning yourself as a brand, both opportunities and questions come up.

Scholte & Coppes provide a very simple three-step model to help you think about yourself as a personal brand. The three-step model is shown in the picture above. The basic personal branding questions on the left and actionable tools and means on the right.

In the green building block in the third step consists of social media networks, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.  The main question that Scholte & Coppes will answer in the book is: “How social technology can help you with your personal brand(ing journey)?

 

Why, about what and how well are you being found ?

Scholte & Coppes have developed again a simple model that helps you to take the deep dive into personal branding and social media, when you’ve completed the three-step model.

The Scholte & Coppes model above consists of five layers, each with three building blocks per level:

1. Results
2. Keywords
3. Strategies
4. Means
5. Activities

Each of the five layers will be discussed in more detail in the upcoming sections, since this is the core essence of developing your personal brand.

 

Focus on the results

Scholte & Coppes explain why the focus on results is a logical starting point. It helps you to focus and carve out your own niche as a personal brand. Have a look at the dynamics in your personal network when someone asks you for a expert becuase he/she has problem A.

When you recommend an expert that does a good job and solves the problem, that expert is appreciated and even higher rated, The expert becomes even more recommended and is more likely being asked for more work. It is a flywheel-like approach. 🙂

 

What are your keywords

The second layer of the model is called keywords. Determining your keywords is done on three levels:

1. What do you do or plan to do ?

• Activities, products and services
• Expertise, specialism or field of interest
• Results

These bullets clearly help you think about the what-keywords, that describe you and your personal brand. For example results motivate and results inspire people.

2.  How do you do this ?

You could rephrase this question as “What is your way of working?”. You can get answers to this question via feedback from colleagues or friends.

However a clear answer can really strengthen your LinkedIn profile, if you can show that you have certain personal.

3.  Why are you doing it ?

Scholte & Coppes state the why keywords are by definition suitable to share online, because you can touch people and let them make a real connection with you (and your driving forces).

The what, how and why keyword levels reminded me of an earlier article of Peter F. Drucker – Managing Oneself and the book Golden Circle of Simon Sinek. Simon Sinek would advise start with why ! 🙂

 

Strategies for being found well

Scholte & Coppes explain three major strategies in their book:

1. Increase your visibility;
2. Increase your recognizability;
3. Increase your added value;

Practical examples are used to emphasize the practical relevance of the three strategies. Personally I do think that these strategies are still valid for the practical everyday business world and the strategies don’t just hold for the online social world.

Means for being found well

Scholte & Coppes distinguish three categories of means (for being found well).

Behaviour

Eight behavioural characteristics that help you execute your strategies are: confidence, social, driven, enthusiastic, entrepreneurial, environmentally aware, expert and reliable. These behavioural characteristics and its combinations provide a pretty good overview of the person behind the social media profile. The communication message and tone, should reflect the the eight characteristics as defined by Scholte & Coppes.

Communication and Framing

“Framing is a quality of communication that leads others to accept one meaning over another. It is a skill with profound effects on how organizational members understand and respond to the world in which they live. It is a skill that most successful leaders possess, yet one that is not often taught.”

Scholte & Coppes introduce the concept of framing, which can help you to clearly communicate your message (and behaviour)

Symbols & symbolism

Symbolism is for example expressed in the brands you like, the clothing you wear or the colours you use on different social media profiles. In this book this is a pretty brief section, however in my personal opinion this is a pretty important aspect, that can enhance the overall message reflected by both your behaviour and communication.

 

Activities for being found well

Scholte & Coppes distinguish three key activities for being found well:

1. Sharing value
2. Monitoring
3. Respond

These activities are recurring topics in the upcoming chapters that cover specific social networks in-depth.

When I analyze this model of Scholte & Coppes, I personally see similarities with the Business Model Canvas. Furthermore I see similarities as well with the future planning methodologies, presented by professor Roel Pieper during the Vision on the future symposium.

LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook

Coppes & Scholte dedicate a chapter each on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook as the most important social networks.

The Scholte & Coppes model consist of the activities building block (sharing, monitoring & respond). These activities will form the structure of the chapters that cover LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

1. Sharing value

Which means sharing knowledge, experience, your network, but also links to blogposts.

2. Monitoring

Let new knowledge and information flow to you by monitoring what value others in your network share.

3. Respond

Forward, reply, like or comment on the value shared by others. This is a simple way to let those people know you’ve read their message.

Smart applications

Scholte & Coppes come up with smart applications or smart solutions for each social network. Those solutions will be particularly interesting for the LinkedIn-, Twitter- and Facebook power users.

 

Google+, YouTube, SlideShare

LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are certainly the most important social networks. Scholte & Coppes focus in this chapter on other channels or networks that could help building your personal brand.

Google+, a social network operated by Google, Inc., launched on June 28th, 2011 with integrations across a number of Google products.

YouTube was founded in February 2005 and has become the go-to site for video on the web. Google bought YouTube in 2006 and underwent a significant redesign in 2011. One hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.

SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. With 60 million monthly visitors and 130 million page views, it is amongst the most visited 200 websites in the world. SlideShare has been acquired by LinkedIn in May 2012, making it a perfect professional asset to enhance your LinkedIn profile.

 

Cross-media use of social technology

In the 7th and last chapter Coppes and Scholte discuss roughly four topics:

1. The use of social media on a smartphone

Applications for most important social networks are available on almost any mayor smartphone platform. Windows Phone 7 has even integrated Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn into its design, so it becomes really easy to sharing value, monitor social networks and respond to posts or updates.

2. TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop and Hootsuite

TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop or Hootsuite are tools that combine the various social networks into one application. These type of tools help you easily monitor and share different content to different social networks.

3. Connecting social networks

Scholte & Coppes focus on three types of connections that help you being found well online.

First you can connect Twitter- and LinkedIn profile, which means that tweets are shown as status updates on your LinkedIn profile.

Second you can connect Facebook- and Twitter profile, which means that every tweet is shown as a status update on your Facebook feed.

Third you can connect other social networks to Facebook as well. For example Flickr if you would like to share pictures, or SlideShare to share PowerPoint decks, Spotify to share the music you are listening to or Runkeeper to share your exercises.

Personally I use each social network for a specific purpose so connecting these networks is not an option for me. However I can imagine that this social strategy of connecting different networks works for a lot of people. 🙂

4.  Klout & Peerindex

It Is important to measure your popularity, influence and reach on various social networks. Scholte & Coppes provide some metrics and introduce tools like Klout and Peerindex that “measure your online influence from your social networks”.

Concluding thoughts and wrap-up

Joris Coppes is a former Microsoft colleague, so I was fortunate to hear some of the presented thoughts on the use of social media from him directly (while enjoying a good cup of coffee). When reading the book I can feel the same drive and passion which Joris has in the offline world. 🙂

The book Hoe je goed gevonden wordt – Profileer jezelf met social media provides useful tips and tricks for both starters with social media as well as for advanced power-users.

Scholte & Coppes focus on the use of social technology for personal branding purposes. This results in a clear focus on the individual, with a lot of practical and actionable handles. Open Leadership from Charlene Li, a book that I reviewed a little while ago, focuses on the advantages of social technology use in a corporate setting.

The book includes a voucher to get extra information, special e-zines, external links and more.  So the journey won’t end when you’ve finished reading Hoe je goed gevonden wordt.

“Hoe je goed gevonden wordt – Profileer jezelf met social media” is written in Dutch and is available for the price point of € 24,95 via Van Duuren Management.