My trip last weekend to keynote at Ball State University took me in to the heart of basketball country. Everywhere you looked there was connection to the game.

Coupled with this has been the meteoric rise of Jeremy Lin over the past two weeks. A social media personal branding sensation.

It was a case of basketball, basketball, basketball! It truly has been LINsanity (he has just applied to trademark that phrase!).

There are a number of lessons from Jeremy’s LINtastic recent success that you can take and apply to your own personal brand;

1. Continue to play to your strengths.
Even though he was not picked up originally by an NBA team, dropped and relegated to minor leagues he still continued to play to his own set of strengths.

Personal Brand Lesson
It is important to understand your weaknesses and how they might impact on your brand. But if you spend all your time on them you draw attention to them and you will never get a weakness to a point of strength. Take the extra time and effort to leverage your strengths.

2. Be ready for the opportunity.
A number of injuries and poor results gave him another chance, just when the team were considering releasing him. His persistence paid off and now he has helped the team to win 8 of the last 10 games.

Personal Brand Lesson
In the new reality that is work today the next opportunity might come when you least expect it. You have to be ready. Once you have been given the chance make the most of it and be sure to give 110%. People will remember you for your hard work and results.

3. Be authentic, remember where you came from.
There have been his detractors, but Lin has remained humble and appreciative of the chance to play. Even crass (or just thoughtless) sports reporting he recognised as a mistake and accepted apologies.

Personal Brand Lesson
Your personal brand is who you are. It should not be some false image or manufactured personna. The temptation once you have found more success might be to conveniently forget the past. Remain true to who you are and recognise what got you where you are now.

What other lessons can you see and apply to your career and personal brand from the recent LINsanity?

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.

The video above reminds us that “Pain is temporary, but quitting lasts forever.” Lance’s battle with cancer more so than his 7 Tour de France victories epitomizes this philosophy. Here was a cyclist in the prime of his career taken out by a fatal disease, and yet he had an unyielding focus to not quit. He simply refused to get that DNF in his race against cancer and he won.

4 Actions to Avoid Quitting on Your Brand

Personal branding is not a race and there is no finish line. However, in the face of pain it is possible to quit believing in our brands. Here are 4 actions you can take to quiet that evil voice telling you to quit.

1. Stay focused on your ‘Why’

Your vision, purpose, values, and passions energize you.  They are the bedrock of your brand and  remembering why you do what you do will always reinforce a strong belief in your unique promise of value.  Guy Kawasaki reminds us that purpose and passion ‘enchants’ others.  Your ‘Why’ is your brand differentiator and pulls people in. ‘What’ you do and ‘how’ you do it is likely the same or similar to many others. Simon Sinek refers to this as the ‘Golden Circle’ in his TED Talk and tells us that “People do not buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”  Keep your sights on the ‘Why’ and you will have that strength to power through the pain and pedal onward.

2. Be selectively famous

Personal branding guru William Arruda says that “personal branding is not about being famous, but rather about being selectively famous.” Focus on just the target audience who need to know you and avoid trying to be all things to everyone. This may seem counter-intuitive as you do not want to turn away possible business, but the more selective and targeted you are, the more focused you become and the more successful you will be. Spreading yourself too thin will begin to dilute your brand and your ‘Why’ will no longer be clear to those who are making decisions about you. Your passionate ’Why’ will transform into a painful ‘Why am I doing this?’ and the desire to quit will prevail.

3. Keep Your Goals to Yourself

To realize your ‘Why’, you need goals. So set your goals, make them SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound), write them down, post them in a place where you can see them every day, and internalize them. Then keep them to yourself and don’t tell anyone! Psychology tests have proven that the simple act of telling someone your goal makes it less likely to happen. Announcing your goal to others and receiving praise for it satisfies you just enough so that you are less motivated to do the hard work needed to complete your goal. Your goal now has a DNF!  Once you have actually achieved your goals then tell the world.

4. Thank Your Champions

A champion believe in you and your ‘Why.’  Of course fans, followers, and subscribers are important members of your brand community, but your leap of faith is not theirs as well. Your champion’s support runs deep. When that inevitable nagging voice inside your head is telling you to quit, your champion will remind you that your pain is temporary and you are riding on the right road to success. Whether your champion is your husband, wife, business partner, life partner, parent, teacher, or friend, make sure to thank them every day for believing in you and giving you the strength to continue riding down that road to follow your dream. The simple act of thanking them is a powerful force.

How have quieted that voice inside your head telling you to quit?  Share your comments below.

In today’s competitive global marketplace, you cannot afford to not set yourself up for success or jeopardize your performance with poor role and environment choices. Being able to compete with top talent requires demonstrating a history of results that comes with performing well at work.

By positioning yourself using your true strengths and unique qualities – what I like to call your Brand DNA – for best fit roles and environments, you will not only naturally stand out in a highly qualified global talent pool, but you will set yourself up to perform at your best by being your best self.

Using your true strengths leads to optimum performance

True strengths are defined by one’s natural ability to make choices that lead to optimum performance. A person can’t help but express their true strengths when a situation calls for them to be applied. Hence leveraging your true strengths sets you up to perform at your best and can be done with ease rather than the energy, work and additional focus required when leveraging other talents and skill sets.

A person’s true strengths are part of their Brand DNA – they help drive their performance, their fulfillment, their differentiation and are part of their ultimate competitive advantage.

With an awareness of their true strengths an expat can fully capitalize on their power to generate value in the world – as well as communicate this value to employers or clients who are seeking it, increasing their chances of success in their career or business.

A lack of awareness of these important assets reduces a current or aspiring expat’s ability to: 

• understand what drives their performance, their satisfaction and how they can perform at their best with the greatest ease
• see when their role and/or environment choices are affecting their ability to perform and enjoy their work
• identify and position themselves for roles and work environments that would set them up for success
• communicate their unique value and stand out from their competitors in the global talent pool
• influence decision makers and translate interviews into job offers, new assignments or new clients

Given we spend at least a third of our waking hours at work and the current competitive global marketplace, you cannot afford to unnecessarily inhibit your ability to perform, compete and thrive at work.

Identifying your true strengths can be a challenge

High achieving expats are usually aware of many of their strengths. But some natural talents come so easily to them they don’t see them as a strength. Or they don’t see how they contribute to their peak performance. Sadly this can result in some of their true strengths being underutilized or even untapped completely.

As well as being unconscious of some of their strengths, high achieving expats can also mistake a skill they’ve mastered to perform well at a job as a true strength. True strengths can be leveraged effortlessly, while skill mastery requires focus and practice – and can sometimes be draining rather than motivating. Hence roles dependent on skills not rooted in one’s true strengths require more energy and effort to perform well, as well as potentially being much less satisfying.

Identifying true strengths can also be challenging when a high achiever is in an environment that triggers their blockers and weakens or neutralizes those strengths. For example, someone with strengths in innovative thinking and visioning has the potential to help an organization become an industry trendsetter. However they could also possess the blockers of unrealistic goal setting and the inability to respond to challenges to their ideas without anxiety or frustration – both which can affect the power of those strengths.

Using those true strengths in an environment that plays to those blockers may result in those strengths being seen as blockers or weaknesses - and work against them generating desired results. If this person worked in a team, organization or culture that was risk averse, their innovative ideas would be less likely to be adopted. They may be seen as reckless and untrustworthy rather than an innovator. Without trusted advisors from whom they could calmly receive and internalize honest feedback about their ideas, they could take an “overly creative” approach to an important project that could have disastrous consequences.

Impact of not using your Brand DNA to drive your choices

In this example the expat’s lack of awareness of their true strengths and the environments in which they can actually use them could result in reduced performance, lack of advancement or even dismissal, as well as a loss of confidence in their ability to perform. This expat’s choice to take on exciting work in another country could quickly turn from a dream to a nightmare.

But this is not because they didn’t have the ability to be a top performer. It’s simply because their choice of role and work environment – meaning the organization, project or culture in which they worked – inhibited their ability to leverage their true strengths and succeed by being their best self.

Hence when high achievers don’t build their personal brand or value proposition around their true strengths and unique qualities – or their brand DNA - but rather around mastered skills and qualities they associate with top performance, they are positioning themselves for less than ideal fit roles and environments that:

• don’t leverage all of their natural talents that drive their success and how they generate value in the world
• may trigger their blockers and inhibit their ability to perform at their best
• may force them to struggle or work harder to meet objectives
• can drain them of energy and confidence in their abilities
• may allow them to accomplish great things but they will enjoy them less
• can have a very negative impact on their ability to advance or realize their career or business goals

It’s clear the price for not using your Brand DNA to guide your career or business choices can be high - some might even say crippling for the normally high achieving expat professional, executive or consultant. And yet many seem willing to pay it – which is why there are millions of unfulfilled, unhappy, unengaged, under performing and even unemployed people in the world right now.

Stand out and succeed by being your best self

By positioning yourself using your true strengths and unique qualities for best fit roles and environments, you will naturally stand out in a highly qualified global talent pool. Your true strengths and unique style will help you develop a compelling, differentiated message of value and give you a competitive edge over those competing for the same roles.

This approach will position you as the candidate of choice for the opportunities that allow you to perform at your best by leveraging your true strengths and being your best self.

Expat & International Career Success Tip: Are you an current or aspiring expat and unclear about the jobs or roles and work environments that would set you up to be successful by being your best self? Historically have you been a high performer but are now struggling in your current role and are not sure why? Are you uncertain what your true strengths are?

If so, reflect on times when you have performed at your best and truly enjoyed your work. What were you doing and how would you describe the environment in which you were working? Identify ways that you can use these insights to help identify your true strengths – and how to make better choices in your career or business. Commit to doing at least one of these things and being more strategic in your choices to support your career success abroad.

Megan Fitzgerald, Expat Career and Personal Branding Coach, helps expats land fulfilling work abroad by becoming highly visible, sought after experts and leaders. Named a top 50 personal branding consultant, she’s been featured in Fortune, CNNMoney.com and WSJ Online. She writes about expat career success at: www.careerbychoiceblog.com

Social media is definitely one of the things that you need to use effectively in order to position yourself as the expert in your niche. Establishing a presence there is not enough – you need to know how to communicate and engage with your audience well.

Simply put, it is not enough to simply be yourself. You need to realize that you are the product – you need to be able to sell yourself to people, to keep them coming back for more. Otherwise, you are just going to be another faceless, nameless voice in social media, trying to get yourself heard over all the other noise.

So how do you become the product? What are the things you can do to engage your audience and keep them interested?

1.   Know your audience

In order to effectively sell yourself, you need to know and understand your audience. You have to find out what they like and what interests them, and then figure out how to build a relationship with them through the things you’ve discovered.

A simple thing you can do is to ask questions. People in social media enjoy answering questions, especially when it’s relevant to them. The more answers you get, the more you understand your audience and what you can do to engage them. Social media has really made things easier since it lets you communicate with your audience directly and get inspiration from them.

2.    Get the conversation going

True product engagement means that people are talking, debating and arguing about you. In social media, the more people who are talking about your brand, the more that they will attract other people who are likely to be interested in following you as well.

How exactly do you do this? Create polls, host contests, get your audience’s opinion, and always remember to reply to comments and mentions of your brand. Basically, you need to pay attention to your audience and communicate with them through social media. Don’t let any response to your brand be ignored. Even a mere thank you or show of appreciation can help the conversation get started about your brand.

3.   Remember to include a “call to action”

Sometimes, your audience needs a little nudge to start commenting and participating in your social media discussions, so don’t be afraid to ask them to like, re-tweet or comment on your posts if they enjoyed it.  Of course, remember not to do this on every little post of yours, since that can become annoying. But occasionally, it really helps to tell people to comment or like what you’ve written to get things going.

4.   “A picture equals a thousand words”

There’s a reason why this saying exists, and it’s because the majority of people are more drawn to visual images as compared to written words. Think of Facebook and how people who post interesting, intriguing or even shocking pictures get the most number of comments and likes. Of course, as a personal brand, it’s important to stay away from posting anything offensive. But the point is, pictures typically evoke a sharper reaction from people as opposed to written words.

Since you are the product in social media, posting interesting pictures that represent you and your brand can help you stand out and be noticed. Remember to make sure that they’re relevant to your niche – don’t simply post things that are intriguing but have nothing to do with you, since this wouldn’t help your personal brand.

It’s all about engagement

When it comes to social media and personal branding, it’s not just about you. There has to be something about what you do that makes people connect and relate with you.

The key here is engagement. As a personal brand, you are the product – so you have to offer your audience something that makes them want to “buy” you or listen to you.

Think of the well-known personal brands out there. What makes them stand out? What makes them so special? These people know how to sell. They know how to convince others of their expertise. Their personal brand has become a product that people want.

So make sure you know your audience, get the conversation going about your brand, contribute with value in a meaningful way, include a call to action, and utilize visual images to engage your audience. By always remembering that you’re the product, you can learn how to sell yourself so that people will stand up and listen.

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.

Happy Valentines Day!

Do you love YOU enough?

How often do you take time to reflect on your strengths?

I would quite confidently suggest very little. In my work with leaders and employees in Fortune 500 Companies the most under leveraged part of their personal brands are their core strengths.

Your core strengths are the things that you do so naturally and so well that you perform them almost sub-consciously. When I point out to someone that others have identified a particular strength in them they say

“Oh really, but I do that all the time!” – EXACTLY!

Many people are very poor at spending enough time on their own personal development. It might only be in their annual reviews that they do this. Those experiences are not always very positive ones. 5 minutes spent reviewing what you did well. Then 55 minutes spent on strategies to bring weaknesses up to, at best, an average level of performance.

Some may view this as either a little simplistic or harsh. Truth is that only 42% of North Americans believe that working mostly on their strengths will mean they are more successful. That drops to an alarming 24% of Japanese and Chinese.

Very often it is difficult for you to articulate your top strengths and how they might be reflected in your career to date. If you can identify those strengths, you are ahead of the game. And you will love yourself more!

You can also take this information and create your examples, or stories, around how you have used that strength in business situations. People love stories. They will be more likely to want to work with you and for you based on these emotional connections.

There are many other assessments and tests that can be taken to understand more about yourself. It is probably best to find one or two that resonate and make sense to you.

Another good personal brand exercise is to conduct a SWOT analysis – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats. In each area ask yourself these questions:

Strengths – what are my strengths, what do I have that is positive, that can help me achieve my goals?

Weaknesses – what are my weaknesses, where am I challenged the most?

Opportunities – if I was able to overcome those weaknesses and utlilise my strengths what will result for me? What is the upside?

Threats – what is the down side if I do not address those challenges?

It’s not just enough to be aware of your strengths. Take the time to discover if you have other hidden talents either through your own analysis or from the feedback of others – ideally both. The foundation of ALL strong brands are built in part on maximising strengths.

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.

What’s Your Brand’s Lasting Impression?

Just as we need to be aware of the first impression our personal brand makes when we walk into a room, we also need to think about the lasting impression we leave behind after we say “goodbye.” People will always make decisions about you after you leave the ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ rooms. Their decision to connect with you will be based on their emotional reaction from that very first meeting, but they will always later rationalize their decision based on the lasting impression you leave behind after you have left the room.

This reminds me of the famous ‘Elaine Dance’ from Seinfeld.

I am sure Elaine had hoped to leave a better impression then she did! Here are three tips for your personal brand to leave an awesome lasting impression and prevent the fallout from the Elaine Dance!

3 Tips to Leave Your Mark in the ‘Real’ and ‘Virtual’ World

1. Respond and give thanks sooner than later

A good rule to follow here is what I call the “24-hour rule.” Send an email within a day after leaving a ’real-world’ event to all the people you engaged with. Thank them for their time and even mention something that they shared with you. This shows you were listening and valued their contribution.

In your ‘virtual-world’ always thank someone for following you, mentioning a post you wrote/shared, retweeting your tweets, liking your Facebook page, or commenting on your blog. When others feel you have something valuable to share with members of their own community, show your appreciation and say thank you right away. Don’t put off sending your thanks until tomorrow when you can do it today!

 2. Give credit where credit is due

To this day I remember the President of a university I worked for telling me “Go ahead and copy my idea. Just give me credit for it!”

Nowadays, blogs, eBooks, and online portals have enabled any one of us to be ‘published’. For 2012 William Arruda sees personal publishing as an important trend for demonstrating thought leadership and extending your personal brand. It is now more important than ever to share the resources where you have gained your insight, tools, and knowledge. For example, “I picked up some great tips from Reach’s ‘The Personal Branding Blog’ so check it out this link.” or “My personal branding approach uses Reach’s proven 1-2-3 Success methodology.” In your social media channels always refer to the source of the tweet, post, or video you are sharing.

3. Ask yourself if you are ‘on-brand’ or ‘off-brand’

Is what you are about to say or do going to support your brand or potentially damage it? Elaine’s memorable dance on that Seinfeld episode is a perfect example of why you need to be aware of your actions!  You might be a thought leader in your field, but a insulting comment or ‘Elaine dance’ at a networking event could leave a mark that you do not want to be remembered for.

In the virtual world you leave digital footprints behind you. Mind what you say in your blog posts, tweets, Facebook updates, and comments on sites. Personal publishing may be an effective way to leave a lasting impression, but it is also important to realize that once you do publish something online, it is available for the world to see.  You cannot take it back. Even if you remove it or sweep it under the digital carpet, it is likely that someone has already seen it and shared it.

You may have worked very hard on building a lasting impression online, but all it takes is one bad comment or photo tagged of you to show up on the first page of your search results to change everyone’s opinion of you. Use the “grandmother test” – if you wouldn’t want your grandmother to see or hear it, then don’t share it!.  Instead share the things that support your brand and would make your grandmother proud.

Do you have any other tips to leave a lasting impression?  Share your ideas 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

When you walk in to the lobby of a tall office building, often you will see the sign for the stairs. But does that sign say enough to make you ignore the elevators and walk the stairs?

Chance are no. Unless you are still sticking to a new years resolution!

But if you saw the sign above, chances are by over 35%, that you would. Even 9 months after the sign was first posted. This is what researchers in New York found after placing a few of these around the city.

So if something that simple can cause that type of re-action and continued action, what can you be saying about yourself that might get the same result?

One immediately obvious place would be your business card.

Rather than say Accountant. What re-action might you get if it were to say – Honest assessment. Accurate results – Accountant?

Or better still, include one of your emotional attributes.

Honest assessment. Accurate results. Fun approach. – Accountant.

When communicating your personal brand it’s important to reflect the real you, after all it’s going to be the reason why people want to hire you, work with you and for you. The fact you can perform great tax returns is a given. If you have a little fun too – that’s the difference.

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.

As the manager of our personal brand, we must be diligent in insuring that this tool shows our best side and gives that great first and lasting impression.

Are you guilty of….

Long and unclear messages – with the volume of emails that people are receiving these days, we have one chance to get their attention. When they open their mail and see that it’s long, there’s a big chance that they’ll scan it a little before deciding to save it for later reading. This is fine but there’s also a great chance that they’ll never get back to it. What you can do is make it clear and concise. Use bullet points to highlight your ideas to make your message easier to understand. Make it short and direct to the point.

I’m personally guilty of this. It comes from many years writing formal letters. Email is such different animal. I recently read a recommendation that we need keep emails to three sentences – anything more than that then we need to pick up the phone. There’s a challenge!

Sending without checking for errors – it is important that we check and double check our message before sending it out. Readers are taking their time to know us; we don’t want bad grammar and misused words to get in the way because this will reflect back on our brand. Tt makes us unreliable. Take that extra time to reread the message before sending it out because once you hit send, there’s no way to get it back for corrections.

Inaccurate and unclear subject lines –this is important because this line is responsible for attracting our readers to open our message. If we give them generic and a poorly worded subject line, there’s a big chance that they won’t open the email. The subject line should be a sentence that describes your message, like a teaser and what to expect when they open their email. Writing specific subjects will also save your message from being marked as spam.

Shortcuts and abbreviations – never use shortcuts or abbreviated words for business messages. Not everyone can understand abbreviated words or shortcuts, like those that are used for text messaging. Use of such a style is also too informal and can be misinterpreted as unprofessional or unreliable. Make sure that you spell all words out correctly and eliminate grammatical errors. Any email message that has no shortcuts or abbreviated words is more appealing to readers because it displays professionalism and makes our brand trustworthy.

Not being careful with your content – it is important that we review our message and think about the content that we are going to include. If we are going to include links in our message, let’s make sure that we link our customers to the right site. If we are going to attach an image or video, let’s make sure that it will greatly benefit the receiver.  And, leave the animated images off of any email.

These five common email mistakes can be avoided if we take the time to review our messages properly before sending them out. Ask someone how you can simplify your message so that readers will have an easier time understanding it. Then make use of bullet points to make your ideas clear. Read and reread your message.  Use your Twitter skills to make the message even more concise!

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.

What’s Your Brand’s First Impression?

Does your personal brand capture others at “Hello” when you enter a room? We all probably remember that infamous scene in the movie Jerry Maguire when Dorthy interrupts Jerry as he is professing his love to her and says, “Shut up. Just shut up. You had me at hello. You had me at hello.”

I often recall this scene when I remind my clients that their personal brands help to capture people’s attention and send off a powerful first impression. Whether you are interviewing for a job, meeting potential clients and partners at a networking event, or even commenting on someone’s blog, how you use your brand to say “hello” and engage others will provide the differentiation you need to stand out.  The first impression you make goes a long way towards defining how others perceive you, and remember, we don’t get a second chance to make a first impression!

3 Tips to Make Your Mark Offline and Online

1. Maintain eye contact

In the real world we need to look people in the eye at first meeting and maintain good eye contact throughout the discussion. Especially at a networking event, once you are engaged in a chat don’t let your eyes wander towards the person at the other end of the room you really want to be talking with. Keep your focus on the person in front of you until you find a polite way to move on.

We maintain eye contact in the virtual world with our professional head shot – one that has a full view of your face, eyes, and smile!  Use Gravatar to link your head shot to the avatar that shows up when you comment on other’s blog. And don’t be an “egg head” on Twitter! Nobody wants to engage with an egg or a silhouette image.

2. Seek first to understand…

…rather than to be undersood! Too often we get caught up with proving our brand to others by boasting about our credentials, experience, ability, and skills. Our personal brands speak for themselves, so let your brand do the talking!  When meeting people, be the first to ask questions and find a common ground. Listen actively to what others have to say by acknowledging their input and responding sincerely.

Even in the virtual world we need to be listeners. Social media channels are a wealth of insight, ideas, and thought leadership.  Use an 80/20 rule – maximize 80% of your time as a listener and 20% as a talker. By following this rule, the contribution you eventually make will give off an impression of value to your target audience.

3.  Use people’s names and personalize your connections

What’s in a name? EVERYTHING!  People like to hear their own names so make an extra effort to use someone’s names in every interaction. After leaving a chat, thank the other person for their time -  “It’s been great talking with you Peter.”  When commenting on a blog use the person’s name and recognize their contribution before giving your comment – “Thank you Peter for this great post.  I really agree with what you said about…  I often feel that…,”.  A great way to personalize your request is to avoid the standard canned request when connecting with others on LinkedIn. By making your request personal it will demonstrate your sincere interest in connecting with that specific person rather than simply increasing the number of connections you have.

Stay tuned for my next post where I will share 3 tips to leave a lasting impression!

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.

Here are some media trends that will hit big this 2012. Take a look at how these media types are going to help your business:

SMS – people like being mobile, we prey on convenience. In the last decade, mobile phones changed the way people communicate and because most consumers have mobile phones, text messaging as a marketing strategy is going to be big this year. By texting, you reach out to your consumers faster. When they hear the beep, they read your message. As per email, it might take a while before they can read your message, especially when they don’t open their emails on a regular basis.

Mobile compatibility – if you have a website, you want to make sure that it is mobile compatible. A lot of people are jumping into using smartphones. They want to be able to access their social media accounts even when they are on the go. They want to be able to read their emails and browse websites without having to pull up their computers. When your website is mobile compatible, this means that you are not giving your customers a hard time accessing your website. Again, convenience. You also increase your chances of making a sale.

Facebook – Facebook is not going anywhere, as a matter of fact it’s still growing. It’s still a great place to connect with your audience and a chance to convert them into customers. Make sure to strategize on how you can make the site work for your business needs.

Pinterest – this is a new site that has great potential for businesses. The concept is to “Pin” images that interests you. Your followers can see what you are pinning and they can like, comment, and “Repin” your image. You can even organize your interests into “Boards”. The “Board” is where you can pin images depending on each board topic. It’s a place where you can post images of your products or services and let your customers see what you are offering.

Gamification – consumers like to participate in games and if you gamify your business, you have more customers getting involved. The concept of gamifying is earning something, like points and prizes. FourSquare is a good example. Companies are integrating FourSquare into their business by rewarding those who checked-in with points and badges. When you reach a certain number of points or a certain badge, you get discounts on products or services.

Using video – videos can help your business in a lot of ways. You can use them to educate and train, and as a means to communicate with your customers. Learn how to make use of videos as web content. Instead of articles, why not make short videos to give out tips? They don’thave to be long; you can do something instructional in less than 3 minutes. Consumers like watching how things are done. This is also their way of seeing you and getting to know you more.

You don’t have to be on everything but you can try to mix these options up and see which combinations give you the most benefits.

What combos are you using?

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.