Who Else Wants a Personal and Profitable Connection?

March 15, 2012 By 2 Comments

Connections make the world go round. To achieve success in this world, most of the time, it’s not really what you know, but who you know. Trust is the building block of any relationship, and this includes the relationship between a seller and a buyer, an employer and an employee, and a professional and a client.

This is why it has become essential for both business and personal brands to create strong personal connections with their customers and audience. This could mean the difference between success and failure.

People listen, follow, and buy from individuals and companies they know, like and trust, which is why building a relationship with your audience or followers is key to the success of your personal brand.

How exactly do you do this? How do you create strong personal connections with your audience both online and off? Here are some tips:

1. Remember that first impressions are important

Whether you’re meeting a client for the first time in person or interacting with someone new online, always remember that first impressions count.

Make sure that your online profiles are updated so that anyone who searches for your name in the search engines will have accurate information. It’s also essential that you have an updated photo, so that people will know what you look like. People want to interact with a person, not a faceless, nameless creature.

If you’re meeting someone new in person, it’s a good idea to do your research about them. You can do this by Googling their name, checking their social media accounts, or by asking a mutual acquaintance (if any) to tell you more about them. By knowing something about the person, you’ll have lots more to talk about and can enjoy a deeper, more meaningful interaction with each other.

2. Ask questions

People like knowing that someone is genuinely interested in their lives, which is why asking questions is a great way to create a strong personal connection with someone. Avoid being the person who views people as merely customers who can give you a profit – learn about your clients, discover what they need, and find ways to help them.

The more questions you ask, the more you can discover how to help your audience and satisfy their needs. You build a relationship with your followers by knowing them and genuinely caring about them.

3. Reveal things about yourself

To build strong personal connections with people, it’s also essential that you share things about yourself. You don’t reveal something too personal yet you can share stories that your clients or audience can relate to. I heard a phrase that has served me well – “Facts tell; Stories Sell.” What’s your story? And, how can you utilize storytelling in a way that engages and creates connections with others?

4. Communicate regularly with your audience

In our hyper busy lives, we often forget to connect just to reach out and get to know someone or to connect with providing ‘help’ in mind. If the only time you reach out to someone is when you need them, your relationship with them is in serious danger.

Social media has made it a lot easier to engage and interact with hundreds of people with just a click of a button. It’s been an easy tool to help us become more consistent so that we can get to know people better and they have the opportunity to sample ou character and competence. It’s also important to comment and reply to your followers’ posts as much as you can, because this really helps in creating a strong bond with them.

There are also many ways for you to connect with people off-line. Though people have started to rely on online communication quite heavily nowadays, these cannot completely replace the connection you create when talking and interacting with someone in person. Face-to-face meetings are still the best way to establish meaningful relationships with people.

Also, with email being such an easy and convenient way of communicating, sending a personal letter just to say thank you is a great way to help you stand out and connect with someone more strongly.

5. Be patient

Remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and strong personal connections aren’t created with just a snap of the fingers. Be patient – remember these tips, and give yourself a goal of interacting with someone meaningfully at least once a day.

Building a great relationship with one person beats having meaningless interactions with hundreds of people – so who can you connect with and make a difference in their life….today?

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.

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Expat & International Careers: Environment Choices Have a Big Impact on Your Performance and Personal Brand – Part I

March 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

“Environment is stronger than will power.”

~ Buckminster Fuller

I cannot overemphasize the importance of this statement when it comes to maximizing the power of your personal brand and making environment choices that naturally set you up for success.

 

Strengths are a key driver to your performance & personal brand

Strengths-driven roles allow high performers to perform at their best effortlessly rather than spending more time and energy in those roles focused on skills they’ve mastered to do their job well. For this reason, not allowing your true strengths drive your role choices can negatively impact your performance and enjoyment at work, as well as your ability to deliver on your unique promise of value or personal brand.

 

Your blockers can neutralize your ability to leverage your strengths and perform at your best 

But many people can also inhibit their ability to perform at their best and deliver on their brand promise by not being aware of or understanding the strength of their blockers. Blockers are areas where we are at high risk for making choices that negatively affect performance. A person’s blockers are akin to the well known comic book character Superman’s kryptonite.

Hence regardless of their role choices, if a person is in an environment that triggers their blockers they can literally neutralize their ability to perform well. By environment I mean a project, team, organization, industry, sector or culture. And when we’re talking about working abroad, I’d be sure to give proper emphasis to the impact culture choices can have on your performance.

The impacts of choosing environments that trigger blockers and negativesly affect performance include:

  • not getting promoted, demotions or even dismissal
  • early end to an overseas assignment
  • not receiving salary increases, bonuses or recognition given to high performers
  • the perception that the message of value or personal brand you put forward to your employer or client was false advertising
  • work and client relationships suffering
  • lack of recommendations or referrals from colleagues, peers, managers, staff and clients
  • loss of confidence in your ability to perform well in that (or any) role

[Read more...]

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Can Anyone Really Own Your Social Media Contracts?

March 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

We interact with brands differently now. In the past, it was easier to catch your customers’ attention through advertising and mass media – now, customers build relationships with the brands they love, and they are becoming increasingly loyal to these brands

This is why it’s become essential for brands – both personal and business ones – to build relationships with their consumer and connection base, and one of the best ways to do this is through social media. Social media has changed the game, making it easier for brands to connect with people, interact with them, and build meaningful relationships.

Small businesses typically assign one person to manage their social media platforms. This ensures a consistent message across the board, as well as a consistent style and personality. Often, the reasoning behind it is lack of marketing funds to focus on it so interns and family members are tapped for the work. With regards to large corporate brands, it depends – usually, many employees represent the brand through their different social media accounts, enabling them to reach a huge number of people.

Herein lies the problem – if you work for a company, you represent yourself as well the company, but what happens when you and the company finally sever ties? Who owns your social media contacts? Does the company have a legal claim to the contacts you’ve accumulated during your tenure with them?

Contracts and Agreements

Well, it depends. First of all, there are the contracts you signed when you first joined the company (this is why it’s important that you comprehensively read anything you sign). If you aren’t sure about the things you agreed to, you may have to ask for a copy from your company.

For example, if you signed an intellectual properties agreement, which means that the accounts and things you’ve created during company time belongs to the company, then the company you worked for may claim your blog, Facebook and Twitter account, etc, that you created while you worked for them. This is especially true if you use these social media accounts for promoting and marketing the company.

Another contract you may have signed is a non-solicitation agreement, which means that you agreed not to solicit clients, vendors and employees of your employer once you’ve severed ties. If you leave the company and start adding these people in your social media accounts, your employer may be able to make a case against you.

And even if you didn’t sign a contract regarding this, if a company hired you to create and manage their social media accounts, then these accounts very likely belong to your company, which means the contacts that you’ve accumulated also belong to them.

Exceptions

Of course, if your social media accounts have been well established even before you joined a company, then it is very likely that you do own your social media contacts. If you have a strong personal brand even before becoming an employee, then it would be very difficult for your employer to make claims on the social media accounts you have.

The Real Question

But the real question is, can anyone really make claims on a person’s social media contacts? Because people who are active in social media can easily become popular and thus have a well known personal brand in their own right. So how can a company claim that they own the contacts when it’s the employee’s voice that the people are tuning into? Losing that employee can easily mean losing those people who are following the brand in social media as well.

We discussed this during a recent #brandchat conversation and it’s exciting to see how diverse comments are about this subject.

Social media has really blurred the lines between what’s personal and what’s business. This is because your job typically bleeds into your personal life, as your colleagues and clients become friends, as vendors admire and follow you in social media.

And in reality, even if a company makes claims on your social media contacts, the real truth is they cannot really claim the contacts unless the people agree. Because in social media, it’s all about the relationships you build with people, whether you’re a personal brand or a company one. It’s easy to unfollow one account and follow another. It’s really up to the people to decide whose voice they want to hear.

In the end, no one really owns these contacts. And it’s not the ownership that’s important, but how well the engagement and relationship is that determine real ownership.

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.

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Get your personal brand ahead – by a leap second or two!

February 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Rather predictably, especially given the current economic climate, the news headlines for today, February 29th have been about the extra costs the leap year brings. Extra payroll for hourly or weekly paid workers, extra power to run businesses, extra IT costs to deal with computers and chips that cannot allow for the extra day.

There’s also a leap second — the extra moment added to atomic clocks to keep them in sync with the earth’s rotation, which is slowed by the gravitational pull of the Sun and the Moon. It’s been added 24 times since 1972, the year the International Telecommunication Union defined Coordinated Universal Time. Last month, a timekeepers’ meeting failed to agree on whether or not to scrap the leap second (perhaps they ran out of time!). This has come under criticism because every time a second is added, the world’s computers need to be manually adjusted, a costly practice that also boosts the risk of error. Defenders of the leap second say without it, hi-tech clocks would race ahead of solar time, amounting to a discrepancy of about 15 seconds every 100 years.

However on the positive side here is what an extra day means for your personal brand;

- One extra day for you to work on defining and developing a clear brand message.
- More opportunities to communicate that brand at work or to clients and get noticed.
- Using a leap year to do something on brand that really gets noticed because its only one every 4 years!

And finally Happy Birthday if you are one of the approximate 5 million ‘leapers’ globally. You probably have to make up at least 4x for missed birthday opportunities!

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 works with executives, managers and teams for leading Fortune 500 corporations.

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Is Your Visual Brand Smart?

February 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

It’s a fact that most people are visual creatures. This is why when it comes to your personal brand, it’s important that you grab your audience’s attention visually – from your website, to your social media accounts, and even your caller ID, you need to ensure that you’re memorable and that people can identify that it’s you.

There is too much noise out there which is why it’s getting harder and harder for brands stand out. Personal brands also get overlooked even though their impact is stronger than product brands since people are the ones who are doing the interacting.

Since the first thing that people are going to notice is your visual brand, have you taken the steps to ensure that your brand is visually appealing? What are some of the ways you can ensure that your visual brand is smart?

1.   Amp up your website/blog design

Your website or blog is one of the first things that people will visit when they want to learn more about you and what you have to offer. Ensure that your website or blog is attractive enough to capture their attention and make them stay long enough to read the content you share. Because even if you have the most amazing content, if no one stays long enough to read it, then people aren’t going to know about it.

Your website or blog should represent you and what your brand is all about. Your design should reflect your style and personality – it would be odd, for example, if your design is very dainty and girlish, but your brand is all about rock and roll. So it should help represent you visually to your audience – make sure it’s in line with how you want people to view your personal brand.

2.   Optimize your social media accounts

Social media is where most people are currently spending their time, which is why it’s essential for personal brands to establish their presence in different social networking sites. Though it would be easy to simply create an account and post status updates every other day, it would be better for you to optimize your account so that it is visually attractive and that it represents you.

Facebook, for example, has rolled out a new profile for users – Facebook Timeline. The most distinctive thing about it is the landscape cover that spreads out horizontally at the top of every user’s page – it’s a great way to enhance your page and establish a unique and distinctive visual brand. Put up a great picture that really represents you so that you can quickly grab the attention of anyone who visits your page.

3.   Utilize your visual caller ID

Did you know that you can now control how you appear to people you call and to people who call you? YouMail offers you this option so you can control how your personal brand appears through caller ID. In light of this, you now have the ability to show the image and information you want to portray, and not simply be represented by a random number or even the wrong information.

YouMail’s app is called WhoAreYou, and it’s a completely free visual caller ID application for android phones. With the use of this app, you have better control of how your personal brand appears so you can ensure that your visual brand is as smart as possible.

4.   Consistently use one picture for all accounts

Having one distinctive picture for all of your online accounts can help your visual branding. It helps you become memorable and helps people associate your work with your persona.

Of course, make sure that your picture accurately represents how you look in person, so that people who meet you will be able to remember your online profile. Don’t use a picture taken years ago since this will only confuse the people you meet. As a speaker, I’ve found that it’s always beneficial to you to look “better in person” than you do in a photo.  So, don’t use old photos to depict who you are now.  No one appreciates that “bait and switch” feeling when they meet you in person and you look so much older than your profile pictures.  Always offer something that is current and updated, as well as something visually appealing.

When it comes to your pose, it depends on how seriously you want to portray yourself. If you’re a graphic artist or marketing specialist, for example, you may want a more casual pose that shows you’re easy to work with; but if you’re a lawyer or doctor, you may want a more professional photo so that people will see you as competent and able to do the job.

Yes, it’s time to evaluate your visual brand. Nothing’s worse than blending in and becoming a random person among millions of people. Be distinctive, be smart, and be unforgettable with your visual 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.

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Expat & International Careers: Your Personal Brand DNA is Critical to your Career Success Abroad

February 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment


Personal Brand DNAIn 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 Personal 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 Personal 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 Personal 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 Personal 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 Personal 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 Personal Branding CoachMegan 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

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Filed Under: Discovering Your Brand, Personal Branding for Careers Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

You Are The Product

February 16, 2012 By 5 Comments
In today’s highly competitive world, everyone claims to be the go-to person in their chosen niche. So-called “gurus” are a dime a dozen. This is why it can be tricky to stand out among all the competition. As a personal brand, you need to understand and utilize different platforms well in order to separate yourself from the crowd.

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.

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Do You Love Your Personal Brand?

February 14, 2012 By 2 Comments

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 works with executives, managers and teams for leading Fortune 500 corporations.

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Personal Branding is Like Taking the Stairs – There Are Always Easier Options

February 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

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 works with executives, managers and teams for leading Fortune 500 corporations.

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Does Your Brand Suffer From These 5 Email Mistakes?

February 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Email is an extension of your brand.  It counts as a conversation.  Sometimes people even refer to it as “having a conversation” with someone.

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.

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