Online Branding – My Social Media Story

Jul 14, 2010 by mandeewidrick

I’m a pretty simple person. The glasses in our cupboards don’t match, and I haven’t bought a new pair of jeans in two years. Not that I wouldn’t like some nice things from time to time, but hook me up with a fast computer and smart phone, and I’m good to go.

Get ready because I’m about to give you an inside look into my life. First off: I live at home and work from home. I don’thave an income that will blow your mind…in fact, for quite some time I’ve hardly had an income at all. (That’s finally starting to change, thankfully.) I don’t waste money on unnecessary things because I’ve never had the luxury to even have that option. I’m a farm girl turned business woman, I live on the edge, I take risks, and I dream big.

In the past several years, I have spent countless hours sitting behind a computer, tapping on my keyboard and scrolling through pages with my mouse. I’ve been a bit over the top, some might say. I mean, really, what normal person spends their days and nights online?

Let me explain what I’ve been up to. When I first started my online journey, I didn’t really know what I was doing. In fact, I had no clue that I was actually building my personal brand. People started to learn who I was as a result of my blog posts and Twitter and Facebook updates. When I was 16, I started a website for our farm and sold angora rabbits to people around the country. I just thought it was cool at that time…I had no idea that it wasn’t the normal thing for folks to travel from 12 hours away to buy a $50 rabbit. Looking back at it now, I can only assume that these people were finding me through their search engines.

So, sometime last year, I started branding for other people. I created Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts for friends. I encouraged them to start blogs, and then I helped them syndicate their content. Suddenly, more and more people started asking me for help. I couldn’t turn them down because I enjoyed this new online marketing technique so much.

It was about this time that a few influential people in my life stepped said that I needed to start charging for my services.

“Seriously?” I would say to them. “People would actually pay me to do something they could do themselves at little to no cost?”

“Sure,” my friends would reply. “Many of us don’t understand how social media works, and not only that, but we surely don’t have time to keep up with it even if we did learn.”

This got my mind to reeling. Was it really possible to make money online? After doing some research and talking to a few small businesses, it seemed so!

I started getting calls and leads through referrals, and that’s when things started to really take off. I’m now getting regular calls and interest in my services. I love it!

I didn’t need startup capital (unlike some of my other endeavors that didn’t end up working for me). I didn’t need a college degree. I didn’t even need to leave my house! In fact, I still work at home unless I have a local meeting with a client. I’m not making a fortune quite (yet) and I’m not going to pretend that I’m rich, but at the speed I’m going it won’t be long. What a great future I have ahead.

How about YOU? What’s your social media story?

After all of that, of course I need to add a quick plug for my biz! If you need help with online branding, send me an email at contact@mandeewidrick.com and set up a FREE half hour consultation. I can’t wait to talk to you!

–

Photo credit: Mario Alberto Magallanes Trejo

–