Build a Brand and Track It

That seems to be one of the buzz words these days, branding.  In some fore or another, everyone is taking part in this branding.  Whether you are just a person on twitter, or a company out there, it is important that you pick a brand and buidl upon it.

As a person, your brand can simply be your screen name.  Try to make sure you carry the same one across the various social media platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and you are on your way to creating your personal brand.  As for a company, make the screen name match your company name and you are branding it on these networks as well.

After creating this brand, it is extremely important that you follow up and track how your “brand” is being talked about, its popularity, any problems with it, and so on.  But with the vastness of todays social media world, that task can be daunting.  Well I have found your solution.  Enter “The Social Media Firehose“.  It is an unreal Yahoo Pipe built by Kingsley Joseph.  You simply enter the terms you want to search for, like your product or company name and you get this:

A list of everywhere in the social media-verse your brand is mentioned, including images, twitter updates, blog posts, and so on.  It is extremely powerful.  It even has subscription options to include RSS, so you can almost instantly see what is being said about your brand so you can respond appropriately.  You can even get badges to embed on your web site so others can see it all happen in real time as well.  It is really an awesome product.  One that should not be overlooked as you are trying to build and track your brand.

Has Twitter Jumped the Shark

So to speak ? Or at least Twitter users. I don’t know about you but I have really noticed a big jump in the number of what I will call “fishing followers.” You all know the type. They are the ones who follow you in hopes that you will follow back. However, I am not the just follow everyone back type. I like to gain some value out my Twitter use.

In any case, I have been seeing an alarming number of followers with a huge ration gap of Following to Followers. And their twitter streams usually boil down to a bit of spam (see Nick O’Neill’s post on Twitter etiquette).

For instance here a couple I have received in the last few days tripixdesigns and even better was this one subbiejournal (this is an interesting one, check out the blog .. says her “Master” was sick the other day, so no spankings for her :))

Anyway, as this trend continues to increase, I wonder is this the future of Twitter.  is it to become the next MySpace where we are barraged with spam of all sorts and our meaningful converstaions with each other get lost in the mix ?

Have anyone else noticed this ?  Any thoughts ?