… they are quoted hundreds of times a day on Twitter.

For the record, I like a motivational quote as much as then next gal.  The targeted quote used to introduce an article or chapter can be informational and inspirational, but thousands of quotes a day on Twitter are just Internet fodder.

Successful social media aficionados have to post and tweet many times a day even if they have nothing of consequence to say.  Right?   No. You can reach your desired audience with fascinating and beneficial information while maintaining your decorum.  Got to use a quote here – “Less is more” Robert Browning

Etiquette in the virtual space has the same rules as in the physical space.  You would never spam someone at a dinner party and if you did you wouldn’t be invited again.  Before jumping into your sales pitch, you’d take time to get to know the person and establish rapport. Before sending endless correspondence, you’d question permission and if declined you would happily respect the request. 

Online doesn’t mean anonymous. In fact, your local online community is a just that – a community.  Although it’s larger, it still has the same expectation of etiquette, manners and acceptable behavior as any community. You are expected to be polite in person and online.

Facebook and other online social sites give us the opportunity to have more friends than ever before.  That’s because we can more easily keep up with the activities that make us friends.  It is estimated that before social media, we had an average of 150 friends.  With social media, that average is up around 700.    But we still expect kindness, politeness and courtesy from our friends.  I like Aliza Sherman’s 10 Golden Rules of Social Media as a guide to using the online communities. Regardless of the media, we are people communicating with people. 

As the social media and marketing experts (that’s all of us) choose what is an effective online strategy and as our expectations of social media as a marketing tool are redefined, we should remember what our mothers taught us –

“If you can’t say something that’s not spam, don’t say anything”

“There is no substitute for excellent manners”

“Silence is golden”

and “Don’t forget the Golden Rule.”

Until next time … shhhhh

Names like Donald Trump, Jack Welch and Martha Stewart are huge simply because there are a million like us who know them. Did you ever figure it out as of how that happened at the first place? Well, you do hear politician as you’ll always find them in the news if not anything else. Each and every household is familiar with the Hollywood celebrities – this is simply because they are visible on the silver screen every now and then or you can even spot a few promoting something or the other – or may be promoting themselves in the process. This is where huge fishes like Donald Trump, Jack Welch and Martha Stewart fit in? They are the top notched business personalities who have been able to successful make their own brands as leaders. These business celebrities were doing well in their respective fields. But, that was not the end of the world for them. They took the same to a higher level through personal branding. “Personal branding” is a process through which a person could promote and advertise himself. It would be like promoting your won package of personality. Like in this case, Donald Trump is branding himself by telling people as of how to become a rich person whereas, Jack Welch advices people as of how to take care of their business in a better way. Martha Stewart on the other side guides you through to look stunning. All these people have their business in hand; but, through this personal branding maneuver they are not only doing better in their business but at the same time they’ve been able to distinguish themselves from their enterprises and are being a brand themselves as well. Personal branding has always been there but the existence of the same was quite subtle. In 1997, the same emerged bug time. If you look at the concept and see what the movie stars do then you’ll be able to relate to the concept even better. A movie star has to have a personal branding. Only then he/she would be visible and be eligible to sell the skills. Sports celebrities, politician and the movie stars had gauged the importance of personal branding way earlier and have been using that successfully. Personal branding used by Donald Trump, Jack Welch and Martha Stewart amongst the others have opened the same to the business world as well.Personal branding is what you need in case you are in a process of making your own profiles to brand yourself as a leader. You don’t have to have a business empire like Donald Trump; instead you could be using social media to market your home business and yet could be benefited by personal branding. Personal branding ensures you to take places. You would become visible and visibility is every thing in the world today, in case you want to be rich and powerful. There are endless ways with which you could be making your own profiles to brand yourself as a leader and one of the ways would be by using wordpress to brand yourself. It has been nearly a decade that the concept is evolving for excellent. Take advantage of the same and see your business and yourself growing as two different assets – there by doubling the worth of your business.