Suddenly people knew who I was, they knew my name, and they were looking for me. I had new friends and fans on all of my social profiles and I was happy with that. I didn’t realize early on that being known means more than just having lots of connections and new networking opportunities.

People started to contact me and ask if I was available to help them with their web projects. Some work I took, some I didn’t. I was able to pick and choose what work I wanted to be a part of. Since I was holding a full time position the extra freelance income was nice. Then something happened to change that.

Last Monday I was downsized from the agency I was working with. This didn’t surprise me at all. Lots of business had just left (due to no fault of mine) that is just the nature of the online marketing business. When it happened I wasn’t very worried, I have branded myself and people have been coming to me to do work for them. I had plenty of freelance work for the next few months with nearly no sales work required. Still I called a few of my contacts.

Two hours later I had a better agency job and started the next day. The people who interviewed me knew who I was — they had seen my blog and before even speaking with me thought that I would be a good fit with their agency. I had never before gone to an interview where they were excited to meet me. This was all thanks to my self-branding efforts.

Had I not branded myself, had people not known anything about me – I would likely still be out hitting the pavement and trying to find work. I would never have been able to leave one job and start a new one the very next day.

I cannot speak for other industries but for online marketing branding yourself can be the most valuable thing you will ever do for your career.

Social media is the new big web buzz word.  Sure, it has been around for some time now, but halfway through last year is when I finally climbed on the bandwagon and got stuck.

It all started with StumbleUpon.  I installed the toolbar and stumbled around aimlessly for a while until I received an email that said “Someone has sent you a message on StumbleUpon.”  How nice, I thought, my first message.  I went to check it out and saw I had 8 people that were fans of me.  What?  I have fans? 

At this time I hadn’t viewed any other profiles on Stumble so that’s what I did.  I started following like-minded people and soon my random Stumbling became focused.  My new friends were sending me to some great sites that I probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise. 

That’s when the marketing light bulb above my head clicked on – The more friends and fans I have the more powerful my stumbles are – duh.  In the past month I went from 8 to 70 friends and followers.  My thumbs-up now sends 300-1000 people to wherever I want – with a single click of the mouse.  For an internet marketer that makes good money from traffic to his sites – that’s power.  

Now this power is great and all but that isn’t the end-all be-all of social media and it isn’t the full reason for my obsession.  There is something else that happens, and is much more powerful than traffic – you make real friendships and connections with people.

My favorite social site for doing this is Twitter. Twitter, if you haven’t heard, is pretty much “social media 2.0.” I say this because all Twitter is, is being social.  You chat with people about everything from what you are doing to what you like/dislike and every now and then you tell people about that cool new site you found.  Everyone that is following you sees your messages so the more you have, the more useful it becomes (Read more about why I like Twitter here). 

Thanks to a mention on MarketingPilgrim about the “75 Marketing gurus on Twitter (updated to 200)” I now have 120 followers.  Before this mention I had about 50 friends and followers but it was still great.  I had chosen to follow the big names in the internet marketing world – some followed me back – some didn’t.

I was learning a lot of stuff from the people I was following and I was getting to see a lot of great content suggested by them.  That’s not why it is so amazing though and still not the full reason why I am so obsessed with it. The largest reason for my obsession and what happened is I actually started talking with people in my field that I looked up to – and they were talking to me! 

I was networking like never before and making connections I never would have otherwise.  So far I have only met one of these big names who I originally only knew through social media, and Twitter made it happen.
 
What excites me the most about this kind of networking is when I go to my next big conference (SMX West) I will be able to use Twitter to find out who is going/who’s there, make plans with people, and meet some of the biggest names in internet marketing – and they all know who I am (and want to meet me) thanks to Twitter.  This is amazingly powerful – going from being relatively unknown to chatting on a daily basis with the biggest names in your field – is incredible.

As far as obsessions go I think this one I have with social media is a good thing.  It is an obsession that we, as internet marketers, should all have.  Being social is the direction the web is heading in 2008 so if you aren’t on the social train already you can start your own obsession by following me on Twitter and/or on StumbleUpon…

Just be sure to send me a message so I can follow you back!