Yes, SERPs — rightly or wrongly — is the way some people determine trust. While I don’t dispute that, trust is best developed by consistently developing and delivering a product to your customers. Once you reach a certain trust level, then personal marketing can be eased.

Personally, I would much rather spend my time writing for my customers then putting excessive time into social media.

I’m thinking that a lot of our social media methods are played out as in over done, tired or just plain useless. I don’t plan on leaving the social media world, but I constantly monitor its usefulness with what I do.

Branding is still important and like your W.O.R.D.S. tag line — well thought out and highly memorable.

There is this great book out by a Director Friend of mine in Hollywood, Phil Cooke. He is a Christian and recently wrote, Branding Faith. I have never heard of branding so it was an eye opener. But he really explains how to do it and why to do it. I learned so much from his book. It actually helped me come up with the tag line for my blog: Write, Observe, Respond, Defend, Shape (words). It gave me a focus to my work and when I get lost I remember my vision is to “use my w.o.r.d.s to Write, Observe, Respond, Defend, Shape the current conversations taking place in America.”

It makes my life so much easier when I know where “north’ is, you know.

Anyway, here is a link to Phil’s blog and his book. Highly recommend it.

http://www.philcooke.com
.-= Dominique´s last blog ..could the REASONS Canada became a WELFARE state be the same reasons AMERICA might? =-.

Yes, I’m very particular as to who I will follow on Twitter as well as on StumbleUpon and elsewhere. No photo or no link to a website and I won’t follow you.

I block as many people as I follow these days for the simple reason I don’t want to have to mine through a lot of useless hype. The occasional pitch is fine — I’m “guilty” of doing as much myself — but not when it is an end to itself.

Of course, one of the strengths of Twitter is that you choose who you will follow and those should be the only tweets that you see. I don’t automatically follow someone who follows me. Rather, I wait to see if they will interact with me first. Also, I look to see if they have a blog or website listed in their profile and I check that out too.

If you find yourself following the wrong type of person, simply unfollow or block that person.

The second point of your article is also valid. Branding should never replace quality of work ever. Period.

Good post!
.-= Laura Spencer´s last blog ..Professional Writing – A Key Component to a Professional Image =-.

Now how did this conversation turn to politics?