Great Personal Brands engage and evoke emotion in their target audience.  All great brands do this.  What emotion does Coke evoke in you, or Apple or Nike or Virgin…chances are your thoughts and feelings about these brands are strong.   An effective Personal Brand should have the same effect!

If your personal brand evokes an emotion (positive or negative) in your prospects; then you will effect two changes.

1.       Clear your pipeline by turning away the prospects who do not engage with your brand,

2.       Turn those prospects who engage with your brand into CLIENTS!

It is the second of these effects we are most interested in!

So how do you use your personal brand to evoke a positive emotion in your prospects?

To an extent - this does depend on your target audience - but in general;

•          Be persistently consistent - subscribe your prospects to a newsletter or a regular communication and communicate with them!  Share ideas, tips and a little bit of your life!  Figures say that a prospect will need to receive 6 emails form you before they take an action, so do not give up after 3!
•          Involve these prospects in your business (or your life) - generate polls or surveys and ask them to provide feedback on your services and ideas.  When they provide feedback, tell them how you plan to use this feedback.  People LOVE to be listened to!
•          Connect - Introduce your prospects to other prospects, or clients where they may be reciprocal business or interests.  I recently introduced a legendary social media consultant with a deep passion for Rugby to another contact of mine who is the owner of a Rugby Site www.heavensgame.com and may need some social media advice…or simply just another fan with the same passion!
•          Take an interest - when you meet with these prospects, take time to understand what their interests are, and send them updates or articles on these interests…consistently!
•          Hustle - My friend Gary Vaynerchuk talks about “always be hustling, we are building businesses here…” and he is right.  If you thought building a business was meant to be easy, then you are in the wrong game!  Spend time and hard work communicating, connecting, involving, and being interested, and you will soon have more clients than you can handle!

In the next post, we will look at the most important of the steps in growing your business…turning clients into LOVERS using your personal brand!

 

 

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And this my friends, is what Personal Branding is ALL about…

Special thanks to Richard Sauerman for sending this over in his “thought for the week”

Thanks to And

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To my readers who celebrate Christmas - Merry Christmas!

Just as important though are the things you can be doing over this Festive Period to start your Personal Brand off on the right foot for 2009!

Commit to Learning - Steve Pavlina wrote a great post back in 2005 that suggested you should contribute 3% of your monthly income to personal development and learning.  Sit down and perform your own SWOT - discover what some of your weaknesses may be.  then think about your target audience and your objectives for 2009.  For example, if you have weakness in the public speaking department and your have a goal to be a better public speaker - because your target audience need to hear your messages; then enrol yourself in a course on public speaking!

Take a day out to discover your MOJO - what are your passions and what gets you really excited every morning.  A friend of mine Richard Sauerman talks about your Red Wine Midnight Conversations - what are the things you talk about with friends over a Red Wine?  These are your real passions.  As my friend Gary Vaynerchuk says “There is no reason in 2008 to be doing shit you hate…if you like smurfs, smurf it up!”

Live (a little) like a Rock Star - One you have a better understanding of your MOJO; give some thought to how you can introduce more of this into your life.  For example, if you really love motorbikes, buy one and ride to work 2 or 3 days a week!  Go for a ride at lunch!  If you really enjoy photography, take your camera to work, and start a little lunchtime project  called “CDB at Midday” and at midday every day you are in the office, take some photos on the street, create a website (read - blog) and upload your Midday CBD photos.

Work out what you are - Play a little game over the break and ask your friends what 3 words best describe you.  This will inform you of what your brand attributes are.  Sit down and cut out some pictues from a magazine that remind you of yourself - then stick them in a scrap book.  Start to build a picture of what you stand for and how other people see you.  Are you the Sydney Harbour Bridge or are you the Olympic rings?  How can you communicate these attributes more widely?  If your brand is the Olympic Rings - because you connect and inspire people, then…

Help your World - Go through your contacts over the break and categorise them as “made contact in the last 3 months” or “not made contat in the last 3 months”  then categorise them further as “those you want to make contact with int he next 3 months” and those “you don’t want to make contact with in the next 3 months”  Delete those you don’ t want to make contact with (go on, I dare you) and then make contact with those you want to make contact with.  Tell them about your brand attributes, your passions and you MOJO and ask how you can HELP them.

You Dot Com - This does not refer to your good Chinese Friend, this refers to you getting online!  If you know what your MOJO is, and who you need to be talking with, then you will know where you need to be online.  I recommend at least registering (or updating) your stuff on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.  Over at Buzzle we have the YOU.com programme, where we help people get started with their online profile!  Jason Alba wrote to me this week and said “he wished he had worked harder on his online network and connections 3 years ago…before he lost his job and had to start over (incidentally, the best thing he ever did was start over, as his creativity has now been released and he has started JibberJobber and written several books on the subject of personal Branding and career excellence)

Most of all…enjoy and have a GREAT Festive Season; and be sure to commit to 3% of our income being spent on YOU - it is the best investment you will make right now!

Have you ever been hacked?

And then had to change hosting providers?

What a royal pain in the ass - and 24 hours later, I am only just starting to get my ‘life’ back in order.

The only upside to this, is that I must have developed a pretty pesky online profile for a hacker to want to inflict some harm on me?

Well, thanks to Media Temple, all is getting back to shape, and I want to apologise for the ‘MIA‘ status I had adopted over the last 24 hours!

(If you rely on your blog, website and sorts to help communicate your personal brand, then make sure you choose a good host provider…)

What else did I learn from this exercise - well;

• If you have a strong personal brand that is well communicated - then you will be open to more criticism and attack; so be prepared, but recognise the best way to deal with criticism is with dignity and grace!
• The SOCIAL aspect of your personal brand (your network, who you hang out with etc) is vital - not only are you judged by the people you associate with, but they will defend you and support you when you’re most in need; so choose carefully who you associate with,
• Be vigilant - Gary Vaynerchuk talks about ‘always be hustling’ and the need to hustle in business - well this includes staying on top of your online real estate, and the threats that exist,
• Know you business! - I do not want to be my own IT guy for the rest of my professional life; but right now my online presence is part of my core business.  Outsourcing my core business does not make sense; and I am thankful I have a good enough technical knowledge to deal with any minor catastrophe,
• Relax; recognise that losing your website for 24 hours is not the end of the world - the most important part of my personal brand is still ‘me’

That’s enough - now back to work and getting the rest of my websites working again!

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Now that is a great collection of brands!

Dan Schawbel and his great team of Connie Bensen, Miriam Salpeter, Scott Bradley and Selina McCusker  have produced the BIG edition of The Personal Branding Magazine, and it is packed full of great interviews and advice on communicating your Personal Brand.

This edition has Gary Vaynerchuk on the cover, and includes interviews with such booming Personal brands such as David Allen, Keith Ferrazzi and the master of influence and persuasion - Dr Robert Cialdini.

Grab a free copy here (you will need to register first) - and I strongly encourage you to buy a subscription to the magazine as 50% of the proceeds go to the American Cancer Society!

Oh, and by the way…my business buzzle is a sponsor of this months magazine, so enjoy!

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Don’t blame me…Loren Feldman created the title!

I just can’t work out who is who (oh, I can recognise Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk), but cannot really tell who is the dope, and who are the Jews, cos’ there is a whole heap of untruths and misconceptions floating around in this panel discussion.

Julia Allison is rabbiting on about a Personal Brand, and does not really say much, except to infer that you create a personal brand?

You cannot create a personal brand. You can reinforce and emphasise elements of your personal brand (or uncover one), but you cannot create a personal brand…you already have one.

Loren Feldman makes an interesting point that your product or expertise comes first, and then this becomes your brand.  Wrong.  This is the ‘Practical Element’ of your personal brand; the practical element of your personal brand is what you have achieved, how you achieved it, what it was you achieved etc…but you always had a personal brand - even before you created this thing.  This ‘thing’ just made it easy for you to communicate and promote your personal brand…

Someone did mention that if you are clear on what you are passionate about, and what gets you going, then this is your personal brand. Well, this is sort of right…except that this only helps you to articulate your personal brand, and tell your brand story with passion.  This makes it easier for you to ‘live’ your brand, but it does not define your personal brand.

Look, personal branding is many things to many people…and Julia, Loren and Gary have their views on the subject.

It does not matter who you agree with in this discussion, it is a subject that provokes plenty of emotion.

Over at buzzle we keep it pretty simple…

1.  We DEFINE your personal brand - what you do, how you do it, passions, talents, skills, personal value proposition,

2.  We PLAN your Personal Brand - how are you going to communicate your brand, who is your target audience, and what are the messages you need to deliver, and

3. We PERFORM your Personal Brand - you need to be persistently consistent, and you need help and support doing this, so we make sure you execute your plan, and make adjustments where required!

…and we believe all Personal Brands have 4 elements (we call this IP3)

1. INTELLECTUAL - what you know, education, innovation, experience
2. PRACTICAL- what you do and how you do it
3. PRINCIPLE - your integrity, do what you say, your sincerity
4. PHYSICAL - your appearance, your language, your network

I look forward to hearing what you think about Personal Branding and what it means to you.  Who is right, Julia, Loren, Gary or all 3?

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