Successful people create positive personal impact.  It is one of the career success competencies that is part of my Career Success GPS System.  You create positive personal impact by developing and nurturing your personal brand, dressing for success and knowing and following the basic rules of etiquette.

As a career success coach, I believe that a strong personal brand is the starting place for creating positive personal impact.  Do you have a personal brand?  How did you develop it?  What do you do to nurture it?

Personal branding is simple in concept.  Figure out how you want to be known.  What two or three words do you want people to associate with you?  Once you determine how you want to be known, consistently and constantly do the things that will get people to think of you that way.

Visibility enhances your personal brand.  Volunteer for projects inside your company, church and community.  Write a column or opinion piece for your company magazine or an industry publication.  Write a letter to the editor of your local paper.

That’s the essence of personal branding – knowing how you want to be perceived; consistent and constant action, and visibility.  However, all strong personal brands are built on integrity.  Tweet 62 in my new book Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice All in 140 Characters or Less, says…

Your personal brand should be unique to you, but built on integrity.  Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.

Here are my best career success coach tips on how to become known as a person of high integrity.

People with integrity succeed.  Be true to yourself.  Your reputation is all you’ve got.  Know your values and stick to them.  If you haven’t already articulated your personal values, take a few minutes, think about them and write them down.  Review them every week to make sure you’re staying true to yourself.

Be direct and truthful.  Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing so astonishes men as common sense and plain dealing.”  Astonish the people around you with common sense and straightforward communication.

Admit your mistakes.  We all make mistakes.  Own up to yours. You’ll gain a reputation as a straight shooter who as honest with himself or herself as he or she is with others.

Become widely trusted.  Deliver on what you say you’ll do.  If you can’t meet a commitment, let the other person know as soon as you can.  Agree on another deadline – and meet it.  Keep confidences.  Avoid gossip.  Never embarrass your friends and coworkers by repeating what they share with you – even if it isn’t in confidence.

The common sense point here is simple.  If you want to succeed in your life and career, do everything you can to promote and nurture your personal brand at all times.  Remember this important career success coach point; everything you do – and everything you choose to not do – communicates your brand.  Dress, handle phone calls, e mails and face to face conversations in a manner that enhances your personal brand.  If you do this, you’ll stand out from the crowd and be well on your way to creating positive personal impact.

That’s my take on nurturing your personal brand.  What’s yours?  Thanks for reading.  As always, I encourage and value your comments.  Please take the time to share your thoughts and ask your questions on personal branding.

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 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

Last Saturday, I was on my way from midtown Manhattan to Newark Airport when a Porsche Cayenne passed me.  It had a vanity plate that said, “DR DBK.”  I’m not a vanity plate guy, the regular old plates I got from the State of Colorado are fine with me.  On the other hand, I do like to figure out the message on vanity plates.  This one seemed pretty simple.  The woman driving the Porsche was a doctor and her initials were DBK.  I could be wrong, but I’d be willing to bet on this one.

As a career success coach, I advise my clients to create and nurture their unique personal brand.  Vanity plates are one way — although not a very good one in my opinion — to brand yourself.  I have a friend who has two cars with vanity plates.  One says “FST BRK,” and the other, “SLM DNK.”  He has branded himself as a basketball fan by his “fast break” and “slam dunk” plates.  The New York Knicks logo on the plate further defines his brand.

Let’s get back to Dr. DBK and her brand.  She is obviously proud of the fact that she’s a doctor.  She should be.  It takes lots of time and effort to become a doctor – whether she is an MD or PhD.  I know, I spent a lot of years in grad school – and a lot of money – to earn my Dr. credential.  Interestingly enough, I seldom use it.

Personal branding is not difficult conceptually.  I tell my career success coaching clients that it involves two things:

1. Figure out how you want people to think of you.
2. Consistently and constantly act in a manner that will get them to think of you that way.

Easier said than done, however.

When I was creating my brand, I came up with the term “common sense” easily enough.  Several of my friends and career success coaching clients told me that those two words most often come to mind when they think of me.  I was comfortable with the common sense moniker.  I want to be known for my common sense, my ability to simplify complex problems and arrive at simple, easy to implement solutions. 

But then I ran into a bit of a problem.  What is the word that should follow common sense?  Because of my academic credentials, “doctor” and “doc” were the first words that popped into my mind.  I rejected them for two reasons.  First, people might think that I was a medical doctor offering common sense advice.  Second, “doctor” or “doc” just didn’t seem to fit with “common sense.”  The three words just didn’t go together in my mind. 

I considered other alternatives.  One was “guru.”  That was even worse.  “Common Sense Guru” sounded too pretentious and new age to me.  I could see people creating mental images of me sitting around in my pyramid with crystals all over the place.  “Common Sense Coach” fit OK for the career success coach part of my business, but was too limiting.  Besides being a career success coach I am a speaker, author and blogger. 

One day I was having a conversation about this with one of friends and mentors.  I was complaining that I couldn’t seem to get the correct word to go with the common sense part of my brand.  I said something like, “I don’t like Doctor or doc.  I don’t like guru.  I don’t like coach.”  They all have problems, but mostly, they’re not me.  I’m just a guy.” 

She said, “What’s wrong with Common Sense Guy?”  My first reaction was negative – too pedestrian, too common, not enough pizzazz.  However, the more I thought about it, the better it sounded.  I think of myself as a guy – someone easy to talk to, easy going and unpretentious.  And so I became the Common Sense Guy.  I get a lot of positive comments on this brand.

Dr. DBK doesn’t have the hang up with branding herself as a doctor as I do – and that’s good for her.  Your personal brand should be something that resonates for you.  It should attract other people – but not everybody.  I’m sure some people are put off by the informality of my Common Sense Guy brand.  That’s OK.  They probably wouldn’t like how I approach my work anyway.  On the other hand, while some people may be put off by Dr. DBK’s brand, others – especially those into credentials — will like it. 

Your brand should be comfortable for you, and it should resonate with others.  My Common Sense Guy brand does that for me.  I hope that Dr. DBK’s brand does the same for her.

The common sense point here is simple.  If you want to become a career success, you need to create positive personal impact.  Creating and nurturing your unique personal brand is an important key to creating positive personal impact.  Your brand should be uniquely you.  It should communicate who you are in a few words.  It should be how you want other people to think of you.  Once you choose your brand, you need to consistently and constantly reinforce it.  You need to act in a manner that gets people to think of you as you want them to.  Take it from the Common Sense Guy and a seasoned career success coach, a strong personal brand will help you stand out from the pack and get noticed.

That’s my take on building a strong personal brand.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  If you have created your personal brand, please tell us how you chose it and what you do to reinforce it every day.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

Creating positive personal impact is one of the keys to success that is part of my Career Success GPS System.  I discuss it in detail in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success, Your Success GPS, 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success, Star Power, I Want YOU…To Succeed.  As a career success coach I always tell my clients that you need to do three things to create positive personal impact: 1) build and nurture your unique personal brand; 2) be impeccable in your presentation of self – in person and on line; 3) know and follow the basic rules of business etiquette.

In this post, I want to discuss a tool for building your brand and for enhancing your on line presence – Twitter.  Do you tweet?  You should.  Your tweets can help you build your brand, but only if you do them in such a way that presents you as serious and competent.

I’m about to release a new book called Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Success Advice in 140 Characters or Less.  It’s a collection of tweets I’ve posted over the past year.  Here are a five of them…

You’re in charge!  Commit to doing whatever it takes to create the successful life and career you want and deserve.

Treat failures as the tuition you need to pay to succeed. If you have a setback, just choose to react positively and learn something.

The mightier your purpose, the more likely you are to succeed. It will give you a strong foundation “when the winds of change shift.”

Vision without action is a daydream. No matter how big your plans and dreams, they’ll never become a reality until you act on them.

Write a resuwitter — a 140 character resume. It is a great way to get focused on exactly who you are and what you have to offer.

Here’s my resuwitter… 

Bud Bilanich The Common Sense Guy helps people create the successful lives and careers they want and deserve by applying their common sense.

It’s 140 characters exactly – even if it’s missing a few commas.

I use my tweets to build my brand.  I’m a career success coach, helping people create successful lives and careers, so I tweet about career success.  Hopefully the tweets I’ve shared above demonstrate my thinking on career success.  If they don’t, they’re not helping build my career success coach brand.  I’d appreciate it if you would leave a comment letting me know if you think I’ve accomplished my goal with these tweets.

Retweeting is another good way to build your brand.  When you see tweets that you like, retweet them.  This is a good way to show others what you think is important – even if you haven’t thought of it yourself.  In many ways, retweets tell more about you then your own tweets.

Many people say that they don’t use Twitter because it’s too hard to get people to follow them.  I have found however, that when you post high quality tweets and retweets, people will begin retweeting your tweets.  This will build a quality list of followers – people who are interested in you and what you have to say.  Chances are people in your company, or in companies where you might want to work, will see some of these tweets.  This will position you as a respected member of the community in which you work – and build your personal brand.

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people create positive personal impact.  Tweeting is a great way to create positive personal impact.  It builds your personal brand, and if done well, enhances your on line image.  Tweets are pearls of wisdom that are no more than 140 characters.  You can write your own tweets or retweet what others have to say.  Better yet, do both.  This will help you build your personal brand — and help other people get to know you and what’s important to you.  It’s easy to set up a Twitter account and beginning tweeting.  Take it from a career success coach, career success depends on action. I suggest that as soon as you finish reading this post go to www.Twitter.com, set up an account and begin building your brand and enhancing your image by tweeting.

That’s my take on brand building by tweeting.  What’s yours?  Please take a minute and leave a 140 character comment (Twitter style).  I’ll give a copy of any of my eBooks to anybody who tweets a comment.  Give it a try.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

Pearl Buck was one of my favorite authors when I was a child.  I loved The Good Earth.  The other day, I came across a quote by her that grabbed me – so much so that I went looking for some paper to copy it…

“Every great mistake has a half way moment, a splt second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.”

As a career success coach, I read that and said, “Wow!”

I tell my career success coaching clients that stuff is going to happen as you go through life – some of it unpleasant.  I also advise them that it’s not the stuff that happens that’s important.  How you react to the stuff that happens is what’s important.  I think this is particularly true when it comes to brand building.  It takes a long time to build a great brand and only a minute to destroy it. 

Serena Williams is a good example.  I am a big Serena fan.  I love her grit and determination.  She never quits.  However, her brand took a big hit last summer at the US Open.  If you’re not a tennis fan, here is a recap of what happened.  Serena was down one set to love and four games to five in her semi final match to Kim Clijsters.  She was serving at 15 – 30.  The lines judge called a foot fault against her, taking the score to 15 – 40, one point away from losing the match.  A foot fault is a rare call, and one that is hardly ever made in crucial situations.  In this case, it also was an incorrect call, the replay showed that Serena had not foot faulted.

Serena was clearly upset about the call.  However she seemed to gather herself and get ready to serve again.  I was thinking, “Good for you, Serena.  You’re not going to let a bad call take you out of your game.”

Then disaster struck.  Serena backed away from the service line and approached the lines judge, holding the ball in front of her and screaming that she was “Going to take this f***ing ball and f***ing shove it down your f***ing throat.”

The umpire called the lines judge over, and asked is Serena had threatened her.  She said, “Yes.”  As a result, Serena was docked a point.  However, it was a huge point.  The foot fault made it 15 – 40, the point she was docked gave the game, set and match to Clijsters.

I tell the story here because of Pearl Buck’s quote.  Serena made a great mistake.  And there was a half way moment when she could have avoided it.  In fact, she seemed to have made it successfully through that moment.  Then she lost it and confronted the lines judge.  It seemed to me almost as if she said to herself, “To hell with it, I can’t let her get away with such a terrible call.”

Instead of recalling the mistake, she went right on ahead and made it – seemingly knowing what she was doing.  That was too bad.  She lost the match and the opportunity to defend her title.  And, she did some real harm to her brand.

As you go through life, you’ll encounter some foot fault moments.  I know I do.  As a career success coach, I urge you to take full advantage of that split second moment when you can stop yourself from making a mistake that will damage your brand, or your relationship with an important person.  Slow things down.  Don’t let your anger get the better of you.  Choose to do the smart thing.  Because after all, what happens isn’t what’s important.  How you react to what happens is.

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people build and nurture their unique personal brands, and they build and nurture relationships with important people in their lives.  Pearl Buck suggests that “Every great mistake has a half way moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.”  When bad things and things that make you angry happen, remember these words.  Don’t do damage to your brand or your relationships.  Slow down, take a deep breath, think about what you’re doing.  Take it from a career success coach, this might help you avoid letting your anger get the better of you.  It might help you take advantage of that split second when you can recall and remedy a mistake you are about to make.

That’s my take on how to take advantage of the split second when you can remedy a mistake you are about to make.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

Positive personal impact is one of the keys to career success that is part of my Career Success GPS System.  As a career success coach, I help my clients create positive personal impact.  I discuss in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success, Star Power, I Want YOU…To Succeed, Your Success GPS and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success. 

I’m always telling my clients that if they want to create positive personal impact, they need to do three things: 1) create, build and nurture their personal brand; 2) dress for success; and 3) know and follow the basic rules of etiquette.

Today I want to tell you a story about a guy who I know who has built a powerful personal brand from the ground up in about 15 months.  His name is Jason Sadler and his brand is “I Wear Your Shirt.”  In late 2008, Jason decided to cash in on his knowledge of social media.  He created a unique offer.  To help companies promote their products he would wear their T shirt for a day.  He would blog about the company and their products and do a live video feed about them over the course of the day.  He would tweet and do face book posts about the shirt he was wearing that day.

He priced his offering in a unique manner too.  If he wore you shirt on January 1, you paid a dollar.  If he wore it on January 20, you paid $20.  If he wore it on December 31, you paid $365.  In other words, his pricing began at one dollar on January 1 and went up a dollar every day until the last day of the year.

Things took off for Jason.  He sold out every day in 2009 and has only a few days left in 2010.  He added a partner, Evan White in 2010.  So now pricing goes up in two dollar increments.  Companies advertising with Jason and Evan pay $2 on January 1 and $730 on December 31.  If you go to the I Wear your Shirt Website, and click on the “press” button, you’ll see that Jason has been featured on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, ABC News with Charles Gibson, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal and a whole lot of other big media outlets. 

I bought a day in 2009 and two days in 2010.  Here is a link to all of the things Jason did for me on Friday February 26 the first of my 2010 days; http://tinyurl.com/BuyBudsBook.  I was promoting my book 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success. 

Jason has followed the two basic building blocks of any strong personal brand. 

1. Decide how you want people to think of you.
2. Consistently and constantly act in a manner that will cause people to think of you that way.

Jason decided he wanted people to think of him as the guy who promotes businesses by wearing their T shirts.  Then, he consistently and constantly stays on brand.  Every day, he promotes not only the company whose shirt he is wearing, he also promotes the I Wear Your Shirt brand.  This is a win-win for Jason and his advertisers.  There is a certain amount of “cool” associated with having Jason wear your shirt.  I found that out when I saw the number of tweets that mentioned me on the days Jason has worn my shirts. 

Jason and Evan rock.  On Friday, I sold lots of books due to his efforts and I got almost 50 new subscribers to my ezine and daily success quotes.  By the way, if you’re not subscribed, you can do so at my website, www.BudBilanich.com.  This is probably a good time to mention that I am donating all of my royalties from sales of 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success to the Be the STAR You Are Foundation, a charity that helps women, families and youth-at-risk through improved literacy and positive media. 

If you would like to help yourself – or one of your kids, or someone you manage, or someone you mentor — become a career success please buy a copy, or several copies to give away.  You can do so at Amazon.com or at www.42Rules.com.   Search for 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success at either site, and you’ll be taken to the sales page for the book.   If you decide to buy a copy, go to http://www.budbilanich.com/42jumpstart/ and let me know that you did.  I will send you the eBook versions of two of my most popular books: Straight Talk for Success and I Want YOU…To Succeed.

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people create positive personal impact by developing and nurturing their unique personal brands.  Brand building is simple in concept.  First, decide how you want people to think of you.  Then consistently and constantly act in a manner that will cause people to think of you that way.  Jason Sadler and his I Wear Your Shirt brand is a great example of these steps in action.  Jason, more than anyone I know, stays on brand consistently and constantly.  If you check out his website and get on his mailing list, you’ll see what I mean.  Jason is a great example of brand building in action.  Take it from a long time career success coach.  A strong personal brand that you reinforce consistently and constantly is an important step in creating the career success you want – and that you deserve. 

That’s my take on Jason Sadler and personal branding.  What’s yours?  Please take a minute to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

Positive personal impact is one of the keys to career success that is part of my Career Success GPS System.  As a career success coach, I help my clients create positive personal impact.  I discuss in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success, Star Power, I Want YOU…To Succeed, Your Success GPS and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success. 

If you want to create positive personal impact, you need to do three things: 1) create, build and nurture your personal brand; 2) dress for success; and 3) know and follow the basic rules of etiquette.

Have you created your personal brand yet?  What is it?  How do you use it to help create your career success?  If you have already created your unique personal brand, please leave a comment sharing your personal branding experiences with us.  If not, listen up.  Here’s how to do it.

I get lots of questions about how to create, build and nurture a personal brand.  I always advise my career success coaching clients to focus on the Three C’s of branding.  Your brand needs to be clear, consistent and constant – meaning that people need to be able to easily understand your brand, your brand must be consistent with who you are as a person and you need to stay on brand all the time in all you do.

I’ve found that clarity is the C that gives my career success coaching clients the most trouble.  Here are four simple questions that can help you clarify your personal brand. 

These four questions are simple, but require some thought. 

• What?  What do I do?
• Why?  Why is it important?
• How?  How do I do it?
• So What?  Why does this matter in the long run?

Let me use my Common Sense Guy brand as an example.

• What?  I help individual people, teams and entire organizations succeed by applying their common sense.
• Why?  Common sense is often overlooked.  Most problems have simple answers that can be solved by the application of time tested, common sense principals.
• How?  I coach individuals.  Facilitate team building workshops.  Analyze organizations and suggest and help implement strategic changes.
• So What? Individual, team and organizational success require constant renewal.  Common sense says it’s important for people, teams and organizations to periodically review their goals and aspirations, as well as their progress in reaching them.

Can you answer these four simple questions about yourself?  If so, you have created your personal brand.  Now you need to build and nurture it by making your actions consistent with it, and making it a constant part of your behavior.

The common sense point is simple.  Successful people create, build and nurture their personal brands.  You can create your unique personal brand by answering the following four questions.  1) What do I do?  2) Why is it important?  3) How do I do it? 4) Why does this matter in the long run?  These questions may seem simple at first glance, but they can help you summarize what you want to communicate about yourself to the rest of the world – and that’s a great start on creating your personal brand.

That’s my take on personal branding and the four simple questions of What? Why? How? So What?  What’s your take?  Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts with the rest of us.  I really appreciate and value your thoughts and comments.  Thanks for reading.

Bud

Competence is one of the keys to success in my Common Sense Success System.  I discuss it in detail in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success; Your Success GPS; Star Power, I Want YOU…to Succeed and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success. 

If you want to succeed you need to develop four basic, but important competencies: 1) creating positive personal impact; 2) becoming a consistently high performer; 3) communication skills; and 4) relationship building.  

Yesterday, I blogged about a great new book that I was asked to review, The Big Picture: Essential Lessons for the Movies.  Authors Kevin Coupe and Michael Sansolo do a great job of discussing the business and career success ideas in almost 200 movies.  This is a very thoughtful book.  Kevin and Michael make some great points about success that pop up in some unlikely movies.  For example, they use the movie Babe to make the point that it’s important to be different – and break some rules — if you want to get recognized and succeed.  That’s great personal branding advice.  Creating and nourishing your unique personal brand is the first step in creating positive personal impact.  Here’s some of what Kevin and Michael have to say about Babe…

“Babe is a simple story, but it contains an important lesson.    Think of how many business have stuck to the way things always are and completely missed the opportunity to become something entirely new, bigger and better.

“MTV didn’t invent video or records, but pulled them together in an entirely new cable channel.  CBS, in contrast, owned a television network and a record company, but missed the chance.”

I experienced a rule breaking moment the other day.  I was in a local bookstore looking for a book on fitness.  As you can imagine, there was no shortage.  As I opened various books to check them out, I found Tamba Mbawa’s business card in every one of them.  I purchased a book and took it home.  When I got there, I went to Tamba’s website www.ptogfitness.com.  Tamba is a personal trainer and fitness coach.

I thought this was a great example of breaking the rules and personal brand building.  Tamba spent the time to go to a local Barnes and Noble and place his card in every one of the fitness books they have on the shelf.  He was getting his name in front of a very targeted audience; people who purchase books on fitness.  Pretty cool idea in my book.  And one that is a perfect manifestation of what Kevin and Michael have to say about breaking the rules to get recognized for your uniqueness.

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people create and nurture their unique personal brands.  Good personal brands highlight focus on the uniqueness of the person who created them.  One way of doing this is to break a few rules.  By breaking the rules, I don’t mean doing something illegal or unethical.  I mean thinking outside of the box and not being constrained by conventional wisdom.  As Kevin Coupe and Michael Sansolo point out in their great book The Big Picture, Babe the pig succeeds because he doesn’t act like a pig.  He is friendly and mannerly – characteristics not usually associated with pigs.  Tamba Mbawa broke the rules in building his personal training brand.  He placed his business card inside all of the fitness books in a local Barnes and Noble.  What rules are holding you back from building a great personal brand?  How can you break them to demonstrate your uniqueness?

That’s my take on creating a powerful personal brand by breaking the rules.  What’s yours?  Please take a minute to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

PS: If you liked this post, you’ll love my free 90 minute DVD on career and life success.  To get your free copy, go to www.CareerSuccessDVD.com.  That’s www.CareerSuccessDVD.com.  Go there now and get started creating the successful life and career you want and deserve.