Jim Killeen does some great stuff..and his latest venture “Google Me’ is a documentary covering the lives of all the other Jim Killeens he found..7 in all!
Watch the trailer - thanks to my friend, the Chief Buzz AgentMaria Elena for bringing this to my attention; way cool!
What a great idea..has anyone considered starting a Google Group, or a LinkedIn group for all the people of the same name, and then gone about tracking these people down around the world…then learn what differences there are between your brands? Would be a great project…anyone want to start?
In developing a powerful and distinct personal brand, one of the three key elements is to make sure your brand is visible! There are many ways to do this; network at relevant events, participate in forums, speak at volunteer organisations on your subject, write an ebook, develop a blog, stand for local council or government, and write reviews! Our friends over at Seeds of Growth recently wrote a post on a great little website called Loudervoice, which is effectively an online community for reviewing ANYTHING. You can contribute reviews via a mobile phone, Twitter, and your reviews are posted to your blog (or twitter) automatically (with your permission of course). I believe this is a great tool to develop your personal brand a little further, and to demonstrate your passion and expertise in a particular area. As an example, I posted a review of Dan Schawbels Personal Branding Magazine - albeit a very brief and high level review to test the website, the experience was great! Furthermore, Loudervoice can also be considered another notch in your online social community. Go and have a look, and review something you feel strongly about!
Oh well, it is a weekend, so let’s have some fun! A blog Queen named BizChick just recently created a nice little post about “What 80’s band Heart has to do with Personal Branding” - and what song best represents your Personal Brand? The question to ask yourself is…if a TV show or movie was made about your life, what song would be the theme song? Now, I like such exercises for defining ‘who you are’ which I see as a critical (and fun) first step in developing a Personal Brand. Dan Schawbel recently posted a similar thought about if you were an object or an image, what would you be?
For me, the song I would like to be played would be Men at Work, Land Down Under; because I find it captures so many of my brand attributes - proud, enthusiastic, inspiring, interesting, well travelled, energetic, funny, cheerful, passionate..and it is a great song (plus it is Australian, and I grew up with it!)!
As for an object, well this was a little more difficult, but I believe that the Olympic Rings are the object that best explains me;
It is also great that it is an Olympic year, but the rings stand for energy, enthusiasm, passion, strength, united, networked, colourful…and again many other things that are attributes of my Personal Brand.
Tough exercies, but totally worthwhile..and as much fun as this is, it does help you to look more closely at yourself and understand your own strengths. Importantly, it will also help you articulate this things about you that are unique. I look forward to hearing back from you. What is the song that plays in the movie about you, and what image or object best explains you? Have fun…
After watching the Shift Happens video the other day for the 20th time, and really marvelling at the speed at which things are moving and advancing; it comes as no surprise that practices we take for granted are simply being ‘reinvented’ and challenged. Seeking and applying for a job used to be a well proven formula; you look for work, you update your resume, you send it in to the employer, you wait for the phonecall, and if lucky, you attend an interview, or two or three before landing the job! I talk about how I have never applied for a job in my Bio, and this is true. So when I see stories like ‘Take your Resume and Shove it” from the US News, which is an interview with Aaron Strout - a Vice President at Mzinga where Strout has effectively reinvented the recruitment process, I get very excited. By not asking for resumes, and not wanitng email contact…he simply wanted to hook up with the applicants on Facebook or Twitter to discuss the job first before committing to an interview. Admittedly, Mzinga is a Social Media business, so it makes sense that they should take this approach, but the approach has some very real application to almost any role. Strout comments in the interview how he got less applicants; but they were all VERY well qualified, and he had a very good idea on their skills and passions before he spoke with them, by simply learning more about them via their online profiles. Aaron firmly believes that this process is totally applicable to any employer, by simply asking the applicant to see their blog or online profile as part of the process, an employer can gain a much deeper understanding of the applicant. Employers are already entering the applicants names in Google, so this is the next natural step! It is articles, and practices like these that are emphasising even moreso, the importance of an individuals Personal Brand, and how this is reflected online.
Dan Schawbel just keeps producing great content on the subject of Personal Branding!. Dan and his team produce the Personal Branding Magazine 4 times a year, and it is full of quality interviews, and input from thought leaders and entrepreneurs in this field! In this edition, there are 25 info packed articles, including interviews and input from;
In my mind, there is not enough of this content being produced and discussed, so I want to share the love and provide you with a free copy of the magazine (thanks Dan) so you can read, learn, and pass it on to those who need to know more about the importance of personal branding…
(The free copy can be downloaded by clicking on the magazine cover image above)
A few days ago I wrote a post that explained Social Media in simple and straightforward terms (I hope). As promised, I wanted to spend a few words on social networking in this edition of terms 101! The most succinct deifintion I can come up with is “Social networking is a phenomena defined by linking people to each other in some way” Now, most of us reading this post will be comfortable with the raft of social networking websites and online tools for this; but for those who don’t, I mentioned most of them in my previous post; LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook etc. Importantly however, social networking does not just apply to the internet and web technologies. Although the term was spawned from the recent (and soon to be obselete web 2.0), the same principals apply to offline and face to face activities. There are many ways to get connnected and linked to other people, and many of us have been practicing these for decades; We have all attended networking events, and industry functions with the intention of networking; but for many, this has been to little avail. So, the web does make networking, and ‘linking’ to people a whole lot easier! It definitely makes people a whole lot less nervous! My advice, is don’t let ‘online’ social networking completely replace your networking efforts, and make sure you apply the same principles; be clear on who you want to network with, be clear on why you want to network, take pride in your appearance (yes this is imortant online too), follow up all leads from your networking activities, and attend regularly. If you have not yet started your social networking activities online, and you think it will all just go away, the it may be worth you reading this post on the Buzz 101, and watching this short video from the same site…
Just a quick post to plug a great little book…good fun read with plenty of take outs. There are more and more great books like this making it on the shelves…
For me, this is totally relevant; the author leaves behind a successful law career to be a ‘Spotlight Coach’ to help people get noticed!
Lately, a lot of people I have been speaking with have been asking what exactly is social media and social networking. They comment on all the blogs and all the information about Personal Branding and career enhancement, but feel a little lost amongst all the ‘jargon’ So, over the next few days, I am going to spend some time explaining the key terms associated with Personal Branding; starting with SOCIAL MEDIA.
Social Media - put simply, this is the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences and perspectives with each other.
Generally, social media is known as the ‘New Media‘. The best way to think about this is to think about ‘old media’ and the types of media you have been used to before; newspapers, magazines, television, radio, books etc. In contrast, if you think about this blog, the differences are obvious (thanks to Robert Scoble for inspiration here)
This blog can be updated in a heartbeat! No need for reprints or re-runs to change my story!
You can interact with this blog - you can leave comments, see the comments, see how many subscribers, subscribe in an instant.
There is no crazy sign off process for this content - I can publish whenever I feel like it (or have the time).
I can use any type of media to get my story across - video, writing, pictures; and
I can include media an content form ANYONE else in the blogosphere, and pass opinion and comments at the touch of a keyboard..
These points help to demonstrate the difference between old and new media, and ultimately reinforce some of the defining elements of Social Media!
For some relevance to your personal brand; think about how the ‘old media’ used to report on your skills, experience and value proposition? Fair chance, they did not report on you at all! With social media it is far easier to be distinct and accessible..to access your potential employers or business prospects..now they can read about you anywhere or anytime (and it may not be true!).
Wow, have I been having some interesting converations lately! I currently work closely with this country’s biggest search company for Non-Executive Directors and Chief Executives for the top 50 organisations in Australia. Basically, I am totally surrounded with Baby Boomers! On the other side, I get Google alerts almost hourly on the subject of Personal Branding..so many of these alerts and posts from bloggers around the world talk about Generation Y and how they MUST be using social media and building their Personal Brands for the future! Now I am a proud Gen X‘er and have been making some interesting observations. Someone said to me today that Gen Y and Baby Boomers have trouble seeing eye to eye, but Gen X’ers seem to offend no-one; they are the conduit between the Baby Boomers and Gen Y. I am starting to refer to my Gen X clients and contacts as the ‘Emerging Leadership’…they are starting to fill leadership positions in Corporates as Baby Boomers retire, and many are also leaving to start their own businesses (as I did) - many of the entrants in the social media space are owned by Gen X’ers! Why is this relevant to Personal Branding; well I believe it is Gen X’ers that are MOST in need of powerful and clear Personal Brands. Of the recent conversations I have had lately with Gen X’ers - not one of them have been able to answer the question, “so what is your personal value proposition”. Whether it be seeking career progression, leading corporations or building their own businesses - the ‘Emerging Leaders’ need to be working overtime to develop and promote their Personal Brands!! What does everyone else think? Do Gen Y hate baby boomers? What do Geny think of Gen X? Look forward to hearing some thoughts…
P.S. only today I got feedback on my Personal Brand from my friend the Microbrandologist! Great work!
Today, whilst visiting Vincent Hunt’s blog Microbrandology (nice name - hard to spell), I stumbled across a brand srategist by the name of Martin Lindstrom. Martin is a brand futurist, and he is a leading authority on brand strategy for some of the worlds leading organisations. There were two particular video clips he produced that caught my attention. In one video clip he speaks about the five senses, and in particular, smell. Smell is apparently one of the strongest senses, due to it’s strength of recall. His story about play doh, and it’s vanilla scent being intentional really made sense to me…you see I LUV PLAY DOH. I especially like the smell and the texture. Apparently vanilla has a very strong impact upon the emotions; making us recall the past. Maybe this explains the plethora of vanilla scented his and hers perfumes available at the moment?  Martin’s point was about how powerful brands use smell to appeal to prospects and clients. Sound relevant…well it should be. Dan Schawbel has been speaking a lot lately about brand stereotypes; and how they play a part in how your prospects may perceive you. Well, appearance and grooming are an important part of these stereotypes. As human’s we pass judgement on people we meet 11 times in the first 5 seconds! We make these judgements based on our senses - sight, smell, sound etc etc. Therefore, it would appear very important to be aware of your scent when you meet prospects..do you have a smell that is part of your personal brand. Is there a favourite smell you would like to associate with? The second point Martin made was about how children make our branding decisions for us in 67% of the cases. In other words, for every 100 brands you purchase, our children influence 67 of these purchases! Sounds scary…but as an aside…how does your brand appeal to children? Long shot I know; but think about the qualities of a brand that children like; fun, colourful, dangerous, fast, sweet? Whatever these qualities are, think about your own brand, does it reflect any of these qualities? My point here, is that personal branding is not all about your achievments, and your passions, but it can also present an opportunity to think about how people perceive you based on their senses, and how other decision makers in your prospects lives can influence the way they perceive you? In exploring your own personal brand; discovering your passions, identifying your target audience, and increasing your visibility, remember to have fun, and be aware of how and why people make judgments and frame perceptions!
Hello and welcome to the blog of Luke Harvey-Palmer, the Chief Brand Officer at buzzle. A collection of thinking, tips and opinion on the subject of Personal Branding. Thanks for visiting!
Hello and welcome to the blog of Luke Harvey-Palmer, the Chief Brand Officer at 