MarketingMel

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Recently a prospective client called on me to help him build his personal brand.  In assessing his needs, I quickly saw that there were five things he could do immediately to start building up his social media presence. Here are five ideas for branding yourself.

1- Have a professional photo made, and use it! I am actually amazed by the business professionals who contact me via LinkedIn who appear as grey silhoutees on the page. Remember you are projecting an online image at all times, like it or not. Once you get that photo be sure to sign up on Gravatar so it will appear whenever you comment on others’ blogs.

2- Create an e-mail signature: Every time you send an e-mail (and ditto for an invoice) it is an opportunity to brand. Decide what information you regularly want people to have about you and put it in the signature. Be sure to get clients’ feedback on this. I added my phone number to my signature when I first started my business at client request.

3- Enlist your “Rolodex”: I have to chuckle when people still refer to their contact lists as a “Rolodex.” While I can’t remember the last time I used one of those spinning lists of business cards, the point is you do have contacts somewhere. Capitalize on that list through an opt-in e-newsletter.

4- Use LinkedIn’s Questions, Answers and Groups: If you haven’t read Jon Moss’s superb guest blog piece that’s a How-to LinkedIn “Ten Ways to Totally Rock LinkedIn in 2012” please be sure to do so. Then use LinkedIn to your advantage to gain visibility as an influential thought leader.

5- Post Regularly: There are different schools of thought on how often to post but be sure to keep your contacts well informed with your valuable professional insights.

For these and other helpful marketing and P.R. tips please sign up for my “News You Can Use” quarterly e-newsletter on the right hand side of this page.  You can also visit the MarketingMelPR Facebook business page. 

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What's your personal brand?

Recently I had the opportunity to conduct video “man-on-the-street” interviews asking people about their New Year’s resolutions. This was a project to help one of our church ministers with his upcoming sermon. I learned several things:

1- Generally people do not like to talk about resolutions. Most likely it’s because they remind them of broken promises.

2- Unless they think they look good they don’t want to talk on camera. People obsess about their clothes, hair, make-up, etc. (This goes for men as well as women although the men I met weren’t worried about make-up.)

Ultimately resolutions reflect on our personal brand. As we move into the New Year let’s each take a quick assessment of our own personal brand and what we can do to better ourselves in 2011. Here are some tips I recently provided to two of my clients in customized one-on-one sessions and am glad to share here with you.

1. Google yourself– What do you find? Is it fresh? Is it negative? Does it need a PR boost?
2. Does your image transfer to mobile? People will be on their phones more than ever in 2011.
3. Who is your target audience? What communications channels are they using? Do you have your elevator speech planned for the next time you bump into Future Big Client X?
4. How do you plan to promote your brand in 2011? Through guest media appearances? Your blog? Podcasts? Social media? Your e-mail signature? Video?
5. Do you have an editorial calendar planned for 2011? Remember, you are a publisher. Now is the time to think seasonal and timely in your future writing and publishing.

All the best of luck to you in 2011 and remember, your personal brand is always with you!

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