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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No way…

Surely, there is not 50 people doing what I do on the planet?

Well, turns out there is..and I thought I was unique?

Chris Cairns over at Smartlife is starting a series on Personal Branding Consultants, and over the next few weeks will be writing about this very subject- and sharing some experiences of clients of these people.

Chris was kind enough to write the following about little old me…

Luke Harvey-Palmer (website, blog)
Luke goes a step beyond helping clients develop their personal brand. He helps them manage their brands with an eye to the long-term. He provides in-depth information about social media and its uses for personal branding.

I look forward to reading this series from Chris, and one of our clients will hopefully be included in Chris’ case studies..

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Image via CrunchBase

My wife asks all the hard questions!

This morning as I am telling her of my recent explosion in followers on Twitter, she asked “so why do people follow you anyway”

This is not an easy question to answer..

My thoughts on this are the subject of this post, and I think I may be onto something?

Firstly, I believe it has a lot to do with the 140 character format. Winston Churchill once made comment about the difficulty of penning a short speech versus a long speech…the shortness of our tweets forces us to be a little more thoughtful, hence there is often more meaning in the 140 chars.  More importantly though, I believe the 140 char format of Twitter brings out our real personality; and it is the real personality that people are attracted to and like to follow!

Related to this reasoning for the follow, is the simple fact that what someone has to say may just be entertaining, insightful or informative…

Maybe also, there is something here in about vanity “If I follow you, you will follow me, and therefore, I get more followers” - and this is true in some cases I am sure…especially for the so called ‘social media sluts’ who simply crave the largest number of connections with little meaning.

Finally, there is the the basic principle of Social Media…reciprocity and good manners..”you followed me, so I will follow you in return” (which does not always apply in my case - especially when internet marketers follow me).  This is one of the endearing natures of social media and social networking; everyone working together and striving to get along (mostly).

So if anyone asked you why people follow you on Twitter (or anywhere for that matter) how would you answer?

BTW - you can follow me here on Twitter

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1.  Get a Gym Membership! If you already have a gym membership, get yourself along to the gym the very next day!  This is important for many reasons including; it helps you establish a routine (which is CRITICAL during stressful times), exercise makes you feel better, exercise makes you healthier, it is another environment to meet people and network!

2.  Revisit your contact list! Download your list of contacts from your email client, or take out your business cards and work through them.  Discard those who you think are worth discarding, and then make contact with everyone else either through email or a written note to say.  "Hi, I have recently left ABC Pty Ltd, and I wanted to get back in touch to let you know of what I have been up to" Give them a run down of your skills and achievements and what you would like to do next!

3.  Update your resume - NOW You should have already been doing this, but if not, then get to it.  This will serve many purposes, but most importantly it will force you to think about your skills and experiences, and commit you to writing them down.  If you have not had a resume for some time, I would recommend you get a resume professional like Meg Guiseppi.to help you out.  A well written resume can make a big difference.

4.  Get online You should at least set up a profile on LinkedIn, and consider other sites like Facebook, VisualCV, Tasty Nectar and many other social networking sites that will help you meet new people, and communicate your skills and talents to a wider audience in the search for your next opportunity.  For those a little more ‘technically inclined‘ I would most DEFINITELY recommend starting a blog and writing about your passions and interest.  It will act like therapy (writing can be calming) and will introduce you to a whole new world of opportunity (I guarantee).

5.  READ - now is a great time to read all those books piling up on your bedside table.  Visit www.amazon.com or the like and search for the recommended reading under subject areas that interest you.  Seek out the best blogs and websites on these subjects and take time each day to read them, stay informed and LEARN!

6.  Get invited - seek out some interesting events, and get on th einvite list.  Even if they cost good money, these events can be invaluable for meeting new people, starting new relationships, and improving your confidence.  The longer you spend away from social situations, the more uncomfortable you will become - so stay social!

7.  Be Grateful - self help and personal development guru’s like Bob Proctor or Jack Canfield of the Secret talk all about ‘The Attitude of Gratitude" and how it can change your life (here is a good post on the 5 ways to develop and attitude of gratitude! Be grateful for the great skills you have developed and for those dearest to you like your family and friends.  Be grateful for your good health!

8.  Take some time out and work on #1 Don’t rush into your next opportunity (unless you have to).  You may be surprised how easy it is to simplify your life, get rid of some unnecessary expenses, and afford to take little time out to ’smell the roses’  If your past role took a lot out of you, then it would be a good idea to recharge your batteries and take some time to get to know yourself.  This would be a great time to work on DEFINING your Personal Brand, and working out what it is that excites you, and what is unique about you - do you have a Personal Value Proposition?

Notice I did not mention getting yourself in to your nearest search consultant?  This is not that I do not think they can do great work, it is just that this post is about the BEST things to do, and right now, search consultancies may not have too many jobs on offer…your next career step is up to YOU..it is time for YOU 2.0 - reinvented!

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Are you intelligent, educated, energetic and like face to face meetings?

What are your KEY brand attributes?

Take 60 mins out from the chaos for a while and take the time to understand your own personal brand using these steps.

1.  The PHYSICAL aspects of your personal brand

How is your appearance, your grooming, your height, weight and general health.  How is your spoken language - do you speak fast or slow….are you easy to understand.  Do you have an accent?  How big is your network - does it mainly consist of friends and family, or mainly professional contacts?  What would other people think of your network - would they want to know you because of your network?

2.  The PRACTICAL aspects of your personal brand

How do you like to work and what have you achieved?  Do you have any testimonials or awards?  Do you prefer face to face time with people, or over the phone and email.  Do you like to use social media to meet new people, or are you shy and prefer to be introduced to other people?

3.  The PRINCIPLE element of your personal brand

When you say you will get back to someone, do you?  How long does it take you to return phonecalls or emails?  How comfortable are you telling your friends or clients that they are wrong, or need to change their approach to an issue?  When was the last time you ’sacked’ a customer because their values did not agree with yours?  What are your values and beliefs?

4.  The INTELLECTUAL element of your personal brand

How educated are you?  What qualifications do you have?  What are good examples of ideas and innovations you have come up with?  What is your personality type - extravert, intravert?  What experiences do you have in life and work?

This is not a definitive list of questions to ask yourself to help you better understand your own personal brand - but they should give you an idea of the questions to ask yourself, and to help you understand your current brand attributes against a set model.  These questions will also help you to understand the strong elements of your personal brand, and the less strong elements of your brand.

This exercise should then assist you in the next stage..making a plan to emphasise and communicate the strong elements of your personal brand, and a personal development plan to strengthen the areas of your personal brand that may need some attention!

Have fun developing and communicating your personal brand!

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Dan Schawbel has recently finished his book “Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success”

Given the title of the book, I wanted to explain what this means for YOU 2.0.

We have all heard of Web 2.0, and we all know the 2.0 stands for the 2nd version of the web right?  WRONG.  This is part of the story, but the interesting thing to know is that the 2.0 also means there are now 2 people in the conversation.  Web 1.0 was all about direct advertising, and pushing messages at you with little engagement or consultation.  As consumers, we now demand more than this, we want to be engaged, involved, listened to, and asked of our opinion.  Web 2.0 is all about the online tools that allow for this interaction - like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter and blogging!  Media now needs to engage others, and involve them in the conversation…if you doubt this, just spend a moment to reflect on Barack Obama’s recent successful Presidential Campaign!

So what does this mean for YOU 2.0?

Not only does the media need to reflect the values of Web 2.0, but so too does your personal brand!  Like any successful web 2.0 and Social Media campaign, you should be considering how your personal brand delivers on the four essential stages of the 2.0 world!

1.  LISTENING - what are your target audience talking about, and what are they demanding from your personal brand.  Do they need you to be available or knowledgeable or to simply respond when they ask a question…either way, you need to be listening to you target audience (this is difficult if you do not know who you target audience is!)

2.  TALKING - do you encourage conversation about your skills, talents, products or services..what are you selling?  How do you encourage this conversation.  Do you take 2 or 3 customers to lunch on a monthly basis, do you introduce your network to one another?  You know your personal brand is powerful when others do the selling for you!

3.  INVOLVING - when was the last time you asked a customer or prospect for feedback on your services and your brand attributes?  When was the last time you asked friends or colleagues to explain you in 3 words or less.  If you ask for this feedback, be sure to thank them for it, and then demonstrate how you have taken this feedback on board.

4.  SUPPORTING - you know your personal brand is super effective when your prospects and customers are now solving one another’s problems, and speaking to one another about your services in a positive light!

5.  ENGAGING - the final stage in the YOU 2.0 process is the engagement of your target audience in the process of product and strategy development.  Who developed your last product or service..your customers or you?

So, how are you going to start listening to your target audience?  Think about these 5 steps and how you can integrate them into you business or life.  You can be assured that by following these 5 steps, you will find your personal brand will engage others, and draw them to you.

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• Your words account for only 7% of the message you convey (the other 93% comes from non-verbal communication like tone and body language)
• We comprehend 25% of what we hear.
• We are distracted, preoccupied or forgetful 75% of the time
• We read 28% of the words on a web page

This being the case, what is the chance of ever getting your point across or influencing the perception of others?

Barack Obama understood this.  There has been plenty (almost too much) written about Obama and his use of web 2.0 tools, but this is not the only ‘channel’ or tool he used to influence the voters and communicate his Personal Brand.

Barack Obama understood that YOUR PERSONAL BRAND needs to be everywhere; it needs to appeal to all the senses, through all the channels and yet continue to deliver the same messages!  To further reinforce this message, the hottest ticket item following Barack Obama’s recent success in the US Presidential Campaign has been the humble newspaper! (read more here about this)

So if your Personal Branding strategy only includes online tools, and is limited to your blog and a few social media sites, then you may not be communicating your Personal Brand as effectively as you could be!

A few points to consider to communicate your personal brand more widely, and hence increase your chances of influence are;

• If you have a blog - use video, audio, text and images to relay your message,
• If you like to write - then write in forums, your local newspaper, and produce white papers for clients and prospecrs
• Never forget the influential power of being seen and associated with other influential people (your network!)
• Create a resume or bio online and in print (use Tasty Nectar or LinkedIn).  Consider a video bio also!
• Get to know you local member of parliament, the respected academics in your community, the influencers in the media and the local business community - these 4 pillars will serve you well!

I hope this post gets you thinking more broadly about your Personal Brand…and reminds you that even the most impressive Personal Brand we have known; Barack Obama used more than the Internet alone to communicate his personal brand!

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I have to thank Dan Thornton for the inspiration for this simple little post..

I met Dan over at Twitter and in between discussing the ethics of Tweeting, I was looking for some blogspiration (inspiration on what to blog about next)…a good video or photo was suggested.

This video captures a whole heap of the concepts I have been speaking about all week with clients and at presentations - Web 2.0 connects us.  Web 2.0 makes developing and projecting your Personal Brand so much more important; enjoy!

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I bet you never thought Resumes, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (Brangelina) would end up together in a blog post!

Lately, I have become a huge fan of some clever social media tools for reinforcing and extending your Personal Brand…and two have caught my attention in the last few days.

1.  Saranyan and his Visual Resume over at Slideshare (one of my favourite tools!).

| View | Upload your own

2.  Brangelina and their HUGE ‘couple brand’ - Dan Schawbel bought this video to my attention on his recent post- Are you and Your Significant Other Co-Branded?

So, the challenges for you this week - think about how you and your significant other can become the next MEGA BRAND, and GET YOUR RESUME ONLINE!

Happy branding…

This evening, I had the pleasure of presenting to 15 or so Associates of the Institute for Independent Business about using social media and personal branding to create more business and more buzz.  It was a 15 minute presentation - but to reinforce the benefits of some of the tools I spoke of, I have put my presentation up here (courtesy of an embed from slideshare) and uploaded the video…

| View | Upload your own

I hope the Associates found the presentation of interest…it was a whole heap of fun for me, and reminded me how easy it is to present on a subject that you are passionate about! (DEFINE, PLAN, PERFORM!)

Here is the video!