Have fun while boosting your brand

So you’re already well versed with social networking sites - you regularly update your Facebook profile, you have hundreds of professional connections on LinkedIn, and you manage to share most of each day in bite sized a 140 character Tweets.

So what’s next I hear you ask.

While you may be well up to speed with adding value to your business through social media, do you know how to use it as a tool for successfully marketing your personal brand?

no? Well here are some quick easy tips for leveraging your brand on the web:

Utilize services that allow you to post to multiple sites and services with a single post. For this purpose, I highly recommend Posterous.com. It’s a free service that allows you to post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn by sending a single email.

Trial and error is the best way to learn: try different things to see what people respond to most. This is especially true when you have a diverse audience with varying interests, it’s important to experiment and test to see what works and what people are responding to. Don’t be afraid to experiment and see what gets your audience interacting.  

Join the conversation. Social media is all about online conversations. It’s a place to listen to your users and encourage participation. If you are too heavy handed with your “marketing” you may well run the risk of alienating your community of followers. Respond to other people’s posts, interact, be yourself and join in the conversation. Remember your followers follow you because they believe you are interesting ans share content of value - never ram your stuff down their throats.

Be real. People want to follow someone they can relate to - the real authentic you. Including  photos, quotes, things that have happened to you - let people see who’s behind the brand.

Make it fun!!! Social media is about having fun and interacting. Show your passion, be a little silly, don’t be afraid to show your quirky self.

In light of this last point I have been playing around and having fun with my brand - check out my new animation video here and make your own to boost your brand! http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6516217/

Yours in prosperity, passion and purpose

Heidi Alexandra Pollard, The Living Leaders Advocate

Get more social to boost your career

I guarantee almost everyone has done some level of ego-surfing and googled their name to see what comes up. While it may sound like a trip down vanity lane googling yourself on a semi regular basis is a great way to track and measure your professional online presence.

Using quotation marks around your name eg: “Sarah Smith” is the cleanest form of searching and will ensure you just get results for your own name (as well as any others with the same name)

It’s a great way to track and measure your presence as well as get a feel for the topics and themes associated with you on the web. Why? Because I guarantee you many prospective employers these days are googling applicants names to confirm resume claims and get a feel for what others say about them as well as what they get up to on the weekend! Sound scary?

With Facebook leading the way and Twitter activity on the rise, Australians are rapidly increasing their participation in social media, content sharing and personal brand building. A recent study showed nearly four in five of Australia’s nine million social media users sent or shared a photo in the past year and nearly three quarters shared a link. The biggest increases in social media usage were reading and posting on Twitter and reading wikis.

Twitter’s audience levels grew by more than 400% in 2009 so if you’ve got something to say, that’s the space!

“The opportunities for brands and companies to tap into the social media phenomenon are really just beginning to emerge and to date we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg,” states Melanie Ingrey, Research Director for Nielsen’s online business.

Your personal brand is the most valuable asset you have - what are you doing to build your brand online?

Yours in prosperity

Heidi Alexandra Pollard
The Communicator’s Coach

Is your brand as clear as Epsom salts?

My own coach from the US Therese Skelly recently posted the following article and I thought it had some great points of interest relevant to communicating your personal career brand. Enjoy and thanks Therese!

Is your brand as clear as Epsom salts?

This has got to get the award for the WORST marketing ever. Reading a bag of epsom salts (don’t ask!) I was surprised from a marketing perspective at what it said “Epsom Salt – Magnesium Sulfate U.S.P – Natural Mineral” (and here’s where it gets interesting….)

A soaking aid for minor sprains and bruises

A saline laxative for the short term relief of constipation

A plant nutrient for vigorous lawns, flowers, plants, vegetables and trees.

Now I don’t know about you, but I doubt even brilliant marketers like my friend Michele PW or the famous Dan Kennedy could come up with copy for a product that helps with bruises, constipation, and gardening! All the marketing messages I teach about having to have a unified message just get thrown out the window with this thing.

As I re-read this bag of Epsom salts, I had the fantasy that a bunch of marketers were sitting around brainstorming, and finally they said, “What the heck, let’s just throw it all in.  We can’t figure out what to say, so we’ll just list the uses and let it go from there.”

With epsom salts, you pretty much know what you use it for.  And unlike coaching or whatever business you are in, there’s only one variety.  There’s not mint flavored, low fat, west coast, designer salts.  You get one thing.  Where you put it is your own business!  But it makes it easy because there’s only ONE way it’s delivered.

But in your business you don’t have the ability to have a crappy marketing message because you can’t figure out if you work with business owners, or mom’s, or teens, or people in transition.

That’s what this article is about.  Just because Walgreen’s can get away with having a generic product with bad packaging, as a small business owner, you can’t.  Your only choice is to narrow your focus, get crystal clear about who you serve, and what they get, and then go about creating compelling language around that.

So where do you start?

The things you need to be able to clearly articulate are what you do (as in your unique expertise) who you do it for (target market) and what problems you solve for them.  Most people start out as generalists, but the goal is to refine your market, offering and services even tighter as you get more and more sophisticated.  If you are stuck here, grab a mastermind partner or survey some old clients to get more information about how they benefited from working with you.

Why is this important?  Success is about being seen as the foremost expert in your industry. 

Well I hope you enjoyed Therese’s article - something to ponder because unlike Epsom salts, there’s no one else like you!

All the best

Heidi Alexandra Pollard

The Communicator’s Coach

Attitude is everything

Stuck in a rut? Feel like you’ve hit a plateau at work? Not sure what to do next to get your career progression into gear?

Then it might be time to take a look at your attitude. Just what attitude am I referring to? There are many positive attitudes that can enhance your career advancement – a few of which I believe can really help you get ahead.

Enthusiasm and positivity - being enthusiastic at work is all about your mental state. You need to decide you want to be a positive and enthusiastic employee.  Reflect on your posture, your presence and your self talk. If your self talk is all about being bored then you’ll end up feeling worse. Instead get motivated and interested in what you are going and show others that you are enjoying what you are doing. Everything is energy – the more you focus on your positivity the less room there will be for the negative to creep in.

Bygones – make every effort to forgive and forget in the workplace – that is don’t hold grudges and be easy to get along with. I am not suggesting you should compromise on your values and boundaries but no enjoys working with someone who whinges and complains all the time. Be the first to volunteer, to offer someone support and to move on when there has been tension in the team.

Not only will your peers appreciate that they don’t need to tiptoe on eggshells around you but your manager will love you for not giving them something else to have to manage!

Strive for excellence – we can’t all be perfect but if you are seen to be making efforts to be the best you can be and strive to deliver excellent service in whatever you do you will find yourself a highly valued team member in no time. Why settle for good when you could be great?

In striving for excellence you should find yourself exceeding expectations, giving your full attention and being present for each task that you undertake. Do this whether you are being watched or not. How you do anything is how you do anything so it won’t be long before your manager starts to notice your excellent work. By always aiming for excellence you will find that you naturally surpass many others in the workplace who have settled for being mediocre.

Such attitudes in the workplace will make you a welcome member of any team and will demonstrate your ability to step up into a leadership role. If you are looking for the competitive edge to give your career a boost then attitude is everything!

Have you thought about your career brand?

Personal career branding is essential to career advancement not only because it helps define who you are but because it also gives people a sense of what you stand for and the value you would bring to their company.

Just like a company, your personal brand is your reputation. I find most of my clients are not proactive in establishing and building their personal career brand and it is not until we begin to focus on their brand values and articulate them that they start to find they are more attractive to employers. Basically if you don’t stand out you will may miss out on many opportunities. 

Management guru Tom Peters, writing in his book The Brand You50 (Reinventing Work): Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an “Employee” into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion! states: “Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are the CEOs of our own companies: Me, Inc.” He adds, “You’re not defined by your job title and you’re not confined by your position description.”

So have you thought about your career brand and what it says about you?

All the best
Heidi Alexandra Pollard
The Communicators’ Coach