You may not have given much thought to this question until the recent popularity and emergence of social media touched the masses. Beyond the social implications of this new media, social networks and social online tools play an essential role for all professionals, entrepreneurs, and business people. Posted content and images either add or subtract from your desired brand.

With over 800 million profiles on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn, and millions more on micro social sites, a mug shot or profile avatar has quite a bit of brand power.

Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, Associate Professor and Mervin Bower Fellow in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School conducted extensive research on the subject of social media and images. His findings indicate 70 percent of all social media actions are related to viewing pictures or other peoples’ profiles.

The day when only authors, rock stars, celebrities, and other gurus needed to consider their photo images is gone. Today everyone has a new stage on which to shine or look like a goofball.

And this is not limited to online social communities; the same goes for speakers at conferences. Regardless of your professional status as a speaker, if you are contributing to the program and the organization is promoting you on a Web site, your image counts. This also applies to printed association directories and what you put on your own Web site.

Your mug is your surrogate persona and a voice for your brand.

Don’t fall victim to the crappy, old, and tired photo thing. You can control this part of your brand.

If your goal is to build an online footprint that supports your professional substance and brand, here are some tips I recommend to get the biggest bang from your mug shot.

1) Consistency is key.
Use the same image of you in all of your social communities. This will build equity in your visual mark and strengthen the memory factor.

2) Production quality says a lot about you.
Grainy, wrong, and low-resolution images scream cheesy, unprofessional, and that you are foreign to the online environment.

3) Project your true you.
If you are a creative soul, let your photo image convey that. Cropping, adding a compelling prop, and the right facial expression can achieve that.

Are edge and risk part of your brand? Then demonstrate this with the style of image.

Are you serious, conservative, or highly intelligent? A traditional portrait may best suit you.

For any of these personas, consider your wardrobe, accessories, and the background. All of these elements project a message.

4) Keep your image current.
There is nothing worse than meeting someone who is 25 years older than his or her published photos. Update your photos every couple of years, unless you look pretty much the same—and good for you! This can be a trust issue too.

5) Invest in your brand.
Using a group shot where others were cropped out of the original, or posting a poorly-lit image with no contrast to feature your brilliance are often the product of being cheap and not valuing your brand. Your photo image is often the first thing people associate with you and your qualities.

Remember, first impressions only happen once and people make immediate judgments based on what they see.

As noted on front page of Oddpodz, we are experiencing some changes to our site. Our plan is to re-launch in the next 30 days with better social dialogue tools, more blog contributors, and useful tools to help you grow your business.

During our transition, some items in the Community section of the site are not functioning properly. We are working on all of these.

Thank you for your patience!

About the author: Karen Post, a.k.a. The Branding Diva® is an international authority on branding, marketing, and entrepreneurial matters. She has been featured as a business expert in print publications; on TV, radio, and on Web channels. Karen authored the best-selling book Brain Tattoos Creating Unique Brands That Stick in your Customers’ Minds and she is co-founder and CEO of Oddpodz.com.

For all the doubters and naysayers, social media can bring in the Benjamins. In fact, for my consulting practice, Brain Tattoo Branding, Twitter scored an exciting, new, six-figure assignment.

So how did it happen?
First, you’ve got to be signed up. It’s easy and painless. If you are clueless to the new world of Twitter, watch the video on the Twitter web site and also check out these excellent books on the subject.

All A Twitter by Tee Morris

Twitter for Dummies by Laura Fitton, Michael Gruen and Leslie Poston

Secondly, you need to understand what Twitter is and is not. In a bird shell, Twitter is a micro blog that enables you to post and read “tweets.” A tweet is a text message in a concise, less than 140-character format. A tweet post has no content boundaries other than length. You can tweet or twitter anything, from a question, a quote, an opinion; a status on what you are doing, feeling or about to do; share resources, or dish an experience.

Twitter is a real-time communication channel for personal and business purposes. It is intended to adhere to the new social media etiquette and be more about dialogue and helping rather than hard selling. But, like many things in life, there are always a few bird brains that don’t seem to get that part.

Back to how I did it.
I set up my profile, selected a handle — @brandingdiva.com, uploaded a photo, and added keywords that are relevant to my world. Now, as a twitterer, I get to follow others, which means their posts are in a timeline on my Twitter page. It’s not about quantity, but quality. You must follow people who can add to your success.

A few years ago I joined a mentor group lead by The Million Dollar Consultant, Alan Weiss. Alan has authored over 32 books and is one of the smartest cats I know. He helped me improve my business proposals, leverage my intellectual property, and just become a better consultant. I delete reams of newsletters and mail in my inbox daily, but, I’m very religious about reading Alan’s stuff.

In a recent email, he suggested I follow him on Twitter @BentleyGTCSpeed. And because I like Alan’s thinking and humor, I thought this would be a great way to get bite-sized samples of his brilliance, fast. So I started following him.

That Saturday night, I was drinking my BV cab and perusing my tweets, and I saw one from Alan. It read something like: Global industrial company looking for branding and naming specialist, interested parties contact XYZ.

So I did, right that moment. I shot an email to the contact listed. My branded email was formal and included my contact info, background on me, services summary, web site links, and an article from a prominent business publication in India that highlighted me and my views on brand naming.

Within minutes, I heard back from the contact; we exchanged a few more emails and then chatted on the phone. It turned out that he had also been in Alan’s mentor program. He was not the client, but was making recommendations to the client. After all of our dialogue, I was on the short list.

A few weeks later, I got a call from the client outlining the actual assignment, background on the company, and other details. I listened more than I talked. From there, he requested a proposal. I explained to him, that before I could produce the proposal, I needed some additional information from him and agreement on key issues around the project. My list was extensive, but he promptly answered all my questions and I submitted my proposal.

My proposal was brief; not a lot of selling, but it did include our agreed-upon goals, measure of success and value expected, pricing options, and a strong overview of my company’s credentials and B2B experience.

Three weeks later, I get another call. They want me to come to their home office to meet the team. They also requested I summarize my proposal into 3-4 pages. I obliged, on my nickel. For those you who squirm at shelling out travel expenses in advance of getting a deal, I say get real, if you are worth your proposal, you will earn this back quickly.

As it turned out, they were interviewing several firms and I was still in the hunt. To reinforce my position as a branding authority who works in diverse sectors, I prepared and did as much homework as I could. I flew in the night before, leaving nothing to chance, flight delays, bad weather, etc.

In my pitch I stressed my creative problem-solving ability above my knowledge of their industry. I rehearsed my key points and continued to listen and ask questions. In fact, I walked in with a list of both, so I wouldn’t forget anything. While I had plenty of B2B experience, I did not have hands-on experience in their specific industry category. However, I presented my lack of specific experience as a strength, not a weakness.

A few weeks later, I got the bright green light and today I’m working with a great company on a challenging project. Once we take it public, I will share with you more on the branding and project processes and outcome.

I am thrilled that a new social media like Twitter made this opportunity possible. I hope it soon does the same for you. Following are the key lessons I took away from this experience.

Lessons learned:

1) Twitter is tool, just like your business card.
2) Twitter is not an autopilot sales associate.
3) Twitter is a marketing tactic that you must use strategically.
4) Social media is not a magic potion that cures all; it is one piece of your marketing arsenal.
5) Jump on opportunities when you see them. Even on the weekends.
6) First impressions only come once.
7) Be efficient and “on your brand” with all of your touch points.
8) Not having experience in someone’s business is not a deal killer.
9) Listen more. Talk less.
10) Do your homework on the prospect’s competition, their leadership, and the challenges they face.
11) Proposals are to confirm goals, methods, measures, and expectations; not to convince.

About the author: Karen Post, a.k.a. The Branding Diva® is an international authority on branding, marketing, and entrepreneurial matters. She has been featured as a business expert in print publications; on TV, radio, and on Web channels. Karen authored the best-selling book Brain Tattoos, Creating Unique Brands That Stick in your Customers’ Minds and she is co-founder and CEO of Oddpodz.com.

And connect more dots.

One of the most important attributes of a being a successful entrepreneur is having the ability to generate fresh and meaningful ideas, often. Then, connect the dots to move your business forward.

Many times circumstances for entrepreneurs make this pretty darn challenging. You have a microscopic budget, no staff, juggle two full-time jobs to pay your bills and your cat has the chicken pox; all while you’re building your dream.

No problem. Some of the biggest and best ideas are birthed because of the above. Why? Because you are forced to be a truly creative problem solver.

My best creative thinking happens when I stimulate my brain by exposing myself to other cool ideas that empower me to recognize patterns, think in a metaphoric way, and absorb a lot of information quickly.

Here are 4 easy ways to increase your idea flow.
1) Visit online and offline, high-volume idea venues.
Trend reporting websites like Springwise and Iconoculture are two of my favorites. Springwise showcases entrepreneurial ideas from around the globe, and Iconoculture recaps top consumer and business trends with a good mix of recent market facts and statistics in a free newsletter.

Schedule a trip to a shopping mall. Don’t go to shop. Go to discover with a conscious eye. Watch how people behave and respond to marketing initiatives; evaluate displays, and listen to conversations.

Annually attend industry tradeshows in innovative sectors. Journal what you see; the good and bad, pick up marketing collateral and take pictures of exhibits and people.

2) Pay attention to smart, successful companies and people.
My list includes competitors and random organizations, both large and small. I keep an admiration notebook and folder on my computer. I include words, images, and processes that I find intriguing.

3) Develop a habit of producing idea quotas.
This means, need a solution or big idea? Set a daily volume quota for your ideas. For instance, need a new product name? Jot down five possibilities a day for two weeks. Invite a friend or colleague to do the same. In 14 days you’ll have at least 70 seeds for finding your big idea. Remember, don’t set any limits for your ideas, the wilder the better. Ignore budget restrictions and don’t strive for the perfect idea; aim for quantity.

4) Master the art of scan and skim, and read more.
Early in my career I attended a workshop on how to read the Wall Street Journal in less than 15 minutes. This 60-minute class dramatically increased the amount of information I can absorb which, in today’s world of massive data deluge, is a necessary skill to have.

Here’s the fast track on how to be a better scanner and skimmer of publications.

Turn off distractions like music and the TV. Go straight to a publication content summary, sometimes this is the table of contents, sometimes it is a special section that features top stories. Find subjects that interest you, jump to those articles. Then read the subheads, the intro and the last paragraph. This filtering method is a quick and efficient way to cover a lot of ground. I also scan all visuals, images, and charts and graphs and set a reading time limit on a publication. I also use an index card to underline what I’m reading and I highlight information I want to retain.

New, different, and sometimes even recycled ideas are the vital ingredients for problem solving and connecting the dots. The better and bigger the idea flow, the higher propensity you’ll achieve success.

About the author: Karen Post, a.k.a. The Branding Diva® is an international authority on branding, marketing, and entrepreneurial matters. She has been featured as a business expert in print publications; on TV, radio, and on Web channels. Karen authored the best-selling book Brain Tattoos, Creating Unique Brands That Stick in your Customers’ Minds and she is co-founder and CEO of Oddpodz.com.

CBS’s 10Connect in Tampa filmed a segment on Oddpodz. Interns Sarah, Justin and Baptiste got walk on roles.

Check out the broadcast segment.

Trying to get publicity on your business can be a grueling effort. You are competing with every organization out there, the news professionals are many times extreme stress baskets and under huge deadlines, and then there’s the $2 million dollar question “what is really news worthy?”.

This past week I called one of the local news stations about doing a feature on Oddpodz. I reached the morning show producer, but unfortunately, she was putting out a fire and gave me about 15 seconds to tell her our story. At the end of my sprint pitch, she requested, why don’t you email me something. “Great” I replied, “it’s on its way”.

I sent her a brief, to -the-point note about our company and three angles that may light her fire. I knew her show was a mix of stay-at-home businesses and professionals on their way to work. I attempted to appeal to those audiences.

A couple days passed. No word from my contact at the station, should I call her, email her again or blow it off?

I rationalized, sure she’s busy, but they all need news and our company is newsworthy—so I picked up the phone and followed up.

Man, I’m glad I did. When I got her on the line, she recalled the company and me. She politely said, “I do remember seeing the information and I also remember accidentally throwing it out. Can you send it again?” Sure can.

I resent the info, waited another day and called her again. This time she was very attentive, had questions and said, “sounds like a perfect story for Monday’s morning news, we’ll send cameras today and can you be at the your office at 4:30 AM Monday for a live feed too?” Absolutely!

Quick PR lessons.

1) Timing is the magic in the news room.

There are slow news days, interviews cancel, breaking news can bump your piece off the schedule, but TV stations always need stories. Scoring a segment often is not just about the hard news factor of your pitch, but about filling the airways and lucky timing.

2) The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

My follow up calls got us booked. If your story is newsworthy, non-annoying and resilient follow up calls can definitely make a difference.

3) Don’t give up so easy.

If you get a big fat, “No we are not interested”, don’t take it personal and throw in the towel. Re slice that cheese, there are many, many ways to present a story. Ask yourself, would it fly if it were tied into something already in the news, like a current affair? what about if it were pitched as a round up story with 2-3 other examples? or what about connecting it to a holiday?

4) News is often like art, its value or market merit is often left up to the eyes and the schedule of the producer.

We’ve all seen stupid stories that sound like the biggest commercial ever, with no apparent news angle, and wonder “How did that get aired?” Someone was persistent.

Our story ran this morning and will again run at noon, plus with the Internet, it will be streamed later today and be around forever, got to love that.

(The following post is by Sarah Guinot, Oddpodz newest team member).

I was until this week, when I attended Social School in Tampa.

I just joined the Oddpodz team as an intern. I’m finishing my MBA at the University of Tampa and I am thrilled to be working with such an exciting, young social media company. To learn more about me and connect, my Oddpodz user name is sarenka. I’d love to hear from you.

Part of my contributions to the company will be helping the Oddpodz community members and attracting new ones through social media.

My first assignment, get in the social media grove fast.

Lucky for me, the Oddpodz offices are located in www.Walkerbrands.com, a super cool place to work. Not only is it a design-centric, creative environment, the office culture has also lots of means for collaboration and learning via our roommates, tools and events.

This week the office hosted Social School. It was lead by Nancy Walker, President of Walker Brands and a super savvy, branding and marketing pro, and Julia Gorzka, a social media enthusiast and consultant.

The event attracted a diverse group of business people, all like me, hungry to get on the social media train.

So what is this international phenomenon sweeping the media, business and people’s lives?

It’s the “world’s largest cocktail party where everybody is invited”, explained Julia.

Such a definition makes it clear that social media challenges the “old school” marketing thinking. As most of the audience, you might find social media intimidating. After all, there are so many social tools out there, where does one start? How do you find your markets in this new World? You heard about Twitter and might wonder who is this new animal. But have no fear. The good news is that it is completely possible to understand social media and, even better, to make great use of them in order to support your brand and its delivery- two essential components for business success.

Here are some of the highlights I took away from Social School.

1) The first step is to define your brand. A brand is not merely a logo or a catchy slogan anymore. It’s what customers think, feel and expect about you, which is earned at every touch points, every contact with your customers, from product and signage to employee training.

2) Then, once you have a coherent and strong brand essence, it’s time for delivery. You are now ready to hit the social media universe. What are your goals? Is it brand awareness? Discoverability? Finding new leads?

3) Remember that in the World’s largest cocktail party (social media), the communication style is very conversational, helpful and educational and definitely not about hard selling. If you’re focused on mere transactions, you will be quickly black listed and your efforts will be a waste.

As Julia explained, “It is not as much about advertising anymore anyway, when companies were pushing their messages. It is about giving your customers something to talk about”.

For more on how social media can help your business check back, we will be posting other gems gained from the class. If you are interested in attending a future social media class go to social school.

Also we’ve posted and reviewed some great FREE social media tools and resources in Oddpodz FREE Biz Findz.

I’m trilled to be a part of The Florida Conference for Women on May 12th in Orlando. The event is a one-day, non-partisan education and networking event that will bring together thousands from across Florida to tackle the issues that matter most to women and empower them to impact meaningful change in their personal and professional lives.

The Conference, hosted in conjunction with the Florida Commission on the Status of Women and the FCSW Foundation, Inc., will feature internationally recognized speakers that will share their experiences and vision on issues such as business, finance, health, volunteerism, media and personal growth, among others. The event will include keynote sessions from women leaders in their respective fields, as well as dozens of breakout sessions by renowned panelists (including me, Oddpodz co-founder Karen Post) offering their insights and perspectives on a myriad issues that matter most to women. Don’t miss this awesome event and stay connect with twitter updates too. My program will be on social media and your personal brand.

No matter what your budget is you can launch this priceless campaign and start reaping the rewards right away.

Say thank you to your customers, your employees, your prospects and your vendors. And not just when you like what they dished out.

When they do business with you
When they compliment your company
When they offer suggestions
When they try something new
When they recommend a friend
When they are patient
When they help you serve them better
When they complain
When they make you smile

If you have a budget, say it with a note, a gift, a card, a phone call, a meal or with a personal visit. Emails count but, not as much.

Thank you for reading this blog.

Oddpodz is not a Facebook and not a Linkedin and does not want to be.

While we appreciate both of their roles in business, they are enormous tracks of land, full of weeds, bugs, ugly and beautiful flowers. They are general spaces and if you are not careful, you can easily get lost.

The mega sites growth has been remarkable, the combined two sites of Facebook and Linkedin is over 250 million people strong. Social networks have truly changed the way people communicate, get info and even how brands market. It is a whole new ballgame.

In 2006, we started the Oddpodz community with the goal of building a place for creative-minded people to unite, share ideas and gain stuff that makes a difference. Like a lot of young companies, we have good days and days we ask ourselves, why us, why this? Yep, that can be frustrating at times, but we continue to move forward and grow. Our community has gone from two people with a passion and an idea to a wonderful network of talent, creativity and growing businesses. We touch over 10,000 creative people every week.

Jocelyn and I have been working hard at making the Oddpodz site more useful, easier to get around and richer with ideas and content that helps you prosper.

The Oddpodz team is a very small group of dedicated creative souls.

In addition to the founders, we are like to recognize other important people that are adding to the growth and value of our community. Some have been with us since the beginning, others have recently joined the team. They include: Jack Omlor, Kristen Friend, Michelle Carrigan, Ann Marie Gardner, Son Nguyen, Kyle Williams, Shaina Bindeman, Heidi and Victor Morrill and the Wyndstorm development team. In addition to working with Oddpodz, they all have their own gigs too. You can learn more about their talents through the Oddpodz network search tool.

We are now ready to take Oddpodz to the next level

But we can’t do it without you. The real power of community comes from active connections and collaboration. Our focus these past few years has been to build the Oddpodz framework. While it’s not perfect, we have a lot of engine power ready to help you. To activate more of the energy in our community this week we will be adding several new things and we invite you to check them out, give us your feedback and participate in.

•We will be launching a Creative Inspiration Contest to help all businesses get past these touch times.

•We’ve added new forum discussions and will be actively posting to them. They include: Book reviews, lessons learned and a Web site critique.

•And we are most excited about our new dedicated section of FREE Biz Findz. We have over 75 awesome, totally free tools and resources to help you success. This list grows every week.

•We’ve enhanced our bi-weekly Idea Engine Newsletter with forum and blog posts too.

Thanks for all your support! We look forward to big year!

Here’s a great new spin to interning. Mid-career Interns.

Check what “Women on the Web” did. This a sassy web site for women started an innovative mid-career internship program. High-level former executives, — including publishers, editors and VP’s drawn from the shrinking print media companies — are retraining in on-line skills at wowOwow.com.  Joni Evans, WOW’s CEO explains, “These are people with wisdom and worth.  In our program we draw on their skill set for WOW while teaching them new skills, reequipping them for the new economy.  It’s a win-win situation.”

Lois Dreagin, a 55-year-old former senior editor at TV Guide is one of these mid-career interns. In her old job she did not need to know a URL from an SEO, facebook from twitter, or a Google trend from search engine optimization. Now at WOW she’s paired with a 24 year old WOW staffer, Randi Benfield, who’s teaching her how to write tag lines for Google and URLs in return.  Lois supports Randi with expert literary instincts and flawless copy-editing skills.

WOW editor in chief, Deborah Barrow, who conceived the program, says that she thinks, “This could only happen at a company like WOW.  This website is run and owned by women.  The idea of women helping women, empowering each other, participating in a caring community, is so different than the way male dominated workplaces have functioned.”  Deborah believes that other companies should imitate her concept of women helping women as a means of survival in the new economy.

wowOwow.com, was founded just over a year ago by former Simon + Schuster publisher Joni Evans, author Peggy Noonan, columnist Liz Smith, ‘60 minutes’ correspondent Lesley Stahl, and advertising guru Mary Wells.  Contributors Candice Bergen, Joan Juliet Buck, Joan Ganz Cooney, Whoopi Goldberg, Judith Martin, Cynthia McFadden, Sheila Nivens, Marlo Thomas, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Wagner join them on line.  These iconic women are making history with the first-ever website aimed at educated affluent experienced Women.

In the past few years, we’ve heard our share of news stories on dishonest, scum bag, greedy souls. From the Enron gang, to Allen Stanford, to the biggest scammer of all, Bernie Madoff who misled investors and lost over $65 billion. These people are a disgrace to business and mankind.

While these criminal profiles are plastered on every media venue from out there, and they should be, what about companies and brands that behave less than truthfully everyday in their advertising and communications? I think they are just as guilty, and consumers should be aware of their shady moves and then make their choices on what company they should do business with.

I’ve talked about some of these less than forthright brands in my speaking programs and I’ve written about them in the past. We just posted a story I wrote for Fast Company called Integrity, an invaluable brand asset

These companies really get under my skin. In fact, this morning I was reading a half page ad for “The Perfect Pitch” giveaway in Tampa. It is sponsored by Teasdale, marketing of distinction and some other seemingly reputable media companies. The ad says: throw us your perfect pitch and two companies could win $250,000 in media to promote your company and the at applicants get a gift bag valued at $3,000. What it did not tell you was that it costs $500.00 to apply. That information was only found inside the site on the PDF form. To me that’s creepy, and falls under the category of not being honest. Why not put that information on the ad? Wasting my time because of a lack of full disclosure or not clearly marking fees puts no integrity points in their basket. In fact I’ve shared this example at 10 times today with my business buddies.

Contests are notorious for these sneaky ploys. Big brands have dirt on their collars too.

I just received a mailer from Verizon. The offering was $99.00 flat fee for Internet, TV and phone service and they give you $150.00 back. Sounds great, right? So, I call my friendly sales rep to investigate. I wait on hold for 17 minutes, just to find out the boxes you also need for the TVs were not included and neither were the taxes. The drive out price was the same as what I already have. Wasting my time because of a lack of full disclosure or not clearly marking the real price is no better than a friend telling me a big lie. It hurts the relationship.

This list of slimy-talking, deceptive messaging happens every day. And brands wonder why consumer trust is at an all time low. If you know of a company that is resorting to dishonest marketing messages or campaigns, please share, so we can inform our community that the brand in question may too deserve the Bernie Badge of Deception.