As a career success coach, I urge my clients to build strong relationships with the people in their life – to make friends.  Cindy Yantis has become a friend of mine.  She is a career architect, helping people build careers they love.   Our friendship started when I responded to a query she posted asking for advice on personal branding for her blog. 

Her query resulted in a dynamite blog post called 50 Seriously Greats Tips to Elevate Your Personal Brand in 2010.  It had some really great common sense career success advice.  I liked her lengthy post so much that I asked Cindy if she would allow me to excerpt it on this blog.  She graciously agreed.  So each day this week, I shared 10 of Cindy’s 50 tips on personal branding.

Personal branding is an important key to creating positive personal impact.  As a career success coach, I help my clients create and nurture their unique personal brands.  My advice on branding building is simple.  First, figure out how you want others to think of you.  Second, consistently and constantly act in a manner that will get you to think of you that way.  You have to do all the work when it comes to deciding how you want others to think of you.  Cindy’s tips will help you consistently and constantly act in a manner consistent with your brand. 

Here are the final ten tips (41 – 50) of Cindy’s 50 tips on personal branding for career success…

41.  Know your stakeholders
“Know who your stakeholders are, what they need, what they’re interested in, and how you can make a difference. Genuinely engage your stakeholders in conversation. Ask questions that matter. Offer insight that is fresh by doing your homework. Dont be phony. Participate in conversations. Read blogs. Write a blog. Follow people and organizations who you think are interesting; maybe theyll follow you back. Comment on their work. Make a contribution that will add value to your brand.”             Christopher R. Groscurth, Ph.D., drgroscurth.com

42.  Be strategic in getting attention
“I exploded my personal brand into a Resume Magazine called SEEKERS. I printed a bunch and have circulated them among employers. They loved it.  I also created personal bookmarkers, tassel and all, to have employers bookmark my website and invited them to go visit. I also developed a postcard as a direct mail piece and sent it to employers. The resume is dead. My strategy is getting attention.”  Gina Marie Mangiamele, ginamarie.biz.

43.  Create a video resume
“We created a video resume to help marketing professionals elevate their personal brand. This is a compelling and engaging way to reach targeted audiences – prospective employers, clients or partners. The response has been tremendous!”  Tara Greco, blackscreenstudios.com

44.  Do great work
“Do a really great job on a client’s case, so you can truly believe in what you do.  It gives you the confidence to elevate your brand.”  Jay Weinberg, Esq., www.jayweinberg.com.

45.  Seriously use video online!
“To personalize your brand, include a different You-Tube video on each page of your website.    WHY:  In order for potential clients to connect with us personally, we put a U-Tube video on each page of our website. Since doing that, our website has come to life and has cemented us at the center of the brand. This use of three-dimensional media not only enables audiences to listen to information about Success Trek, but it also allows them to tap into the energy, voice and look of the presenter who someday might be leading their focus groups, retreats or trainings.”  Theresa Valade, SUCCESS-TREK.COM

46.  Really do things differently than anyone else
“We have elevated our business through cafes.  We started our business as a group of freelancers in cafes… a lot of our business came from the people we would meet in the cafes. Now we are a full-service agency and cafe agency with our own studio in chicago. We attract several clients since the front half of our studio is a Doejo cafe.  Doing things different than the average business and standing out is the key to elevating our business.”  Karley Hall, http://doejo.com

47.  Hone in on your core values
I recommend sitting down and thinking through your core values. Too many of us know the values we were brought up with (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” “Money doesn’t grow on trees” etc) but few of us have thought through what we really stand for.  Company’s have mission statements that include their core values– each of us must as well.  Do you prize responsiveness? reliability? flexibility? creativity? attention to detail? punctuality? clarity? brevity? Spell it out for yourself, then embody it in all you do, say, write.”  Frances Cole Jones, thewowfactor-thebook.com

48.  Be REALLY effective on Twitter!
“Google’s real time search has changed the way the search engine finds tweets.  Now, tweets must include keywords that your clients, prospects and press use to find information about products, services and businesses.  For these reasons make sure you:  run a Google keyword report on search trends and use these keywords in your tweets; use Trendistic.com – A Twitter application that allows you to search for what’s trending on Twitter; review Twitter trends daily and incorporate these trending keywords and phrases into your Tweets as long as they are relevant to your target audience, otherwise it’s spam! Use #hashtags to #SEO your message via Twitter so you can be discovered; use simple language that offers advice, how to’s and important information that is Google-friendly to real time search.”  Valerie Jennings, jenningssocialmedia.com

49.  Talk about the benefit you provide instead of what you DO
“Is what you do for a living perceived by potential customers as being a mere commodity; more or less the same as others in your profession? The good news is you can change customer perceptions by changing the way you describe what you do.  Rather than describing yourself in terms of a generic label, you can instead refer to the ultimate benefit that you deliver, inviting them into the conversation.  Bottom line: next time you need to set yourself apart from the competition – beyond just lowering prices – try changing the way you talk about what you do for a living.”  Jeff Mowatt, JeffMowatt.com

50.  Follow the A B C’s of personal branding!
“You are your own best walking advertisement, your own walking billboard. When you “show up” anywhere, you are both the message and the messenger for your brand. Align your physical image with your brand image and you’ll see — people will hear you, see you and “buy” you much more quickly, more easily. Accentuate your best assets.  Balance your message from the inside out and head-to-toe, and Camouflage anything your adoring public does not need to know. It’s as easy as A B C!”  Lauren Solomon,  LSimage.com

The common sense point here is simple.  If you want to become a career success, you need to create and nurture your unique personal brand.  In this post I have presented the final 10 common sense personal branding tips from Cindy Yantis, a career architect.  I presented Cindy’s thoughts on personal branding all week because in my work as a career success coach I have learned firsthand of the power of personal branding.  Here are the final 10 of Cindy’s 50 Seriously Great Tips to Elevate Your Personal Brand in 2010.  41) Know your stakeholders.  42) Be strategic in getting attention.  43) Create a video resume.  44) Do great work.  45) Seriously use video on line.  46) Do things differently than anyone else.  47) Hone in on your core values.  48) Be really effective on Twitter.  49) Talk about the benefits you provide, not what you do.  50) Follow the A B C’s of personal branding.

That’s Cindy Yantis – and others – take on personal branding.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

As a career success coach, I urge my clients to build strong relationships with the people in their life – to make friends.  Cindy Yantis has become a friend of mine.  She is a career architect, helping people build careers they love.   Our friendship started when I responded to a query she posted asking for advice on personal branding for her blog. 

Her query resulted in a dynamite blog post called 50 Seriously Greats Tips to Elevate Your Personal Brand in 2010.  It had some really great common sense career success advice.  I liked her lengthy post so much that I asked Cindy if she would allow me to excerpt it on this blog.  She graciously agreed.  So each day this week, I will be sharing 10 of Cindy’s 50 tips on personal branding.

Personal branding is an important key to creating positive personal impact.  As a career success coach, I help my clients create and nurture their unique personal brands.  My advice on branding building is simple.  First, figure out how you want others to think of you.  Second, consistently and constantly act in a manner that will get you to think of you that way.  You have to do all the work when it comes to deciding how you want others to think of you.  Cindy’s tips will help you consistently and constantly act in a manner consistent with your brand. 

Here are the tips 31 – 40 of Cindy’s 50 tips on personal branding for career success.  Pay special attention to # 39 and the career success coach who provided it…

31.  Forget competition; forge relationships
“Those offering similar value in a similar niche or field are not competitors because no one can offer exactly what you do, the way you do. Instead of fearing, fretting over, (or worse) ignoring or undermining these birds of a feather, turn them into allies and advocates for your own brand.  They can sharpen your focus, they can push you toward your best, they can show you what you are lacking, their success is not your downfall but a catalyst and a sign that your niche is prospering. Show them good will (acknowledge what they do well, encourage their efforts, and even share their work with your readers/clients/supporters). You will earn the respect and admiration of your colleagues but also your supporters because you’ve increased their knowledge and resources. The good will you’ve shown and spread in these directions will come back to you.”   Nichelle Strzepek, danceadvantage.net

32.  Be a Collector and Connector
“Cultivate relationships, for yourself and for others.  Those who are able to increase their personal brand are those who see the value in surrounding themselves with people who are diverse in their skills and ambitions and then connecting those persons with others, for their mutual benefit. By cultivating these relationships and helping to connect like-minded and complimentary people you increase your reputation (brand) as a person who “knows everyone” and “gets things done”. People want to be around those who make them feel good about themselves and help them accomplish their goals. Can you make people see their own worth and bring them together with others who can help them meet their goals? If yes, then you will increase your own personal brand.”  Nadine Owens Burton, www.owensburton.net

33.  Take time to stay centered
“Spend at least 2 minutes per day in silence – “meditating” or just sitting, and breathing in more inspiration and breathing out any stress. Assigning meaning to the breath makes it more powerful and gets you more centered!”  Stephanie Mansour, StepItUpwithSteph.com

34.   Protect your time by delegating
“I have hired a high school and a college intern over the next 6 months to do online research and pitching for me. I don’t have the time and they can do it at a very low cost rate.”  Abby Marks Beale, thecorporateeducator.com

35.  Broadcast your message daily
“One way to elevate your personal brand at very little or no expense is consistent and daily messaging to the audience you want to reach. Ensure your web site messaging is consistent with your blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter messaging. The key here is to communicate often and with a clear and direct message.” Daryl Wizelman, darylwizelman.com

36.  Enhance your digital presence
“There are 2 ways to do this easily, without having a lot of knowledge in the field. 
1. Subscribe to blogs that interest you and comment often.  When you take the initiative to add your thoughts to an ongoing discussion, ensure that you have something insightful to say. The more you add, the more attention you receive. The more attention you receive, the more people are interested in what you have to say. This eventually leads them to your blog. *Be sure to always take the option to leave your website URL as well as your name and email address.  2.  Offer to guest post.  Social networking is currency in the digital world.  The only way to gain “digital cred” is to make sure that you are very visible and adding something to the medium.  If you are launching a business or are a niche blogger, be sure to reach out to folks in your field. Write a post and send it over with your credentials. More often than not, bloggers and professionals are all to happy to introduce you to their communities if you have something useful to say.”  Tiffany Hill Thompson residuemarketing.com/

37.  Surround yourself with people whose company you enjoy and who inspire you.
“I’m particularly drawn to other people who love their work and are ambitious enough to keep moving forward in life. Choose those with ethical codes similar to yours, for example: emphasizing quality in their work, aiming for sustainability, and looking to improve the industry rather than to make a quick buck before getting out.”  Colin Wright, exilelifestyle.com

38.  Engage ferociously
“Embrace, be fiercely active, engage on social media & build genuine relationships with successful entrepreneurs.”  Ros Guerrero, Ficklets.com

39.  Determine how you want to be perceived.
“Figure out how you want other people to think of you. Then consistently and constantly act in a manner that will get them to think that way.”  Bud Bilanich www.BudBilanich.com.  Congratulations if you’ve read this far.  Send me an email and I’ll send you the eBook version of my best seller, Straight Talk for Success.

40.  Expand your visibility everywhere you can
“I am elevating my brand in 2010 by subscribing to HARO and ReporterConnection.com and pitching every appropriate request that is presented. Taking just 15-20 minutes/day to carefully review the listings and responding wherever there is a good fit. I’ve been doing this for just one month and have already gotten 4 responses (1) Included in a St. Patricks Day Gift guide on a website with millions of visitors per month (2) Radio Interview scheduled for April 5th (3) Radio and Weblog – gift guide plug all of May and (4) Tying in a custom song with a double date for another Radio show. I fully believe if I continue doing this religiously day after day, week after week my brand will increase greatly in popularity and value.”   Vincent James, LoveSongs.com

The common sense point here is simple.  If you want to achieve career success, you need to create and nurture your unique personal brand.  In this post I have presented 10 common sense personal branding tips from Cindy Yantis, a career architect.  I present them here because in my work as a career success coach I have learned firsthand of the power of personal branding.  Here are tips 31to 40 of Cindy’s 50 Seriously Great Tips to Elevate Your Personal Brand in 2010.  31) Forget competition; forge relationships.  32) Be a collector and connector.  33) Take time to stay centered.  34) Protect your time by delegating.  35) Broadcast your message daily.  36) Enhance your digital presence.  37) Surround yourself with people whose company you enjoy and who inspire you.  38) Engage ferociously.  39) Determine how you want to be perceived.  40) Expand your visibility everywhere you can.

That’s Cindy Yantis – and others – take on personal branding.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

As a career success coach, I urge my clients to build strong relationships with the people in their life – to make friends.  Cindy Yantis has become a friend of mine.  She is a career architect, helping people build careers they love.   Our friendship started when I responded to a query she posted asking for advice on personal branding for her blog. 

Her query resulted in a dynamite blog post called 50 Seriously Greats Tips to Elevate Your Personal Brand in 2010.  It had some really great common sense career success advice.  I liked her lengthy post so much that I asked Cindy if she would allow me to excerpt it on this blog.  She graciously agreed.  So each day this week, I will be sharing 10 of Cindy’s 50 tips on personal branding.

Personal branding is an important key to creating positive personal impact.  As a career success coach, I help my clients create and nurture their unique personal brands.  My advice on branding building is simple.  First, figure out how you want others to think of you.  Second, consistently and constantly act in a manner that will get you to think of you that way.  You have to do all the work when it comes to deciding how you want others to think of you.  Cindy’s tips will help you consistently and constantly act in a manner consistent with your brand. 

Here are tips 11 to 20 of Cindy’s tips on personal branding for career success…

11.  Get yourself on the morning news shows!
“Call your local television news stations (plural!) and ask for the person who books the morning news. Ask if you can send this person an e-mail introducing yourself. If you get that opportunity, BRIEFLY (two sentences at most!) tell them what you’re capable of talking about, and let them know you’d be happy to be available at the drop of a hat. Morning news shows have interview slots for members of the community–make sure that’s you by communicating how you can be of service to them.  Be available too; nobody is perfect, and sometimes a booked guest has to cancel. Be the person they call to fill the spot and you’ll be doing a lot to make their life easier.

Pro-tip: send the planner or producer brief notes about the most popular questions people want to know about what you’ll be talking about. Example: If you’re a pet store owner, and your interview is on pets, list the top 10 questions you get asked, AND, type out your general answers. This gives the producer an idea of how to make the interview interesting, AND gives them an idea of how you’ll answer those types of questions. If you hit the nail on the head for what the producer is looking for, you may just hear your questions being asked, verbatim!” Fritz Chaleff (Communications Director | U.S. Congressman Brian P. Bilbray) bilbray.house.gov

12.  Have your own unique name online
“Be sure the name you’re using is consistent across sites, especially if using social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Your name is part of your brand leverage it. For example, the first step in your own branding is to Google/Bing/Yahoo yourself and look at results. If your name is fairly common, can you create a more unique identity by using your full name / middle initial, etc.?  Be cautious about using nicknames. Also, as part of researching what’s already out there on the web about you, leverage the tools like recruiters use (www.whoozy.com or www.pipl.com or www.Zoominfo.com) to conduct an even more comprehensive search and explore your online presence. Posting and building an online presence can help boost your image/brand.”  Danielle Beauparlant Moser, blendedlearningteam.com

13.  Control your tweet messages
“I love scheduling many of my Twitter messages each week in Hootsuite. It allows me to spend an hour or so each week setting up my regular tweets and Hootsuite lets me see the Stats on each tweet, and has provided hootlet which lets me tweet any web page easily. I love it!”  Wanda Jewell, sibaweb.com

14.  It’s all about the company you keep
“Have you ever heard of “guilt by association?”  Well, it works in the other direction too. One of the best ways to elevate your personal brand is by creating genuine relationship with other well-respected individuals in your industry and niche. By cultivating relationships (and emailing a person once doesn’t count as a relationship), you gain a sense of credibility from the company you keep. Plus, you can also gain access to those people’s fans- folks that likely overlap your target market.  This is a strategy that takes time, but is worthwhile over the long haul and will not only give you the most bang for your buck, but also the most long-term credibility.  Carol Roth, carolroth.com

15. Be bold and valuable
“Do something big, outrageous and valuable to your target market .”  Carma Spence-Pothitt dragonwyze.com

16.  Focus on where you’re going
“Focus less on where you are now, and more on where you want to be a year from now, and start positioning yourself that way.”  Alexandra Golaszewska, eastern-star.net

17.  Create an event where you’re the center of attention
“In February I created the ‘Song Bomb’ recruiting 32 songwriters to each write a song, record it and post it on my website. I wrote, recorded and posted 32 songs myself.  The rewards from this venture?  All the fans of those songwriters who visited my site to hear their songs got to find out about me too.  My site traffic for the month at least tripled and I have a project that I can use to bring new fans to my site for months to come.  More over I strengthened my relationship with every songwriter who I brought on for the project; everyone was grateful for an catalyst to write new songs and get them out into the world.” Timmy Riordan, TimmyRiordan.com

18.  Write an advice booklet
“If you’re a small biz owner or solo entrepreneur, you’re an expert and can write advice booklets or brochures for your target market. Small booklets are easy to produce on office copiers. Design a cover and you have a wonderful, unique and valuable branding and marketing piece to pass out at conferences or mail to prospective clients. http://moonstruckpromotions.com Tammy Brackett

19.  Update regularly to build your reputation
“1) Use a professional resume writer and update your resume regularly. There are degrees of professional certification — use the best you can afford — and repurpose their content for LinkedIn and other professional profiles.   2) Ask for new recommendations for your online profile quarterly. Pull language from the quotes, “e.g. creative, thought-leader, skillful manager, etc. and create an intro paragraph for yourself that leverages the same language. Consistency in a brand builds strength.   3) Make a vow that if you offer to do something for someone else (e.g. create an introduction) do it within 24 hours after the ask. This builds a reputation for speedy, reliable assistance.”  Karen Howe  mindbloom.com

20.  BE PERSONAL with your blog
“Obviously, if you are not maintaining a blog, you should. Too many people writing niche blogs think they cannot inject their personality into their blog. They also think that every post must be laser-targeted to their niche. Don’t be a robot -write in a way that let’s people get to know you – that’s how you elevate your personal brand.”  Chris Reimer, thebasemententrepreneur.com

The common sense point here is simple.  If you want to achieve career success, you need to create and nurture your unique personal brand.  In this post I have presented 10 common sense personal branding tips from Cindy Yantis, a career architect.  I present them here because in my work as a career success coach I have learned firsthand of the power of personal branding.  Here are the second 10 of Cindy’s 50 Seriously Great Tips to Elevate Your Personal Brand in 2010.  11) Get yourself on the morning news shows.  12) Have your own unique name online.  13) Control your tweet messages.  14) It’s all about the company you keep.  15) Be bold and valuable.  16) Focus on where you’re going.  17) Create an event where you’re the center of attention.  18) Write an advice booklet.  19) Update regularly to build your reputation.  20) Be personal with your blog. 
 
That’s Cindy Yantis – and others – take on personal branding.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud