Shama Kabani spends much of her time teaching entrepreneurs and CEOs to promote themselves on social media. She wrote a well-received book, The Zen of Social Media Marketing, owns a growing digital marketing company, and stars in a web-TV show offering advice on building your brand and more.
Friendly and outgoing, Kabani, 26, defines her own brand as open, vibrant, and innovative. Yet her actions sometimes run counter to the accessibility she works so hard to project. She removed the "send an e-mail" button on her Google+ account after a barrage of "You're so hot" and "I love you" missives. Then, in December 2010, Kabani abruptly stopped following all 16,000 people she had subscribed to on Twitter in hopes of eliminating a barrage of spam and other comments. "It became unmanageable," she says.
Some followers took her decision personally. A few blogged about her "slash and burn" move; others called her arrogant and selfish. Kabani admits the decision may have resulted in a few lost opportunities, such as potential clients or organizations seeking a speaker. But it also led to a careful deliberation on how to balance her various personas.
Sure, Kabani is an author, a smiling multimedia answer woman, and a CEO in "an industry of transparency." But was she, in fact, overexposing her own brand? "Someone once gave me advice," she says. "When you start, you say yes to everything. As you grow, you need to learn to say no."
With Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Quora just a click away, there are more ways to promote yourself than ever -- and just as many ways to screw it up. Worshipers at the temple of "just spell my name right" may have forgotten that overbranding can take someone's reputation from Ferrari to clunker faster than anyone dreamed possible. Just ask Paris Hilton.
The temptation is particularly perilous for rising stars or newly promoted executives. They develop one success, and instead of growing it into a second and a third, they start selling themselves shamelessly. "The brand is your promise that represents real things that you deliver," said Steve Cannon, vice president of marketing for Mercedes-Benz USA, a company that knows something about image creation.
Lyles Carr, a veteran recruiter at the McCormick Group in Arlington, Va., says he tends to discount a résumé that doesn't list true accomplishments. "It goes back to the old commercial, 'Where's the beef?' " he says. "They're trying to substitute style for substance."
While it's nice to be able to boast about the sheer numbers of friends you have or Twitter posts you've made, sometimes less is, in fact, more. James Alexander, CEO and founder of Vizibility, which helps professionals and job seekers control their online identities, recently turned off all the updates from a man on LinkedIn (LNKD) who posted every single hour. "He's lost his privilege to communicate to me in that way," he says. "You can spend all this time and effort -- it does take time -- only to turn around and end up alienating people."
