Now, Discover Your Strengths is one of the very few personal improvement books worth the money. It’s been superseded by the awkwardly-titled StrengthsFinder 2.0 but the message is the same in the new book:

You should concentrate on what you’re best at. Don’t try to improve your weaknesses, instead sharpen the skills that you do better than anyone else. It’s a countervailing message in this age of self-improvement. It says to drop what you suck at (I’m never going to be a great basketball player) and work on what you do best (writing and photography).

The two books contain surveys to identify your unique strengths.  You’ll probably experience an “ah-hah” moment at the results, confirming what you already knew.

The same principle of concentrating on your strengths can be applied to social media efforts. In this new and ever-changing field, how do you determine what to spend time on? Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, FourSquare, Digg, SlideShare, Scribd, Flickr… and on and on and on. You could spend twenty-four hours a day in front of an overheated laptop updating social media sites.

I worked with Janice Hall Booth, a very interesting woman who wrote an inspiring book, Only Pack What You Can Carry. She’s an “adventurista” and an excellent role model for young women who want more out of life than Sex and the City.

Janice had a problem. She wanted to use social media to promote her book but had a full-time job. I’ve seen some of the social media plans for authors – they’re comprehensive, exhausting affairs filled with exhortations such as “get 20 new Twitter followers a day for 30 days.” How do you compel people to follow you? These plans treat all social media channels equally and require herculean efforts to complete.

Also, social media experts are extroverts; writers are not.

I took a different approach. I advised Janice to concentrate on the social media channels that she was most comfortable with. She was more likely to stick with something she was really passionate about and enjoyed. For Janice, this was blogging. Not surprising, since she’s a writer.

For my own social media efforts (for me and Murder in Ocean Hall), I’ve concentrated on blogging and Twitter. I like the constant newsfeed of Twitter, as well as the back-and-forth wittiness with friends. And for writing longer than 144 characters, I have this blog.

There’s a thousand other ways of promoting a book online. GoodReads is a really interesting online community. Facebook marketing ties yourself to the whims of a single online service. A book trailer (like a movie preview) on YouTube is a good idea for graphic novels. An email newsletter is something I’d like to do at some point. I post a lot of photos on Flickr, though they’re about my life in general, not just my book. FourSquare – why do I want people to know where I’m at?

My other piece of social media advice: evaluate after 30 days. What’s working? What’s not? Most social media, like media in general, does not reach a mass audience. You will not have thousands of followers overnight.

Instead, I’d look at your social media efforts based upon your individual strengths. Do you have blog posts that you’re really proud of? Have you made new connections that you treasure? Have you learned something new?

Passion and authenticity are rewarded in social media. Don’t try to do everything. Concentrate on what you enjoy.

Content marketing is defined as:

the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases.

We’re all in the marketing biz now, defined by the content that’s available about us online. Whether it’s a post about World of Warcraft in a gaming forum, a Facebook complaint about teenagers at the mall, or a well-sourced article in a scholarly journal, our identities are a function of the web. We may be very different people in real life, but for potential employers, customers, friends or romantic partners, first impressions are formed by what pops up during a Google search.

Unless you’re living off the grid in some Nevada desert, this information, this shadow-version of your self exists in cyberspace. Details about your life are posted online (like that you finished in 122nd place in the local fun run), without you probably even being aware of it.

You could rage against this loss of identity or you could do something about it. Content marketing is doing something about it. Instead of just being a viewer of content, start actively creating it. Register a site in your own name. Create a blog. Tweet, comment on stories and contribute to online forums.

But do so consciously. Be aware that you’re shaping your personal brand online. Think about the searches that people will be doing in the future and how you want to appear in them. Don’t let other people define you – use content marketing to shape your image online.

I’m a fan of Seth Godin, particularly his book, The Dip, which is about knowing when to quit and when to keep going. His thoughts on traditional publishing are also really compelling – it’s an industry that is broken. I read just about everything he writes.

Purple Cow is one of his older works, published in 2003 and updated last year. Purple Cow is a book that will push you to create something extraordinary. Godin’s basic point is that we don’t remember ordinary experiences, like the airline that got you to your destination on-time or the meal that was merely OK. Instead, we become passionate over excellent, “above and beyond” service and products. We rave about them to our friends and neighbors, which is the best marketing there is.

And about the only marketing that works.

Which is Godin’s point – in order to break through the clutter, we must create the truly extraordinary. Do work that scares you, that’s on the edge. Don’t be like other people – be unique.

A compelling idea, but one that probably doesn’t deserve a whole book (even a slim one). After a while, it’s the same story of iconoclasm again and again. Also, some of the examples are dated now, like JetBlue as a paragon of customer service and Godin’s comment about mobile phones being commodities at this point – obviously written before the iPhone.

But if you’re a fan of Seth Godin, or are currently working on a new product and need some inspiration, then it’s worth checking out.

Note: The 2010 edition includes an appendix containing stories of companies and organizations that have adopted the Purple Cow philosophy successfully.

The March DC Film Salon offered tips from Allied Integrated Marketing on promoting your independent movie or documentary. The salon is a free monthly networking opportunity for film and video professionals.

The meetup began at six, allowing filmmakers plenty of time to mingle before the presentation started at 7. There were about forty people at the super-hip Gibson Guitar Room, one of my favorite venues in DC. Located near the Verizon Center, it’s a beautiful space complete with a piano and scores of electric guitars.

After showing a “sizzle reel” (a flashy intro movie about their agency), Ivory Zorich and Gloria Jones from Allied Integrated Marketing shared their expertise on how to bring a film the attention it deserves. Allied Integrated Marketing is a marketing agency that specializes in the entertainment industry. They have offices around the country, including a small one in DC.

Ivory and Gloria shared examples of how they promoted the films that they represented. Their talk held some interesting tips for anyone promoting a product:

• All marketing is local these days. Even in Washington, newspapers want to see a local angle. You can’t just have a story about a movie – you have to tie it to the local community somehow. For example, if one of the stars is from the area.
• Secondary press partners are key. These are smaller publications like the City Paper that are easier to pitch too.
• Use niche marketing. For example, with the film Sin Nombre, they targeted Latino audiences. Milk was aimed at the LGBT community.
• Tastemaker screenings are another useful marketing tactic. These are preview screenings for “tastemakers” in the community, i.e., influential people who love movies.
• Partnerships. If you have a documentary about AIDS, then you should partner with AIDS organizations to get the word out.
• New media. They mentioned Brightest Young Things as a “hipster” site to reach out to. (I am not hip – I find BYT to be unfathomable.)

One question I had was, “How do you measure results?” That’s difficult to do, according to Ivory and Gloria. It’s hard to tell if a movie’s success comes from PR or something else. I think that’s part of the reason why the field can be so frustrating to people – if I bought Google Ads, I can track how they’re performing. But how do you measure schmoozing tastemakers?

Still, these are all excellent ideas for getting the word out about your movie, or your product. The most important thing is to think about your movie from the perspective of the audience, and tailor your efforts accordingly.

Ben Balter at Fathom Creative

DESCRIPTION

March 8, 2011: Personal Branding and Lessons from Journalism, with local WordPress enthusiasts Ben Balter and Greg Linch.

Greg and Ben will be sharing best practices and how you can take the next step with WordPress as a platform. Pulling from their wide-ranging experiences in journalism, publishing, government, and development, they’ll be discussing how you can use WordPress to craft your personal brand, and what lessons that can be learned from how journalists use WordPress.

We’ve invited the DC Hacks/Hackers group, a meetup for journalists and developers, to join us this month. You can learn more about them at http://meetupdc.hackshackers.com.

Here’s their cheeky bios:

Since 2007, Greg Linch hasn’t had a journalistic job or project in which he hasn’t thought about using or — in most cases — used WordPress. His current job at The Washington Post is the only exception, but it’s only been a few months, so give him time. Most notably, Greg led The Miami Hurricane’s migration to WordPress in 2008 and co-founded CoPress to help other student news organizations do the same. (Twitter: @greglinch.)

An aspiring attorney, a coder, and an all around geek, Ben Balter is a J.D./M.B.A. candidate at the George Washington University and a member of the FCC’s New Media team. When not working or in class, he enjoys tackling otherwise-impossible challenges to sharing information using nothing more than WordPress, duct tape, and occasionally a pack of bubblegum. (Twitter: @BenBalter.)

NOTES

Andy Nacin introduces and thanks sponsors for the beer and space.

April 12 next meetup. Format: lightning round. Looking for speakers.

Greg Linch

Used WP on multiple projects, including Miami Hurricane. NYT using it for blogs. Davis Enterprise using WP for content, then imported into InDesign for print. It’s web to print. (I am skeptical of all-in-one solutions, having seen balky print-to-web systems pushed by journalists who hated the web back in the 90s.)

EditFlow: assign stories, set status for newsrooms. It’s a WP plugin.

AssignmentDesk: interact with community, an open assignment desk.

NPR’s Argo Network uses child themes for local blogs.

WordPress goes well with a delicious IPA.

WP Courier is an email newsletter plugin. (I need that.)

LivingStories is an interesting experiment in online storytelling.

Good question: how to get reporters to use? Show em how simple it is.

Washington Post is getting a new commenting system. (Yea!)

Ben Balter

Using WP to craft personal brand, take back Google results. Dynamic speaker but then goes into brandspeak, i.e, “what is a brand?”

You’re the Chief Marketing Officer of your brand. Search engine management needed for professional reasons. They show pics of modems.”This is how people used to connect online.” Everyone laughs. I feel old.

No longer defined by a company, you need an online brand (like joeflood.com!). Your content online is your brand, including the embarassing pics. It’s like your college transcript.

73% of recruiters Google you.

WP makes it simple to tell your story.

Grab a domain (key in google searches), describe yourself on your site, setup a basic WP site, start a blog for credibility and engage others, use Google Reader to find things to blog about. It’s like an online brochure about you.

Use Google Analytics to discover your most popular posts.

Be social. Use Facebook, Twitter, etc to promote your posts.

Establish a Board of Directors for your brand.

Update: here’s Ben’s presentation.

MY THOUGHTS

Every journalist should have a web site. Every potential journalist should have a site. Every job-seeker should have a site, if only so that your embarrassing Facebook photos don’t show up in a Google search.

I’ve met writers and editors before who don’t have web sites. They don’t want to learn HTML and still look at the web as a lesser medium. That’s short-sighted. WordPress is not difficult. If you can use Word, then you can create a site in WordPress.

WordPress DC meets monthly. It’s a nice mix of developers, writers, bloggers and other creative and technical folk.

I wrote a short piece for FlackRabbit on my adventures in book marketing. Last year, I published a book, Murder in Ocean Hall, using the awesome CreateSpace.

Why publish it myself? Because the traditional publishing model is broken and it takes a year to get a book in print, even after it’s been accepted by a publisher. Being a web person, that struck me as a crazy and unnecessarily long time.

The downside, of course, is that you have to do your own marketing. However, that’s been a good learning experience, which I write about in the FlackRabbit article.

Last night, I attended the Elements of Publicity Workshop put on by Amanda Miller Littlejohn and Jacqueline Lara of Mopwater PR. These two charming and knowledgeable ladies covered a lot of ground in just a two-hour session:

• How to develop your message
• How to create a “news hook” for your story
• How to pitch to local, national and social media.

What I liked about the workshop was that Amanda and Jacqueline have a lot of practical experience in real-world PR. Their talk was spiced with useful examples and anecdotes from their work. They didn’t just tell you how to pitch a story to a reporter, they shared what should be in the email subject line and the best time to make a follow-up phone call.

This is a good workshop for people who don’t want theory but want to know tactics – the practical steps they can take to get media coverage for their product or cause. Want to know what should be in a press kit? Should a backgrounder be in print or electronic format? Should you do a social media release? How do you deal with a TV producer? All of this was covered in the workshop.

Workshop attendees consisted of small business owners, entrepreneurs and managers of small nonprofits – exactly the type of people who will do PR themselves, lacking the budget to hire a firm. The workshop was a really good fit for their needs and Amanda and Jacqueline tailored the class toward them. It was a very interactive session, with lots of Q&A and idea-sharing.

As someone who’s promoting his own book (Murder in Ocean Hall), I left with a lot of useful ideas to pursue, including things I had never thought of before (people still listen to radio?).

Elements of Publicity is just one of a series of low-cost workshops that Mopwater PR is teaching on blogging, social media and publicity.

Check out my article, Reel Lessons in Marketing on FlackRabbit. It was inspired by my experience working for the DC Shorts Film Festival. I’ve been involved with this annual event for several years and have done almost everything – I’ve judged screenplays and films, taken pictures, sold t-shirts, moderated discussions and, of course, attended numerous parties. With my front row seat at this festival, I’ve learned a lot about marketing – lessons for anyone promoting an event, product or cause.