Jason Baer at Convince and Convert has an excellent post today on the 9 Ways to Humanize Your Brand (with real Humans). It got me to thinking about how we try and humanize ourselves as much as possible in the Internet landscape.
I know that I try on a daily basis to be as human as possible online. I don’t want to be seen as another social media marketer trying to sell his/her wares over the Internet. I’m just me and me is the best I’ve got. 
Jason has 9 tips to Humanize your brand and I will add 11 more tips:
1. Build and optimize a blog
2. Reach out to other bloggers in the category for guest posts
3. Syndicate content to vertical aggregation sites
4. Publish white papers and ebooks, and/or conduct Webinars
5. Create a few killer presentations and get them on SlideShare
6. Do at least a little video blogging to make him/her three dimensional
7. Hustle for speaking engagements
8. Get on Twitter and make sure he/she sets aside time to really engage people
9. Make sure current company customers know all about the initiative and are invited to participate
These are great points and I wanted to add in some small business owner pointer to humanize your personal and professional brand online.
11. Join an offline networking organization: I am involved in a group called Rainmakers which allows me to network in the offline world and then connect it to the online environment or vice versa. This allows you to start connecting with more and more people over the course
12. Attend TweetUps and parties centered around social media. I would rather redirect you to an awesome post by Corvida of SheGeeks: Using Social Media To Get Our Of Your House.
13. Join Geographically Base Social Networks. Ning has a huge database of niche social networking that will allow you to meet and start conversations with professionals and other people in your area. I am a member of Smaller Indiana and it has given me a massive amount of exposure as a HUMAN and not a screen name.
14. Join a Network like Flickr or Facebook for Picture Galleries. This is not meant to say you should post every party or outing you have been involved in. This is just a way to post pictures or your family and friends. People buy into people and not products. In this emotionally charged world, a brand is the people behind it and not the billboard on the side of the highway.
15. Authenticity. Authenticity. Be Authentic. I preach about this non-stop. Authentic communication and content is key to humanizing yourself in social media. Talk about what you do and add personality into your posts and usage of social media. I can pick up the Wall Street journal every morning. I want to read REAL content.
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Kyle -
Thanks much for the link. I love your expanded list. I really dig the geography-based soc nets. Good tip.
Cheers,
jason
Thanks once again – inspiration …..
Awesome tips. I’m having trouble with a blog of my own. You see I am currently in the process of creating my own blog yet I have no idea what to name the URL to my blog or the title. I’m so stuck! Any ideas on how to come up with a title. I have pretty much tried everything you could possibly think of yet no luck so far.
To Mattress above:
What’s your niche? Your blog should really be tailored to a niche and then your URL (domain name) should reflect that niche. The domain name should contain keywords that reflect your niche, which helps in SEO.
Our website (not really a blog, but it contains lots of original writing) is http://www.prowrestlingarena.com, and as you might guess, we write about pro wrestling. It’s a new site, and we’re struggling for traffic, but we’re hoping our SEO efforts and our domain name will help us.
I just ran across this one tonight. I think these tips are very solid. It can be difficult to get caught up in trying to be everywhere online. I would rather pick a few and have a solid, HUMAN presence on those.
There are some amateur internet marketers that think about renting domain names for promoting their sites. Well honestly it’s a bad plan but it also can be a good business idea.