Permission Marketing and Building a Band of Supporters

May 9, 2013 by Leave a Comment
email marketing

First off, permission marketing pertains to delivering relevant and personal messages to people who actually wish to receive them. Marketers realize that getting an individual’s close attention is a rare and precious opportunity, and thus when it happens should not be wasted. Permission is usually not obtained easily and takes time as the target person has to be won over bit by bit. Once a business has the attention of its target audience, one thing that the business will notice is that permission is cost effective. You can use email and RSS feeds to deliver your message to the people who have agreed to listen to you. Subscriptions ensure you have a loyal and valuable audience. However, getting to such a level where you have an audience of loyal customers takes patience and humility. If you’re an entrepreneur, how you conduct your business will reflect even more so on your personal brand. Permission Email Marketing Tips to Help Exude Your Personal Brand The … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Exuding Your Brand Tagged With: , ,

Turning Negatives into Positives

April 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment
negatives to positives

Experience negative situations is a challenge for all of us. We focus on what could go wrong rather than looking at what will go right. This tends to break the focus from working to achieve a goal to trying to avoid failure. Unfortunately, this is exactly what leads to failure. Consider yourself driving down the road. Off to the side, a plastic bag floats by and offers a distraction from the road. More often than not if you follow the plastic bag, you start subconsciously drifting towards it rather than keeping your eyes on the road ahead. The same applies to life and business; focusing on what could go wrong will lead you off the road to success. Negative thinking Seeing or anticipating the worst in every situation, leads you to focus on what needs to happen for a project to fail. Small issues that lie ahead could pose a threat, but how you handle them makes all the difference. Often, a negative individual will complain about the problem. Perhaps there’s too much to do and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding Quick Tips Tagged With: , , ,

What is Your Personal Brand Feeling or Experience?

January 31, 2013 by 2 Comments
feel

One of the primary characteristics that define a brand is the uniqueness that your experience provides it. While we might attend the same seminars, classes, and even read the same books, the knowledge we gather from them will always be different. The same goes for the experiences that we encounter in our everyday activities within our brand. The clients we encounter, the audiences we engage, and even the techniques we try and test, all influence how we feel about our brand. All of these encounters help a brand generate its own unique image. The question is: Do you allow that to exemplify your brand by sharing it with the audience? The feeling How do you feel when you successfully engage an audience? Is it good? Are you excited? Is it a new opportunity for your brand? These feelings are natural for any individual working towards personal branding, and can help humanize your brand and generate a relatable image for your audience to see. How do you extend it through your … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Expressing Your Brand, Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs, 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: , , ,

Feelings are the Fuel for Word of Mouth

January 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment
emoticons

Brands are unique to each owner, possessing characteristics that can’t be reproduced by any other. So what is it that actually defines a brand? There are numerous characteristics that you might think are defining your brand but they don’t. For example, your perseverance to share your content with the audience and the number of individuals you reach are merely responsible for improving your brand’s visibility not defining it. The definition of your brand actually is your unique promise of value and the unique way you communicate it. [tweet this]. Your Brand Image: You, Your Audience and Your Content When it comes to sharing your brand with your network, how you do so will reflect upon your brand image. Feelings are what define you as a relatable individual. Keep in mind that the audience isn’t a computer program or a statistical structure. Each person has their own qualities, likes, and characteristics. In order for them to relate to your brand, you (the brand … [Read more...]

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

The Best Business Cards to Showcase Your Personal Brand

October 4, 2012 by 2 Comments
business card

Business cards are still a vital part of a personal marketing strategy.  They have been around since the 15th century when they were first used in China. And, they still hold more credibility than any “phone bump” or a “virtual card” in a face to face meeting. Business cards are meant to compliment word of mouth marketing and relationship building. After making an initial connection, you give a card to help the potential client get to know more about your business or the kind of services you give. These cards are a very powerful marketing tool even as more and more people embrace technology. Instead of merely being documents with contact information, business cards provide information to fill the  gap of what someone does, who they benefit and how; and what makes them unique. Five Foundational Components A business card is someone’s first image impression of you and needs to be of the best quality. To ensure that your card is always effective as a marketing … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Social Media 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: , , , , ,

Will Lance’s Personal Brand Continue to Live Strong?

August 26, 2012 by 2 Comments
Lance Armstrong

Athlete......Survivor.....Philanthropist......Cheat? Sadly, unless there is a definitive answer, that final attribute will now always be associated with Lance Armstrong's personal brand. But always with a question. We all know him through those first three attributes, the question is can we ever not think of him without the last one? Both sides were always too far apart for this to be concluded with anything other than the wrong result. Witnesses and experts on both sides claiming to be right. Strong personalities involved. A lot at stake. Now the truth may never be known. Part of the confusion for many of us might be the fact that what might be a lifetime ban for some sports (e.g. cycling), can be a couple of years in athletics or results in a 50 game ban or less in baseball. Even some multiple offenders come back to play in their sport again. For the USADA this has been a 10+ year endeavour. The rumour and insinuation has hung over Armstrong really ever since his … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Sports, Strong Brands Attract and Repel, Strong Personal Brands Tagged With: , , , ,

Word of Mouth Starts by Owning Your Contacts

August 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment
address book

Your connections begin in your own database.  When I’m asked about how to “own your game”, or dominate your niche, the first place I begin asking about is what do you know about your database? Even those born within this last minute, already have a handful of people in their personal database. From the mother that carried them, to the physician that delivered them, to the nurses in the delivery room, the pediatrician and the nurses in the nursery – the newborn even know somebody! How can you make the most of who you are already connected to? First, clean your list.  Start going through to see whose email, phone number, cell phone, address, and employment information is up-to-date and who is not. Your first focus is to make sure you have the most current, effective information for those people who already know you. Second, grade your list. No, I’m not talking about judging people yet I am talking about categorizing them in a way that makes sense for you.  … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal Branding Quick Tips Tagged With: , ,

Asking for Forgiveness Can Help Your Brand

August 2, 2012 by Leave a Comment
forgiveness

There will always come a point for a business where you will be unable to actually answer a question or come up with a solution to a problem that has been posed by a client or customer, but how you handled this situation is extremely important. Basically, if this is dealt with correctly by a representative from your company, and they ask for forgiveness, then it can actually help your brand rather than hinder it. The reason why this is important is because word of mouth marketing still plays a key role in the potential success of a business and people do like to know that a business is honest enough to admit to a mistake or admit to not knowing the answer to everything. This honesty is even more important in the world of social media where customers will often use it as a means to communicate to the world about some issue they have with your business, and ignoring these issues will only reflect badly on you. It only takes one It is important to remember that it can take years … [Read more...]

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