1) Start by identifying your objectives. What do you hope to accomplish through your social media presence? Are you hoping to directly sell products and services? (Note: in-your-face sales tactics are rarely successful via social media.) Are you hoping to spread awareness amongst your market? Are you seeking to build stronger relationships with current clients? Or are you simply trying to drive traffic to your website? As you see, there are a variety of ways in which social media can be approached. Define your objectives before jumping in!

2) Look to build relationships and form community. Social media is a fantastic forum to strengthen existing relationships and to develop new ones. It is easy to plug yourself in to communities of people that share the same line of work, the same geographic location, or even the same hobbies as you. Start conversations, pursue relationships, and work to integrate yourself into various communities. You will find that these relationships often lead to productive collaboration and are well worth the time you invest.

3) Use Facebook and Twitter to share more about yourself, your interests, and your personal life. Whether it is sharing photos of your family or keeping your followers informed of your latest travels, social media platforms represent a great opportunity to “open up” and let your connections get to know you even better. This is an excellent way to build trust, as well—as it gives your audience a chance to see the “real” you. As you probably know, consumers prefer to do business with people that they trust—so take advantage of the opportunity!

4) Remember to stay true to your brand across all platforms. Whether it is Facebook, your blog, or even your latest TV appearance, it is always important to stay consistent with your brand. The ease and frequency with which you can communicate via social media makes it easy to stray off course, so discipline is important.

Social media is a powerful tool for personal branding. Thanks to platforms like Facebook and Twitter, today you have the ability to reach a massive audience in real-time and for virtually no cost. Thirty years ago, marketers would have stood in line for days and paid untold sums of money for this type of reach. The only question is… will you take advantage? And it all starts with a strategy—contact us today if you’d like to learn more!

For instance:

Do you have a unique educational background? Perhaps you attended a prestigious college or earned a prestigious degree? Or maybe you are a lifelong learner and have acquired multiple degrees. If your educational background makes you uniquely qualified to provide services to your market, emphasize it! You spent plenty of time and money pursuing your education—it only makes sense to leverage it as much as you can.

What are some of the more interesting facets of your personality? Incorporating your personality into your personal brand is important—but only in a way that is relevant. Your phobia of spiders, for example, probably won’t add value to your brand. On the other hand, your non-stop work ethic or your creative approach to problem solving are likely worth working in to your personal brand.

What are your hobbies and passions? Remember, a strong personal brand is distinctive as well as memorable… and what better way to create a memorable brand than by incorporating your unique passions? I am a Florida Gators fan—and my clients, friends, and colleagues are well aware of this fact. You may not be a sports fan, but what are you passionate about? American Idol? Your vintage car collection? Traveling the world? Don’t be shy about working these hobbies and passions into your brand!

A strong personal brand will inspire your audience to trust you—because they will feel like they already know you. But such a brand cannot be built without highlighting the areas that make you unique. You’re not a robot—you’re not all business, 100% of the time. So don’t build a robotic personal brand. Focus on your points of differentiation and your unique characteristics and you’ll be well on your way to building an effective personal brand.

The NBA season tipped off on Christmas day, which meant a return to the spotlight for Lebron James and the Miami Heat. As you probably know, Lebron James generated controversy (not to mention numerous headlines) last season with his decision to publically jilt the Cleveland Cavaliers in favor of the Miami Heat. In the process, Lebron’s personal brand evolved substantially—from a fan favorite, to a villain, to a gradually “rehabbed” image this offseason. There are a number of lessons that are relevant to business owners seeking to build a strong personal brand in 2012. Below are three of the most important.

1) If you’ve got bad news, deliver it in private whenever possible. Last offseason, Lebron James left Cleveland to play for Miami. This is not uncommon in sports—star athletes relocate often. However, the way in which Lebron handled the process was an unprecedented disaster. Rather than discreetly moving on, Lebron took over ESPN airwaves for an hour to make his announcement. He outraged Cleveland’s management team, broke the hearts of their fans, and disgusted fans across the nation with his seemingly self-centered approach. The moral of the story for business owners is simple: keep negative developments as quiet as possible. Whether it is laying off an employee, discontinuing a product line, or even closing a store location—handle it as discreetly as you can.

2) When you screw up, apologize and move on. Lebron’s “Decision” was handled poorly—this was obvious to everyone, immediately. But rather than apologizing for it, Lebron bristled at the suggestion that he did anything wrong. He then doubled down, so to speak, by appearing in a celebratory rally with his new teammates in Miami. As a result, he faced criticism all season long—a fate that could have been avoided had he simply apologized for his indiscretion. The moral: if you know you’re wrong, don’t fight it. Come clean, set things right—and move past it!

3) At the end of the day, it’s the bottom line that matters. Lebron James, for all of his personal accolades and notoriety, has yet to win a championship. To make matters worse, he has often seemed to “choke” when the stakes were highest. As a result, the media and most fans primarily focus on his shortcomings. Winning would completely change the narrative surrounding Lebron—but until that happens, he’ll be viewed by many in a negative light. As a business owner, the lesson is simple: exceptional products and services will define your brand in a way that nothing else can. Deliver an outstanding customer experience and you’ll never have trouble bringing in new business.

You’re not a superstar basketball player, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from Lebron’s personal branding nightmare. Keep these lessons in mind as you create a powerful personal brand in 2012!

Without both of these components, no branding campaign will work.

This should be an obvious point, but you’d be amazed at how many business owners approach branding (and marketing in general) with only one half of the equation. There are some that have a great vision and an aggressive plan to brand themselves as an expert in their field—but that fail to create systems to ensure that their plan is executed. Then there are others who utilize systems to get things done, for instance, posting on their blog twice per month, using Twitter, speaking at networking events—but that don’t have any overarching strategic purpose behind their actions.

For your brand to be successful, the first step is creating a plan. What does your brand consist of? Who are your target customers? How will you communicate your brand to your target market? How will your brand differentiate you from the competition? How will you leverage your brand into a profitable component of your overall marketing plan?

Of course, there is more to creating a plan than that, but those are many of the important questions that must be addressed. (If you’d like help creating a plan for your personal branding campaign, get in touch!)

Step two requires taking your plan and creating systems to ensure that it is executed.

If an element of your plan includes blogging regularly, the system could be that you (or a staff member) spends thirty minutes every Friday morning writing the blog for the upcoming week. Or perhaps you’d prefer to spend two hours writing your blog entries for the upcoming month. Either way is fine—as long as you have a defined system, and some sort of accountability to ensure that the system continues to run. If your plan calls for regular public speaking, assign as staff member to monitor local newspapers, websites, and organizations on a weekly basis in search of opportunities for you to speak.

This isn’t rocket science—but it’s critically important, and often overlooked!

Stop spinning your wheels in vain when it comes to personal branding and marketing. Take stock of your current efforts right now—do you have a plan, and systems to execute it? If not, get busy! If you’d like help, please get in touch with me today!

Over the last couple of months, Netflix has undergone a major brand transformation—and not in a good way. They’ve gone from a trendy, convenient video provider to a bumbling, greedy, corporate entity—and the significance of this transformation has shown itself in terms of cancelled subscriptions (over 800,00 accounts lost in the third quarter alone) and a plunging stock price (a drop of nearly 75% since July).

What caused this massive fall from grace? At its core, of course, were financial challenges. Netflix is facing increased competition and higher operating costs. But Netflix leadership made a fatal mistake while planning their response to these challenges—they failed to consider the power of public perception.

In July, Netflix announce that they were separating their online streaming services from their DVD service—and that customers would have to pay for both. In effect, this amounted to a 60% price increase. In what should have been a predictable outcome, there was a massive costumer outcry, particularly online.

Quite simply, Netflix leadership failed to account for the reality that customers would see their reorganization as a major price hike, and that these upset customers would vocalize their frustration online.

It got worse.

Over the weeks following their July announcement, Netflix held firm. They acknowledged customer frustration, but took no steps to fix the problem.

In September, they announced that they were creating a separate company and website to handle their DVD services, known as Qwikster. Once again, they failed to address customer perception—as this “solution” in no way addressed customer concerns. The response was overwhelmingly negative, and ultimately Netflix scrapped the idea.

The lesson here? Perception matters. Had Netflix created a more palatable strategy addressing their financial concerns, their dramatic fall from grace could have been avoided.

Netflix management appears to have recognized their error, and stated the following in a recent shareholder letter: “$7.99 for unlimited streaming and $7.99 for unlimited DVD are both very aggressive low prices, relative to competition and to the value of the services, and they are the right place for Netflix to be in the long term. What we misjudged was how quickly to move there. We compounded the problem with our lack of explanation about the rising cost of the expansion of streaming content, and steady DVD costs, so that … many perceived us as greedy. Finally, we announced and then retracted a separate brand for DVD. While this branding incident further dented our reputation, and caused a temporary cancellation surge, compared to our price change, its impact was relatively minor.”

Don’t repeat their mistake. Think about the impact of the decisions you make, as the CEO of your business, through the prism of your customer’s viewpoint. It’s not enough to make decisions that work for your business internally—they need to make sense to your customers, as well. Never forget the power of perception when it comes to building a strong company brand!

What he didn’t realize is that, in stating that he didn’t need a personal brand, he had just identified his personal brand! Namely, this business owner is known to be “trustworthy, honest, and reliable.”

I share this story to correct the misconception that a personal brand is something only for Hollywood celebrities and public figures. The reality is this: everyone has a personal brand. Your personal brand is simply the collection of thoughts and emotions that your friends, family members, customers, clients, prospects, and competitors have whenever you cross their mind.

Everyone has a personal brand—but that doesn’t mean that it’s a positive image. For instance, some business owners may be considered arrogant or unconcerned with customer service. In some cases, this negative brand conception may be accurate—but in others, it can result simply through miscommunication.

As a business owner, you cannot afford to have a miscommunication when it comes to creating your personal brand—which is why it is critical that every business owner deliberately define and communicate his or her personal brand.

That doesn’t mean you have to appear on TV or plaster your smiling face on billboards throughout the city—that’s a strategy that is appropriate for some businesses, but not every business. You don’t have to become somebody that you aren’t. Your personal brand should reflect and enhance your personality, not distort it. If loyalty, honesty, and a focus on relationships are important components to your personality, those are the attributes that your personal brand should be built around.

Personal branding is not about becoming someone you’re not—it’s not about changing who you are. Personal branding is about enhancing your personality and your unique points of differentiation… and it’s about making sure that you are properly understood by your market.

Whether you recognize it or not, you already have a personal brand. The real question is this… do you have control of your personal brand—and are you happy with it? If you don’t define your personal brand, you are leaving it up to others to do so for you. If you’d like to learn more about defining a personal brand that appeals to your market and your customers, contact me today!

1) A strong personal brand establishes you as the leading expert in your market. Your customers want to work with an expert—that’s simply human nature. Think about it for a moment—if you had to choose a new doctor, and cost wasn’t an issue, who would you choose? Chances are, you’d look for the most well-respected, expert doctor in your area. The same goes for an accountant or a wealth manager. Expertise matters, and a strong personal brand will establish YOU as the expert in your market. This position in your market will ensure that you have a steady stream of new business—and it guarantees that your customers will be willing to pay premium rates for your services.

2) A strong personal brand puts you on the forefront of the minds of consumers in your market. An effective personal brand is memorable. It sticks in the minds of your customers and prospects, and ensures that when they think about your industry, it will be your name that springs to mind. Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, and the late Steve Jobs are great examples of individuals with memorable personal brands—and it’s not just because they have been successful. There are plenty of businessmen and women who have been equally (or more) successful, but remain virtually anonymous. Why? Because Oprah, Trump, and Jobs created a personal brand that was truly memorable.

3) A strong personal brand enables you to make headlines and reinforce your position. As a respected expert within your industry, you have the ability to generate valuable publicity. Your expert status provides the credibility necessary to get you on the radio or appearing on local TV. And one you’ve built a powerful brand, this becomes a recurring cycle—each media appearance further reinforces your credibility and further separates you from the competition in your market.

4) A strong personal brand inspires trust—and helps you close the deal. Your personal brand allows prospects to feel like they know you—even if you’ve never met. They’re familiar with your personality and are well aware of your expert status. As a result, you don’t have to convince them to trust you—your brand has done that work already. This implicit trust makes it much easier to close the deal… and it widens the gap between you and your competitors.

Your personal brand can become an incredible marketing tool. It can establish you as the leading expert within your market—and will have your competition constantly playing catch-up. Contact me if you’d like to learn how to get started!

1) Incorporate your personal brand into speeches and public events. Whether you’re speaking to a large audience or you’re networking with two fellow business owners, don’t be afraid to tie your brand into conversation.  Tell stories.  Talk about your hobbies.  Let your audience get to know you, personally—not just in your professional capacity.  By interweaving your brand into your conversation, you can simultaneously impress your audience with your knowledge of your business and create a strong personal appeal. 

2) Use direct marketing—but make sure your brand always shines through. Many business owners don’t realize how effectively personal branding can be tied in to a direct marketing campaign.  Whether it’s your website or a direct mail campaign, branding yourself as an expert in your industry while presenting a strong call to action is powerful.  Don’t just market your products and services—market yourself through your brand.  At the end of the day, most customers want to work with an expert—so present yourself as the expert in your market.

3) Live your brand. Personal branding only works if you truly commit to it.  Every interaction you have with your market—whether it’s a face-to-face conversation, a radio commercial, a website, or a speech—should be consistent with your personal brand.  By itself, your personal brand has limited value… but when you tie it in to every aspect of your business and your relationships, it can take your marketing efforts to the next level.

At the end of the day, business is all about generating results.  A strong personal brand, properly leveraged through a variety of marketing channels, will have a tremendous impact on your bottom line.  Contact me if you’d like further information!

You recognize the importance of building a strong personal brand—otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this blog entry.  But have you found a way to make personal branding fun? Quite frankly, branding is much less effective when you view it as an inflexible job, something that you have to do on a regular basis.  Your audience will identify branding that feels forced and artificial, and are going to be more attracted to a brand that appears genuine, vibrant, and fun.  So how can you make your personal branding fun?

1) Make sure that your brand represents your personality and your interests. If you asked your friends to describe you, how would they do it?  Would they note your intensity, your sense of humor, your attention to detail?  Whatever the case may be, make sure that your brand reflects who you are.  That way, whether it is on Twitter or in face-to-face conversation, you can be yourself without contradicting your brand. 

2) Share your hobbies. Are you a big sports fan?  (If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I am a Florida Gator fan!)  Are you into coin collecting?  Poker?  Whatever they may be, make your hobbies part of your brand—because talking about your hobbies is something that you won’t have to force yourself to do! 

3) Keep your audience up to date on your latest adventures, whether business or personal. I enjoy sharing pictures of my family via social media.  I often mention when I’m out eating at a certain restaurant, or if I’m on my way to a sports event.  (Don’t take it too far, though—don’t be the guy who posts pictures of his lunch five times each week!) I also keep my audience up to date on my latest speaking events, and other business projects.  It’s fun for me because I enjoy what I do, and therefore I enjoy talking about it.  Keep your audience up to date—let them know what you are up to.  It’s a great way to build relationships with your audience, and it’s a fun way to use new technology such as Facebook and Twitter!

If branding is a chore, you probably aren’t going to be very effective.  Find ways to make it fun.  Not only will you spend more time at it, but your audience will be more attracted to the brand you create.  If you need help making your brand fun, get in touch with me today!

As you know, personal branding is all about building credibility, visibility, and establishing yourself as an expert in your field.  But there is another element of personal branding which is often overlooked, and that is relationships.  In fact, I would go as far as to say that personal branding that doesn’t create and nurture relationships is almost useless.  Creating a relationship with a target customer often turns him or her into a prospect, and nurturing that relationship can turn the prospect into a customer.  Strong relationships with referral sources often lead directly to more great prospects.  And the relationships you nurture with colleagues can be an invaluable source of knowledge and ideas.  So how can you make sure that relationships remain a priority as you run your branding campaign?  Below are several suggestions.

1) Add a personal touch your social media presence. If you follow me on Twitter (@NickNanton), you’ll see that in addition to work-related posts, I also share pictures of my family and keep my followers updated on my latest adventures, work-related or not.  While you shouldn’t feel pressured to share more than you are comfortable with, showing your personal side on social media allows your audience to feel like they truly know you.

2) Actively seek relationships. Look, I understand the demands on your time.  I’m in the same boat—I’m always being pulled in four different directions.  And it’s great to be busy—but the danger is that our lack of time can easily cause us to neglect relationships.  Take advantage of every opportunity you get to create a new relationship, even if the individual doesn’t provide an obvious benefit to you.  You’ll be surprised how often a relationship turns out to be more valuable than you would have expected.

3) Be genuine. As long as you remain true to yourself and your values, and as long as you are committed to creating and nurturing relationships, you won’t have a problem building them!  Just remember that a relationship can’t be faked—so be real.  You don’t have to force yourself to be smart, funny, or charming… just be you!

Focusing on relationships is a great way to leverage the power your personal branding efforts.  Unfortunately, many business owners are so busy running and marketing their business that they fail to take advantage of them.  Don’t make that mistake—remember that relationships are the key to growing a strong business!

As technology continues to evolve, video is becoming more and more prevalent across the internet.  Even five years ago, filming and publishing professional-grade video content was much more difficult than it is today.  From a personal branding standpoint, video is a fantastic tool as it allows your audience to see your face and hear your voice… instead of simply reading text.  Below are three great reasons why, if you are serious about personal branding, you need to be on YouTube:

1) Video allows you to connect with your audience in a way no other medium can. Blogging is great.  So is a strong social media presence and well-written content on your website.  But no medium can provide the type of personal connection that video offers.  There is no substitute for this connection. 

2) Video allows you to express your personality. The essence of your personal brand is your personality.  And video allows you to express yourself far more effectively than any other form of media.  From your facial expressions to vocal inflections, video communicates the subtleties that make you unique.  Video allows you to express your passions effectively as well—passion is communicated much more clearly through video than through text or pictures.

3) Video is fun and easy for your audience. Let’s face it, reading takes more effort than watching a video.  For better or worse, most of us enjoy being able to lean back and simply watch the computer screen rather than actively read.  In addition, video is easy to share, both on your website and on social media.  Take a look at this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQKng6ummN4) that we created introducing our “Generation U” marketing services for an example! 

Today’s technology makes establishing a video identity achievable for every single business owner.  YouTube and other video-based websites are dramatically growing in popularity every day, so don’t wait until it is too late to jump on this bandwagon.  If you have questions or would like further advice regarding using video for personal branding, please feel free to get in touch with me today.  I look forward to seeing you on YouTube!

There are plenty of misconceptions when it comes to personal branding, but I have found one to be particularly damaging: the idea that personal branding is nothing more than how you dress and the first impression you make on an audience. While it is true that your personal appearance and the impression you have on those around you are both important, the reality is that personal branding is all about the details.

When you create a brand, you are telling a story. It does you no good to build a “mostly strong” brand--because the details that you get wrong will undermine the brand you are trying to build. Have you ever heard a friend tell a great story, but been distracted by two or three glaring inconsistencies or downright falsehoods? No matter how compelling the story is, most people won’t be able to get past the details that are incorrect. So it is with building a brand. Below are several “little things” that many business owners get wrong...often with disastrous consequences for their brand:

1) Not staying true to their brand while dealing with individual customers. Many of us have experienced this bait-and-switch while dealing with large businesses, such as satellite TV providers or phone companies. You know what I am talking about--the commercial portrays the business as customer oriented and exciting, but the automated phone system sends precisely the opposite message. Don’t disappoint your customers--stay true to your brand every time you interact with them.

2) Contradicting their brand. It can be difficult to stay consistent with your branding efforts across multiple platforms. It is easy to say something in person that contradicts something you’ve written in your blog or shared on Twitter. But if this happens regularly, your market will begin to lose confidence in you and your business. Stay consistent.

3) Trying to be everything to everyone. Many business owners, in their quest to land every customer they see, are willing to shake up their brand in order to appeal to their latest prospect. Unfortunately, while this may increase your chances of landing a client in the short term, it weakens your brand to the point where it no longer stands for anything. Understand your brand, know what it stands for, and don’t deviate!

It is easy to undermine or weaken your personal brand.  And unfortunately, doing so can invalidate the time and resources you have invested.  Make sure that you have the details right!

Rebranding is a drastic action that's is rarely necessary. But nonetheless, it's sometimes the only option...so today we are going to walk through that process.  Below are the essential first steps in the rebranding process.

1) Understand your market. The essential goal of branding is to differentiate yourself from your competition. Therefore, before you do anything else, spend time thoroughly researching your market. Understand the branding strategies of your competition. Evaluate which brands have been successful--and why they’ve been successful.

2) Identify your niche in the marketplace. Before kicking off your rebranding campaign, it’s essential that you know exactly which segment of your market you are aiming for. Which customers are you trying to appeal to? How intense is the competition for these customers? How will you differentiate yourself from the competition in order to win the business?

3) Make a clean break with your old brand. If you are rebranding, it means that your old brand is no longer viable. And if that is the case, why would you want any association with it? I'm often surprised to watch businesses, supposedly trying to rebrand themselves, end up with a new brand barely distinguishable from their old brand. Make a clean break. Change the name of your business, the colors, the “feel” of the marketing materials, everything you can. Otherwise, what’s the point?

4) Don’t repeat your mistakes. Your brand isn’t like a car--you shouldn’t need to replace it every couple of years. If you’ve determined that rebranding is necessary, it means that that either you made mistakes managing your previous brand, or that your market has shifted on you. Before proceeding with a rebranding effort, make sure that you understand where you went off course, and that you have a plan in place to avoid repeating your mistakes.

5) Create a plan. Once you clearly understand where you are going and why, it’s time to create a plan. Be realistic with regard to costs and schedule--if you don’t have the resources to commit to the effort, don’t do it yet. A rebranding campaign isn’t something you can do halfheartedly.

A rebranding campaign requires time, effort, and resources. Worse, it essentially nullifies all of the work you did building your previous brand. Nonetheless, from time to time it is necessary. If you are convinced that rebranding is your only option, make sure to take your time and do it right! The last thing you want is to be back in the same situation a couple of years later.

1) Email signature. How many times per week do your clients see your signature?  For many of you, that number will be in the hundreds!  At minimum, you need to have a logo.  You should also include a creative tagline, if appropriate, as well as links to your website, your blog, and your social media profiles. 

2) The holidays. Nowadays, receiving an actual physical card or a letter is unusual.  Take advantage of our digital overload and send your clients some type of tangible card or gift—this is guaranteed to make you stand out from the crowd! 

3) Your attitude. This is particularly important if you interact with customers and clients regularly—and yet, it is often overlooked.  Are you an optimistic, can-do, anything-is-possible type of person?  Even if you aren’t, try your best to adopt this attitude—because the positive “vibe” you create for your clients is more powerful than you may think. 

4) Answering the phone. I have mentioned this previously because it is a classic missed opportunity!  When the phone rings at your office, whoever picks it up needs to state the name of your business.  (I.E. “Celebrity Branding Agency, this is Nick.”)  Don’t miss this easy opportunity to keep driving your brand identity home!

So there you have it: in addition to your personal branding efforts on social media and through your blog and website, take advantage of these often overlooked opportunities.

If you have creative and/or overlooked branding opportunities, I’d love to hear about them!

1) Does your brand still differentiate you from the competition? The core purpose of branding is to separate yourself from the rest of your market.  If your brand is no longer unique, it may be time to rebrand.

2) Has the market shifted away from your brand? Over time, consumer taste changes.  Think back to the clothes you wore in the Eighties if you don’t believe me.  The personal brand you created fifteen years ago may not have the same appeal to the marketplace that it once had.  Be honest and ask yourself whether your brand still appeals to your target customers.  If it’s hard for you to honestly answer the question, seek opinions from trusted friends or family members.  If your brand no longer appeals to your customers, it is time to rebrand.

3) Does your brand represent the direction your business is growing? Your goals and plans for your business may have shifted dramatically since you began branding yourself.  Where do you envision your business in five years?  Ten years?  Will your current brand still be a good representation of your business?  If not, it’s probably time to rebrand yourself and your business.

4) Is your brand visually appealing compared to the competition? Your brand includes your logo, your company colors, your marketing materials, your photo, and plenty of other visual materials.  Compare your branding materials to those of your competition.  How do you stack up?  If most of your competition has more appealing visuals, it is probably time to rebrand.

Rebranding yourself should be a last resort.  Most of the time, I advise my clients to simply work changes into their current brand.  But from time to time, it’s simply more efficient to start over with a blank slate.  Do you need to rebrand?

Yes, you’re busy. The demands of running a business are non-stop. I understand—I run several! But you find time to brush your teeth twice a day, right? You take the time to straighten your tie before heading out the door. Where do you find the time and the energy? You don’t have to “find” the time—you just do it, because it’s a habit. And that’s what personal branding needs to become. A habit. This could mean a couple of minutes on Twitter before bed each night, or it could mean 20 minutes every Tuesday and Thursday to work on your blog.

Personal branding isn’t about flashes of brilliance. It’s about being yourself, consistently, and engaging with the world around you. Posting three incredibly insightful tweets each month is much less effective than multiple “routine” tweets each day—because the point is to build a connection with your audience. And you can’t do that without consistent interaction. That’s why it’s critical that you are active on a near-daily basis. You don’t have to feel inspired—you just have to be there, and be yourself.

Effective branding requires consistent activity. It’s as simple as that. But you aren’t going to be able to be active consistently unless you establish a habit. It could be first thing in the morning, it could be the last thing you do before you leave the office, it could be after lunch—but whenever it is, find time to dedicate to your personal brand and start building the habit!

1) Be yourself. Many business owners make the mistake of building a serious, all-business personal brand. And while the core of your brand has to be your business expertise, a boring brand is simply not going to be memorable. So spice it up. Showcase your sense of humor. Share some opinions that may surprise people. Don’t hesitate to include your family and personal life into your public brand. You will connect with your audience most effectively when they feel that you are a “real” person just like them—so stop being so uptight all the time!

2) Join clubs and organizations that you genuinely enjoy. Networking is a big part of personal branding—after all, your brand needs an audience. But too many people force themselves to attend conventions and trade shows that they truly have no interest in. Do not go down that road. Instead, seek out organizations that you will truly enjoy. If you like acting, join a theatre club that meets every week. Or find a club for fellow hobby enthusiasts. Make friends, be yourself, build your brand—and you might be surprised by how many valuable connections you create. And you will have fun in the process!

3) Support causes that you believe in. Supporting the community is a great way to gain exposure for you and your business—while helping out a good cause at the same time. Rather than supporting specific causes because you always have or because you feel a duty to, seek out causes that you are passionate about. This could include local schools, community outreach—just about anything. By supporting an effort you truly believe in, you’ll be getting your brand out there while doing something you can truly feel good about.

Your personal branding efforts can be fun—in fact, they are most effective when you are having fun. So stop viewing branding as a chore and look for ways to make it something you genuinely enjoy.

1) Straying from the core of your brand. This is probably the most common mistake made by business owners. We have talked often about the importance of consistency, so we are not going to go in depth here. Just remember that you cannot be an expert in every subject and you cannot please everyone, so don’t try. Focus on the core of your brand and keep driving those points home.

2) Failure to connect with your audience. If your brand does not resonate with your target market, there is little point to your efforts. First and foremost, it is critical that your brand appeals to your target customers. If you are targeting senior citizens, “hip and forward thinking” is not going to work for you. Similarly, you aren’t going to attract young professionals through an old-fashioned “classic” brand.

3) Failure to buy in. Building a strong personal brand requires time and effort—and if you are not committed, you are wasting your time. Branding cannot be something you think about twice per month, it needs to become a part of your daily life. Every sales pitch, every email you send, every time you address your staff you have an opportunity to reinforce your brand. If you aren’t reinforcing it, you are undermining it. So commit—or don’t waste your time.

4) Copying the competition. Whether it is subconscious or intentional, many business owners tend to shape their brand into a copy of the competition. And while it is a good idea to pay attention to the brands that are competing with yours in the marketplace, simply imitating your competitors is literally defeating the purpose of your branding efforts. Your brand is supposed to set you apart from the competition, not make you blend in. That doesn’t mean you can’t borrow a clever idea from another business—but make it your own, make it distinctive. A strong brand should distinguish you from others in your market.

5) Poor visual materials. Your logo and your company colors are the main visual representation of your business—besides your own image, of course. All of your branding efforts revolve around this visual identity. So don’t go too cheap here—it is important that you have a logo that you can be proud of. Invest in a session with a great photographer and ensure that you have at least one picture that makes you look great. Make sure your visual materials and your pictures truly reflect the spirit of your company and your brand.

Are you guilty of any of these common mistakes? If so, the good news is that you can fix it. But it won’t happen by itself, so get busy!

And I’m usually met with a blank stare or a really generic answer when I follow up their question, with my own, “why do you want to get on TV?”

Their answer is almost always one of the following:

1. I just want to get out there more
2. I need some exposure for our product/service
3. I’ve always just thought that if we got on TV, our business would explode

Getting on TV can do all of these things for you, but most people miss out on the fact that getting on TV, by itself, isn’t a very sound marketing strategy. In order to make you understand this, let me explain the two major forms of media to you:

1. Mass Media – Television, Radio, Newspaper
2. Targeted/Direct Media – Brochures, email newsletters, web sites, sales letters, CDs, DVDs or any media that you create and send directly to an audience that cares what you have to say (usually an audience you’ve pinpointed as good prospects or a list of people who have indicated that they’d like to learn more about what you do)

Mass media is great for building two things, credibility and awareness. Both of these things are great, but they usually don’t directly drive revenue.

Targeted/direct media is great because you can control how much money you want to spend on it and you can control when and where it goes. The downfall of direct media is you have to get beyond the skeptical viewer/reader because it doesn’t have the credibility of a message that’s been seen in a mass media format. Consumers and business owners assume that the information they see in the mass media is credible, they aren’t sure about direct media because it usually comes across as a marketing piece.

The Secret Formula for Media Success

This is the million dollar secret that everyone misses:

Get as much mass media as you can get, then promote your mass media appearances and content through direct media to your core audience of prospects and clients.

Mass media is an amazing thing for your career, but if you don’t use the media and convert it into a marketing piece that you can use over and over again, it’s really just an expensive exercise in getting your message heard once. And I’m sure by now you know what happens when people hear your message once—nothing.

And that’s the mistake that kills most businesses. They pay a fortune to try to get good PR, if they end up getting it, they wait for the phone to start ringing off the hook and the orders to start pouring in, but rarely does that ever happen. No one ever told them that getting the mass media was the first step and using the mass media to create credibility and marketing through direct media was the step that generates all the revenue. And similar to a boat that runs out of gas half way across the lake, the business with media and PR that doesn’t have enough sales to stay in business, doesn’t do much good for anyone!

Just remember the two step formula for success with media and you’ll be miles ahead of your competition.

JW Dicks (@jwdicks) & Nick Nanton (@nicknanton) are best-selling authors that consult for small- and medium-sized businesses on how to build their business through Personality Driven Marketing, Personal Brand Positioning, Guaranteed Media, and Mining Hidden Business Assets. They offer free articles, white papers, and case studies at their Web site www.CelebrityBrandingAgency.com. Jack and Nick have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek, FastCompany.com, and many more media outlets.

The first instinct for many people is to delete any negative comments if possible. But this is often a mistake. For one thing, if you do it often people will catch on to the fact that you are censoring feedback. And then everything positive that you’ve done is tainted. But even more importantly, a public criticism or complaint can actually be a great opportunity to win over customers and prospects. Because by publically responding to a complaint and fixing the situation, you’ve just sent a very public message that you care about your customers and that you will make things right.

Say you’re a restaurant, for instance, and a customer complains that your kitchen forgot to include chicken on his take-out salad. Take the opportunity to apologize and offer him something great—a free entrée on his next visit, perhaps, to make up for your mistake. I’d argue that such an exchange is even better than if he hadn’t complained to begin with. When you get right down to it, customers understand that everyone makes mistakes. Many businesses don’t care enough to make it right—but now your audience knows that you do.

The internet is a great platform for personal branding, but it does expose you to public criticism from time to time. If you or your company faces such a situation, remember to view it as an opportunity to impress your audience with your commitment to your customers. Apologize and do what it takes to fix the situation—you’ll be glad you did!

In this blog series we've covered positioning and how if you position yourself correctly you'll have no competition. We've covered how to build credibility, and I even gave you my million dollar secret for media success and our formula for the business trifecta. We've laid it all out.

But the third and final pillar of the Brand or Die triad is what ties it all together. To refresh you, the first two pillars are Positioning and Credibility. The final pillar is Community.

Here's the secret: when you build community, you build value. You can base a community off of anything. A community is a group of people who have some common thread. It can be based on geography, interests or hobbies, or even things you dislike. It can be anything that ties a group of people together and creates a common thread-- and what I really want the common thread to be is you. We'll get deeper into this concept in future posts, but for now, let's look at the best way to start building community.

Over 99% of people who visit your website will never come back. Why? Well we don't really know for sure, but we can assume they get distracted, they forget. The next time they search on Google someone else's info pops up first, which obviously doesn't help you build your business. So let's cover the biggest mistake that most business owners make.

They all make this very simple but costly mistake:

They don't capture the prospect's information the first time they arrive on the website (this holds true for brick and mortar businesses too, they don't capture the information of the prospect when they arrive at the physical location either).

So, in case I'm not abundantly clear, the majority of the time, more often than not, the only goal you should ever have for a first time visitor to your website is to capture their information by giving them access to something that will interest them enough to give you their most valuable commodity online besides their credit card, which is their contact information. Why?

So you can control the conversation.

When I'm speaking to large audiences, I'll often ask this question, "How many of you are looking to buy a car this month?" I get maybe one person, maybe two, depending on the size of the room. "How many people are going to buy a car in the next six months to a year?" I'll get 20 % of the room or so. Then I'll ask, "Who's going to buy a car in the next three to five years?" And all the rest of the hands go up. The point is that everyone in the room is a prospect for buying a car, but if I were only looking at who walked in the door today, my prospect list would be very small. This exact same concept holds true to your business. Not everyone is ready to buy right this second.

When someone visits your website they're interested in what you have to offer but they may not be ready to buy today. So it's our job to make them opt-in to your email list so you can control the communication, so that you can educate the prospect ... so that when they're ready to buy they know that you're the most trusted resource.

So again the only goal you should have when someone visits your website for the first time should be to capture their information. Then you can control that communication and you can use it to build a community of people who trust what you have to say and are interested in what you have to offer. This strategy will not pay instant dividends in most cases, because the reality is that many prospects just aren't ready to make a purchase yet. But instead of losing the prospect altogether, by controlling the conversation you can use their period of indecisiveness to build an irrefutable case that you are the best choice. When they finally are ready, you're in prime position to get their business. With time, you'll have an entire community of prospects engaged in conversation--and you can look forward to a dramatic increase in sales as they make up their minds and purchase your products or services.

We'll have more on community in our next post, but for now: are you capturing your prospects' information effectively?

1) Choose the right picture. The space for your picture on Twitter is small—so anything other than a closely cropped head shot doesn’t work well. Choose a picture that you’re happy with, and that reflects the brand you’re trying to build. If you’re a writer, for instance, a light-hearted and casual picture probably works well. If you’re a tax accountant, you’ll want to choose a more professional, serious picture.

2) Engage the community. Many people view Twitter as a great mechanism for sharing their thoughts with the world. And it is that—but here’s a reality: most people don’t care what you have to say. There are many thousands of Twitter users tweeting into a vacuum— don’t join them! Your focus needs to be on engaging other users. Join in conversations. Answer questions. Provide feedback. Soon you’ll be part of an active community, and you’ll have given the Twitter world reason to care about what you have to say. Which leads us to my next point…

3) Don’t be boring. It’s important that your Twitter account represents you and your business in a positive light. But it’s also important that people read your tweets. Mundane updates simply won’t get it done—don’t be afraid to display your sense of humor and share your opinions. If you can make your audience smile every once in a while, they are going to pay much closer attention to your future tweets.

Twitter represents a fantastic branding opportunity. There is a vast audience out there, and it doesn’t cost you a penny to get started. It’s hard to get more cost-effective than that! So make the most of the opportunity… get started today, and keep the tips we covered above in mind. See you on Twitter!

1) Scarcity = value. Have you ever wondered why Apple always seems to run out of products after a new release? Surely the company that revolutionized the smartphone can figure out how many iPhones are expected to sell in their opening weekend—and can handle the logistics required to ensure that their stores won’t run out of stock. You’re right, of course. Apple could easily overstock their stores to ensure that everyone who wants a product can get one. But by deliberately running out of stock, Apple is able to create a perception of scarcity and value.

2) Not for everyone. Whether it’s pricing strategies or the decision to restrict iPhone usage to the AT&T network for several years, Apple sometimes seems determined NOT to sell their products to everyone. That’s counterintuitive, right? Why would any business limit their sales? The answer is that Apple wants their products to be seen as exclusive and valuable. Excluding certain market segments makes it clear that Apple products aren’t for just anyone—and that perception is in large part responsible for the frenzy that accompanies each product release.

3) Focused on adding value. Watch any Apple commercial and you’ll notice a theme—Apple doesn’t market their products by listing all of their features. Instead, Apple shows customers how their products can improve their lives. The iconic iPod commercials are a classic example—rather than talking about memory space, or sound quality, or the intuitive menu design, Apple emphasized how pleasant it was to be able to listen to your music at the gym, or on the bus, or when out for a jog. The focus isn’t on what their products can do—the focus is on how they add value to the lives of their customers.

You may not be selling a product or service as innovative as the iPad, but you can take these lessons and apply them to your brand. Create the perception of scarcity. Don’t offer your services or products to just anyone for any price—treat them as valuable commodities. And above all, focus on adding value to the lives of each of your clients or customers. You may never sell millions of products in a single weekend, but you can expect to see an increase in demand as your brand becomes more exclusive and more valuable.

Take real estate agents, for instance. Most real estate agents want to be known as trustworthy, well-connected, and as great communicators. While those are all desirable traits, building a brand on those qualities alone is about exciting as vanilla ice cream. A real estate agent who wants to truly stand out from the competition needs to spice things up a bit. This doesn’t have to be difficult—in fact, simply identifying a favorite sports team or a unique hobby can be enough. The point is to give potential clients something to connect with. Generic talking points simply don’t feel “real” – but a short conversation about the state of the National Football League or a discussion of the latest episode of Glee can create a bond quickly.

Of course, the most powerful branding occurs when your unique traits or skills give you a competitive advantage. In that case, your personal brand becomes more than a way for clients to get to know you—it actually provides a powerful incentive to choose you over the competition. What’s your competitive advantage? Why should a potential client choose you instead of someone else? Maybe you’re an accountant that also happens to be a flying enthusiast—and you use your small plane to fly across the state, meeting clients wherever they are. Or maybe you’re a real estate agent with previous experience in construction, or plumbing, or even banking—experience that can be invaluable when it comes to spotting potential problems for your clients. Not only will each of those traits help you stand out among the masses, but each of them offers your clients a specific reason to choose you—because you can help them in a way that no one else will.

Now here’s the important point you need to grasp: YOU have something that sets you apart from the rest of your field. Whether it’s an incredible ability to listen and empathize with others, an ability to focus relentlessly until the job is done, or even family connections that give you an advantage over others in your line of work, each of us has something that makes us unique. So take a couple of minutes to think about what sets you apart. And then, make sure that your branding strategy includes an emphasis on the traits that make you truly one of a kind.

Check back often for more business, marketing and personal branding videos from Nick Nanton!

1) Completely fill out your profile. You know that often-irritating little reminder on the right side of your LinkedIn home page, the bar that shows how “complete” your profile is? Don’t stop working on your profile until it’s at 100%. Many LinkedIn users don’t bother to do this—so not only will you stand out, but you’ll take advantage of every opportunity to build your brand.

2) Create a custom URL. LinkedIn allows you to customize the URL of your profile, so take advantage. You can set your URL in the Edit Profile menu. It will read www.linkedin.com/in/******. Fill in the final section of the URL with your name or your company name—whatever is consistent with your branding efforts. In addition to being yet another space to reinforce your brand, customizing the URL will potentially bring you more traffic from search engines. That’s because Google ranks LinkedIn profiles highly, and therefore searches for your name are likely going to return your LinkedIn profile towards the top.

3) Integrate your social media presence. LinkedIn allows you to add applications to your profile which can feature your Twitter profile and blog, among other things. Integrate everything you can and visitors to your profile are likely to end up checking out the rest of your internet presence.

4) Mingle. Don’t simply create your LinkedIn profile and forget about it. Join groups that are relevant to your area of expertise. Participate in discussions. Recommend colleagues and seek recommendations of your own. Actively participating on the site will expose you to other professionals who wouldn’t otherwise have connected with you. Just remember to stay “in character”—every single interaction should be consistent with your personal brand.

LinkedIn is a great tool for personal branding, particularly for professionals. If you haven’t joined the party yet, get started today. And if you already have a presence, make sure you’re taking full advantage of it!

The common objection when I suggest writing an E-book to a client or colleague is “I have no idea what to write about.” That’s just not the case! You definitely have an E-book in you. You’re an expert at whatever it is that you do—and you’ve accumulated plenty of wisdom and insight throughout your career so far. You’re not trying to write a bestseller here—in fact, your E-book probably wouldn’t interest 85% of the potential readers out there. But that’s not the point—the point is that writing an E-book based on your expertise makes you look like a true expert in your field. Your potential future clients will be very interested in your E-book—and that’s who you’re targeting.

I’ve had clients tell me that they’d love to write an E-book, but that it sounds like a huge undertaking and they don’t know where to begin. But in our high-tech world, creating an E-book is much easier than it used to be. There are plenty of websites and software programs that will help you from start to finish. If you want, there are sites that will publish and host your book for you, in exchange for a portion of the revenue. And yes, you will have to actually write it, but that task isn’t as difficult as it may seem either. For one thing, you don’t need to write hundreds of pages. Thirty pages can be just fine—as long as you’re communicating clear and helpful information to your target audience. If you’ve been blogging regularly, you probably have all of the content you need—it’s just a matter of adapting it to a new format.

Don’t get me wrong, producing a quality E-book will take work. But it’s not the insurmountable and expensive task that you may think it is. If you’re looking to separate yourself from the competition in your market, an E-book may be the perfect tool to take you to the next level. You are an expert in your field—now it’s time to make sure that customers, prospects, and colleagues in your field recognize your expertise.

Check back often for more business, marketing and personal branding videos from Nick Nanton!

Hope you enjoyed Nick's personal branding take on this year's Grammy Awards! Check back for more personal branding videos!

1) Live your brand 24/7. Everybody knows about the outrageous costumes Lady Gaga wears to award shows and her performances. But unlike many celebrities, Lady Gaga stays in character virtually all of the time. She doesn’t present herself as a performer who dresses up in goofy costumes from time to time, she instead portrays herself as a unique and creative artist who lives her entire life outside the box.

2) Create your own publicity. Lady Gaga is constantly in the news. Why? Because she puts herself there. Whether it is stunts, like showing up to the Grammy awards inside an egg, or controversial interviews, Lady Gaga makes sure she is always being talked about. The lesson? Don’t wait for branding opportunities to come your way—make your own opportunities!

3) Define yourself—don’t let others do it for you. The tabloid culture that surrounds celebrities leads to constant scandal. Whether it is drug abuse, racy video clips, or extramarital affairs, celebrities are constantly seeing their “private” lives spill into public conversation. Lady Gaga hasn’t had this problem—because she’s decided to define herself rather than let the tabloids do it for her. She’s been open about her drug use and other potentially embarrassing habits—and as a result, she has been able to frame those revelations in a manner consistent with her personal brand.

4) Continually reinvent yourself within your brand. Wearing an outrageous costume is great, but it only holds attention for so long. Many celebrities find their “look” and then stick with it. But Lady Gaga is constantly changing her appearance—to the point where she makes headlines every time she appears in public! She stays true to her central brand, but she evolves quickly to avoid growing stale.

Lady Gaga is a marketing phenomenon. But to those who are serious about personal branding, she is more than just a curiosity. She’s a master at personal branding, and if we’re smart we will all pay attention.

In today's post, as promised, we're going to reveal the secret formula for media success. But, before we get into that there's three things you have to do to grow your business--media, marketing, and PR.

Let's cover how many people make the same avoidable mistakes. A lot of people spend a ton of money on creating media. Let's look the example using video. A business will hire a video production company. They'll spend oodles of money to try to get a great looking video and then when the final video is delivered, they are often in a bind. They're now out of money and they don't have a plan for what they're going to do with the video to get it into the hands of the people they want to see it.

Or, a business will hire a marketing firm but they won't have any media or PR to help the marketing firm get the message out. Or, lastly, one of the biggest mistakes I see is when people hire a PR firm and they don't have any media or marketing to back up the PR.
So here is the secret. we call it the "business trifecta" for growing your bottom line. You've got to have a healthy combination of media, marketing and PR in every single thing that you do. Not just one of these elements.

Let's look an example based on what we do for authors. We put together books where we guarantee best-seller status. One of the things we do is we produce a great hardcover book. That takes care of the media element. Then, we help market the books and we guarantee best-seller status. We actually handle the marketing to get the books to best-seller status and we teach our authors more than 30 ways to use a book to grow their business. Finally, we put out press talking about how they the authors just hit the best-sellers' list, and another one that the author got signed to a publishing deal. In essence, these authors get everything they need--media, marketing and PR, all-in-one. This example is really not designed to be a blatant pitch for what we do, but it's one of the few examples I could find of an all-in campaign.

The point is that in everything you do to promote your business you need to have a plan for media, marketing and PR.

Okay, now that you understand the business trifecta, we'll reveal our secret formula for media success. Another important distinction is that there are two types of media--mass media and targeted media. Mass media is, for the most part, considered to be made up of television, radio and newspapers/magazines. Mass media does two amazing things for you: it builds credibility as well as awareness. Now, the thing that most people forget when they are plowing ahead with big PR budgets to get into mass media is that "you can't eat credibility or awareness," i.e. they don't usually generate revenue without some form of direct solicitation for business. That's where marketing comes in.

The second type of media is known as direct media. This is the kind of media that, typically, you create and most importantly you are in charge of where it gets distributed.
Great examples of direct media can be seen in websites, direct mail, newsletters, magazines, flyers, CDs, and DVDs, just to name a few. By distributing this media to an audience you select, and by you being involved in the creation, you can directly solicit business with it through sales copy and a "call to action", and you can make sure people see it as many times as you want. Therefore it becomes a form of direct marketing. The problem with direct media is that it lacks any real form of credibility.

When you are soliciting someone for their business, they immediately put up their guard because people love to buy but hate the thought of being sold because they have had experiences in the past that ended negatively when they made a bad purchasing decision. So, increasingly, consumers look to third party credibility in the form of testimonials and product reviews, but there's another form that works great too, and that's where the secret formula comes in. The best solution for this credibility issue can be found by combine the two forms of media, mass media and direct media.

So here's what you do. You try to get mass media--television, radio and newspaper/magazines--the fastest, easiest way you possibly can. Then you take your direct media, the stuff you can spend as much or as little money as you want on it and as much or as little time as you want on it, but you can control it, and you insert your mass media credibility in the direct media. So, for example, the next time you send out a sales letter or a mail piece, or you send out an e-mail or an e-zine, you now have the credibility of being in mass media to insert in it. What happens when someone comes to your website or they see your mail piece, it effectively if not bluntly says, "You may have seen us or our products recently on NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX affiliates or in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today or Newsweek."

Now let me ask you this, do you think that won't get you taken a little bit more seriously? I can tell you based on literally hundreds of case studies, it absolutely will get people to pay closer attention to you and what you have to offer.

Our point here today is you've got to take mass media credibility--television, radio and newspaper/magazines--and insert this credibility in your direct media. Make sure you don't make the mistake of spending all the money you can on trying to get on TV, trying to get in the papers or trying to get on the radio without a plan for using this media in conjunction with direct media for your marketing. If you fail to use these two types of media together, then you'll always fall short of the results you could have had.

1) Describe my personality in three words.
2) What are my most valuable skills?
3) When you hear my name, what single word comes to mind first?
4) What makes me different from everyone else?
5) Describe my attitude in one word.

Make sure that you ask several people these questions so that you can develop an accurate picture.

The answers to these questions will paint a strong picture of the personal brand you’ve been broadcasting. Look at the results—are they what you would have hoped for? Do coworkers and other friends recognize the skills that you want them to recognize? Is their perception of what makes you different what you’d hoped it would be?

If the answer is yes, congratulations! You’ve just confirmed that the efforts you’re making to brand yourself are working. That doesn’t mean you’re done branding, obviously, but it does mean that you are on the right track.

If your survey returned mixed results, you know you’re doing at least some things right. Focus in on the areas in which you aren’t conveying the traits you’d like to be conveying. For instance, let’s say you want to be known as a great problem solver, but nobody listed that as a descriptive trait. Begin brainstorming ways in which you can begin emphasizing that aspect of your personality. That could mean blogging about challenges you’ve overcome (obviously you need to do this subtly—blatantly telling the world “I am a great problem solver!” won’t help anything) or it could mean helping others solve problems of their own. I use Twitter to share my passions with my followers—take a look at my profile and it won’t take you long to realize that I’m into music, marketing, and writing, among other things!

And if the feedback you received wasn’t at all what you hoped for, don’t despair. You’ve got plenty of time to redefine your personal brand. Take a look at past blog entries and articles that I’ve written for some tips to get you headed in the right direction.

1) Invest in good equipment. Nothing will sabotage your videos as quickly as poor sound or visual quality. You don’t need to spend a fortune, but make sure that your setup allows for a sharp picture and clear audio.

2) Don’t ramble. You want your videos to be crisp and to the point. Most people aren’t interested in watching you ramble on about every topic under the sun. If the purpose of your video is to give motivational tips, do so! It often helps to have an outline or a script prepared to help you stay on task.

3) Don’t stare down the camera. It’s a common tendency to ‘glare’ at the video camera while recording. Try and soften your look—pretend that you’re looking at a friend instead of the camera.

4) Minimize distraction. Be careful about your background—you don’t want much going on behind you. People walking around is a definite no-no, but even something as minor as a interesting picture on the wall behind you can cause the viewer to focus on the background, not on you. Also, be careful about wearing shiny jewelry or other distracting accessories. You’re the star, not your wardrobe.

5) Cross-promote. A great video on YouTube isn’t going to do you much good unless people see it. Use your other social network channels, including your blog, Twitter, and Facebook, to promote and share your video.

6) Reshoot. If you aren’t happy with a video, shoot it again. And again. There is no reason to upload a video that you aren’t completely happy with. A successful video could be seen thousands of times—so make sure you spend the time and effort to perfect it before sharing it with the world.

If you’re hoping to build a strong personal brand, the first step is identifying the traits and qualities that you want your brand to consist of. For instance, maybe you’re going for “young, focused, witty marketing professional.” Once you’ve determined these qualities, you can think about driving them home. The key here, once again, is focus. Each interaction that you have is an opportunity to broadcast your personal brand—and that means you have many, many opportunities on a daily basis to stray from the core of your brand. Do your best to avoid sending mixed messages—if you’re trying to establish yourself as a dedicated and hard working employee in the mind of your boss, don’t contradict yourself. Don’t spend 15 minutes Monday morning complaining about how tired you are, even if your boss doesn’t mind—or is complaining himself. Stay focused on your message.

For many, the toughest part of establishing a personal brand is the realization that they can’t be an expert on every subject. Just as Rolex would destroy its brand by offering a watch for $19.99, you’ll destroy your brand if you try to be everything to everyone. If you’re a tax consultant, be an expert tax consultant. Don’t try to be a real estate advisor, stock market guru, and foreign policy expert—even if you are knowledgeable in these areas. A well rounded personality is great, but a well-rounded personal brand is meaningless.

The key to establishing your personal brand is consistency. Determine what you want your brand to stand for and resist the temptation to be an expert in everything. Focus on the core of your brand and drive it home… over and over and over.

1) Focus on relationships. Twitter and Facebook are full of individuals and companies that are trying to establish their brand and sell their products by ramming them down their audience’s throat. It’s free marketing, the theory goes, so why not aggressively self-promote and sell? The problem with that line of thought is that most people don’t log on to Facebook or Twitter looking to be sold something. People use Facebook and Twitter to build relationships, both personal and professional. The key to establishing your brand on these sites is to build relationships. Spend more time replying to status updates and tweets than you do creating your own. When you see a friend or a connection asking a question, answer it. If you’re not connecting with your followers and your friends, you’re going to be lost in the crowd.

2) Don’t be boring. Most smart social media users are very, very careful about what they post. After all, a thoughtless post or tweet could have disastrous results. While this is certainly true, the unfortunate result is that many Twitter and Facebook profiles are completely devoid of originality, personality and substance. If you’re going to stand out, you need to be interesting and thought provoking. Post jokes, or commentary on pop culture, or predictions for upcoming NFL games. Tweet using only haiku form for a couple of days. Be creative. Find a way to express yourself and your personality—and before you know it, you’ll realize that followers and friends are looking forward to your next tweet or status update.

3) Break down the news. Twitter and Facebook are great sources of breaking news. As soon as anything of even minor importance happens, you can bet there will be thousands of posts announcing it and linking to news stories. Posting a link to a breaking news story will not help you stand out—but insightful analysis will. Let’s say you’re a stock broker and a new law was passed impacting the capital gains tax. Rather than simply providing a link to the story, add some instant analysis. Your tweet will stand out from the thousands of others, because you won’t simply be stating what happened, you’ll be telling your audience what it means to them.

Social media has exploded in popularity. The challenge for individuals and companies looking to build their brand is finding away to stand out from the millions of other users. Be creative, don’t hesitate to think outside the box, and keep these three strategies in mind as you build your social media presence.

1) Don’t hesitate to be “friends” with colleagues. OK, this one is a bit complicated—there are many professionals that prefer to use Facebook only for personal activity. This is understandable… after all, most of us keep our business life separate from our personal life. But if you are committed to branding through Facebook, you’ll have to commit to connecting with other professionals. And once you’ve made this decision, remember to keep your activity professional—especially when it comes to pictures and videos you post.

2) Show your “other sides.” LinkedIn and Twitter don’t give you much of an opportunity to show off your family. Facebook is a great place to project the sides of your life that colleagues and clients wouldn’t see otherwise. Pictures of you and your family are a great way to add to your brand—instead of being one-dimensional, your contacts will begin to see you as a well-rounded individual.

3) Display your sense of humor. Facebook is a great place to share links, quotes and videos that make you laugh. And doing so is a great way to show off your sense of humor. It’s difficult to do this on LinkedIn, though you can do it on Twitter. But Facebook makes it easy—for instance, if you post a video, your friends can view it in Facebook instead of having to follow links to outside locations.

4) Demonstrate your expertise. Obvious promotion doesn’t work well on Facebook. However, subtle displays of your expertise can be very effective. If you read an article featuring breaking news in your industry, post a link to it! Add a sentence or two of commentary, and you’ll be sending a message to your readers that you’re knowledgeable and plugged in to current developments in your field.

While Twitter and LinkedIn seem to be the top platforms for personal branding, Facebook should not be ignored. Take some time to familiarize yourself with it before you jump in, and follow the tips we’ve covered to get started in the right direction.

1) Negativity. Regardless of the type of brand you are trying to build, negativity is poisonous. Potential clients don’t want to work with an individual that is overly negative, and companies don’t want to hire negative employees. Don’t get on Facebook and complain about a friend or a business that mistreated you. When you’re on the phone with a client, don’t spend time complaining—not even about the weather, the local sports team, or anything else. You want to appear positive and approachable. Negativity will kill your brand quickly—avoid it at all costs!

2) Lack of Focus. You can’t be everything to everyone. Your personal brand should be focused around a few key qualities—your engineering skills, your sense of humor, or your customer service skills, for instance. You can’t be a brilliant chef, political commentator, science expert, comedian and financial guru all at once—at least not in the world of branding! Overdoing it will dilute your brand, and you won’t stand for anything. Decide what qualities are most important, and focus your personal brand around them.

3) Dishonesty. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Don’t claim to know more than you do. Don’t pass other people’s work off as your own. The real danger with dishonesty, from a branding standpoint, is that it will render you untrustworthy. If you’re known as the writer who plagiarizes, for instance, you’ll need to find a new career. If you’re known as a business that promises clients the world and then can’t deliver, you’re going to find it very hard to attract customers. When you’re branding, don’t embellish and don’t lie. Sooner or later, dishonesty will come back to haunt you in a very big way.

4) Impatience. Building a strong brand takes time. You can’t expect to have an incredible brand within a couple of months of work. Branding is about building a long-term perception of yourself and your company. Unfortunately, I’ve known many businesspeople and individuals who were very excited about branding—but dropped it after a couple of weeks. Building your brand is a long-term project that requires commitment and dedication. If you’re expecting instant payoffs, you’re going to be disappointed—and you’re probably going to quit.

5) Procrastination. One of the top reasons that personal branding is neglected is because you don’t have to do it. It’s not like paying taxes or filling up your gas tank. There is no required timeline, and the benefits can be hard to quantify. As a result, when you’re going through your to-do list, it’s easy to push branding off to the next day. Building your brand requires consistent work—whether it’s posting on Twitter or Facebook, writing on a blog, or sending out a newsletter. If you procrastinate, it’s simply not going to happen.

Obviously Nelson Mandela and Michael Jordan are better known than most of us. But everyone has the opportunity to develop and project their personal brand in the context of their own life. As an employee, your personal brand will go a long way in determining your career trajectory. What does your boss think of you? Are you motivated and determined? Or maybe you’re the guy who is easily distracted and has trouble finishing projects on time… if that’s the case, you need to rebrand yourself ASAP!

So has your brand been predetermined for you? Not at all! The great thing about personal branding is that it’s an ongoing process. If you aren’t happy with your brand, you can change it! If you’re pleased, you can reinforce it and expose it to new audiences.

So how do you determine what your brand should be? Ask yourself “what do I want to be known for?” Maybe you want to be known as a brilliant programmer, a great dancer or an insightful business analyst. Mix in your personality—do you have a great sense of humor? Or maybe you’re proud of your laser-like focus. You should have a theme emerging—something like “talented, motivated financial guru with a great sense of humor.” That’s the core of your brand. Branding can be more than just your professional life, however. Are you a family man? A mother? A devoted spouse? These elements of your personal life also play an important part in defining your brand. Take this information, think hard about what you want to be known for, and distill it down to a handful of words. That’s your personal brand!

If you haven’t been paying attention to your personal brand, don’t panic. Technologies that make it easy to establish your personal brand are still relativity young—and many people have yet to take it seriously. You haven’t been left behind-- yet. In fact, you have the opportunity to be ahead of the curve and set yourself apart from many of your peers. But the time to act is now. A recent survey conducted by Kelly Services (http://tinyurl.com/38engr2) has indicated that a rising number of workforce members are recognizing the importance of personal branding. As Kelly Services General Manager Mike Webster put it, "Personal branding is taking on a new importance as more people take control of their careers and market themselves to a vast audience.” As you’ve heard many times now, one of the most powerful tools you have to project your personal brand is social media. Not surprisingly, the survey indicated that 52% of the workforce is at least “somewhat active” on social media. These numbers will only increase in the future as young men and women enter the workforce—the vast majority of them very active in social media.

Now, you may be wondering how exactly personal branding can help you in your career.
Remember that the central goal of personal branding is to position yourself as an expert in your field. If you’re an accountant, branding yourself as a highly qualified expert should have an obvious impact on your job prospects—whether you’re looking for a promotion, a new job, or new clients. If you are a restaurant manager, successfully branding yourself as an expert will increase your value to your current employer, will make you more desirable to other restaurants, and will make you appear more impressive both to your customers and your employees.

But there is much more to personal branding than just positioning yourself as an expert in your field. You also need to emphasize the unique qualities that make you who you are. Your friends and family know your personality—you need to make that personality shine through your branding efforts so that colleagues, employees, bosses and customers see it as well. You don’t want to be just an expert accountant—you want to be a young, bright, motivated accounting expert. Or an experienced, well connected accounting expert. Social media is a great platform for projecting your brand, but there are other great ways to do this as well. In fact, every time you communicate, you are impacting your brand. This includes face-to-face chats, email, and phone conversations. Think about the way that you communicate and what it says about you. Are you sending the messages you want to be sending?

Personal branding is as essential to your career as your resume. Each day, more and more members of the workforce are recognizing this and making it a priority. Don’t get left behind!

Faced with the reality that he could easily slip from memory over his 9 month layoff, Conan and his advisors launched a massive social media campaign that included a presence on Twitter (he has over 1.7 million followers), Facebook (well over 1 million fans), and Youtube (nearly 4 million views to date). Not only was Conan active on all of these platforms, but he took the time to put together great material. For instance, not long after being fired by NBC, Conan composed this gem of a tweet: “In three months I've gone from network television to Twitter to performing live in theater, and now I'm headed to basic cable ... My plan is working perfectly." His constant presence across the social media spectrum allowed him to stay very much in the minds of his target audience despite his long absence from TV, and this presence directly contributed to his strong debut on TBS.

While most of us don’t have our own TV show to host, we can all learn from Conan’s use of social media. An effective social media plan that includes well-crafted material and a constant presence can work wonders for your personal branding and brand awareness. You may never have 1.7 million followers on twitter, but you can effectively communicate your personal brand to the followers that you do have.

1) Commenting on other popular blogs in your niche. An effective blogger will spend MORE time commenting on other blogs than he or she does writing for his own blog. Unfortunately, most bloggers don’t seem to grasp this. Effective blogging is about creating conversation—and that takes initiative on the part of the blogger, or it won’t happen. In most cases, when you comment on a blog (be sure to leave a link back to your blog), the owner of the blog will take a look at your blog. If your content is interesting, there is a good chance he or she will leave a comment on one of your posts. So by commenting on popular blogs within your niche, you are opening the door for a popular blogger to leave you a comment—which will work wonders for your credibility. Even if you don’t get any comments in return, a comment on a highly regarded blog is likely to be seen by others in your niche—so you’re getting your voice out there. Just remember to stay “in character”—all comments should be written to communicate your personal brand.

2) Interviewing influential individuals. Interviewing important people in your field is a fantastic way to boost your credibility. While major celebrities are probably going to turn down your request, you’ll be surprised at how many “minor” celebrities (experts in their field) will happily oblige. Make sure you prepare good, thought provoking questions—and then post the interview on your blog. Not only will you get a rush of traffic due to the status of your interview subject, but you will position yourself as a knowledgeable and well-connected blogger in your industry. Check out the interviews I’ve done at http://www.celebritybrandingagency.com/1-on-1.

3) Guest blogging. Another fantastic way of broadcasting your personal brand is guest blogging. Contact several well known bloggers in your niche and ask to write a guest post. If you have a well written, interesting blog of your own they will often oblige. Take the opportunity to reach an audience that wouldn’t normally read your blog—and blow them away with a fantastic post. If you do a good job, you can expect many more subscribers to your blog… not to mention a substantial boost in credibility.

There are many great reasons to blog—and the opportunity to project your personal brand is among the best. The techniques discussed above will help you in these efforts. Just remember that everything you write should be calculated to reinforce your personal brand!

In our last blog on FastCompany.com, we talked about putting some personality in your marketing, but we wanted to expound a bit due to some questions we got. This whole concept fits in very well with the new transparency movement, which you've undoubtedly heard a lot about recently, because letting people know who you really are is an important part of transparency. But you might be saying, "Well I'm not a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, or (insert what you do here) so that won't work for me." Or, "but I run a large company, and it's not just about me." What we want to share with you today is the fact that this same exact concept also works really well for big companies too, not just for solo practitioners and small businesses. Corporations can use this concept to create what we call "internal evangelists."

WATCH VIDEO with Nick Nanton: The Rise of Internal Evangelists

Look at it this way, if you were to take your entire staff of let's say a hundred people, and you were to train them well, (this is the key, training them well up front) and then set them loose on the Internet and social media. What do you think that would do for your business? We know it might sound scary but, if you set them loose with the knowledge they have, here's what would happen--you would create your own Wikipedia of sorts for your business and your industry with a bunch of personalities who would go out and reel in the business of people who connect with that they have to say. Your sales team isn't going to be able to connect with everybody. They will likely only be able to making meaningful and lasting connections with a small portion of the market that you could be serving. For example, if you are in the tech industry, your sales team might not connect at all with decision makers at other companies who have backgrounds as coders or graphic designers. But, what if you could match up a coder, with a coder? Get the point?

If you would set the knowledge free that's in the minds of the employees that are working with you, you would be creating internal evangelists, people who work internally for you and spread the word about what your company does to the outside world, by doing this more prospects will come across your employees' information and will create bonds with new potential clients that you might never reach on your own. We all know that consistent, relevant content drives traffic online and the beauty of this type of system is that the knowledge your company will be spitting out on a regular basis will be voluminous if you have 20, 30, 50, or even a hundred employees out there using social media and the Internet to push and let people know about you. This works even better if you can teach them to display their expertise, and show their personality, like we discussed in two of our previous blogs. This concept can absolutely make your business explode.

Another key point that we want you to understand is this concept works in any way, shape or form. Let's look at a quick example, back on the small business side, of someone you may not normally consider as a small business owner--a dentist. So, if you went to a typical dentist's Web site, what would you see? You'd likely see a bunch of stock photos of random smiling people.

You've seen these types of photos on all the stock photo Web sites, but here's the thing, they are useless when trying to build a relationship with your prospects. All you are showing them is some random people! 99% of the time these aren't even people who the dentist has ever worked on! What a mistake! These Web sites, with random photos on them would not let you in at all to who the dentist is and why you might want to choose them as your dentist. Compare that to a dentist who has used some of the tactics we've talked about in our previous posts, who is displaying their personality and expertise.

Now, let's say you you're new in the community and you didn't really know anyone but you needed to go to the dentist. So what you would most likely do is hit the search engines and look for a dentist in the area? That's also where your potential clients are starting, but we digress. In our example, let's say the search engine delivers two Web sites that seem relevant to you and are in a close enough proximity that is convenient enough for you.

The first one, we'll call him Joe Dentist. He's got these random smiling people on the front page and his office hours, maybe a phone number, perhaps a map to his location--but that's probably it. The second dentist, who we'll call Jane Dentist, who has perhaps been reading our blog, has a big button encouraging you to download a portion of her bestselling book that happens to be about the exact issue you're experiencing. She's got video of her being interviewed recently on the local news, or even just a video of a friend or patient interviewing her. She's blogs regularly about things her patients would be interested in, she's got articles that cover common myths about what is and isn't good for your teeth, all searchable so you can find what you want when you need it. She's got press releases too! The first one is on how she was just named top small business in her community and the second one talks about how she just filled her 10,000 cavity.

Now, let's stop and ponder: which dentist are you going to want to go to? The boring guy or the lady who you now not only feel is amazingly qualified, but after watching some of her articles and videos you actually feel like you know her?! The first guy you probably couldn't pick out of a lineup!

If you want to take it even further, to a level of sharing your hobbies and affinities with your potential clients, you can become even more magnetic. Let's talk about the dentist who likes Harley's and he post pictures of himself taking Harley tours up and down the East Coast and he has a link to his local Harley Club. It may not be for everybody, but the people who are into Harley's--where do you think they're going to go?

To ping on the concept of allowing your employees to get involved on more time, you should note that Twitter recently started allowing accounts to have "Contributors" because there was a big debate on whether or not it was misleading to have multiple employees tweeting from a corporate account. So, Twitter came up with the concept of having group accounts and they now allow contributors to tweet from group accounts, so they can amass more follower, but each contributor is able to be identified.

Twitter accounts used to be associated with just one person and it was tricky for big corporations who wanted to amass lots of followers, but had multiple talented people who wanted to tweet, but now you can have multiple contributors inside your company, again let me point out that they need to be good hires who are well trained, who can go out and become evangelists for what you do to the outside world. A great example of this concept is Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos. Zappos allows all of their employees (more than 1800 last I heard) to get on Twitter in the name of Zappos, with one goal--to help customers get the best customer experience possible.

When I stopped and asked Tony if he was afraid about what they might say, or what the rules were for social media he essentially said (and I'm paraphrasing here), "We don't have any rules for social media. We just hire right and we fire fast if we need to." You've got to give your employees some room to be themselves, and you've got to let them display their expertise and let them get out into the world in ways that they normally wouldn't in a typical corporate structure. If you do that, your business will grow in new ways and your business brand will come alive based on the way your employees are out interacting in ways that you could never do on your own.

In case you missed our point, these strategies work for everybody, everywhere and you can use them in any business. But you've got to display your expertise and you've got to show your personality and you should really consider letting some of your employees get involved too. Who knows where it might lead!

After more than three decades, even Disney (the family Mecca) has expended its branding strategy to include offering a family-friendly payment plan for Florida’s season pass holders. Gasp $275.84 to purchase a seasonal pass for Disney, ouch. But $15.74 per month to take the family to see the Mouse any time they want, now that’s something to think about. That’s what, three lattes a month?

Do you have a product or service in your business that carries a hefty price tag? Could your personal branding benefit from offering payment options? If your choice is no client or a client who pays monthly, I bet the answer is yes. Even our branding agency offers payment plans for services. Think about it dental services, coaching plans any high-end product or service your business offers that might be easier to swallow in a monthly payment form. Like Disney, you can even require a down payment to cover your upfront costs (Disney charges $87.33 to initiate the payment plan above) and then a monthly fee moving forward.

The age-old quest for small businesses has been to separate themselves from the pack, and offer a new and unique experience to their customers. With personal branding, we recognize that building your business around your personality can be the most unique attribute you have – you are the only you! Use your personality to let people get to know you. Once people get to know and like you, the more likely they are to do business with you.

Using video on your website and across social media platforms can be the single most effective way to showcase your personal brand. Daily, Weekly or bi-weekly videos of you sharing your expertise allows people to see you in action. It allows you to control your message, share information, and create unique value for your customers. Think about it – if you are a specialist in real estate, for example, why not share your expert advice on finding the right property or offer a daily tip on selling your house.

Things like this provide a valuable service for people interested in buying and selling real estate. Once your customers find that you are providing them value, and they get to know you and your personality, the chances that they do business with you in the future increase dramatically.

In a recent post on Mashable.com, it was reported that Gawker.com founder, Nick Denton, discussed how video is the future of online media. Nick talked about the demand for more TV-like online products and how the future will be in video, with text being the way to add context and detail to the media.

I couldn’t agree more…we advise our clients to produce and post as many videos as possible, and compliment them with informative and consistent blogs and articles. All of these tools together will help build a personal brand, let your customers get to know you, and ultimately turn to you when they need an expert in your field.

Choosing the right photo of yourself and using it consistently can be one of the easiest and most effective things you can do right now to provide a foundation for you personal branding strategy. Here are a couple tips on using the right photo to represent you and your personal brand.

Quality Matters

The easiest way to instantly lose credibility with prospective customers or clients is to showcase an unprofessional photo. When I visit a new website, or even a twitter page, the first thing I look at is the photo. It bothers me when I see professional people using unprofessional photos. I instantly think that if they didn’t take the time to present themselves professionally, why would they take the extra steps necessary to impress me as a client?

Now, professional doesn’t mean “stuffy.” You want your photo to represent you the way you are, but in a clean and clear way. For example, if you are a corporate lawyer, an executive or a financial advisor, etc., most people would expect to see clean-cut with a suit and tie. If you’re personal brand is to be a “financial rock star,” then maybe you’re dressed more loosely, etc. The attire doesn’t really matter – it just needs to match your personal brand and should always be professional. The cost of getting a professional photo can pay dividends in the long run. You know what they say about first impressions!

Be Consistent

With so many places online to represent yourself, it is extremely important to be consistent with your photos. Once you get a professional photo shoot, I suggest choosing 2 or 3 of your favorite, preferably with the same background and/or attire. This way, you can spread these images out across twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc without using the same photo, but keeping the same theme throughout. I would also suggest these photos being the same ones that are used on your website.

You want to be consistent with your photos in the same way you are consistent with your marketing message. Using a quality photo to build your personal brand is the first image and impression that people get of you. It’s easy to do, and it could mean the difference between a “walk in the door” or just a “drive-by.”

Many people who we come into contact with have amazing personalities, in person, and then we go check out their content (their blogs, articles, videos, books, etc), and it's totally flat and stale--or what we often describe as very institutional or corporate feeling.

We're going to tell you to do the exact opposite. That is not at all what your clients and prospects really want. They want to know who you really are. Think about it this way, the way that you connect with people is really based on a scale of how much you can relate to them, i.e. how much they are like you. For example, if you are a 35 year old housewife, and a 25 year old stockbroker with no kids who works 80 hours per week tries to give you advice on how to raise your kids, how do you think you'd take it? Probably not real well. Agree?

So, if you want to build your personal brand and be perceived as an expert by your audience, ultimately your expertise has to align with your personality and who you're trying to connect with. Although scary at times, that means you have to let people in on who you are. We've heard it said before that it's 10 percent what you know and 90 percent the other stuff. We're not positive that ratio is exactly right, but it does a great job at making the point that "people have to know you before they'll listen to you." That's what my friend James Malinchak says and we agree. People have to know you before they'll be willing to listen to you because if they don't know who you are then they don't know if they should take your advice. So, you've got to let them in. That also means you can and likely need to show them your quirks and idiosyncrasies. Some experts choose to get into politics, religion and everything else, that's totally your call whether you want to go that far or not, but it is important for you to know that the more polarizing you are, the more magnetic you will become to those who are like you. It's a really interesting phenomenon that through the things you say and do, the more you let people know who you really are and let them into your innermost being, the more they'll either see themselves or see they're not like you.

And the more polarizing you are, the more you'll push some people away too, but the people who identify with you will be even more attracted to you. If there's any personality that you are aware of right now that you cannot stand, and you can't possibly understand how they have the following they have, it's because of this rule. There are people who feel like them and the more polarizing they are the more they're drawn to them.

We want you to focus on showing more of your personality. You can do this online and offline. We have lots of great online tools that will allow you to get started instantly.

Facebook, for example, is a great tool because you can share literally anything on Facebook--videos, links, pictures, blogs, articles, anything you want. And people can start to understand who you are, even if the information you are posting is not anything that you created on your own! By sharing content that appeals to you, you are becoming a curator of content, and that content will appeal to others who share the same interests with you, people who are like you. That's ultimately what you're doing on Facebook for your circle of friends-- you're showing them things you think they'd be interested in.

Another great tool is Flickr.com. Flickr is a really neat social photo and video sharing service. I (Nick) don't usually go to Flickr.com and post a lot of photos, but I use an application called Posterous.com anytime I take a photo or a video on my iPhone and I email it to Post@Posterous.com and it automatically posts the photo or video on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and just about any other social network that I want to post it to.

Sometimes I'll post funny pictures or videos of my kids. Sometimes I'll post a video from a seminar I'm attending or I'll link to a blog I really like from Mashable.com of FastCompany. Why? Because when you let people see parts of your everyday life and it allows you to start showing another dimension of who you really are. You give them bite-sized glimpses of your personality.

We call these "personal hooks." The more you're willing to share who you really are with people, the more personal hooks you throw out. If I (Nick) tell you that I used to play tennis for four hours a day in high school, that I got recruited to go play tennis in college, that I love the Florida Gators, but not as much as my wife because she's only missed like eight home football games since she was seven years old, (she even goes to the games where the gators play teams like "Upper Lower Northeastern Southwestern State" and those are the games I'd stay home from!). If I told you we have a five year old son, and a two and a half year old son, and that my two and a half year old broke my LCD TV last month and my new iPhone this month, you'd then realize you probably shouldn't give my two year old your electronics, but you'd know much more than that!

The more I tell you, the more you're going to know about me and you're likely going to find something that you're interested in too that you can use to connect with me, something that gives us some common ground, and that's ultimately my goal and when building your personal brand that should be your goal as well. You've got to give people reasons to want to like you, reasons they'll be attracted to you, think they're like you and ultimately trust you and do business with you.

We're going to share one last secret with you in this post that will help you share your personality while also helping you convert your personality into sales. This is the formula for what we call an "Origin Story." You should use your origin story a lot. You're going to recognize the format from your favorite Richard Simmons infomercial, or something similar, but here's how it works. We're going to a weight loss infomercial style example, because it's an easy one to follow and to recognize the core elements of what you need.
Here is an example of an origin story for an expert in the weightloss realm:

"Hi, I'm Jim and I'm 6'2", weigh 140 pounds and I'm built like a brick and I get more dates than I've ever gotten in my entire life. I used to have my life, but now I absolutely love every moment of my life."--Part 1 is you tell them who you are now.

This next part, you need to use these magic words or something similar, "but it hasn't always been this way." These words allow you to connect to the rest of the world because the first part of your origin story where you show how happy and fulfilled you are, can make a lot of people want to shut down and stop listening to you because you just sound like another successful person bragging about how successful you are.

But when you say, "But it hasn't always been this way." Their mind starts to turn back on and they think, "Wait a minute." Then you tell them how much you used to be just like them. Again, in our example, the story would probably go something like "I used to be 500 pounds. Used to use my exercise bike in the bedroom to hang clothes from. I used to feel like people were always laughing at me, it was hard to get out of bed every morning, didn't have the confidence to get a date, I was lonely." You're now telling your audience the part of the story that they can identify with.

You tell the audience all the ways you used to be just like them. Then you move to the third part of your origin story, the secret.

"Until I discovered _____" Now, the audience is dying to know the secret. The secret, of course, is usually the product or service you're promoting that can help them overcome their issue, their "point of pain."

In our example, this next part would look something like this: "Until I discovered my 10 step formula" or "Until I discovered this new product." You tell them whatever it is that is the secret to solve their problem, which is followed up with the magic words, "And now I can show you how you can do the same thing."

So, to recap the 4 part formula for your origin story:

1. You show the audience how successful you are, which actually can build some resentment because your audience will think, "That's what I want to be, but I'm not. This person must be special, and I'm not, so now they're just bragging and rubbing it in my face, so I don't like this person."

2. "But it wasn't always this way" and you tell them how you used to be just like them.

3. "Until I discovered" which then makes the audience perk up because they see that you aren't that special, you just found the secret, and of course now they're dying to know.

4. "And now I can show you how you can do it too." This shows your audience that you really aren't any different from them, you just found the secret they haven't found, and now you are willing to share it with them too. They'll love you and they'll be willing to pay for your secret if it relieves a great pain in their personal or professional life.

There you have it. That's the formula for the origin story. It will allow you to show your personality as well as the reason why your audience should listen to you and follow what you have to say.

To recap: Show your personality, let people know who you really are, utilize an origin story and your business just get bigger and better.

What caught my attention was the story behind the opening of the shop and how it relates to personal branding and branding companies. One of the owners, Don Smith, was looking online for some Christmas gifts for a colleague, and was surprised to find a huge niche market of hot sauce and salsa connoisseurs. After spending a good portion of his money on shipping, he thought that it would have been great to just go to a local store and purchase the products. When he looked for local stores, he saw that there were none.

So did Don just leave it at that? No. He spoke with some good friends, and after some calculating and deliberation, they decided to open up a shop of their own. The owners are also certainly aware that their odds of succeeding aren’t necessarily great, since according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, about 650,000 businesses opened and another 575,000 closed each year from 2004 to 2008.

However, I think that they may actually have a good chance.

If their marketing and branding efforts are creative and efficient, they can tap into that niche market that Don found on the Internet. They have already taken the first (and sometimes most difficult) step – they found a market that was underserved in their community and have taken steps to fill that need.

Just like many small businesses, the competition may seem to be a hurdle that is too hard to jump. In this case, Sauce-a-holics will be competing against the large grocery chains like Publix, who offer a pretty good variety of these items, along with larger specialty stores like Total Wine, where they have a somewhat large selection of sauces and gift items that often accompany beer and wine stores.

So what do they need to do? They need to market themselves as being the go-to experts in all of Jacksonville. They have to give customers a reason to specifically go to their store to buy these items. The best reason? These guys know everything there is to know about salsa and hot sauce. Specifically, Stephen (a nephew of one of the owners tapped to run the store) can post a weekly blog about the latest trends in the business, new products, gift ideas, etc. Perhaps Stephen or Don can pitch a recurring segment on the local news to show ways to spice up everyday meals. Pretty soon, people will be saying “if you want sauce, go see Don.” Don’s personal brand as the Jacksonville’s sauce expert will help drive business, because why would you buy from someone who isn’t an expert? You get the idea.

Their name will also help tremendously in this. Just by hearing “Sauce-a-holics,” customers know exactly what they provide – sauces – and most importantly, passion for sauces. If sauce-a-holics can convey their passion for these items effectively, then they can hope to “create” passionate customers. And as well all know, passionate customers are the best kind! They are the lifeblood of your business.

So today’s personal branding lesson is? Find a market that is underserved, fill the need and brand yourself as the go-to expert and passionate advocate of that market – and open your doors to passionate and loyal customers.

With the exponential growth of the Internet over the last 2 decades, the use of online social networking, paying bills online, and the vast personal information available through social media sites has made the risk of identity theft an increasingly growing problem.

Our personal lives are quickly becoming a huge set of data points. Naturally, businesses, large and small, are no exception to this reality. There’s really only one sure-fire solution to protecting your personal information, your reputation and even your personal brand – control your information!

I know this sounds simple, but in reality, it’s easy to get caught up in thinking that what we say and do stays only with our “inner circle” of friends and business associates. This is simply not the case anymore. This kind of thinking can lead to major problems in your business (and personal life.) How many times have you heard of someone getting fired over Facebook pictures? Or an ill-advised “tweet?” How many businesses have had to “clean up” a mess after a leaked memo, or distance themselves from an employee or spokesperson’s statements? It happens more than you would think.

With our branding agency, when focusing on personal branding for our clients, one of the most important things we try to do is “protect the brand.” Sometimes a person’s personal brand is the most valuable asset that they possess. It’s what makes customers choose to do business with them as opposed to their competition.

In order to protect your personal brand, first and foremost, you must be aware of your image. How do your customers and potential customers view you and your business? What attracted them to you in the first place? If you have a successful personal branding strategy, then the answer is...your personality!

We have always said that “People Buy People.” But don’t forget the inevitable hidden truth to that – “People Return People.” Yeah, it sounds a little corny, but it’s true…as quickly as your personal brand can attract customers, it can also cause them to “return” your services and go with someone else. This can only happen if you betray the trust that your clients or customers have in you – whether it is your fault or not! Have a plan in place to defend yourself and your brand, if you find that someone has challenged it.

Defending your personal brand online is key to making sure that your clients are always getting the true representation of your brand in everything you do. Your choice of employees, the tone of your marketing campaigns, your social media activity and your public speaking or sales events – all should revolve around one thing – the lifeblood of you business: your personal brand.

Just by staying actively involved and being aware of how your brand is being perceived will keep you ten steps ahead of the competition. Make sure you know what your customer’s preferences are. Make sure you know immediately if they have complaints – and find a way to rectify them. Not only will you understand your customers better, but they will also respect you more, knowing that you have your head in the game.

Have a game plan. Be involved. Defend your personal brand when necessary and never stop proactively showcasing who you are and why you should be your client’s first choice.

I recently heard an interview with one of the members of the band Cheap Trick. The band was preparing to do a string of 9 shows in Vegas where they will play the entire album of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, along with some of their own popular hits. This is interesting enough on it’s own, but what really stood out to me was a little interesting and humorous exchange at the end of the interview.

When asked about their new album, front man Robin Zander proclaimed “Right now we have the number one 8-track in the world!”

8-track? Did I hear that right? The host was laughing and asking the same question. It turns out, while he knew this was pretty funny, Robin was serious! Their latest recording, called “The Latest,” is available on CD, as a digital download, and yes, as an 8-track!

Being involved in personal branding with our branding agency, this got me thinking about niche marketing and how personalities and businesses can use quirky and unorthodox branding and marketing methods to add to the desired perception of their brand.

I think this was a brilliant idea by Cheap Trick. I’ve always believed that when planning your marketing strategy, it’s always a good idea to see what others are doing, and do the opposite! Now, I’m not saying that you should neglect some of the more obvious forms of marketing – advertising, email campaigns, direct mailing, etc – but find that niche of your industry that you can also try to serve as well.

In this case, Cheap Trick has offered an 8-track release (at a premium price, no less) for those who still prefer the format (yes, there are people like that!), and it has also created a buzz about the release. It’s a talking point in interviews - and it gets people talking! They’ve always been known as a fun and upbeat rock and roll band, and this only helps to increase that perception – it bolsters their personal brand even more.

The music business is certainly a crowded marketplace – much like many other industries. Think of ways that you can separate yourself from the noise and stand out when it’s time for you to push a new product or service.

Watch the Video Blog from Nick here: Personal Branding Tip: Forget What YOU Know

In my last blog for Fast Company, I explained to you that you have to display your expertise and all the ways you could do that.

But I've had a bunch of emails and posts that have asked me, "But, Nick, where do I begin?" And here's where you've got to begin. You have to forget what you know. Now before you go off saying I'm crazy because I told you before to "get out of the business you're in" and now I'm telling you to "forget what you know", here's what's important--you devalue the things that you know, because you know them so well. That's important, let me say that again:

You devalue the things that you know, because you know them so well.

What I want to encourage you to do is forget what you know and start thinking about what your audience knows--their knowledge set is very different from yours. You don't know where to begin because you think everyone knows what you know, it feels like common sense you know it so well, but it's not! When you're want to display your expertise, you've got to start from the beginning. The most profound information is the stuff that's simple, basic and easy to comprehend and most likely, you've forgotten about it because you know the basics so well! But think about it, if you want to learn about a new subject, you've ALWAYS got to start at the beginning, we all just forget there is a beginning when it's somewhere in our distant past or our subconscious mind.

Forget about the complex stuff, you're trying too hard! And start valuing the stuff that you know. I'm going to ask you to focus on starting from the beginning, of course progressively take your audience on the journey to where they need to be, but start from the beginning. Nothing is too basic. Start from the beginning so they can understand it too and that's what is going to make the biggest impact in their business.

So, forget how much you know, teach people the basics and you'll have great success displaying your expertise.

Share your comments with us below!