One of the lessons that I received over the weekend, had to do with keeping your faith young. In most cases when we reach maturity in things we do, we are at our best. However being young in something doesn’t always have to be a direct correlation with immaturity.

I recently came a across a slide show that I put together for a really good friend’s wedding. On the soundtrack is a great song, called Forever Young, by Rod Stewart. Although the lyrics seem to be targeted towards a relationship with a son or daughter, I felt the song generally inspires us to stay young.

I strongly feel this is how we should approach our personal brand. Staying young in heart and mind allows you to stay invigorated, passionate, and most important – teachable. As we mature in life, some of the ways to maintain youth is to continue to learn different things that allow you to sharpen your skills and your knowledge base. Here are a few more things to consider:

Pay Attention to Accidental Inspiration
Although I think it is necessary to be purposeful in everything we do,inspiration and creativity many times is accidental. For instance a combination of experiences allowed for me to be inspired to write this post as explained above.  I think it is always good to keep the juices flowing by mixing up the monotony and allowing yourself to be inspired by your experiences. Allowing yourself to be open to different genres and creating new relationships are good ways to mix things up. Just like a fruit smoothie, if you don’t mix it up you will find that all the good stuff is at the bottom.

Be Prepared for a Pivot
Good entrepreneurs are always ready for a potential pivot. Sometimes you start a business or initiative going in a specific direction. However things in the market could change or your customer evolves and you find that you have to take your idea in a different direction. To be prepared for a pivot you have your hand on the pulse of the market and be prepared to make a pivot in another profitable direction. Changing directions sometimes requires energy; it helps to stay young in the mind and be able to learn new things. This can apply to career’s and passion projects as well.

Maintain Momentum
Sometimes it is natural for us to get comfortable and on auto-pilot with our day-to-day responsibilities. Keeping our batteries charged through rest and recuperation, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and constantly staying in practice allows us to keep up with the pace of our purpose in life.

These are things that can edify your day-to-day duties on-the-job or business, relationships with your spouse and kids, and in our friendships. Stay Invigorated and Forever Young.

What inspires you in life? This Pantene commercial is about a deaf and mute girl that learns to play the violin against all odds. What challenges do you face in life that you complain about? If she can overcome the odds in her life what is stopping you?

Choose to be different and live your dreams. Don’t live your life to just be like others.

Historically I haven’t been a heavy Skype user.  My recent usage of this tool has exposed me to the significant personal branding opportunities. The power of this tool is not that it gives you that cool Jetson type feel, but its ability to connect people in different locations while providing a face-to-face interaction real-time.

Understand it is a free tool  and you are only as good as your internet connection and hardware.

Skype Basic Set-Up
To get started download the free-of-charge Skype software.  You will need to set-up a profile, have access to an internet connection and some basic hardware:  laptop/desktop computer/mobile device, web cam, headset, and recording software (the recording software is only required for recording audio and/or video).

Skype Profile

•    Skype Handle - I recommend establishing a Skype handle (which is your number or contact) using a name that is consistent with your other social network profiles.  (My Skype handle is ‘HajjFlemings’ which is my real name).
•    Avatar – Use the consistent avatar that you used across all of your social networks (actual photo).
•    Bio – Brief bio that should be consistent with your other social networks.

If you are a high profile person, celebrity, or have stalker concerns use a Skype handle and profile that is appropriate and safe for you.

Hardware/Software

Web Cams –  Only required if video is being enabled.  One of the best web cams is the  Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000.

Headset –The headset is strongly recommended for recording purposes.  The biggest  factor that will go into the type of headset you will need is the type of device you will using (desktop computer, laptop, or smartphone).  I would recommend you doing some research.  I personally have a Plantronics.

Recording Software – The personal branding value is maximized when the video functionally is ultiized.  To record you have to download a third party application.
I have listed a few different options.

•    Vodburner (PC Only)
•    Call Recorder for Macs
•    Screenflow – Screenflow is a screencasting software that can be used to capture the video is a cool application that a friend of mind Henry Balanon swears by.

Personal Branding Value:

In the example I used I was able to extend my reach to a group of educators that were outside of  my network with no cost to me except my time.

Products that can be produced from Skype
•    Audio Podcasts
•    Video Podcasts
•    Video Interviews
•    Workshop Presentations

Value Provided By Using Skype
•    Extend your network
•    Extend your reach
•    Reinforces your relevance in the new media space.
•    Its FREE!!! It saves you money and time.
•    Sharable content if recorded, uploaded and linked to.

I hope this short blog post opened up your eyes to the possibilities of using Skype as a personal branding tool.  Please share your thoughts in the comments section about how you have used Skype as a personal branding tool.

1.  Collaborate, don’t compete.

This CBS commercial for “The Late Show” featured David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey, and even late-night competitor Jay Leno.  Why would CBS want to showcase these stars from competing networks?  Two reasons, really – to create interest, and to gain brand value by association.

How can you put this principle to play while building your own brand?  One way is to interview a respected authority in your field, and publish the interview on your blog.  Mohammed Al-Taee did just that in this interview with branding legend Seth Godin.  Another option is to write guest articles for “competing” blogs in your niche.

2.  Continue the story.

The GoDaddy commercials are infamously racy in nature – and I don’t suggest that the particular theme of their spots is right for everyone.  But, what GoDaddy does better than any other advertiser is “continue the story”.  The call-to-action is always to view even more on their website.  Their :30 seconds of fame turns into far more than :30 seconds.

What about you?  When you meet peers at conferences or seminars, do you continue the story?  Does your business card list your blog URL, your Twitter handle, and your Linkedin profile?  Follow the GoDaddy formula, and turn your offline connections into online connections, and vice versa.

3.  Provide sneak peaks to insiders.

Google’s “Parisian Love” spot was brilliant on multiple levels, but I will focus on one in particular.  The day before the Big Game, Google’s CEO tweeted this somewhat cryptic message, signaling that Google might be running a spot.  On several tech blogs, the spot itself was leaked early (accidental?).  I saw the spot the night before the Super Bowl, and was excited to have “inside info” that others didn’t.  Who doesn’t love to feel like an insider?

How can you replicate this same feeling around your personal brand?  You might e-mail your blog subscribers in advance to describe an upcoming series of posts.  Or, you could produce and provide a special video just for your Twitter followers.  Problogger takes similar steps quite often, and each time I enjoy the “insider” feeling.

4.  Evoke emotions.

Budweiser ran several silly commercials with typical juvenile punchlines, and none of them really stuck with me.  But, the Budweiser Clydesdale spot that featured the pony and young steer succesfully tugged at the heartstrings.  The spot was an instant hit because it evoked an emotional reaction from all who watched it.

You can replicate this very concept by occasionally weaving ”truly personal” elements into your personal brand.  The two most powerful articles I’ve read recently were from Copyblogger.com, and both were deeply personal in nature.  Read both this Men With Pens post, and this Jonathan Morrow post, and remember the feelings evoked by these personal tales.

5.  Provide an offer nobody can refuse.

I’ll admit, I thought the Denny’s “Chickens” ads were just plain horrible.  Yet, they managed to create a buzz around their brand by offering a free Grand Slam breakfast to anyone in the country.  The compelling offer was the star, not the ludicrous TV spots.

Just think – if the nation is thrown into a frenzy over scrambled eggs and a sausage link, what could you provide to inspire the same fervor?  Maybe that college paper you wrote can be redesigned and turned into an E-Book?  Promote the book as “Usually $15, but FREE to all blog subscribers by March 1, 2010″.  With a little viral luck, you might just have a brand buzz gold rush on your hands.

The ideas above are just a few of the lessons personal brands can learn from large business brands.  While our individual budgets can never compete – we can apply the very same principles to build buzz around our own brands.

What do you think?  Do you have any other ideas on how individuals might create excitement around their own brands?  Leave a comment below, “continue the story” with me on Personal Branding 101, or say hello on Twitter.

Ryan is the advertising creative coordinator for a Fortune 500 financial services firm on the West Coast.  His experience building the brand of a globally respected firm helps provide a unique perspective on the world of personal branding.  Read more from Ryan at Personal Branding 101 .

What happens when you get a collection of true thought leaders, entrepreneurs, storytellers, tweeters, visionaries and a world-class athlete in a single room?  You get the Brand Camp ’09 experience: engaging conversations with like-minded people that inspire change and transform gray matter with each spoken word and each character of every tweet.

Why Detroit?  Detroit is a blue collar, manufacturing town that was built on the back of the automotive industry which was the Silicon Valley of its day. The cheese has moved and Detroit is currently going through a brand crisis.  It is the perfect location to discuss how social media, personal branding and passion is changing the way we work and live.

Super Heroes/Professors

The list of Rock stars that rocked Lawrence Tech University providing nutrious content for attendees to consume for 7-hours and shared in short 140 character burst of information.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/manoian/4009145335/in/set-72157622580068302/

Mitch Joel, Ken Brown, Scott Monty, Rohit Bhargava, Hajj E. Flemings ,  Valeria Maltoni, April Holmes,  and Robert (Bob) Fish (Not Pictured)

What others are saying about Brand Camp ‘09

• Mitch Joel (@MitchJoel) -  SPOS #175 – Personality And Authenticity With Rohit Bhargava
• Mitch Joel (@MitchJoel) -  The Key to Your Personal Brand
• Nikki Stephan (@EstrellaBella10) – Personal Branding + Social Media = Brand Camp University
• Brian Ambrozy (@icrontic) – BrandCamp University 2009
• Mike McClure (@Mike KMcClure) – 10 Things I learned at Brand Camp `09
• Andrea Freile - Marketable Myself Through Social Media
• Chris Reed (@darealchrisreed) – Personal Branding, Live from Brand Camp University

Is Brand Camp a conference, an experience, or a movement? Only time will tell, but for now it is a passionate community of early adopters who are growing their personal brands and businesses with social media.

I reached out to fellow job seekers and career experts for effective personal branding tips that could help you distinguish yourself to your chosen and targeted audience of employers, and here are some top tips that I compiled to share with you today:

Learn or Master a Skill

Focus on your area of expertise that you want to be known for. Stick to what you’re good at, and then make it even better it. How? For starters, don’t do what everyone else is doing. Don’t go to the local non-profit organization and volunteer your time, joining its marketing team to end up doing whatever task comes your way. Take control of the direction of your marketing project. Go online, research, and commit to learning one new focused skill; pick a skill that increases your value in your expertise. This is your new job for now. Really commit to it, and spend the time it takes to learn it. Master it. Then, go to someone in your target audience, and offer that skill to them to solve a problem. Show them how you can help them; offer them your solution. Make it the best. Wow them with it. - Maren Finzer, www.marenfinzer.com

Write a Book

I’ve been lecturing and writing about careers for quite a while now and the best branding advice I can give is this: write a book. Or, an e-book at least. Choose a unique title to enhance your branding efforts. Include the e-book when job-applying online. Ideally, you can afford to have an actual book printed and can include it with your resume when you’re being interviewed in person.  Don’t let the idea a writing a book deter you–books nowadays don’t fit the traditional definition. They can be a collection of blog articles. Or, short manuscripts. (I’ve been some that have fewer than 30 pages, some of which contain a simple quotation.) You could even outline the knowledge/expertise that brands you and hire a ghostwriter. - Marlene Caroselli, www.caroselli.biz

Plan an Event

Plan a local event for your industry. Sounds crazy, right? With the popularity of “un-conferences” growing, it’s possible for anyone to plan an event for their industry.  Local project manager Jason Brett planned ProductCamp Atlanta. He recruited sponsors to pay for the food and facility. He invited everyone he knows in the industry. 200 people RSVPed for the free event and 185 people attended. It was held on the Georgia tech campus, which provided ample parking and free wireless access. Jason used consistent branding for himself and for the event – so that his name became well-known throughout the community. Jason received a job offer within 30 days of the event. - Brandy Nagel

Use Video

Because personal branding is just that –personal– one of the most effective tools we teach our clients is to allow potential employers (or customers) that “VIP-Access to get to know you” via use of video.  We encourage our clients, for example, to produce a 6-part series of 60 second videos sharing relevant information to not only show their expertise, but also to allow others the chance to understand their personality and build a following.  Potential employers start to like you before you’ve even met face to face.  Suddenly, you are walking into an interview where everyone has already watched your carefully built You Tube channel and vlog posts (they watched it while you slept) and they feel like they know you.  You are a friend on their doorstep, while the other candidates are strangers they’ve never met.  And you know the rule about that.  Never talk to strangers. - Aly & Andrea, www.AlyandAndrea.com

Special thanks to everyone who contributed to this wealth of personal branding insight!

Chris Perry is a Gen Y Brand and Marketing Generator, a Career Search and Personal Branding Expert and the Founder of Career Rocketeer, the Career Search and Personal Branding Blog.

Today we released the official design for the Brand Camp ‘09 graphic tee design.  The Brand Camp Conference t-shirts will follow the Air Jordan tradition and every year we will drop the hottest social media conference t-shirt design in the land.  Be apart of the Brand Camp shirt genealogy and get your social media lifestyle wear.

Brand Camp II (2009): Design Specs:

• Design:  The design integrates: “I Grustle all Day.” and “Brand Camp”
• Garment: American apparel 100% cotton garment will be used for a great fit.
• Colors:  Brown/Yellow/White

Note: To get your Brand Camp ‘09 t-shirt you have to attend the conference. : )

I would argue that you own your personal brand and the qualities that make you interesting and irresistible. This argument begins to blur when you start talking about your digital identity and personal digital network.

Let’s start off by defining personal branding.

Definition of Personal Branding – It is the process of identifying what makes you unique and authentically packaging and communicating your story in a way that creates value and helps you to solve a problem.

Personal branding in a digital world has become a necessary evil whether you subscribe to the theory or not for the following reasons: (1) the content consumption habits of people and corporations have changed, (2) the instability of the job market and (3) shortcut for talent seekers (small businesses, employers, and educational institutions).

Qualities that Successful Personal Brands Possess

o Operating in your Genius – If you take a highly successful person and they lose their wealth, their career success is diminished, or job the true essence of who is what will enable them to make bounce back regain what they lose. True genius is not in how much money you have made but in understanding an identifying the following three points:

• How you are wired – Understanding how you think and operate.
• Platform/Space – Identifying our area of expertise.
• Business Model – Identifying a method or process for how your ideas makes money.

o Unique Personal DNA – No company or entity can own your character, personality, or creativity; they can only have the opportunity to own what you have created.

o Creativity – A corporation can never own your creativity, they can lease your creative juices. They can own the ideas you create during your working relationship.

The Personal Brand Benefits Breakdown (Quick Snapshot)

There can be a mutually beneficial engagement between personal brands to the employer.

Benefits

Who benefits from the personal brand when it operates within the employer brand? The employers primary benefit is identifying talent.

Employer Brand
o Awareness – Helps identify potential candidates for a position.
o Data Points – Provide more information to make an informed decision on a potential candidate.
o Network – Maybe. Depending on your job responsibilities your network could be an asset. It is a big ‘if’.

Personal Brand
o Awareness – Helps potential employer identify you.
o Value – Helps you to package yourself so that you can fully leverage your talent.
o Digital Footprint (On-line) – Helps make you searchable.

In conclusion change is the order of the day and the following four issues will have to be dealt with policies, people, responsibilities, and cultural change.

o Policy versus People – Is there a risk? The answer is yes concerning person and employer brands. The fact that you are apart of the company it is no longer perfect and proper guidelines have to be set so that people can operate successfully. Shining the brass on the Titanic or creating policies that override the value and good of using social media, like with ESPN will have to be addressed.

o Corporate Guidelines – Coming soon to an employer near you are corporate guidelines for employee engagement with the social web.

o Responsibilities – There is a two way street with the employer and the employee to be socially and ethically responsible.

o Fear – Fear of the unknown. This is new territory so there are a lot of unknowns concerning the usage of social media in corporate structures.

“Despite that social technologies can improve customer relationships, the risks may be too great for some companies to bear, as a result, some corporations will shy away from allowing employees to have personal brands.”
Jeremiah Owyang

Brands are ultimately powered by people so it is unrealistic to think that people won’t benefit from the social interaction of social media in a job context. Employer and personal brands can co-exist, much of the value for the employer is in identifying the talent unless there is a direct connection between your job function and your network that impact the bottom line.

At the end of the day cream always rise to the top, just like great athletes find a way to impose their will on the game. For example Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers is unstoppable you don’t have to set a million screens or run plays for him he will score period regardless of who is guarding him. Stars make it happen. If you take away the engagement of personal brands within an employer brand the stars will rise I guarantee you.

Great Minds, originally uploaded by bobsd46.

Influencers, thought leaders, and creatives see the world 180 degrees from everyone else.  There is an old clique that states ‘Great Minds think a like’ which I happen to disagree with. Great minds despise good and become great.  Great minds not only don’t think alike they are not equal they challenge lesser minds, status quo, the fear of failure, and mediocrity. It is the great minds give us creative and innovate products that we didn’t realize we wanted until we saw them.

Revolutionary Ideas from Great Minds
o    Netbooks – They made laptops lighter, smaller and more cost effiencient.  (Netbooks will account 20% of laptops globally sales in 2009)
o    Twitter – Builds brands in 140 characters or less. (Twitter has gone mainstream and has a growth rate of 1,382%)
o    ESPN – 24-hour sports station started by Bill Rasmussen in 1979 with $9,000. (This was before CNN and MTV)

What if Apple focused on owning the MP3 market?

This blog post was birth from my recent purchase of the iPhone.  I begin to think about Apple and how they owned 75% of the mp3 market.  Why didn’t Apple focus their energy on continuing its dominance of the mp3 market?  Apple realized there was a greater opportunity with mobile devices and were not afraid to shift.

“Great minds don’t worry about owning markets
they focus on owning ideas.” -  Hajj E. Flemings ]]> http://www.brandcampu.com/2009/07/great-minds-don%e2%80%99t-think-alike/feed/ 0