You Are What You Text

January 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Everything we say or do represents our brand. We make an impression on others when we communicate with them, whatever way we do that. When you post your contact details on your webpage or people find them on your social media site, they will try to reach you personally. Some customers would prefer to text message you to ask about basic things. Your reply is going to be crucial because it may be the only chance you have with that person. You want to make a strong first impression even when it’s through text messaging.

When you decide to place your mobile number out there for your customers, you have to be ready to communicate with them effectively. Keep in mind that all those who reach you are potential customers. A mobile phone is different from a computer – it’s harder to write messages on smaller devices, especially without the keyboard. Make sure to use it wisely.

Here are some tips on how you can make an impression through text messaging:

Turn off your auto correct – all phones come with auto correct; it’s a feature that is supposed to help a user text faster because of the predefined words saved on the phone. However, auto correct jokes are becoming a form of entertainment today because of how wrongly the words are placed in the text. Since you are doing business, it’s better to turn your auto correct off so you don’t risk saying the wrong things to your recipient. But be sure to still spell your words correctly, no shortcuts because this can be really annoying to someone who is isn’t especially experienced in using “text language”.

Keep it short and simple – typing is hard, and since your auto correct is turned off, keep your message short and simple. It will save you and your recipient time and energy. Give them what they need, or you can ask them if you can call to further explain your answer. Make sure to review your message before you hit send. You don’t want your customer to be misled in any way.

Check the recipient – after checking your message and you’re ready to send it, check the recipient. Sometimes we’re busy thinking about other things that we send messages to wrong recipients. It’s an easy away to keep a good impression with everyone you’re connected with especially when you have numbers of your customer saved on your phone. You don’t want them getting the wrong message. If you are the one who receives a wrong message, respond to that message to inform him/her that they sent a message to the wrong person.

Be courteous – at all times. Take note of your tone when you are composing a text message, make sure that your recipient doesn’t get a chance to misinterpret it. When you know that they don’t have your number, do introduce yourself before proceeding with your message. Also, when you’re in a face-to-face conversation with someone, text messaging is as rude as taking a voice call. Choose a proper time to respond.

Time of response – Watch the time you respond to a text message. Waking someone up or texting late comes with a lasting impression on who you are as a person.

Don’t depend on text messages – text messaging is informal. And, don’t deliver bad news using text. Or, anything that could be misinterpreted – the smartphone can still be used as a phone.

Be patient – when you send text messages, don’t expect your recipient to receive your message right away. Just like you, your recipient might be busy with their daily tasks. There are a lot of factors that can prevent them from responding to you quickly. It’s either they haven’t received the message because of their carrier, or they are out of coverage, or it’s your network that’s not pushing the message to your phone. If it’s an urgent matter, try other means.

Texting and forms of it will be here for a while.  Master it so that your brand expression matches your brand.

Maria Elena Duron, CEO (chief engagement officer), buzz2bucks | a word of mouth marketing firm, is skilled at making networks “work” and harnessing powerful online and offline buzz, she facilitates online visibility services and word of mouth coaching and workshops – taking companies and professionals from buzz-worthy to bucks-worthy.

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs Tagged With: , ,

Substitute

January 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 

But I’m a substitute for another guy
I look pretty tall but my heels are high
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young, but I’m just back-dated, yeah

                                                               ~ The Who

Back in the day, when I first became a certified Personal Branding Strategist, I learned that personal branding was about having permission to be yourself. And personal brand was synonymous with your reputation.

Actually, it still is. 

To be even more specific, there are still many people who use the term personal brand to refer to an authentic expression of who you uniquely are in terms of the attributes, vision, purpose, values, and passions that you bring to what you do. It is the you-ness you add to your professional competencies that makes you more valuable to your clients, and your broader professional community.

In many ways, then, your personal brand is the experience you provide while you are doing what people hire you to do. So, the skills that you bring to your work may be the same skills that others in your profession use, but your approach is unique to you. For example, I have a friend who injects her fun, vibrant personality into meetings where she is delivering accounting and tax advice. She brings who she is to what she does. She didn’t cultivate a personal brand. She is just being herself, and her clients love her!

Today, however, there seems to be a lot of personal branding advice that tends to overlook the you-ness element and treat “your personal brand” as a distinct entity that you have to care for and manage. Kind of like a bonsai tree. So, we get articles and blog posts that provide advice on building, revamping, or reinventing your personal brand!!

While much of the advice these authors provide is actually useful, it has little to do with who you are. It is much more focused on tactics for gaining visibility and attracting clients. In fact, there is much great business information for promoting yourself right on this blog.

Yet, in my opinion, you need to make a very clear distinction that changing how you express and exude who you are is not the same as revamping or reinventing “your brand” – but just the way you communicate it. Indeed, it is only the first stage of the Reach 1-2-3 Success process that gets to your brand…to your you-ness. So, to engage in any exercise that is construed as “working on your brand,” but leaves out YOU, is akin to caring for some abstract entity. It’s like creating a proxy. A substitute.

I think it’s really important to be clear on this – and even more so, today!!

Seeing the notion of personal brand become more mainstream is a good thing. It signals the end of mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Even more it supports the growing recognition that we all have the capacity to serve specific tribes. It helps us see that our true value comes not merely from the commoditized functions our skills are based in, but from the very weirdness that makes us appeal to our niche.

Of course, personal brand has also become subject to criticism. And frankly, based on the approach of many “personal branders,” it’s criticism that is well deserved. If you have any doubt about this, you should read Olivier Blanchard’s very well-argued critique of personal branding. Blanchard notes, “People are people. They aren’t brands.” And ironically, one of the tips he offers is, “Just be you.” I think this is great advice! It’s a great post, actually; and if you haven’t read it, you should!

As you might surmise, I reject the idea of personal “reinvention.” This does not mean, of course, that I believe who we are and the reputations we develop don’t evolve. They do. Yet, they change because we have gained new insights into who we are, what we want to do, who we want to serve, and the difference we want to make for others – and impact that has on how we do what we do. This is very different from throwing out a new value proposition to see if it sticks.

So, insofar as our “brand” is concerned, the real task is the application of introspective insights to our work. And often, it is a process that is best done with a well-qualified coach who can help identify the themes that matter to you and to your audiences. Investing this kind of effort fosters a personal clarity that can help align what we know about ourselves with a communications strategy that will bring meaningful visibility and credibility.

Frankly, as I see it, bringing anything less than who you are to what you do means you may as well have been born with a plastic spoon in your mouth.

 

Walter Akana is a Reach Certified Personal Branding and Online Identity Strategist. Founder Threshold Consulting, he works with mid-career professionals and executives. His career advice has been featured online at marketwatch, cnnmoney, and online.wsj. He is a long-time blogger, and avid user of social media.

 

Filed Under: Expressing Your Brand, Exuding Your Brand, Personal Branding for Careers

Is your career facing a Kodak moment?

January 20, 2012 By 1 Comment

No doubt the business school case studies in years to come about the sad demise of Kodak and it’s brand will raise many questions about the effectiveness of it’s leaders. The filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy by Kodak this week has many lessons for all businesses, but what can you learn from this and be sure that you are not facing the same in your career?

1. Don’t underestimate the impact your ideas have.
It was the mid-70′s when Kodak actually developed for the first digital camera. Can you imagine how far ahead they may have been in the market place and for how long had they moved on this revolutionary idea.

Personal Brand Lesson - just because your industry or vocation has done it the same way for a long time and everyone is comfortable with that way does not mean an idea out of left field is not a better one. Be willing to challenge the status quo.

2. Don’t be complacent or greedy.
Kodak leaders decided to shelve the digital camera because they felt it was going to do too much damage to their highly lucrative and profitable film business.

Personal Brand Lesson – it makes sense to maximise your value with the core strengths you have. But know that you need to continually develop yourself and add new skills. Demands and markets change, so your brand has to evolve over time. Anticipate demands and start adding to your skill set now.

3. Be Prepared to Re-brand
The plan for Kodak is to sell it’s $2 billion worth of patents and emerge as a more agile company in the printer business. They see revenue and profit in ink (HP generates $9 billion a year in ink cartridges). But does the tagline of the “Kodak Moment” still apply? Likely not, as they become less and less synonymous with photos a re-brand of the company would almost seem inevitable.

Personal Brand Lesson - the experts tell us that the workforce of the future might well be in many different vocation, not just jobs, in their lifetime. The foundation and core of your brand might remain the same, but sometimes the message and your target audience will change and a re-branding is necessary.

How do you see business the lessons from the likes of RIM and Kodak apply to your career and personal brand?

Paul Copcutt first aligned with personal branding after reading Tom Peters ‘Brand You 50’ in 1997. Now a sought after speaker and media resource he has been featured by Forbes, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and Elle. He helps employees in leading Fortune 500 corporations realise they can be more successful and productive at work by NOT checking their personalities at the door.

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Everything is a Brand, Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Recession-Proof Your Career Tagged With: , , , ,

Do You Make These 5 Social Media Mistakes?

January 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Personal Brands are taking their brands online as a marketing strategy. It’s easy to set up and is designed to be user friendly. The space is really enticing but there are hazards when taking your brand on social media sites.  If you have social media sites, check out this five common social media mistakes that businesses are committing when taking their business online.

Flooding/Spamming – it’s great that you are sending out helpful messages but don’t overdo it. Customers hate it when you flood their emails about promos, or flood your Twitter or Facebook account about everything and anything.  We don’t need another quotable quote.

Often, the mistake is not purposeful spamming, rather it’s that we get so busy and then remember our social networks and flood them with a series of posts that occur all in the same day, or worse yet, within the same hour!    Avoid posting them all in a day and then being idle for days at a time. Create a calendar to schedule your posts if you have to. This will make your social media site active at all times and your connections will see you as consistent and engaging.

Posting inappropriate content – this is common sense. You wouldn’t want your customers, clients, supervisors or colleagues to see things that can destroy your brand reputation. However, there are things that may arise like a colleague posting a video about the crazy things they do at work or post comments on Twitter that other connections might not get (like inside jokes with other employees). Keep a forever vigilant “brand listening station” set up so that you’ll be aware of any posts that show up with your name associated with it.

No social media presence – it’s great that you now have social media accounts and you did well in gaining followers – now what? A common mistake is to  get into the social media platform just because others are doing it. Posting on Twitter or Facebook every once in a while is alright depending on the purpose and strategy that you have in utilizing the social network,  but being idle and posting once a month is not. Before getting a social media account, plan how you’re going to use it and what you would like to gain from additional brand awareness.

Deleting comments – social media sites are a good place to get feedback and ideas on how you can improve your brand. If someone voices a sincere dislike or concern about something you are doing or you are associated with, as long as it doesn’t infringe upon privacy,  do not delete their comments.

Mismanagement of site – remember that your social media site is a platform for your brand. Whatever is posted or talked about there reflects your brand. If you are going to let someone handle your Twitter or Facebook account, make sure that you train them well. Teach them how to use the sites and let them read about good customer service practices (even if you’re not online to gain customers – customer service principals deliver vital communication and listening skills that will be an asset).  Educate them that it’s not just about posting anything to make your site active. They must know how to address connections when interacting with them.

Your online first impression is even more lasting than your offline first impression.  What do you do to ensure that you manage it well?

Maria Elena Duron, CEO (chief engagement officer), buzz2bucks | a word of mouth marketing firm, is skilled at making networks “work” and harnessing powerful online and offline buzz, she facilitates online visibility services and word of mouth coaching and workshops – taking companies and professionals from buzz-worthy to bucks-worthy.

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs Tagged With: , ,

Be a Personal Brand Mechanic and ‘Tune-Up’ Your Brand!

January 17, 2012 By 6 Comments

On cold winter mornings it can be a challenge to crawl out of bed, jump on the bicycle and go for a ride. Granted the first few pedal strokes are hard as your body adjusts, but once you get moving the joy of the ride takes over and you soon forget about the cold. Some cyclists ‘retire’ for the winter months and put their bicycle into storage waiting for the warm spring weather to dust off the frame, oil the chain, and adjust the gears. Without a spring ‘tune-up’ the bicycle will squeak, creak, and chatter.

Just as a bicycle needs a tune-up, so does your brand. You do not want to ignore your brand and put it into storage. An effective personal branding strategy really requires consistent and constant brand maintenance throughout the year. However, in reality the end of the year is often filled with finishing last minute projects, preparing for the holidays, and spending time in hibernation!

Your Brand is not Broken.  It Needs a Tune-up!

If you have put your brand into storage, don’t worry. Your brand is not broken! It simply needs a tune-up and will be ready to ride again. Start off 2012 right by dusting off your brand and applying these three tune-ups demonstrated by three people I am officially dubbing ‘Personal Branding Mechanics.’

 1. The ‘Alignment Tune-up’ from Mechanic #1:  Jonathan Fields

After a season of riding and racing, your bicycle’s derailleurs, gears, and chain are often out of alignment. The joyful experience of a ride can be ruined by your chain skipping between gears. Taking the time to align these parts will ensure that your shifting is crisp and your chain spins smoothly.

Jonathan Fields 2011 annual report on his blog immediately caught my eye as a perfect way to tune-up your brand. In this report, he says the core driver for success is alignment between these 4 elements:

  • What makes you come alive
  • Your preferred mode of service
  • What you either are good at, or are interested in becoming good at, and
  • What people will line up to pay you enough to live well in the world for.

After reading this it made perfect sense to me why we run the risk of hanging up our brand and putting it into storage! Without this high level of alignment between who we are and what we do, we will walk away from our brand out of frustration, desperation, or suffocation. Jonathan advises to seek alignment by reviewing what we are passionate about and asking others for feedback. He calls it his “Killer App Exercise” and by doing this for himself he was able to get the alignment he needed to tune-up his brand for some exciting changes.

Download Jonathan’s annual report to learn more about alignment, and see how his brand is being realigned for 2012.

2. The ‘Reposition Tune-up’ from Mechanic #2:  John Falchetto

Having the right position on your bicycle is key to top performance. For example, a saddle or seat post in the wrong position will still allow you to ride your bicycle, but will also lead to inefficient pedaling. By slightly repositioning your saddle forward or backward, or changing the height of your seat post you will drastically improve your ride.

John Falchetto is a great example of how to reposition a personal brand. You might know John as the ‘Expat Life Coach.’ As an expat myself, I started following John on Twitter some months ago as I was interested in what he had to say. John has recently repositioned his brand from the ‘Expat Life Coach – Abroad but not Alone,’ to ‘Life Coaching with John Falchetto – Making Everyday an Adventure.’

He has not put his life coaching into storage, but has rather adjusted his brand’s position beyond the expat label to allow for a more efficient use of his brand from 2012. Truth be told, while I was initially interested in John’s expat message, it has been his Adventure Mindset brand and approach on life coaching that has intrigued me more.

Check out how John is “going to roll” this year in this great video and contact him for help in your own brand, business, and life reposition!

3. The ‘Upgrade Tune-up’ from Mechanic #3: Kimberly Bordonaro

Each year I like to make some upgrades to my bicycles by replacing parts that still function well with new parts that function even better. Technology in cycling changes frequently so upgrading to a lighter, stronger, or cooler part is always worth the investment.

Kimberly Bordonaro has done an amazing job upgrading what is already an awesome brand with cooler parts! This month she tuned-up her Brandspiration brand by launching ‘Club Brandspiration.’ This upgrade provides personal branding workshops that are 100% content, without the pitches to buy products or services. This shiny new part on her website gives you training of tried and true strategies to help you upgrade yourself and your business.  What I love about this upgrade is that each class comes with a worksheet to help you plan your next steps.

Check out Kimberly’s Club Brandspiration upgrade and join the Club to upgrade your own brand!

By following the tune-ups from these three mechanics you can remove the dust and rust from your brand because underneath is a personal brand ready shine and ready to ride. Are you a Personal Branding Mechanic with other tune-up tips?  Please share below.


Peter Sterlacci, Founder of BeYB – Believe. Become. Be Your Brand, combines personal branding strategy with cycling imagery to empower on-the-move careerists in global companies in Japan to shift gears, get out of the saddle, and sprint to career success.

Filed Under: Exuding Your Brand, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Strong Personal Brands Tagged With: , , , , ,

How to End Brand Confusion

January 12, 2012 By 3 Comments

Building your brand is not easy. If your business or profession has a lot of competition, it is up to you to communicate effectively what is  unique to your brand that will make it stand out from the rest. Recently speaking at a conference for realtors, I asked a realtor what made her different from the others in the room.  Her answer, “We can all pretty much do the same thing.”

Customers will slip away just because they think you are the same as the others around or in your profession.   In order to find that unique identity, your niche, you have to know who your target market is. Knowing who your customers are will give you an idea of what works best for them. It will help you fine tune your message so you can even visualize that you are speaking directly to one specific person.  This will allow you to concentrate on one thing – that one thing that will give your brand an edge.

Define your brand

For your business to stand out, you have to create and define your brand. If you already have one and you think it’s time for some change, add something new to your menu or to your services. You want your customers to experience something new to them. So even if you’re just another business around town, you’ll be the first choice when they think about something that your business offers.

Here are a few things that you can do to avoid brand confusion:

Make your customers feel welcome – when a customer comes into your establishment, make them feel that they are welcome. This applies also to when they visit your online establishment or online social media pages.  This is your chance to make a lasting impression about your brand. When a customer feels that they are welcome from the time they enter your establishment up until they step out, they will definitely think of you again. Find ways you can uniquely make your customers feel welcome, something that is appropriate in your business. Take a risk and try new things!

Excellent customer service – no less. Without customers, our businesses are nothing. Always provide excellent customer service because this aspect is what makes the sale. If your customer feels that you are doing everything that is expected from you and more, they will feel that they are taken care of. Even if you charge a bit higher than the rest, you’ll be surprised at how much customers are willing to pay to experience excellent customer service. Take more initiative and ask them what they need before they approach and ask you.

Consistency – once you find your niche, you want to do it consistently. (For definition:  Niche is what you do so well and is uniquely you; Target Market is who you do it to or for).  Now that you’ve made a good impression, stay engaged with your connections. With every interaction, you are either building up your relationship or tearing it down.

Extras – because the little things add up. There are a lot of ways to give your customers an excellent experience. You can ask for and use their names when you’re serving them, adding a personal touch to the experience. You can also create a customer database and gather your customers’ contact details. With a database, you can send emails or cards to your customers for birthdays or holidays. You can send them information about new promos or the latest on your menu. Doing the little extras to make your customers feel that you appreciate them will not only set you apart from the others, but will give you a chance to gain loyal customers.

Now thrive!

Ending brand confusion is important if we want our business  or profession to survive and succeed. If we give our customers something great to differentiate our business from the rest and consistently provide that, we are positioning our brand at the top of their list. That’s why it’s important to keep innovating, to keep working on how our customers can add value and attach meaning to our personal brand and our business products and services.

Maria Elena Duron, CEO (chief engagement officer), buzz2bucks | a word of mouth marketing firm, is skilled at making networks “work” and harnessing powerful online and offline buzz, she facilitates online visibility services and word of mouth coaching and workshops – taking companies and professionals from buzz-worthy to bucks-worthy.

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs Tagged With: , ,

Persistent and Consistent Action

January 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Let’s not forget “auld acquaintances” as we start 2012.   Let’s vow to stay connected and more deeply engaged. After all, it’s with the people that are already connected and sold on who we are that we will find better conversations and better referrals.

The challenge is how to do this on a consistent basis. Relationships are built on interaction and developing trust, and part of having that is being involved in some type of action that’s persistent so you are not forgotten (nor they)!

Rekindle old connections – Facebook is a great place to find old friends. Sometimes, our tendency is to just add them, but we never find the time to get in touch with them, even via the chat feature. Get in touch with someone you haven’t spoken to in years. Ask them how they are and what they’re doing these days. It’s about making connections because there is always someone out there who is willing to help your business. Why not an old friend?

Cull your database – Even though I don’t use the database customer relationship management tool, Goldmine, I appreciate the name because in one word it speaks the truth – there’s a Goldmine in your database if you will spend time in there.

Did you know that 67% of the people in your database neither live in the same place they used to, work at the same place, have the same phone number or email address, or are “dead” (yes, they are deceased)?  It’s time to cull through your database and see who you really know.  What may seem like “I just spoke to him yesterday,” may in actuality show that you haven’t spoken to him in two years.  Over time, when a relationship ceases to be mutually beneficial to both people involved, somebody leaves.  It’s just a fact of life – for businesses, marriages and friendships.

Sadly, this is where most people become lost in the task rather thea in the doing. When you encounter that you don’t have the correct or updated information on someone, then we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to update and find that information that we lose the passion behind the prompting to connect or reach out to them.

Identify what you need to find out and update, and then plan 15 minutes every day to gather that information.  Even if it’s a quick phone call, email or contact another person who might know the updated information (or perhaps it’s just you checking the emails where people sent you updates and plugging it into your database), find and take the time to do it.  It will make a remarkable difference to your year!

Send a personal note – a part of great interaction, relationships development or customer service is making your contacts and customers feel that they are special, and what better way to do this but by sending them handwritten thank you notes. It is personalized and it’s random. And, sadly, it rarely happens so you will stand out uniquely over anyone else they interact with.

These are simple tips but they will make a difference in the way you do business. It will add a unique taste to how you approach your connections and customers and this adds more value to you, your company, your products and services.

Maria Elena Duron, CEO (chief engagement officer), buzz2bucks | a word of mouth marketing firm, is skilled at making networks “work” and harnessing powerful online and offline buzz, she facilitates online visibility services and word of mouth coaching and workshops – taking companies and professionals from buzz-worthy to bucks-worthy.

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs Tagged With: , ,

5 Tools to Repair Your Brand

January 3, 2012 By 2 Comments

Imagine you have worked hard to build “brand you”.

  • You have established a firm belief in your brand by uncovering your brand attributes, strengths, and unique promise of value.
  • You have developed the tools you need to become your brand including a personal brand statement, a branded bio, and both an online and offline brand communication plan.
  • And you are clearly, consistently and constantly managing your brand environment and brand identity to be your brand every day.

One day a “Google alert” pops into your email inbox.  You are eager see if your brand visibility and credibility is growing.  To your surprise you see something about you that is off-brand.  People in your brand community begin to comment on this, tweet about it, and share it.  Before you know it your brand is in question.  You might consider just blowing this off hoping it will disappear in cyberspace.  However, by not taking action your brand is derailed.

A ‘Derailed’ brand

In the world of cycling, when your chain is derailed your bicycle will not move forward – you cannot pedal, you cannot shift, and you run the risk of crashing. When this happens, you need to pull over, assess the damage, take out your tool kit, and make the necessary repairs before you try to pedal on.

It is almost inevitable that you will go off-brand, but if you have the proper tools and the right training you can repair your brand.  This reminds me of a Lance Armstrong commercial called “What am I on?”  Lance’s brand credibility was being questioned in the face of doping allegations in 2001. In response to the critics trying to derail his brand, Lance and Nike released this powerful commercial.

Repair Your Brand

By constantly maintaining and tuning-up your bike you can prevent derailments.  The same holds true for your personal band.  Here are 5 tools you need to have in your tool kit to keep yourself tuned-up and on brand.

Tool 1. Maintain consistency across all channels and touch points

If you are not setting your own reputation, someone surely will.  Take control and establish a strong on-brand presence.  Always make sure your personal brand is expressed in a consistent way.  This includes your social media accounts, your website/bog, your business cards, your office, and even your physical appearance.  Even if one of these elements is off-brand it will eventually get noticed and can derail your brand.

Tool 2. Remember, one size does not fit all

When dealing with your brand derailments, offer an individualized solution depending on the context, person(s) involved, and the issue at hand. If needed, reach out to the person who derailed your brand one-on-one, keep the conversation on the issue at hand, and listen to what they have to say. Also, as your family and friends share information about you online, take the time to educate them about the photos they tag you in, the images they post, or the comments they make about you.

Tool 3. Don’t take it personal

This tool really goes hand-in-hand with Tool 2.    Always remember that what you say online stays online, so be constructive.  Never play the “blame game”. Handle it professionally and absolutely avoid fighting negativity with your own negativity.

Tool 4. Manage your SEO

While Lance has the money to hire Nike’s marketing department to help manage his on-brand message, the average person still has enormous power to control their personal brand message with little to no financial investment.  Post and publish your own on-brand content with strong SEO on a regular basis in a blog, website, video, and social media channels.  This will elevate your on-brand message in your search engine results, while pushing down any off-brand content. You want to absolutely make sure nothing off-brand appears on the first page of your search results and ideally nothing on the first three pages.

Tool 5. Set up  a “Vizibility” account

Even if you are diligent about managing your SEO, something still may appear online that is derailing your brand.  Imagine if you could control your search results and avoid mistaken identity.  Vizibility helps you organize and share your entire online identity in one click, from your curated Google results to your hand-picked online profiles, mobile business card and more. Each vizibility account comes with a personal SearchMe link, button and QR code, instantly directing people to your true online identity.

Remember, it is your brand and you can do whatever you want with it – push it,  study it, tweak it, listen to it, and use these tools to stay on-brand!

 

Peter Sterlacci, Founder of BeYB – Believe. Become. Be Your Brand, combines personal branding strategy with cycling imagery to empower on-the-move careerists in global companies in Japan to shift gears, get out of the saddle, and sprint to career success.

Filed Under: Everything is a Brand, Exuding Your Brand, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Sports Tagged With: , , ,

Are You Really Linking On LinkedIn?

December 29, 2011 By 3 Comments

Setting up a LinkedIn group offers great advantages to any business person, if done right. Some of the advantages of starting a group include building thought leadership, connecting to a community, driving traffic to own website, the ability to send personalized messages to the group and subgroup, and helping others. If groups are managed right, member count can grow up to hundreds of thousands. Having this many members in a group already gives you a place where you can market a product or service, depending on your goals.

Once you have created a group and you are gaining members, you want to have continuous interaction happening inside the community you just built. A lot of groups on LinkedIn start off strong then slowly die because of inactivity. You do not want this to happen to your group. Every leader should find ways to keep a group active.

Here are some ways to stimulate interaction in your LinkedIn group:

Interesting articles – create and post interesting articles that you think your members will find helpful, engaging, and entertaining. Think of at least 30 topics, and let your content send a message that tells something about your group. You can write the articles or ask someone to write them for you. You can also link articles from other blogs that you think will be of interest to your members. Posting articles in your group will create interaction when your members start commenting on your posts.

Post questions in the Discussions – make use of this space as a chance to interact with your members. In addition to your articles, create questions that will engage your members to participate in your group. Be creative and add interesting news for your members and encourage them to comment on it.

Encourage members to also post questions in the Discussions. When they do, make sure to take the time to personally answer these questions. This ensures your members that you are always there to provide them with what they need. You can also ask experts to answer questions posted on the Discussions board or write the name of an expert that is a member of your group if they can answer a question. This will serve as public praise, a way to make members feel that they are important.

Seek expert advice – in your group, find and ask experts to guest post in your group or look for an external guest speaker for an event set for your group. Be resourceful. You can try connecting with a foreigner and invite them to talk at your event.

Write about group events – If you organized a coming event for you group, write about it and entice your members to participate. After an event, write a review and ask members to comment on the review. This will give you feedback and let other members know what is happening in your community.

Send messages to members – this is a fast way to encourage members to participate in discussions. Make sure to do this when you have a really interesting discussion going on under a topic.

Manage Discussions – there may be times that members will post “inappropriate” messages in your Discussions. You can manage them by explaining that Discussions is not the place for such messages. Managing undesirable messages will make your group a more productive one and will make your members happy.

Help build connections – help members connect with other members. If you meet someone, offline or online, introduce them to a member that you think will be interested in using Magic Mail. This will leave your group with happy members that keep renewing their membership.
You can also introduce your members to other groups by suggesting them as experts in LinkedIn’s “Answers” tab.

Periodic announcement – as the leader of your group, you are allowed to send an email to the group once a week. Doing this might serve as encouragement to those members who no longer frequent the group. But be cautious about the content because you might be marked as a spammer if your content already appears in your weekly digest.

Take advantage of News Feeds – make use of the RSS functionality of blogs and websites that fit your group. Setting up the feeds will allow a stream of content from these sites to appear to your group. You can set this up by going to the “Manage” tab.

Feature interesting topics from your Discussion – as a group leader, you can select discussion topics and feature them as Manager’s Choice. Your chosen topic will appear on the group home page. It is one way of attracting your members to join discussions.

Organize events – if you have the time and resources, organize events where members can get a chance to meet each other. This will strengthen the bond of your group, and at the same time will increase your network’s value.

Market your LinkedIn group – spread the word that you are managing a LinkedIn group. You can do this by integrating the group to your website or include the group link on your other social media sites. Doing this will show group discussions on your sites and will attract interested individuals to join the discussion.

Ask members to help out with the group – you can give official roles to willing members. Ask them if they want to help out in maintaining continuous interaction within the community. Members who feel more involved have higher chances of contributing to the group.

These are just a few ways to keep your group alive. If there is continuous interaction in your group, the more ideas you will gather from your members. This could lead to the possibility of membership growth. Useful information will keep flowing, helping you and your members learn something new each day. Take advantage of LinkedIn’s features to connect with possible customers. Create a group, build, and take care of it because your network will play a big part in achieving your business goals.

Maria Elena Duron, CEO (chief engagement officer), buzz2bucks | a word of mouth marketing firm, is skilled at making networks “work” and harnessing powerful online and offline buzz, she facilitates online visibility services and word of mouth coaching and workshops – taking companies and professionals from buzz-worthy to bucks-worthy.

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs Tagged With: , ,

Guest Blog Your Personal Brand

December 22, 2011 By 4 Comments

Having a business is about creating products and services, generating sales, striving to get customers at all times, and making your customers happy with what you are offering. Having a business means the need for a good marketing strategy to spread awareness and generate sales. The online market is a great place where you can build your brand and reach out to millions of consumers worldwide.

Businesses are creating websites with blogs as a place to talk about their products and services. As a marketing strategy, they expose brands on social media sites to get connected with customers and get feedback from them. With a well planned blog, you can generate search engine traffic, products and services exposure, and a way to connect with others that are interested in your business.

A good blog has to have great content in order to attract an audience. Keep them entertained while giving practical advice and something that will help them. Create content with great value, content that talks about your business and passions. Write about the things that you learned and share them with your audience.

As part of maintaining a blog for your audience, you want to give them variety. You can do this by guest blogging your personal brand or asking others to guest blog for you. You can ask other blogs, those who share your interests and can help your business, with a large following, to write for you or feature your article on their site. Build a network with other blogs to help you generate traffic to your site. Post quality content as a way to reach out to consumers and build brand awareness. Guest blogging is about building relationships with possible benefits of generating traffic, getting quality backlinks, and gaining brand exposure.

Guest blogging is a marketing strategy and here are some reasons why you should guest blog your personal brand:

Great search marketing – guest blogging will give you lots of high quality links and high quality content. This will increase your brand value and will generate quality traffic to your blog. If you can hold your visitors’ interest, there is the possibility of converting them to subscribers. Guest blogging is also the easiest way to build quality backlinks to your blog.

Gain exposure – if you create quality content and blogs and others find your work interesting, they might publish it on their website and this will gain you exposure. If your article gains a lot of recognition, then you are already building your brand. Use your articles to make an impression and a chance to gain more subscribers to your blog.

Gain credibility – once you have gained exposure and prove that your content is credible, you increase your chances of getting shared with others. If bigger blogs find your work helpful, and see that they can trust and count on you, they will surely help you promote your blog.
Building relationships – guest blogging or getting guest bloggers for your site builds relationship. It also increases your network and your audience.

As part of a marketing strategy, you want to guest blog on sites that have high traffic and large followings. This increases your chances of directing others to your blog and getting your brand known. As a tip, target media sites and associations, find blogs who you like and would like to know. If you want to ask a blogger to guest at your site, start building a relationship with the blog by commenting on their articles or sharing links to your site to let them know that you share their interest or that they might find something of the same nature in your blog. Connect with other blogs by promoting them on social media sites. Get them to guest blog for you by asking them politely.

Guest blogging is a beneficial marketing strategy. Even though you are doing it for free, you are building something more important that will come of value to your business in the long run. Like anything else in the business industry, it takes time and proper planning to execute such strategies. If you target the right blogs, you have a higher chance of spreading the word about your brand. Invest your time in writing high quality content to help build credibility. Keep your blog up-to-date and build a mailing list. Get on your Twitter and Facebook accounts to keep in touch with your subscribers. Give them what they want, something that will be useful to them, keep them interested and you will gain their loyalty and expand your audience.

Maria Elena Duron, CEO (chief engagement officer), buzz2bucks | a word of mouth marketing firm, is skilled at making networks “work” and harnessing powerful online and offline buzz, she facilitates online visibility services and word of mouth coaching and workshops – taking companies and professionals from buzz-worthy to bucks-worthy.

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs Tagged With: , ,
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