Your server soon arrives. “Hi, my name is John and I’ll be your server today”.

“I think I must have the wrong menu. Is this a joke?”.

“No, sir,” he’s answers.

You’re surprised. “Are you serious? This is Chinese food! Where’s the Italian food?”

The server smiles and seems to understand, “Sir. We’re a chinese restaurant. You see, there are already two other chinese restaurants on this street. So, we decided we would market ourselves a little differently to hopefully attract a different demographic.”

Infuriated, you stand up and leave saying, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!”

Is it? Although the above illustration is a little far-fetched within the restaurant business, the exact same senario takes place every single day within other industries. Business and churches alike are often caught trying to “expand their market” by changing the external perceptions about who they are. However, good marketing starts with the “menu” and builds out. You can’t pretend to be something on the outside when the experience on the inside is totally different. True competitive marketing is all about being brutally honest about who you are and aren’t.

So, decide what makes your menu better than the competition’s, and find ways to tell your potential patrons what makes it better. Every decision that you make on the outside should reveal to your customer what to expect when they sit down at the table and get ready to order.

The outside world will always judge a brand, corporate or social, based on available information. Think about how you research online. If you’re like most of us you will go to Google and type a simple search phrase. If your looking for reviews it probably takes only two or three negative reviews to sway your decision. What happens if you use that same principle on yourself? What will a buyer see if they’re shopping for YOU? If you’re a business person or someone who is associated with a business, then the answer to that question could have a huge impact on the effectiveness of your corporate brand.

Below, we’ve compiled a list of 4 simple rules that can set a foundation for your social brand:

1. Stay positive – Social networks are an easy place to make your voice heard. However, if you’ve got something negative or critical to say about someone or something, put some serious thought into whether or not a private/direct message may suite the situation better.
2. Stay balanced – All work and no play, in your social brand, will make you look like a robot and unapproachable. Maintain a sense of reality within your social networks and be yourself. However, if all people ever see of you is your Farmville updates then THAT will become your identity. Be sure that EVERYTHING you do in your social networks is geared to showing the world best of who you really are.
3. Keep it clean – Make sure that your language and images are professional and fitting to your industry. No matter what you do as a profession, foul language and even slightly explicit imagery can ruin your value within the social space.
4. Be selective – Every connection you make within your social networks is a direct reflection upon your social brand. The people in your circle should be people that you would want to be associated with in the real world. There are differing opinions, but as a general rule the QUALITY of your connections are more important that the QUANTITY.

That’s it! Follow through with those four principles and you may be surprised at the results.

Any thoughts or questions? Let me know in the comments section.

Remember the commercials Agassi used to do for Canon cameras? “Image is everything”. That same motto has to be what motivates all those other hairless guys out there who insist on wearing a toupe. They act as if it’s real, but everyone else knows it isn’t. It’s Artificial DNA, and those guys are spending most of their emotional energy trying to sell it as truth. Then there is the guy we all know with the comb-over. Yes, it’s his actual DNA- but the alignment is all wrong. Again, it’s obvious to everyone but him that it isn’t working. Lastly, consider the mullet. We all still see guys wearing these. Yes, it was cool in the 80s and 90s… but that was 20-30 years ago. Times have changed. Even Billy Ray Cyrus figured that out- and successfully reinvented himself.

It is easy for us to see these misalignments when it comes to a person’s hair (or lack of it), but can we see it when it comes to our organization’s marketing? Are we trying to make a “wig” look natural? Are we trying to cover up the “bald spots” in a unnatural way? Are we holding on to a style in 2010 just because it worked for us 30 years ago?

So how do we avoid a marketing “bad hair day”? It’s simple- just be real. “If it ain’t growing, don’t try to keep it flowing”. Don’t try to be something you are not- Go with who you are, and put all your energy into making a better product or providing a better service. And then regularly ask others outside of your organization to evaluate your  ”hairstyle”.

What about Agassi? What did he ultimately do? ESPN writer Rick Reilly sums it up this way…
“He shaved his hair off. He started being real. He learned to love tennis, and tennis learned to love him….. Why is Agassi (now) so scorchingly honest? Maybe because he once lived enough lies for five men. Or maybe because… he’s heard the truth can set him free.”

We’d do well to take a lesson from a tennis player- and let the truth set our marketing free.

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