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Can your Personal Brand Write its own Terms of Service?

What are the Terms and Service of your personal brand? According to Wikipedia, Terms of Service (TOS) is defined as rules by which one must agree to abide by in order to use a service. Usually, such terms are legally binding. The average person is typically not in a position to write there own TOS.

As I have been listening online recently there is a very interesting theme occurring with high profile people leaving companies, organizations and changing industries. This has me thinking about the power and ability to leave on your own terms.

High Profile People who are Changing

  • Oprah Winfrey announces, The Oprah Winfrey Show ends September 2011 and she will focus on her cable network, OWN = Oprah Winfrey Network.
  • Allen Iverson announces he is leaving the Memphis Grizzlies for personal reasons (basically because he isn’t starting) and later signs with the Philadelphia 76ers.
  • Fritz Henderson former CEO of GM is forced to resigned after 8-months
  • Alec Baldwin announces that he is not interested in acting anymore after 30-years in the profession.
  • Bobby Bowen built the Florida State University Football program over 34-years and at the end of his tenure is basically asked to step down, but we still want you to help raise funds for the University.

Why are these events significant? This is significant because the world of work is changing and dependence on companies is fleeting. One of the greatest benefits of developing a strong personal brand is to be in a position to write your own Terms of Service. Whether you like Allen Iverson or not he is a first ballot Hall of Famer basketball player and he has decided he is either going to start or not play. That means he has limited his opportunities but has decided to live on his own terms. Oprah Winfrey has decided to develop her own network and be on TV on her own schedule.

The Elite Personal Brands Rewrite the Rules

Elite personal brands rewrite all the rules that we are instructed to follow in college. The ability to do this comes from paying the piper and spending the 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his book Outliers. As a personal brand I am working to get to the Steve Jobs, Russell Simmons, Oprah level where I can rewrite the rules and live by my own Terms of Service: corporate dress consisting of blue jeans, sneakers, and maybe a baseball cap and start my own television network.

Are you operating on your own Terms of Service (TOS)?

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

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.

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

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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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Personal Branding: The New Celebrity Built Online

What we all love about celebrities is that we believe they live a lifestyle that mere morals only dreamed of? People desire the allure of fame and notoriety neither of which means satisfaction or fulfillment in what you do, but carries with it a lot responsibility. In the age of the social web quote unquote celebrities are popping up everyday. As a personal brand strategist, I am a strong believer in substance and value and that personal brands should be built authentically that package and expose your true DNA.

The New Celebrities

Case Studies, Gary Vaynerchuk (@GaryVee) and Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) are a growing example of the new celebrity. They are larger than life personalities that have cut their teeth online and through shear sweat equity, passion, free social media tools, and a loyal online following have created incredible opportunities for themselves. Thought leaders, Techies, and creatives are the new black and provide regular people with a ray of hope of creating a message for the world that leaves them wanting more.

Basics of The New Celebrities

  • Exposing your Genius – Your genius is what you makes you special. It is the intersection between your passion, the problem you solve, and the process (business model) you use. With all the noise and information flowing online it will be important to expose your Genius.
  • Tell your Personal Brand Story – You need to know who you are and be prepared to tell your face-to-face and online. A personal brand story is not a resume or a list of bullets but a short story that is digestible without chocking people with useless ego chatter.
  • Create Hubs and Use Amplifiers – Social media is an amplifier it doesn’t solve world peace or cure world hunger, it amplifies who and what you are. A hub is a centralized, online digital destination that aggregates your content (i.e. Facebook Fan Page or a Blog.) These public domains are brand building mechanism that empowers your community (fan base) to share and consume your content.
  • Be your own Paparazzi: Establish a social presence with some of the popular social network, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitter to name a few.
  • Create Scarcity – The goal of Celebritism is to create scarcity. Social Networks are great platforms or funnels to offer free shareable content that will allow you to take people up your funnel. The great thing about celebrities is that people are willing to pay more for a different level of exposure or experience. For example I love Malcolm Gladwell books and his other written work, I would be willing to pay more to hear him speak because there are limited opportunities.
  • Follow the Leaders - Look at what the real life celebrities are doing and take a page out of their book: Vin Diesel has 6.7 millions friends on his Facebook fan page, MCHammer has 1.6 million followers on Twitter, and Shaq has 2.4 million followers on Twitter.

The power has shifted to any person with a laptop, iPhone, and an internet connection to connect their passion to the world. The true celebrities have found away to authentically connect people to who they are their passion. I believe the goal is to create scarcity.

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