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You Break It, You Buy It – Even If It’s Free

by Jennifer Gniadecki on July 13th, 2008

Chris Brogan was kind enough to respond to my last post with this comment:

Great points, except that’s not my ad. It’s Radian6’s ad. They bought an ad to support the Twebinar series that I helped them produce and that I hosted.

As for the rest, PodCamp isn’t a money maker. We have an open ledger. It’s not for money but for outreach.

The newsletter is free. The blog is free (several years of content). My ebook is free.

Will I someday intend to make money out of what I’m doing? Absolutely. It will be 100% clear and obvious and above-board and opt-in.

I’m a very strong advocate of separating communities from marketplaces, and I make both very clear.

Sorry to disappoint.

I tried to reply in my comments but it got too long…so here it is, my response. I’d like to remind my lovely, intelligent readers that I really do like and respect Chris and this is not an attack. I wrote it for everyone, so see if something here speaks to you, I certainly hope the part about branding for profit does!

Disappointed? Not by a long shot! I’m thrilled you commented, although a bit thrown off by the content.

If Radian6 used your picture without permission you should talk to them about that! :) The only picture and name in that ad (as you can see clearly in the ad in the last post) are yours. That doesn’t change because you tell me someone else paid for it. So that really isn’t worthy of an "except" there in your comment, is it? Because it’s about the perception of the brand and who owns it. Right?

Which is kind of my point. You’re all about the social networking and the social media. But…you’re going to teach people about branding. If you think it matters one little bitty bit who paid for the ad with your mugshot on it…I’m not sure you’re the best teacher for the subject. You not being the best teacher was not the point of my last post, but having that kind of super-rookie branding mistake in your response to the post is actually rather shocking. Pointing to a third party and saying, "They did it." doesn’t make a difference to the hundreds of people that saw your picture and your name on Facebook. Those people think it’s your ad, and why wouldn’t they? Is there anything about that ad that says it’s not yours?

I also never thought you paid for it. That’s why I linked to the company holding the Twebinar.

Perhaps putting up an ad with an influencer’s picture and name while omitting the name of the company paying for the ad would make a good case study for a future branding Twebinar? Perception of your brand, who has control of your brand, how your brand is spread.

I never implied or said you made money from ANYTHING. That was kind of where I was going with the whole post. *grin*

A business owner or receptionist or anyone that’s networking online or offline needs to  be able to tell people what they sell (reception services, e-books, macrame, whatever!) If they don’t, people will start to wonder. Giving away information for free is great but at some point people want to know what’s in it for you as the giver. Well, the smart and not-desperate ones will.

Building a platform without knowing what you’re going to sell is like making political speeches without knowing what office you’re going to run for. That’s dangerous, no matter how much I might personally think you’re nifty! How do you control the message if you don’t know what you’re talking about specifically? What are you going to teach others about social networking and branding as it relates to profit if you haven’t converted your own brand-recognition to profit? If you’re thinking you’re not talking about branding for profit…stay with me…we’ll get into that in a few….

I never said your future biz wouldn’t be above board and opt-in. But at this point that’s only a theory for you. The Internet marketing e-book/info-product/guru rabbit hole is deep and goes all the way to Wonderland. Someone I really thought got it instituted a squeeze page recently as part of a marketing makeover. It’s not something I think of as an honest marketing technique. But because it works it becomes easier to convince yourself it’s okay to do. The end justifying the means is a slippery slope. It’s not about knowing what kind of business you want to run - it’s about the one little change here and one ever so slight alteration there and it leading to a company you never imagined being at the helm of. You can be sure you won’t do that, but you cannot know for sure because you’ve never been there. You haven’t had a business brand (or personal brand that directly related to making money…yet…) under that kind of scrutiny.

You’re at a crossroads. You’re getting big enough you need to do something with the big and the followers and the whatnot, and you’re not sure what to do with it all and if you’re not selling something but only managing a brand with no profit attached (as yet) - that means you aren’t an expert on branding for profit. Because you don’t know if it works, you just have a theory. The worst part is that because you are in a good position with a regular paycheck, all your decisions will be more difficult because you have the luxury to think and rethink them though until they’re little more than theory by the time you begin implementation. I hate to use a cliche example here, but Miley Cyrus (and her parents and her publicist, etc.) didn’t realize people would think a photograph by a world-renowned artist like Annie Lebowitz would be seen as inappropriate! If you haven’t made a slip with your brand and found it directly impacting your checkbook, well, it’s like teaching people how to swim by throwing them in the pool and thinking everything will be okay because the pool is warm. The temperature of the pool is not the potential problem that needs to be addressed.

Why else would someone have a brand if not for profit (either now or in the future)? Even a receptionist looking for her next job needs to know what NOT to say on public forums because her next potential employer is probably going to "Google her." Her career is going to depend, sooner rather than later, on knowing how to keep it civil or keep it hidden behind an anonymous proxy and a vague screen name if she wants to keep her career on track.

Unless you’re talking about branding for people that are young enough that half naked pictures on MySpace are going to be boring by the time they hit the corporate space. But that doesn’t look like the demographic of the attendees based solely on the design of the main page of the company hosting the Twebinars. But they will still need limits and an understanding of how branding directly impacts job opportunities as well as business opportunities. Being in the social media space is the only time where your brand is just you and how well you translate the real-ness of you without going too far shows your success and worthiness of a position because companies will want you to do that for them too.

Last but not least, being able to Google someone you’re thinking about doing business with or hiring brings communities and marketplaces together like peanut butter and chocolate. (Picture, “You got your community in my marketplace! You got your marketplace in my community! OMG it’s social networking!) Does that make you an advocate of *trying* to keep them separate? Because on the Internet, no one can get rid of their baggage. No matter how much someone tries to stuff that too-big bag in the overhead compartment on the plane.

Well, not without attaching to an open proxy and one or more screen names, anyway! :)

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