Monthly Archive for May, 2011

Personal Brand: Why You Need A Strong One More Than Ever

Published in Digital Marketing. 2 Comments

Personal Branding

YKSYTU37AKWC

I recently attended a lecture about personal branding.  As someone looking for full time employment, this is a topic close to my heart.  But personal branding is not just for those looking for a new job.

Personal branding is important for everyone who strives for career success.  You might be looking to change job function, change industries or land a more senior position in your current company. In all of these cases your personal brand will play a crucial role in your ability to achieve your goal.

What is My Personal Brand?

Your personal brand is your reputation.  It is comprised of your thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions.  It is all the unique factors that differentiate you from everyone else.

The act of personal branding then is how you market yourself to others.  This branding hinges on people’s perception of you.

Unfortunately, we are not able to control they way people perceive us.  We are only able to influence the way we are perceived. So it is critical to know your brand and to clearly communicate it to others so their perception of your brand is as close to the reality as possible.

Why is a Personal Brand so important?

Gone are the days when you would work for the same company for 20 years.  Whether by choice or necessity people are changing jobs much more frequently than ever before.  These days it is normal for workers to only stay at a company for 1-3 years.

Technological advances, commoditization of work in many sectors, mass outsourcing of jobs, and unstable markets have all led to more people fighting for fewer jobs.

Therefore, in order to differentiate yourself in such a highly competitive work environment you have to have a strong personal brand that describes who you are, what you are about, and what makes you valuable.

With so many candidates available and so little time or resources to evaluate their talents, the person with the strongest personal brand is the usually the one who is chosen from all the faces in the crowd.

So what exactly are you doing to build a strong personal brand?

Chicago Marketing Thoughts

Published in Digital Marketing. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Chicago PosterWarm weather has finally arrived in Chicago! So to celebrate here  is another round of marketing thoughts from around town.

Topics covered this time around include: small business tips for surveying customers, states of grief experienced by companies adopting social media, signs of a great word of mouth topic, and reasons why online video is great for increasing your site’s conversion rates.  Enjoy!

  • Amber Naslund at Brass Tack Thinking details how businesses adopting Social Media go through stages closely resembling the traditional stages of grief experienced in people’s personal lives during times of loss.

So who around town do you like to follow?

What marketing thought leaders do you repeatedly learn from?

Drop me a line in the comments so I can include their work in the future.

Automated Tweets Gone Bad

Published in Digital Marketing. 0 Comments Tags: , .
Front page of the Chicago Tribune the day after Osama bin Laden was killed

Photo by Seth Anderson

As a new Twitter record was being set Sunday night due to the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death, did anyone else notice the people/companies sending out automated tweets?

One of the biggest stories of the year was happening and yet there were still tweets about “10 Ways to Improve Your SEO” and other miscellaneous topics.

By my highly unscientific estimation, about 90% of tweets late Sunday night dealt with the topic of Osama Bin Laden’s death. Therefore, any tweet at that time about another subject really stuck out like a sore thumb.

I would not call it an epic fail, but it did make the automatic tweeters look a little, I don’t know, out of touch.

What To Do?

Perhaps they could have temporarily shut off the scheduled tweets? But that would have required someone to have been monitoring Twitter late Sunday night.  I’m sure it’s not standard practice for most people/companies to monitor Twitter late on Sunday evenings to make sure that no major world events are unfolding.

You never know when a big news story will break on Twitter, but when it does you better hope that it happens during your normal work hours so that you can be a part of the relevant conversation AND keep from sending out messages that make you look unaware, disinterested, or both.

What do you think?