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Black Friday: Free Tips to Re-Fresh your Personal Brand (30-Min Checkup)

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If I asked you how important your personal brand is to you, I am sure I would get a lot compelling answers. The way to evaluate this is to identify where you spend your resources (time and money). Today we are going to focus on time. Time is the most precious commodity that you have. Oprah, Chris Brogan, Bill Gates, and Tiger have no more time than you. They however have found out how to get more value out of their time than most.

The tools I am listing below are not new for people who are active in the social media or personal branding space. This post is not focused on your knowledge of the existence of these tools but the updating or maintain of them to calibrate your personal brand.

Google Apps
• Google Profile – Create a Google profile to control how you appear in at least one of the listing people will see when they Google you. For those who have already set-up their profile the next step is updating and revising your bio and social network links so that they are current.
• Google Alerts – Revise and add new keywords that are relevant to things currently happening in your personal brand interest.
• Google Reader – Identify new blogs to pull into your reader to get a fresh perspective or add a new voice.

Twitter Third Party App

There are many third party Twitter application that can be used to manage your Twitter accounts: Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, and Seesmic to name a few.

• Update Search columns more frequently to monitor topics that are important to your personal brand interest.
• Add App to your smartphone to monitor on the go.

Monitor your Twitter Engagement
• Monitor your @Replies and RT: Re-Tweets associated with your accounts.

Just wanted to list a few free Black Friday Personal branding tips that you can re-calibrate to upgrade your personal brand in 30-minutes or less.

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Delta Airlines – Good Brand Poor Customer Service Experience

On Tuesday, November 18th I flew from Detroit, MI to Orlando, FL on Delta Airline and I had a very poor customer service experience. This blog post is not about bashing Delta but about communicating my extreme displeasure as a paying customer. Let me make this disclaimer up front, I have had a positive long-standing relationship with Delta Airline where I am a frequent flyer.

The Brand Experience – Three Important Points

• Touch point – Every person within the organization has to be committed and focused on providing a positive customer service experience.
• Value the Customer – Each person is a brand ambassador and represents the brand and should focus on making the customer feel valued.
• How does your brand respond to a poor brand experience? Every brand will have an opportunity to respond: focus on timeliness, the proper channel, and customer expectations.

After my experience at check-in I tweeted to see if Delta Airlines was listening online it has been 7-days and counting with no response. On the other hand I went online and read how Southwest Airlines responded to a customer in a matter of hours who lost their bags.

Delta_Tweet_web

How important is your brand experience? It is everything. Understand your touch points, value your customers, and respond appropriately.

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Putting the reader benefit into your Personal Brand

If you read the bios of some pretty successful people, you’ll see why truly effective personal branding during job search can be such a bear. Here’s how it often sounds:

“Bob Smith is the Vice President of Really Important, Co., leading five divisions nationwide.”

“Jennifer is the author of Business Book.”

“Marc holds a Bachelors degree from Columbia and a MBA from Harvard University.”

Ooh, we think. Impressive.

And so as we go out to find our new jobs, oftentimes our resumes start to smack of hyped-up corporate bio.

We list titles, awards, education. In short, it’s all about credentials. “See where I’ve been before? Isn’t it great?”

When what the recruiter is looking for is less where you’ve been and much more what you’ve done, and what you can do for them.

Let’s take an example. Imagine you need a sales pro and you need them to be able to run on their own with little guidance. You get two resumes:

“Terri has sold B2B technology solutions for 10 years.”

or…

“John has delivered 20%+ sales growth for each of the past five years.”

Which would you call?

The fundamental difference here is that Terri’s bio plugs a credential, while John focuses on the reader benefit. John makes his statement about the benefit that his employer received. And if it’s a benefit that the new employer wants, they’ll be interested.

So here are some examples of mini-makeovers to focus on reader benefit in our branding and job search messages:

Before: “Allison has five years experience in insurance brokerage, with three years supervisory experience.”

After: “Allison has successfully landed five new clients in the past two years, doubling her book of business.”

Before: “Jamie is a driven, competent communications professional, with strong skills in direct marketing, writing for web, and multimedia content development.”

After: “Jamie has written, edited and produced print and online campaigns totaling $1 million revenue annually.”

Or…

“Jamie has successfully maintained key client relationships for years through her excellent work and relationship building skills.”

So, look over your branding messages. Are you speaking in credentials? Or are you connecting with what the reader really wants?

Kristi Daeda shows mid- to senior-level professionals how to get better jobs faster. Her blog, Career Adventure, shares advice on job search, management skills, leadership, personal branding and more to help savvy career adventurers make it to the top. She invites you to find new opportunities through her ebook, 51 Places to Find a Job.

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Good Morning Twitterverse

Good Morning Twitter and to all my friends in the Twitterverse. I just wanted to add a personal touch and reach out to all you stellar personal brands. If you plan on having a great day sent a tweet and include @HajjFlemings and #Twitterverse and the city you are repping. I will see you in the Twitter stream.

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Write your own Manifesto: Letting your passion kick up your Personal Brand

dg8w2x5s_123g7xq2398_bIf I asked you if you’re doing work that you’re passionate about every day, what would you say?

Would you ask me why it mattered?

There are jobs, and then there are callings. There’s a career, and there’s a natural path. And they feel very different.

A job: You show up, you do what’s expected of you, you head home. You have good days and bad days. Sometimes you win, sometimes not.

A calling: You’re excited to get to it. You think about work a lot when you’re not there — not because you’re stressed, but because you have new ideas. You excel at the core parts of your job almost without trying, because it comes naturally to you.

See the difference?

When your work is your calling, you will naturally excel. You will deliver great results, and be happy while you’re doing.

So I ask you… is there anything else that could be as good for your personal brand?

Sure, it may seem unrealistic to think that you can choose to bring passion into your work. But if you make it a priority to actively seek out roles that play to your natural talents and motivators, you’re far more likely to find yourself in a job that aligns with your passion.

Wanna get started? Write a manifesto.

manifesto ( \ˌma-nə-ˈfes-(ˌ)tō\) – a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer

The definition is a beautiful thing, because it spells out two incredibly simple but key techniques for bringing passion into your life.

1.  A manifesto is written

The process of writing can help you clarify your thoughts, brainstorm concepts you hadn’t thought of before, and serve as an ongoing remonder. So take some time to write down what motivates you, what you’re best at, and what you want from your future employment.

2.   A manifesto is publicly declared

This is where your manifesto links to your personal brand — in the communication. As you develop your manifesto — your statement of purpose, mission, values, etc. — you can start effectively communicating it, in your resume, cover letters, online profiles, elevator pitches and more.

So go out and write your manifesto

Get really clear on what makes you tick and what would make the world work.  Write enough for a tweet or a treatise.  And find one person or a hundred to tell about it.

What’s your manifesto?  Who have you shared it with?  What has it given you?

Kristi Daeda is a career coach and writer who blogs on creating an inspiring career, job search, leadership and more at Career Adventure. Be sure to check out her free report on 51 Places to Find a Job.

photo via flickr – credit: altemark

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