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Keep Polishing Your Personal Brand

polish away, originally uploaded by Darwin Bell.

Personal branding has always been out there, but it has become a better defined and an increasingly popular concept over the past decade.

It is the essential first step in your career search process, helping you identify your own unique and differentiating value and communicate it memorably and consistently online and offline to employers and recruiters. Today’s economic recession and job market have opened many professionals’ eyes to the importance and effectiveness of personal branding throughout their whole career as an ongoing part of their continuous professional development.

Just like with interviews, when you’re seeking job opportunities, you begin to get increasingly better at presenting yourself and effectively answering questions posed to you by the interviewers; however, upon employment, your stop practicing and your interview skills become rusty. This is why career experts suggest that you schedule periodic informational interviews with fellow professionals both within and outside of your organization as part of your career development in order to stay prepared for future interview opportunities should they arise. Maintaining and updating your personal brand online and offline are not only healthy and necessary for effective self-understanding and self-presentation, but also set you up well whether you are seeking employment or you are positioning yourself for promotions or other opportunities within your organization.

So how do you stay on top of your brand and keep it polished?

1. Develop or redevelop your own one-or-two-word personal brand and supporting personal brand pitch and practice saying it as the answer to questions like “Why should we pick you?” so that it is flows naturally and confidently and effectively presents yourself.

2. Update all of your online profiles/websites and career outputs, including your resume, cover letter, email signature etc. with recent professional experience, education and achievements and most importantly your personal brand.

3. Make sure that your actions and achievements are consistent and support your personal brand claim both inside and outside of work.

4. Seek formal and informal feedback from fellow co-workers, family members and friends on how you and your actions are being perceived by others. Compare that to your own perception of your performance, as well as your personal branding goals and make adjustments or updates as necessary.

5. Stay alert and aware of new technological changes with respect to how you present yourself, how you engage in networking and how you search for and pursue new career opportunities and set time aside to learn about and take advantage of new professional networks, platforms and tools.

By periodically polishing your personal brand, you will come across more confident, more professional and more memorable to those with whom you interact and work on a consistent basis. More importantly, you and your personal brand will be ready to “shine” when the need or opportunity present itself to pursue another job or more responsibility.

Chris Perry (@CareerRocketeer) 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.

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Brandcamp Video #3: Marcie Brogan and the business pitfalls of a personal brand

Marcie Brogan, a veteran of the Detroit advertising market, shares her experiences on how hard it’s been to divorce her “personal brand” from the company she loves and co-founded, Brogan Partners.

www.Brogan.com

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Personal Branding: Your Avatar is your Global ID.

Today, we live in a world that is skin deep. Magazine covers, movies, and product commercials are littered with models, celebrities, movie stars and the moving target of what society says is in and is beautiful. Packaging is an important part of personal branding and must be addressed. People are visual and make decisions based upon images, first impressions, and yes your avatar. It is cliché, but true, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

One of the most critical elements of your personal brand is your avatar or as I call it your global ID. It is typically the first visual online impression that people will have with your personal brand.

What is an Avatar?
It is the online visual representation of your personal brand.

Managing your Avatar
o Standardization: Avatar should be branded consistently all of your social networks.
o Professional Looking Image: A professional photo shoot is not required, but a clear crisp headshot is idea.
o Social Network Specs: Follow the specs of the social network your uploading your avatar into.

Benefits of a Great Avatar
o Communicates Trust: Your image can communicate trust and impact perception (enhances or diminishes)
o Branding Consistency: Visual impressions of your personal brand is consistent across the web increasing brand recognition.
o Connectivity: Digital relationships should help build off-line relationships.
o Brand Humanization: It humanizes your brand and helps people connect with you as a person.

Where should your Personal Branded Avatar Exist?
o Wherever you Exist: Press Kit, Blog, etc.
o Social Networks: Consistent across all of your social networks: Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc.
o Business Cards (Web 2.0 Cards): I am an advocate for avatars on business cards. Your business cards should extend the online and off-line relationship. I recommend www.BrandCardz.com
o Blog Post Comments: Create a profile on Gravatar and it will automatically populate your avatar into any WordPress (other platforms are being researched) blog comment that you post. As people begin to read your well thought out comments on other blogs the recognition of your personal brand will continue to spread.
o Slideshare Resume: Create a creative version of your resume in a slide presentation formation should include your avatar.
o Mybloglog: Add the Mybloglog widget to your blog and it will allow you to see who is visually coming to your blog.

There are many schools of thought on creating an avatar such as the usage of cartoons, logos, or cool designs. I recognize there are many successful examples of cartoons (@chrispirillo) or logos (@BarackObama) so the chose is yours. I recommend that you use an image of yourself as your avatar because one of the goals is to turn digital relationships into off-line relationships and it helps the visual recognition of your personal brand.

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Brand Camp Video #2: Social Media & You: Tips for Success in your Career (Scott Monty)

I’m pleased to bring you the second video from the 2008 Brand Camp University Personal Branding 2.0 Conference, with Scott Monty Director of Social Media at Ford talking about Social Media & You: Tips for Success in your Career. His presentation includes his now famous quote “What happens in Vegas - Stays in Google.” He has some excellent information to share. Sit back and enjoy.

Thanks to Portage Media Solutions for producing the video.

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Nine Personal Branding Predictions for 2009

It is 2009 and the Internet is buzzing with experts providing their predictions and trends for the year. I wanted to provide my thoughts on personal branding to help set the tone for an exciting year.

Predictions/Trendspotting

1. Creative Economy: Creativity will be to the information age what manufacturing was to the industrial age. Individuals dependence on being a company man working 30-years at one company or until death do you part will cease to exist. The integration of creativity into business ideas and career will become a necessity and not an option. As a personal brand you will need to think creatively in developing strategic partnerships and ways to stand out. After everybody has updated their Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter pages, established a blog, added followers, and followed all the same tips what is next? Creativity.
2. Purpose/Mission: People will start to seek opportunities or careers that give them greater satisfaction that they have a true passion for. This is primarily due to the instability in the economy and the reduction of jobs that were more lucrative in good economic times. High paying low education jobs are a thing of the past. People will now look at opportunities that align with how they are wired and what they were designed to do.
3. ‘Personal Branding’ Term Commoditized: The term ‘Personal Branding’ will become more commoditized and genericized. The term has significance and value when implemented, but I believe the term itself will be overused and misused.
4. Traditional Journalist Become Commodities: The voice and influence of bloggers and social media experts increase. Newspapers are losing money with traditional newspaper printing and are looking for ways to compete with the new media. Traditional journalist will have to integrate social media and effectively establish their personal brand.
5. Personal Branding Experts Commodization: With the increase of social media gurus the line between personal branding experts and social media experts is blurring. The personal branding industry will become oversaturated and the cream will rise to the top. Those of us in the personal branding industry will have to work harder to cut through the noise.
6. Establish ‘Blue Movement’: The need to develop the ‘Blue Movement is critical. ‘American Made’ needs to be established as the new luxury product. The ‘Green Movement’ has been very successful because big business have bought into it can the same be done with the ‘Blue Movement’?
7. Twitter Relevance Increases: Twitter will gain relevance as a search and primary news source. Business opportunities with strategist business models and usages will continue to be developed.
8. Personal Brands being Healthy: Being healthy is just as importance as your ranking in Google. You can have all the money and influence in the world but without good health you have nothing. Being fit spiritually, mentally, and physically is critical. Learn to have balance and think holistically because you are the sum total of all your parts.
9. Passion Becomes King: People doing what they love. Passion is the fuel that drives you to do what others are not willing to do. We all have the same 24-hours but passionate people find out how to get more out of their time and produce higher quality results.

I want to challenge and inspire you to shine in 2009. Have an awesome year and share your predictions for 2009 in the comments section of this blog post.

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