10 Secrets to a Personal Brand Upgrade – Part 2

January 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment
women speaker

In part 1 of this two-part series I offered the first 5 secrets to your personal brand upgrade for 2013. Here are the remaining 5 secrets to be an awesome New You in the New Year! 6. Build "Me to the Power of We" Your personal branding success is ultimately determined by both your ability to communicate your unique promise of value AND your communities capability to magnify your brand. Your brand grows exponentially by others touting your value. Make it a goal to build the 'we' that will support your brand. Join LinkedIn groups related to your expertise, search for opportunities to be a guest blogger, comment on blogs in your niche, sponsor a 'blogathon' on your own blog, start an interview series and introduce thought leaders to your community. The opportunities are endless to build a community that will in turn grow your brand. 7. Focus on Your Real Clout, not Klout! Your online community and tribe is very important but do not forget about the "real world". We often get … [Read more...]

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

10 Secrets to a Personal Brand Upgrade – Part 1

January 5, 2013 by 1 Comment
seo-secrets

Happy New Year for Brand YOU in 2013! Many of us like to use the first days of the year to create our 'resolutions' - lose weight, exercise more, read a book every week, etc. To be honest, how many of us actually stick to these resolutions? I know I almost never do! So, here is my challenge: 'Resolve' to give up making empty resolutions and take immediate, practical actions to upgrade your personal brand for 2013! In this two-part post, I will give you 10 secrets to get you started on refreshing your personal brand. Here are the first five. 1. Refresh Your Head-shot Start off with the New Year with a new 'look'. Keep it professional and stay 'on-brand', but change it up a bit. For example, if your head-shot in 2012 was more formal with a tie and jacket, think about being a bit more casual for 2013. Simply changing the color of your shirt, your hair style, even the glasses you wear helps to refresh your brand. Just make sure to upload this new head-shot to Gravatar and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Exuding Your Brand, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Social Media, Web/Tech Tagged With: , , ,

Building Your Personal Brand ‘Communication Wheel’

December 7, 2012 by 1 Comment
Bicycle wheel

Managing your personal brand year in and year out involves a regular process of reflection, selection, and implementation. We first reflect on the successes and challenges of the past year. After this, we select the goals and milestones for the next year. Finally, we implement a communication plan to clearly, consistently, and constantly put our brand into motion. The Parts of a Brand Communication Wheel Many people know me as 'the personal branding guy on the bicycle' so I like to visualize a communication plan as the wheels on a bicycle. Without wheels a bicycle cannot move! Likewise, a brand communication plan allows your personal brand to move forward and continue your ride to career and life success. Let's take a closer look at a the parts of a bicycle wheel and how they relate to your personal brand communication wheel. 1) The Rim The rim of your communication plan represents your unique promise of value. This is what differentiates you from everyone else.  On the … [Read more...]

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

5 Tips to Use Up ‘Your Weak’ and Find ‘Your Strong’

November 4, 2012 by Leave a Comment
strongkid

Personal branding is all about leveraging your strengths to stand out and differentiate yourself. Our strengths are what makes us unique, authentic, and real. Yet we tend to easily fall into the trap of fixing our weaknesses. We invest time, money, and effort trying to be better at something that we may never get better at doing.  This really comes as no surprise as the focus on weakness in society is hard to ignore. Almost every job interview asks about our weaknesses in light of our strengths! Basically we are becoming experts at defining how bad we 'suck' at something. Runa Magnusdottir addressed the issue of weaknesses in her vlog Branding Your Unique Weakness.  She reminds us that our strengths actually can grow out of our weaknesses and shares how you can turn your weaknesses into your strengths. This reminded me of a powerful commercial for Saucony running shoes called "What is Strong?"  I simply love the message in this commercial: "Maybe strong is just what you have … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Discovering Your Brand, Exuding Your Brand, Strong Personal Brands Tagged With: , , ,

5 Tips to Avoid ‘Number Porn’

October 2, 2012 by 4 Comments
ff_klout4_f

Last Spring John Falchetto blogged about something he called “number porn”: “With the online measuring tools at our disposal we now have the ability to indulge in number porn. The bigger the number, the more we get hot and bothered.” This got me thinking. Does size really matter?  Well, for some people it does and the focus on social proof is now causing many of us to be concerned with how big we are! Social media is a powerful tool to build our personal brands. When we start out actively using the different channels available, we can fall into the trap of focusing on the numbers and not the engagement. The numbers give us that immediate validation we are looking for and it is exciting to see our growth. But when our score drops or our followers stop following, we can fall into the trap of feeling inadequate and, well, small! It’s not the size that matters. It’s how you use it! This is the classic quality versus quantity conundrum. Don’t be focused so much on … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Expressing Your Brand, Exuding Your Brand, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

Video Builds Personal Branding Credibility, Visibility, and Likeability

September 5, 2012 by 1 Comment
Screen Shot 2012-09-05 at 2.53.31 PM

  I am hooked on the power of video and how it will build credibility, visibility, and likeability for your personal brand. So, rather than write about it, I used video to talk about video! Enjoy my video post below and visit my 30-day Personal Branding Vlogathon hosted on my blog from September 1st to the 30th. Every day a new thought-leader is sharing their personal brand message on video using videoBIO's DIY online tool. William Arruda kicked off the Vlogathon on September first with his awesome video on why video is the 'killer app' for your personal brand! http://youtu.be/H-x9v0Td6Xo   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. … [Read more...]

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7 Tips to Brand Yourself on Video

August 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment
blog-iphone-video

We all know the saying that a picture says a thousand words. Video takes those words one step further and makes them real and memorable. In the world of Web 2.0 people want information in bite-sized chunks. Video is a perfect medium for establishing your visual identity on the web and delivering your personal brand in a clear and concise way. Only a couple years ago using video was going beyond what was expected in personal branding. Today it has become the norm. Consider this fact. In July 2011, ComScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, reported that 180 million Internet users in the US alone watched online video content. This averages almost 19 hours per viewer in a single month! For 2012, William Arruda says that video continues to be a major trend in branding through DIY (do it yourself) and professional platforms. Here are 7 ways you can use video to promote your personal brand.   1. Video bios Michael Margolis, founder of Get Storied, talks about the need … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Expressing Your Brand, Exuding Your Brand, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

Taking Time Out to Create New Habits

August 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment
meditation-6

I recently returned from a 5-day meditation retreat outside of Kyoto, Japan. Meditation used to be a regular part of my life a few years ago, but has unfortunately taken a back-seat. Other things have occupied my time and meditating even for just 15 minutes simply became a chore. However, I have felt an urge, almost a calling, to bring meditation back into my daily routine. My life used to be less stressful and much more balanced when I disconnected myself for 25 minutes every morning and evening. I wanted this back. I needed this back. Off the Social Media Grid In the past year I have been grateful for the role social media has played in my life. It has helped me to launch my business, connect with amazing thought leaders, and express my personal brand. It has become part and parcel of daily life - but perhaps too much. Time I could have spent meditating or even just enjoying the present moment has been replaced with tweets, likes, comments, +1s, pins, etc. I can't even … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Discovering Your Brand, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

Wear Your Personal Brand Colors with Pride

July 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment
larmstrong

  Yellow. It is the color of champions; the color that 198 of the world's best cyclists race for every July in the Tour de France.  It is the color of the 'maillot jaune' - the 'yellow jersey' - the ultimate prize in professional cycling. Cyclists dream of wearing this color and dread the prospect of losing it. It symbolizes power, tenacity, honor, and pride. It unites a team, a country, and even the world. The yellow jersey is an excellent example of the psychological and emotional impact of color. Companies use color in many different ways to evoke a reaction and to solidify a brand in people's minds. Whether it is Tiffany's robin's-egg blue box, UPS' brown trucks, Coke's red cans, or the Tour de France's yellow jersey, we immediately identify with these brands by their color. What's Your Personal Brand's Color? Just as companies brand themselves with color, your personal brand needs its own color. Your brand colors become part of the visual vocabulary that makes an … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Exuding Your Brand, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Sports, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Seeing Your Personal Brand in 3-D

June 1, 2012 by 2 Comments
3d

Have you ever viewed your personal brand in 3-D? I recently came across philosopher Tom Morris in the book "Cycling Philosophy for Everyone" who has a theory of success called the '3-D Approach to Life.' Discover your positive talents. Develop the most meaningful and beneficial of those talents. Deploy your talents into the world for the good of others and yourself. One of the chapters in this book is called "Lance Armstrong and True Success". The authors introduce Tom Morris' 3-D Approach as applied to Lance. Lance discovered his positive talents at a young age. Being drawn to endurance sports and starting off as a triathlete, he soon discovered he had a special talent on the bike. This then became his focus. He developed this talent through intense and regimented training plans to capitalize on his strength. After a battle with cancer he focused his talent on one thing - winning the Tour de France. This focus developed him into the greatest cyclist in the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Exuding Your Brand, Sports, Strong Personal Brands Tagged With: , , , , ,
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