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Personal Branding 101: How to Discover and Create Your Brand

Personal Branding 101: How to Discover and Create Your Brand
Dan Schawbel is the author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, and owner of the award winning Personal Branding Blog. In the past few years personal branding has been discussed exhaustively throughout the Net. The difference between today and over ten years ago when it was first mentioned by Tom Peters, is the rise of social technologies that have made branding not only more personal, but within reach. From the corporate brand (BMW), to the product brand (BMW M3 Coupe) and down to the personal brand (car salesman), branding is a critical component to a customer’s purchasing decision. These days, customer complaints and opinions are online and viewable through a simple search, on either Google or through social networks. Many people think that personal branding is just for celebrities such as Paris Hilton or Britney Spears, yet each and every one of us is a brand. We can also have just as much presence as most startups and mid-size companies and products. 1. 2.

Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online Part 1 Gary Vaynerchuk could tell you that his personal brand is worth millions, but he’s modest. My friend and PodCamp co-founder, Christopher S. Penn, often refers to branding by ZeFrank’s definition: “an emotional aftertaste.” ( See the The Show with ZeFrank episode here.) It turns out that I have so many thoughts, that I’m going to break this post up into 3. Why Build a Personal Brand? You might already know the answer to this question. The easiest answer is that you might want to be memorable, and you might want to transfer your real world reputation into the online world. A personal brand gives you the ability to stand out in a sea of similar products. Hints About Brand in General What’s the difference between Coke and Pepsi? Remember that trying to develop a personal brand involves differentiating in a Coke vs. In some ways, the differentiator on brands is in what you deliver. The Human Side of Brand First off, remember that branding isn’t playing a role. Photo Credit, Brian Solis

How Social Media is Changing Travel - Articles - Travel + Leisur Funniest thing I’ve seen on the road lately? I was in Barcelona, in the lobby of the Hotel Arts. Everyone around me was on a laptop, taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi: Google Mapping itineraries, consulting TripAdvisor for shopping recs, posting Flickr photos of lunch at Cal Pep. A couple from Chicago were using Skype to video chat with their children back home when, as if on cue, LL Cool J strode into the lobby. What else could a hip-hop icon do but squeeze in between Mom and Dad on the sofa, flash that killer smile, and offer a digital shout-out? That encounter would never have worked as a postcard. As a journalist who writes about travel, I can’t begin to count the upsides to this earth-flattened age we’re in. Nor is there much left unknown or unknowable, or at least un-Bing-able. So let’s be clear: I do not pine for the days of inscrutable foreign pay phones and the endless searches for postage stamps. Thirteen million Wikipedia articles. It’s not pretty there.

Personal Brands: Sweat It Out | Personal Branding Blog - Dan Sch What’s the best job you could land as your first foray into the working world once you’re out of college? The answer isn’t the coveted paid internship at Google. It isn’t investment banking on Wall Street, although you may be tempted when the sequel returns Gordon Gecko to the big screen. This advice is brought to you by Guy Kawasaki, courtesy of last Sunday’s New York Times. Since the current CEO of IBM started as an intern there, I’m not sure the Google spot would be a bad choice. Because I know so many people “starting over,” in their careers, I can see how valuable Guy’s advice is – no matter when you collected your last college degree. Title doesn’t mean that they’re the leader Another way to put it is: get close to VITO, the Very Important Top Officer, as my mentor Tony Parinello calls the person at the top of the company totem pole. In a small environment, you are more likely to get the opportunity to pitch in and help out, even if the task is above your pay grade. Author:

Is Social Media Impacting How Much We Email? | Nielsen Wire - Fl Jon Gibs, VP, Media Analytics In the past, we discussed ways that social media has transformed the internet, having been so bold to say that social networks fundamentally changed the way we consume online media. So, if social media and social networks are these all-powerful game changers, shouldn’t they eventually make a newsworthy impact on email, the internet's original "killer app?" We decided to churn some quick data to test our hypothesis that “Consumption of social media decreases email use.” First, we broke the online population into four groups. The first three are terciles of social media consumption in minutes. Here's what we found: At least from this small experiment our hypothesis was disproved, but interesting nonetheless. If you have other theories or questions, we'd love to see your comments or questions below.

Leveraging Social Media: 12 Steps To Develop Your Personal Onlin Do you have a plan on how to leverage the social media trend in order to achieve your career objectives? Are you taking part in the online conversations that are happening on the topics that are important to you and the development of your career? Or are you on the sidelines when it comes to participating in online communities, social networks, etc? If you are not part of the conversations that are important to your career, you can’t learn from those conversations. You are responsible for how you are perceived online. The following 12 steps can help you take control of your online personal brand. Document Your Career Goals. Don’t sit idle on the sidelines.

100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. – Tyler Durden, Fight Club. Branding one’s self in an online environment built on entropy and go-baby-go is difficult at best, and impossible if you forget to take your happy pills. If you like this one, please don’t hesitate to stumble, blog, digg, bookmark, and otherwise promote the hell out of this. Listening Build ego searches using Technorati and Google Blogsearch Comment frequently (and meaningfully) on blogs that write about you and your posts Don’t forget the conversations hiding in Twitter (use Summize.com) and Friendfeed. Home Base Home base is your blog/website. Passports Passports are accounts on other social networks and social media platforms. Outposts Build RSS outposts on Facebook. Content Create new content regularly. Conversation Commenting on other people’s blogs builds awareness fast. Community Face to Face Promotion Become a StudioPress Affiliate

5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Personal Brand Online Dan Schawbel is the bestselling author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, an award winning blogger at Personal Branding Blog, a national speaker and consultant on branding and a BusinessWeek columnist. There have been countless incidents in which professionals have lost their jobs, been evicted, or even been arrested for things they've done on social networks. There has never been a more important time to discuss the many ways you can sabotage your personal brand, and how you can prevent these mistakes before it's too late. A new report by Microsoft states that 64% of HR managers think it is appropriate to look at online profiles of candidates and 41% have rejected people as a result. 1. 58% of Americans don't even Google themselves, but employers and potential customers certainly will. As you create your personal brand on a variety of platforms, your name will start popping up in search engines and on social networks. 2. 3. 4. 5.

11 bullet points that will lead your brand into the future of so We’re fed up with boring old school advertising. We don’t want your information and rational explanations. We wanna dance, laugh, feel and love. We do not want be treated like idiots! James Dean knew how to seduce people while looking pretty darn boring. But face it. Information is all over us. Future brands don’t buy media they create brand dramas that build value and generate SEO equity – only then will you reach your future friends (aka. target group). Here are eleven bullets of love that you can load that brand gun of yours with: (or a crash course in modern branding) 1. As social networks spread all over the world the opportunity to spread your brand globally is bigger than ever. 2. People around the world are savvy. 3. You might trick us into falling in love with you. 4. If you’re looking to race against the best you’ve gotta drop your pit stop times. 5. We’re not runners anymore. 6. Your brand is out there – everywhere. The blue dot is your brand! 7. This one is simple. [updated]

50+ Tips to Brand Yourself Online | Personal Branding Blog - Dan Once you’ve designed your personal brand and have a personal brand name, use this handy list of suggestions to implement your personal branding strategy. General purpose Show your expertise as much as possible.Publicize your brand-related successes and achievements.Make yourself easy to contact for thoughts and questions via email, Twitter, Skype, internet messaging, etc.Help other people in your industry such as bloggers, Twitterers, colleagues, advice seekers, etc.Give people a reason to talk about you in a positive way that also matches your brand.Follow other people in your industry and anyone else who can teach you how to spread your message.Create and apply personal design guidelines that will share the values of your brand and are reusable online and offline.Keep in mind that where you interact online also conveys messages about you, and then stick to the websites and communities that will help most in reaching your goals. Tactics Kinds of websites you could create Blogging Author:

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