Ten K One Writing

Next: Trunk, Dunford, Kawasaki

Twit much? I don’t care what anyone says, the jury’s still out on where all this social media bruhaha is going. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s now considered a little gauche to have 17 different buttons to different trending sites at the bottom of your blog posts. So 2008. And Twitter presents an interesting question as well, notoriously losing 40% of new users after one Tweet. In these posts, I examine the use of Twitter by six personal branding padrinos and padrinas: Dan Schwabel, Frank Kern, Seth Godin, Penelope Trunk, Naomi Dunford, and Guy Kawasaki. What I found was surprising: everyone seems to use it differently. Check out today’s list to compare Schwabel’s utilitarianist vibe to Frank Kern’s tantalizing stage exit and Seth Godin’s understated Twitter driblets (Chirps, perhaps).

Dan Schawbel, the Good Son

The ‘Me 2.0′ author uses a tagging system in many of his Tweets, ranging from ‘ADVICE,’ ‘MUST READ,’ and ‘JOB SEARCH’ to ‘COOL,’ ‘HUMOR,’ and ‘OPINION’. This is a great move for two reasons: it tells you right away to what you’re devoting your precious click-through, and it spells great things for searchability in the great Twitter/Search Engine union. (Google and Bing just added their notches to the Twitter bedpost.) He Tweets on a wide range of subjects, throwing in the occasional fist pump for content on his current object of affection, Brazen Careerist (where I have a profile that I rarely use…do you?).

Authenticity Rating: 3.5/5 Pretty good. I appreciate that Dan frequently posts musings of a completely non-self-promoting nature, like this one from October 18^th: Wordst mispelling of my name OF ALL TIME —> Dawn Schwabel

Usefulness: 4.5/5 For personal branding advice, Dan puts his Tweets where his mouth is. He eats, breaths, and lives personal branding bushido.

Branding Mojo: 4/5

Following to Followers Ratio: .94 (48,893 Following, 51,948 Followers)

Interesting: Dan also appears to hold two other Twitter accounts, @millenialbrand and @mbranding, with zero activity. Is it sloppiness or is the branding Jedi just snapping up good Twitter names the way you might snap up beer.com c. 1996?

Edit: Apparently this theory is wrong wrong WRONG!  He doesn’t own any of the other accounts.  Thanks, Dan.

Frank Kern, the Snob

‘The Dude’ of online marketing first signed on with @Frank_Kern for almost a year, using it 7 times before switching to @masscontrolkern in August of 2008. All was well until a few days ago, when he pulled a Miley Cyrus and shut down his Twitter account completely with a nose-thumbing Tweet about getting real work done. His followers topped out at 17,372 after 1593 Tweets, according to the stats (twitterholic.com/masscontrolkern). Honestly, I only added Mr. Kern recently, and I don’t remember him Tweeting much in that time. Perhaps he decided that zero Twitter presence was better than one with intermittent fits-and-starts.

Authenticity Rating: ?/5 Hard to tell…I can’t remember his Tweets! Does this mean that Twitter lends itself to general forgetability, or that plugging into Frank’s Tweets-of-consciousness wasn’t that great?

Usefulness: 0/5 Well, he’s certainly not very useful now. I can’t even get to his site now that his account is deleted. He didn’t just stop drinking the Twitter Kool-Aid, he took ipecac for it.

Branding Mojo: 0/5 or 5/5, depending on how you look at it. He’s pulled a J.D. Salinger, withdrawing from nonessential contact like DM’s from people requesting free marketing advice, pretty please.

Following to Followers Ratio: .002 (34 Following, 17,372 Followers)

Interesting: Frank also deleted his Facebook profile. A visit to his home site (http://masscontrolsite.com/) also reveals that he’s closed his email list to new subscribers, and that he’s trying a more laid-back approach to his next release. Is this a call back to simpler times, a critical de-lousing of time-wasters, or simply bad strategy?

Seth Godin, the Quiet Industrious Guy in the Corner

This guy has written about a bazillion books on better marketing. It’s just simple metrics to feel like kind of a schlub compared to Seth, although I’m sure he would argue that. He manages to be the king of Twitter redundancy, with two separate and active accounts (@sethgodins and @thisissethgodinsblog) saying exactly the same thing: I updated my blog! As someone who rarely updates I find his frequency impressive, but isn’t that what we have RSS feeds for? Rather than drumming up interest in his brand identity, Seth simply uses his bluebird to point followers directly to his site. Biz Stone, eat your heart out!

Then again, with personal branding mojo to spare, perhaps Mr. Purple Cow doesn’t have to bother with being interesting. His 12,995 followers agree.

Authenticity Rating: 4/5 The man’s Tweets are straightforward blog promotion. Nothing wrong with that.

Usefulness: 3/5 While I can’t depend on Seth’s Twitter feed to tell me interesting things about Google stock, it does let me know whether he’s writing on a topic I’d throw 60 seconds (or even 10 minutes) at.

Branding Mojo: 4/5 It’s a little boring, but consistent. To his credit, Seth’s method has a way of eliminating anything potentially embarrassing or obnoxious.

Following to Followers Ratio: .0006 (8 Following, 12,995 Followers)