William Arruda

A recent Sprint commercial about the “Now Network” noted that 26% of viewers had no idea what “twittering on Twitter” means. Yet, it’s clear that Twitter awareness is growing by leaps and bounds. Of course, this doesn’t mean opinions about Twitter are all positive. Many still hold the view expressed in this Twouble with Twitters video. As well, as Steven Johnson stated in his favorable Time magazine piece, “The one thing you can say for certain about Twitter is that it makes a terrible first impression… It's not as if we were all… saying, ‘If only there were a technology that would allow me to send a message to my 50 friends, alerting them in real time about my choice of breakfast cereal.’"  In fact, when I first started using Twitter, I wondered, to borrow words from Andy Warhol, if Twitter was not just a way to become more “deeply superficial.” All that is chang... (more)

Personal Branding Predictions: Top Ten for 2010

Personal Branding Journal on Ulitzer Every year since I founded my company, Reach, in 2001, I've made predictions about how the world of personal branding will evolve in the coming year. Here are my top 10 for 2010. 1. Video, Video, Video Thanks to greater bandwidth, cheaper storage, and a proliferation of products and services that make shooting, storing, viewing, and sharing video easy (Flip video, iPhone 3GS, YouTube, vimeo, blip.tv, vodpod, etc.), video will be king in 2010. Video is ideal because it allows careerists to deliver a complete communication and convey their perso... (more)

Brand "Environment?" What's That?

Have you heard of the term “brand environment?”  Wondering what it means? It’s all the seemingly “little things” that comprise the environment around you.  Your brand environment includes everything from the carpeting in your office to your clothing, your techno-gadgets, and even where you might choose to host a dinner for your clients.  Each and every decision you make that might give others a “clue” about who you are and what you’re like equals your brand environment. As many of you may have already figured out I live in Pittsburgh, PA – the upcoming host to this year’s G-20 s... (more)

Your Brand, Your People

As perhaps the best known philosophical riddle, if you say, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it,” most people will complete the question by saying, “does it make a sound?" Similarly, if you work at defining your brand without considering the people for whom you’re relevant, do you really have a brand? Put another way, it’s questionable if a brand exists without a brand community. According to Wikipedia, a brand community can be defined as “a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a... (more)

My Seven Favorite WordPress Plugins for Bloggers

I've received emails asking me about how I've done a few things with my blog, so I wanted to share some of the WordPress.Org PlugIns that I use and have enjoyed. The following are my top 7 plugins that I'm currently using on my blog / website: 1) All in One SEO Pack - this one has to be one of my all-time favorites. It works within the pages and posts. You are able to assign a title tag, 160 characters for a description for the search engines, and keywords thus allowing you to optimize your search engine optimization for search engines. 2) DropCap First Character - I've had many ... (more)