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How You Spend Your Time in 2010: 22% in Social Networks

As the year is coming to an end it is a great time to review goals, financials and the value of our time. Which leads me to one of the most important questions how did you spend your time online in 2010.

A large portion of our lives are shared online: So between messaging, commenting, sending emails, blogging and conducting online searches, etc., as a society we spent approximately 25% of our lives online (this translates into 5.5 hours a day.) What did this mean to your personal brand? Did the time you spent online help to grow business, your career opportunities, or help you position that side project that you were working on. In the area of personal branding one of the key components is the value of your minute. According to Nielsen report in 2010 here is how we spent our time online.

The Breakdown

  • 5.5 Hours Online per day
  • 22.7% Spent on Social Networks (Facebook #1 destination)
  • 10.3% Online Games
  • 8.3% Email
  • 3.9% Videos
  • 3.9% Online Search

As we embark on a new year how will you plan your time management goals for 2011? Remember success is a planned activity it doesn’t happen by default. There is less than a week left in the 2010 and many people have packed it up for the year? Well the year isn’t over yet. It is the perfect time to prepare for 2011. Below are a few ways to start preparing for 2011

  • Brand Insights – An experiential personal and corporate branding workshop for 15-people in FD Lofts in Detroit Eastern Market – 01/20/11 with Hajj Flemings (Founder of Brand Camp) and Matthew Kruchko (Managing Director of Applied Storytelling). http://bit.ly/brandinsights
  • Mind Mapping – iThoughtsHD is a mindmapping iPad app that will import and export mindmaps to and from many of the most popular desktop mindmap applications such as Freemind, XMind, Novamind, MindManager, MindView, iMindmap and PDFs.
  • Goal Setting – Establish measurable goals for 2011.
  • Finalize Pending Projects – Many of us have projects that have been started and not completed.
  • Side Project - Start working on a New Project to launch the beginning of next year.
  • Re-Evaluate Resources – To increase your productivity in 2011 look to add a virtual secretary or outsource some functions to be more productive.

What did your time translate into in 2010? How does it affect your bottom line?

Let me know what you are doing to plan for 2011!!

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Are you Living Life in Default Mode?

Are you living life in Default mode?

Wikipedia defines Default: “Default Values are generally intended to make a device (or control) usable “out of the box”. A common setting, or at least a usable setting, is typically assigned.”

The more time I spend in the branding space helping people and businesses transform themselves, the more I see default settings controlling the operating systems of people and businesses. Living life by Default versus design is the path of least resistance as well as least reward.

Why should someone hire you? Why should someone buy your product? Why should someone listen to you? Why should someone read your blog? Why do you matter? Do you matter? Does your work create conversation? Are you living an undervalued life?

I thought the concept of living in Default would be an interesting topic as 2010 is coming to an end and 2011 is quickly approaching.

Remember, “Success is a journey and a planned activity.” Without goals we are living life by Default. For many people 2010 was a year of change and as technology, the economy, and the world changes you can’t depend on ‘What Was’ to be ‘What Is.’

It is time to establish your goals for 2011 personally and professionally.

Food for Thought: There is a difference between ‘Out of the Box’ and ‘Thinking Outside the Box’.

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Social Media: The Relationship Economy


We all live in a global village in a community that is not bound by geography but trust, where Social Media and social sharing is redefining relationships. Our network consist of a mix of friends that we know in real life and E-quaintances that we have connected with online. It is a common occurrence to strike up a conversion with someone at an event and say aren’t we Facebook friends.

Connected World

In this connected world the line is blurring between the digital and real, professional and personal, public and private. We now spend more time in social networks then we do on email, according to Nielsen it consumes 22.7% of our online activity. This equates to approximately 5 hours per day, which means it is impacting our relationships and decisions. The digital landscape is changing the way we consume our news, build relationships, purchase products, and how we engage in conversations, ‘In the Real World.’

Today we can talk to brands directly online (20% of the tweets mention specific brand names.) When we go to restaurants we can check-in online with location based social networks like Foursquare. We can share with our network where we are eating and our dining experience in real-time.

Building Trust

Let me be clear nothing in the world will ever beat face-to-face interaction. Social Networks however have become a very powerful tool in building trust in an attention-based economy. One of the most valuable currencies that we have is trust and those that are digitally savvy can leverage the power of social networks to build genuine relationships in the real world.

The ability to view a person’s status updates in their social network, their tweets and their online activity tells a lot about their behavior and who they are as a person. Engaging in conversations in social networks has the ability to increase the speed of transactions in developing relationships, doing a business deal, or getting to know someone.

In the final analysis in the digital world that we live in it is not about the Technology. As you look to navigate life on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and in other social networks remember the basics. You are having a conversation, you are connecting with people. How would you talk to someone face to face? Would you walk up to someone for the first time and say hey follow me and by the way would you by this product?

Tips to Remember

1. Talk to people online like you would if you were face to face.

2. Be Authentic

3. Relationships are fragile so treat them with care.

4. Remember that everybody has ulterior motives just make sure your building relationships that are mutually beneficial.

5. Relationships are not measured in quantity but quality.

Remember with every tweet, status update, comment, blog post and face-to face interaction you are either building or tearing down relationships.

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Deliver Your Brand

I recently read an article by Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress), which many people like Seth Godin have commented on, that was pretty much dead on when it comes to delivering a product. Here is an excerpt:

Usage is like oxygen for ideas – You can never fully anticipate how an audience is going to react to something you‘ve created until it’s out there. That means every moment you’re working on something without it being in the public it‘s actually dying, deprived of the oxygen of the real world.

I think this applies to personal branding.

Although there are a bunch of us that understand the importance of personal branding, there are droves of our peers out there that are not completely sold on the concept. I believe MOST of that has to do with confidence. What if I am not good enough? What if I am not consistent and compelling? People take themselves right out of the game.

There is a unique paradox in personal branding about being consistent and frequent. I think this is is VERY true, but I do think its more important to be ON TIME, than consistent and frequent. Matt in his article talked about Apple and WordPress dealing with the challenges of delivering product. Apple products many times when released, albeit with ingenuity and gargantuan hype, at times fall short of what pundits say “the customer actually wants.” Much of that is due to the the fact that their philosophy is to deliver great product and develop it to maturity while it is in the market. I believe Apple’s reasoning for this thought process is that they feel many people don’t completely know what they want in a product until they start using it. I tend to agree.

This is the same way with personal branding. Many of us didn’t know what our personal brand was, until we started developing one.

Deliver your brand.

If you know someone who is discouraged by the enormous task of maintaining a personal brand, tell them they have lost until they deliver their brand. You don’t know what you are made of until you get in the game (sports analogy).

I believe it is very important to give your brand oxygen, and if you don’t know what your brand is yet, dig deep inside your heart and create some prototypes. You know the core you, but allow your audience to guide you to where you need to be.

P.S. Deliver Magazine is a great source of information for marketers and small business owners.

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The SparkNotes of Personal Branding

Building your brand is a continuous process that will last you your entire lifetime and there are countless ways that you can build and communicate your personal brand both online and in-person.

However, to get you started, I have put together what I’d like to consider a SparkNotes guide for establishing your brand and credibility in today’s career marketplace in 3 easy steps:

1. Get active and get visible online and offline:

If no one meets you or sees you, it won’t matter how strong your personal brand is. Therefore, it is critical that you get both your name and yourself in front of your target audience. Here are some ways to increase your visibility:

o Create a LinkedIn profile and follow the suggested steps to complete your profile 100%, making sure you include your personal brand and pitch in your subtitle and summary sections

o Create a Google account and profile for improved search engine optimization

o Include your personal brand on your resume, cover letter, business cards, email signature, voicemail message and across your other social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook

o Consider creating a personal website or blog site where you can store all of your professional information, including experience, education, skills, honors, entrepreneurial efforts and more

o Join associations or networking groups within your industry, both online and offline, and try attending their events to meet new contacts and build your target network. Be sure to share your personal brand with those new contacts you meet

o Conduct informational interviews with contacts in your target industry or companies (whether or not you’re seeking a job) and share your personal brand with them in your introductions

2. Offer consistent value:

Make sure that everything you contribute is valuable to those with whom you share it and also relevant to and supportive of your personal brand. Consistency is key, for the more consistent all of your own marketing efforts are both online and offline, the more powerful and memorable your personal brand impression will be on all current and prospective stakeholders in your career. Here are some ways you can start contributing value on a daily or weekly basis:

o Tweets

o Comments on other blog posts

o Blog articles or articles for print publications

o Discussions in LinkedIn Groups or in other forums

o Advice via LinkedIn Answers and other forums

o Book or product reviews

3. Develop thought leadership:

As you grow the quantity, quality and uniqueness of your contributions, you may be increasingly considered as an industry thought leader. Here are some ways to support and even expedite your rise to thought leadership:

o Start your own blog with a unique POV on your industry/area of interest

o Found a company with relevant and valuable products/services/resources for the industry

o Publish and offer print and/or electronic publications

o Get quoted in the media by joining HARO (HelpaReporter.com) and contributing advice, experiences and insights to writers and journalists seeking expert sources

o Find ways to bring fellow industry thought leaders together on a project or at an event

o Find ways to contribute to the projects or events of fellow industry experts

o Get recommended on LinkedIn and any other networks where you or your offerings are available and/or collect and display testimonials from customers, clients and partners

Chris Perry, MBA is a Gen Y brand and marketing “generator,” a career search and personal branding expert and the founder of Career Rocketeer and Launchpad.

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