I just read a post by Darren Rouse of ProBlogger.com that may be the best article I've read in months.

It is called, "Temporary Blogs: Blogs as Stepping Stones," and Darren discusses how several bloggers he really enjoyed in the past, have discontinued their blogs.

At first, he regarded these examples as failures, but then learned these bloggers achieved exactly the goals they set out for themselves.

One blogger dropped her blog after getting a job, which was her purpose for blogging in the first place. She used her blog to showcase her expertise, raise her profile within her field and create lots of content that could demonstrate her knowledge.

Her blog also provided her with a platform to network within her field and meet people she might not have met otherwise.

Once she landed the job she wanted, the need (she felt) for her blog was over. As she explained to Darren:

I wanted to land a job, I was out of work, and the blog was never really going to be anything beyond an online résumé, a place for me to build my profile and build some credibility, and potentially meet some employers.

Another blogger Darren enjoyed reading stopped after he got his fledgling software company off the ground. He told Darren:

He reflected back to me that again, his blog was a means to another end—he was never going to be a professional blogger, that wasn’t his model; his model was to launch a software company, and he used his blog to do that.

This confirms what I've been thinking for some time. I firmly believe that for some fields, resumes will become obsolete and be replaced by blogs, video channels, podcasts or other forms of online portfolios.

Few job applicants fit neatly into a "job description." Few entrepreneurs begin with the credibility they need to attract clients and investors.

But a blog (or podcast, video channel, etc.) is much more than a portfolio of your work. It is also an excellent vehicle to enable you to network with others (especially people you may not be able to contact directly in the offline world). When people comment on your posts, subscribe to your RSS or tweet about your content, you are gathering a following.

And this kind of following is based on your knowledge and insights, not just on the cut of your suit or whether you golf at an influential country club. In fact, just the fact that you have a blog makes YOU influential within your field.

This is the kind of credibility no resume can give you.

But there is one point on which I would disagree with Darren's two friends. Even after you land your dream job or get your company launched, it is misguided to kill your blog.

Two reasons:

1. Your dream job may not last forever. The company may fail or downsize employees. Or your goals may change. At that point, you will need not only the platform your blog once gave you, but also the contacts and readers (and fans) you gathered as a result of your blogging efforts.
   
   What should you do then? Start blogging again? Possibly, but you will most likely have lost a lot of your network that came to you through your blog.
   
   
2. Your blog will most likely make you more valuable to your employer or help you attract more new clients for your company. The same knowledge and expertise that made you valuable to an employer or investor, will make you valuable to potential clients.
   
   Your blog can easily be refocused so that you will be a rainmaker within your field. It will position you (and by extension, your company) as a solver of problems within your niche.

Therefore my advice is to dance with the one that brung you, so to speak. If your blog was what opened the door of opportunity for you in the first place, you will probably want more opportunities to come through that same door.

Your blog is the ultimate personal branding vehicle. It is personal branding not based on flash and style, but on substance, knowledge and solutions to the problems clients need to have solved.

What are your thoughts? Have you achieved success or accomplished a goal as a result of blogging or creating content? Have you landed a job or attracted clients as a result? Let me know.
COPYRIGHT © 2010, Charles Brown

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If you have a career (as opposed to just a job) or a business, or ever hope to have one in the future, you need to know about personal branding.

The term "personal branding," as best I can determine, originated in 1997 when Tom Peters wrote an article called, "A Brand Called You." This legendary article (which pre-dated such internet tools as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube) forecast how individuals could take control of their own destinies by building brands for themselves.

The problem is that we all have a choice: We can either establish a strong reputation for ourselves, or we will become (or remain) commodities. Think about how potential employers or potential clients view us. There is always a tendency to put us in a nice neat box and slap a familiar (if not always accurate) label on us. The reason for this is that the human mind tends to categorize new information by associating it with information already known.

As a new potential employee or business person, we start off as a new bit of information.

The danger of being a commodity is that tangible factors like the price of our offerings or the perceived quality of the schools we attended become the tiebreakers for our prospects or potential employers.

Personal branding is a matter of inserting new and more powerful tiebreakers into the equation.

But here's the secret: Despite their tendency to categorize you, the people who want to do business with someone like you, want a tiebreaker.

Imagine the human resource person sorting through a stack of resumes looking for the "best" candidate. Or picture a potential client doing a Google search (or worse yet, looking through the Yellow Pages) for the "best" lawyer, doctor, plumber, print shop, veterinarian, etc. Or the executive looking for the "best" person to promote within the company. These people are desperate for a significant tiebreaker to help them make this important decision.

It is only when they fail to find a real reason to break the tie that they resort to superfluous factors like whether you graduate from Yale or Kansas State, or whether you charge 15% more than a competitor. In other words, only when factors like value and return on investment are absent, will factors like a name brand school or a marginally higher cost default to becoming the key tiebreakers.

Much has changed since Tom Peters wrote his article in 1997. Now everyone can set up a blog or post a video to YouTube. Social media has made personal branding a reality for anyone who wants to create tiebreakers.

So what is a tiebreaker?

For most professions, and professionals, content is king. If you can create good content that solves problems for your target employers or clients, you can build a personal brand online.

In fact, often the sheer number of search results on Google when someone does a search for a person or a business, can be a significant tiebreaker. If a job candidate has a blog with numerous articles coming up on Google, or if a business has published numerous instructional videos on YouTube, that raw number will, in and of itself, often become a powerful tiebreaker.

This last point shatters the most common misconception of personal branding: That it is just hype and popularity. Personal branding (at least for professionals who market themselves based on their expertise) relies on creating a "paper trail" of sorts online, not just empty claims.

To quote Tom Peters' article:

Almost every professional services firm works with the same business model. They have almost no hard assets [but] They have lots of soft assets -- more conventionally known as people, preferably smart, motivated, talented people. And they have huge revenues -- and astounding profits.

If your company "ME, Inc." has no hard assets to speak of, how can you build your own soft assets? By demonstrating what you can do for a potential client / employer. And nothing can demonstrate better than a thoughtful blog or a series of problem-solving information pieces in the form of articles, videos, or any other content you can create.

Do a Google search on yourself. Do you find anything at all? And if you are listed, do you find content that you, yourself put on the internet or are you finding content creating about others about you?

Let's look at it this way: a news piece about you is great, but it is hard to control news content when you are just the subject of the piece.

Your public relations efforts may pay off now and then, but it is far better create your own content (which is, by the way, a good way to get the attention of someone in the news business, and which may lead to you becoming the subject of many news pieces).

Get started today. If you don't already have a blog devoted to your field, start one. Everyone needs their own piece of online real estate they can control and on which they can showcase their own original content.

Now that you have a blog, what articles, videos or podcasts should you put on it?

• Think about what information your target market (either potential clients or employers or higher executives within your present organization) wants to learn.
  
• What problems do they need to solve and what information will help them?
  
• What questions do your clients ask most often? Or, what questions should they be asking, but lack the background to know to ask?
  
• What information would make them better consumers of your services? In other words, what would help them make the best decision between Brand X vs Brand Y?
  
• What problems could be sneaking up on someone that they are not fully aware of? (Think of all the articles you've seen about medical issues that most of us were not previously aware of)?
  
• What kinds of problems do they need to solve BEFORE they have a need for what you sell? Can you build trust and relationships before your target audience needs to buy from you?
  
• If you charge more for what you sell than your competitors, what information would justify that higher price? What benefits do they get from you that they cannot get elsewhere?
  

Once you have a game plan for creating content, put it on as many sites and in as many forms as you can on the internet.

Create articles, ebooks, and whitepapers. Then take much the same information and produce audio content in the form of podcasts. Create PowerPoint presentations and post them as slideshows. Create videos and post them on YouTube.

Build trails of breadcrumbs on your subject matter so that everywhere your target clients or employers search for information on that topic, all trails lead back to you.

What do you think? What kinds of content ideas can you share that will help to build a better personal brand?

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1. It all starts with having your own blog. How can you get your own ideas out there if you don't have an online platform to call your own?
   
2. Be generous. Use your blog and other social media tools to shine the spotlight on others more than on yourself.
   
3. Be an idea person. A personal brand is built on the useful content you provide to others.
   
4. Define who your audience is. Don't try to reach everyone. Determine who your "buyer personas" are.
   
5. Create or link to content that solves problems for your particular audience. Providing problem-solving information makes you a resource (and an expert).
   
6. It should go without saying that you have to be good at what you do. All the personal branding in the world won't help you if you aren't a quality product.
   
7. That said, narrow your niche to what you are already good at. Lead with your strengths.
   
8. Know what your goal is for personal branding: A new job? Moving up in your existing career? Or are you an entrepreneur seeking new clients?
   
9. Get known. Use social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Flikr and others to let people know about your blog's content.
   
10. It bears repeating: The content you produce IS your personal brand. Can you even think about James Cameron without thinking of Avatar or Titanic? If you are not creating quality content, you are not branding yourself.
    
11. Make friends. Social media is not simply a broadcasting tool, it is a vehicle to cultivate real friendships.
    
12. Be a friend. How can you help, encourage, praise, or even amuse the people you meet online? Think of Twitter/Facebook/etc. as a bunch of friends gathering in a friendly pub after work.
    
13. Practice online random acts of kindness. Do or say something nice to someone who cannot possibly help you or put money in your pocket. An easy way to do this is to spotlight a link to someone else's blog or site.
    
14. Help others grow their number of followers/friends.
    
15. Go offline. Can your blog's content be repackaged as an article, CD or DVD? Shocking as it may seem, not everyone you want to reach is active on social media.
    
16. Get out there and meet your online contacts in the real world. Attend events or Tweetups. Or just arrange to meet someone in a coffee shop.
    
17. Create content that solves problems unrelated to what you sell, but that is very important to your target audience. It isn't about you, it's about them.
    
18. Leverage your growing brand to make contacts with VIPs. Use the power of Twitter and other social media to network your way into elite circles. If you have created good content and been generous, this will be surprisingly easy to do.
    
19. Don't let your old content stop working for you. If an article you wrote 18 months ago is still relevant, send out tweets or Facebook updates linking to it. Make your older stuff available to a new audience.
    
20. Hang out at other people's blogs and websites. Post thoughtful comments and link to their better articles. Don't just swoop down and post stuff on their blogs without first being a reader of what they put out.
    
21. Grow your brand by building up other people's brands. Promote them, spread the word about how much you appreciate this person's information.
    
22. Join or create groups on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn that relate to the brand you are building. Be an active participant in those communities.
    
23. Don't just use social media to spread your own message. Listen. You will be amazed at how much you can learn on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
    
24. After you listen, share what you learn with the people who follow you. It isn't just about sending out links to your own content, link to other sites more often than you do to your's.
    

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Recently I have noticed a growing backlash against the concept of Personal Branding. Several people on Twitter have rightly pointed out that (at least the way many people are practicing it) personal branding has become little more than snake oil salesmanship.

My first thoughts were that these critics were just uninformed. Personal branding, as I have been using it in this blog, is a good thing. It is a way to get the word out about one's skills and expertise.

I am a veteran of sending out lots of resumes and getting little or no response. I am also a veteran of feeling frustrated because I was very good at what I did, but felt I had no way to get the right people to know about me.

Finally, I am also a veteran of old-style techniques of marketing my services as a business person (I still have nightmares about making 200 cold calls a day). I knew there were people who needed my services, but was unable to be found by these potential clients.

Personal branding is the tool to let people who need your expertise find you.

One of the most life-changing books I've read in my life was Robert Bly's How to Become a Reccognized Authority In Your Field - In 60 Days or Less. Bly opened up a new world for me, a world that opened my eyes to the world of how to leverage your skills and become a widely-known expert.

The bottom line is that personal branding without expertise IS hype and IS deserving of the criticism I have been reading about.

Which leads me to my definition of personal branding:

Personal Branding is becoming a recognized expert in a certain niche by producing content that demonstrates knowledge and adds value.

I am not an advocate of Hollywood-style branding, in which someone seeks to become a celebrity simply by being a celebrity. I think of this as the "Paris Hilton method of personal branding."

I suspect this is where the backlash and criticism is coming from. The Hilton method is not, to my mind, really personal branding at all. There is no substance to this kind of name recognition.

In contrast, think of a politician you regard as someone who is a person of integrity and public service. (Try really hard, I'm sure you can think of someone you respect).

When you vote for someone in an election, you vote because of two things:

First you choose this person because of name recognition. This person has done something to get herself on your radar. So far, Paris Hilton meets this criteria, but I still wouldn't vote for her.

But second, and more importantly, you choose this person because you perceive this person to be the better person to deliver the results you desire. You regard this person as capable, knowledgeable, and good at her work.

It is this second factor that is missing from some efforts to establish personal brands.

So how do you establish this perception of expertise? My answer is to produce content. Content - whether in the form of a blog, a book, podcasts, speeches, public presentations, teleseminars, or videos - establishes a person as knowledgeable within a field.

If you want to establish a real personal brand, do so by producing information that solves your audience's problems, helps them achieve their goals, educates them, and helps them make better decisions.

In the world of social media, few people have achieved more celebrity and more of a personal brand, than Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary began his video blog, Wine Library TV, in February 2006. Today he gets over 80,000 visitors a day.

Gary began his video blog because he didn't think he had the patience to stick with a written blog. Every episode showed Gary in his cluttered office in his family's wine store discussing a variety of topics about wine. He would do tastings and discuss which wines might go well with certain occasions.

These short videos propelled Gary into a major star. He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and the New York Times. He is also a much sought after speaker for many business events.

But at the core of his celebrity is content. Gary has consistently built his personal brand upon information. He has created a huge body of work that you can find on a variety of platforms, both online and offline.

If you are starting out, I would suggest that you begin with a blog. Whether you choose a written blog, a video blog or an audio blog (podcast), produce content that will appeal to your audience and solve their problems.

Over time, you can spin and re-purpose your blog material into other forms of content, such as a book or public presentations.

And what if you are not already an expert in your field? Use your blog as a platform to learn more about your topic. As you write about it in small doses, you will find yourself reading, researching, talking with others, interviewing experts, and becoming an expert yourself.

So to the critics of personal branding, I would suggest that branding by producing quality content is a far better way to reach clients and employers than by sending out resumes or direct mail. It is a give-to-get philosophy that builds a brand by adding and creating value to the very people you want to reach.

Or would you rather go back to cold calling and mailing 10,000 resumes?

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Don't get alarmed, I'm not going to get all political on you. But I would like to explore the business applications of learning how the Barack Obama team used social media to put their man in the White House,

As I write this in September 2009, think back to September 2007, just two years ago.

Assuming you had even heard of Barack Obama, did you honestly think that he had even a remote chance of beating Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination - let alone becoming President of the United States?

Come on, tell the truth.

At that time, Clinton looked unbeatable, at least for their party's nomination. She had name recognition, lots of money, a superb organization in place, connections, and experience. Not to mention a Campaigner-In-Chief by her side who understood the process of running for top office better than anyone in their party.

Bill Clinton alone was a formidable asset. He was beloved by the party faithful and was a one man money-raising machine.

But, at the same time, there was a relatively unknown senator from Illinois who was quietly making use of this thing called social media.

Lately I have been reading a book called, Barack 2.0: Barack Obama's Social Media Lessons for Business by Brent Leary and David Bullock. This little book has become required reading for anyone wanting to learn how to use social networking for business.

It's hard to argue with the book's thesis: Without the masterful use of social media and social networking, Barack Obama would not be the President today.

Not only did the Obama team use social media to win votes, it also raised more money than any other campaign in history ($650 million), with the average donation being under $100.

But even more importantly, it used social media to create and energize a volunteer organization of people to knock on doors, make telephone calls and show up for events.

If ever there was an example of the kind of community-building Seth Godin talks about in his book Tribes, the Obama campaign was it.

Barack 2.0 is not a particularly well-written book stylistically, in fact it consists mostly of transcribed podcasts made by the authors as the campaign progressed. But it succeeds in accomplishing what it was intended to accomplish. It is a case study of a hugely successful social media campaign in action.

In addition, it also contains a lot of useful supplemental materials through out each chapter that can be found on the web. It provides links to a wealth of tools and resources that a business person can grab online and start using today.

What it does do very effectively is educate the reader on how to make use of social media for purposes other than running for office. It is, at its heart, a business book that just uses a political story as a case study.

Here are some of the telling facts Barack 2.0 contains:

• About five months into the campaign, the authors got a snapshot of Obama's and Clinton's Twitter accounts and found that Obama had 44,596 followers and Clinton had 4,164. But more telling was the fact that Obama followed 46,252 people, whereas Clinton followed 0.
  
  In other words, Clinton viewed Twitter as a means of telling people her message, but demonstrated little interest in listening to, and having conversations with, other people.
  
  
• Obama was also one of the first people to start using LinkedIn Answers. He posed the question, "What are you looking for in your next president?" and received over a thousand replies.
  
  This is another example of how he viewed social media as a platform to engage in two-way conversations, not just a means of shouting out a message.
  
  
• As of the authors' July 9, 2008 podcast, Obama had 1145 short videos posted on YouTube. These were typically under 3 minutes each. But think of how effective these videos were. It was like he had over 1000 little salespeople online delivering his message day and night.
  
  This is a simple tactic that any business can do that will deliver significant results.
  
  
• Obama didn't just focus on the high profile social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In the same week he reached 59,000 followers on Twitter, he also had almost 54,000 followers on migente.com, which caters to a Latino audience.
  
  
• It wasn't just staffers who were using social media on his behalf. Remember Obama's ever-present Blackberry? He was doing a lot of his own tweeting, posting his own updates onto his Facebook page and sending out his own text messages.
  
  Many corporate execs make excuses that they are too busy to engage in these activities themselves, but it's hard to argue that they are any busier than a man running for president. Modern smart phones like Blackberries and iPhones make social networking a breeze.
  

The book goes on an on with examples of what Obama and his team were doing at the time. But more importantly, Barack 2.0 gives readers a lot of advice that they can use themselves to make things happen for them on social media.

It is, as I said earlier, a business book that uses the Obama campaign as a case study.

Let's face it, nearly every business faces a Hillary Clinton: A more established competitor with greater name recognition, more resources and a huge head start in the marketplace.

This book is for businesses that want to overtake their Hillary Clintons. Consider it a game plan that also comes with the tools, resources and actionable ideas needed to implement the strategies it talks about.

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1. Tweetable Eats: What Street Vendors Can Teach Big Business About Twitter Ann Handley has written an excellent article on how the smallest of small businesses are doing some really innovative things with Twitter marketing, and what the biggest of big businesses can learn from them.
   
   
2. 10 Really Tangible Ways To Measure Social Media Success Most businesses know they should be using social media, but the whole thing sounds a little too touchy feely for them.
   
   This article shows how to derive hard data and measure actual results from your social media efforts.
   
   
3. 30+ More Ways to Create Twitter Groups One of the givens of social media is that it is all about groups. Smart marketers find their way into groups and becoming part of the culture. Once in, the job is to then build relationships by being transparent, informative and generous. In other words, build social capital.
   
   But it is also possible to create groups. This article shows how to create groups on Twitter.
   
   
4. The Facebook Marketing Toolbox: 100 Tools and Tips to Tap the Facebook Customer Base If you are looking for a whole library of information on how to use Facebook, this is the place to look.
   
   
5. 5 Things Your Social Media Expert Should Know Anyone can put "Social Media Expert" on their business cards and make big claims. But how do you really know who can help your business? This article shows you how.
   
   
6. The Use of Social Media to Increase Social Capital This is just an interesting article on how social capital works and how to build it.
   
   
7. Build Your Mailing List with Downloads The money is still in the list. Your list of people who entrust you with their email addresses in order to receive information from you, is your most valuable assett. This article has some great ideas on how to attract opt-in subscribers.
   
   
8. The 7 Benefits of Online Customer Service Communities A lot of talk about social media focuses on marketing. But what about customer service?
   
   This article explores some of the experiences some companies have had from implementing customer service groups
   
   
9. 9 keys to the perfect corporate blog What good is a blog that is simply used to disseminate the same talk you find in press releases? In other words, what good is a boring blog?
   
   Make your blog interesting (or even fun). According to one source quoted in this article: "The purpose of using blogs and social media for businesses is to build up a community around a product or service." Don't always be spouting off your company's talking points. Engage readers and ask for their ideas as well.
   
   
10. 10 Steps to Social Media Success This article compiles the branding and social media insights and ideas from various speakers at the recent event: "Brand Exposure: Practical Strategies in Social Media".
    
    Among the speakers are Tara Hunt, author of The Whuffie Factor, Faris Yakob, Ian Schafer and Paul Worthington.
    
    
11. Spread Your Wings- Get More Retweet Action Today Having your messages retweeted is the viral component of Twitter. Not only has your tweet gone out to the people who follow you, they now go out to the followers of the person who found it compelling enough to retweet it.
    
    Chris Brogan offers some straight forward advice on how to get more of your messages retweeted.
    
    
12. Brand or Be Branded I recently wrote about this article in my post, Why Personal Branding is All About Creating Content. Today it is simply a given that recruiters and H.R. specialists will Google any job candidate at some point during the hiring process. What they find, or don't find, will not only impact whether you get a job offer, it will also be a huge factor in whether you even get an interview.
    
    
13. Confused About Twitter? Just Be An Information Resource This is one of my own articles on this blog, and it is one of the links I most often send to people who have questions about how to use Twitter as a marketing or personal branding tool.
    
    
14. 5 essentials for social media marketing All too often I've heard people talk about social media as if it is an easy fix for a company's marketing problems. While I do believe almost any company can gain from using these tools, they must be used strategically. Before realizing any benefit, an organization must understand how social media works and how to best use it to reach an intended audience.
    
    
15. 15 Business Benefits of Using Twitter For those who scratch their heads and say, "But how can I help my business in just 140 characters?" this is just a very good list of how Twitter can create more traffic, attract more new clients, become a channel for learning more about your customers, etc.
    
    
16. This Twitter Post a Long Time in Coming This is just a great little essay on Twitter that delves into the human behavior that has made it successful and that also poses its biggest problems. It is a great read.
    
    
17. Giving Away Your Expertise IS Your Competitive Advantage I've already mentioned that social media is a tool, not a strategy. In most cases, the strategy is to deliver quality, free content in order to create a following. This article is another display of Joe Puzilli's insights into why giving away your ideas and information makes absolute business sense.
    
    
18. 7 Reasons Why List Posts Will Always Work It's hard to think of a greater treasure trove of great information than Copyblogger. This is just a great article on why list articles are so effective in gaining readers, traffic and, ultimately customers.
    
    
19. 10 Stunning (And Useful) Stats About Twitter Some really interesting information about Twitter and its impact on our world.
    
    
20. Casting a Digital Shadow; Your Reputation Precedes You This is another article on personal branding that shows why creating content is so essential to having an impact on the web.
    

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I just read a very interesting article this last week by Mark Glaser, called Personal Branding Becomes a Necessity in Digital Age. In it, Glaser builds a strong case for employees taking time to build their own personal brands even while building their empoyers' brands.

The first example he cites is that of Scot Karp, director of digital media for Atlantic Magazine, who was chosen as one of the 40 most influential people in publishing. He was not selected because of his work for Atlantic, but because of his own personal blog, Publishing 2.0, in which he writes about how technology is changing the publishing industry.

According to Karp:

"My blog became resume, business card, references, network all in one," Karp told me. "I would go to conferences, meet people, and find they already 'knew' me through my blog -- an odd but useful form of micro-celebrity."

There is no doubt that having a quality blog - or for that matter even a Facebook page, a Google Profile or a site to post your portfolio of work - is an essential tool in an age in which job security is a figment of one's imagination. The more content, or body of work, one can make available online, the more security one can create.

I call these sites "Basecamps" because they are like owning a personal piece of online real estate. Such a place can (and should) supercede a resume because they are mini-libraries of one's work, knowledge and ideas. They can demonstrate to prospective employers or clients that you are an expert in a certain niche.

But just as importantly, these basecamps are places in which you can build a following. They are networking springboards that give you entrance into the most exclusive clubs in your field.

But can one build a personal brand without detracting from your employer's brand?

As you might imagine, opinons on this question vary. Some organizations are threatened by an employee blogging about their industry, specifically when the firm's name is mentioned from time to time.

The fear is that the personal brand might overshadow the company's brand. Or worse, that the employee will build a personal brand at the expense of the company's brand.

Another fear is that the employee is building their escape from the company rather than a parachute in case something disrupts the company or the individual's careeer.

The reality is that the more a person builds a personal brand, the more options they have. Which to some organizations is perceived as a threat. These are companies who still rely on the sweatshop mentality that likes it better when an employee cannot leave and find better opportunities elsewhere.

That is not to say there are not some very enlightened firms out there as well. Some of these realize that having high profile people on the team adds to the organization's own profile.

Professional services firms like law firms have long embraced having their partners mentioned in their industry's directory, such as Martindale Hubbell which profiles top lawyers along with mentions of their published articles in the field.

But in the end, it is up to the employee to establish the game plan and ground rules for building a personal brand:

• NOT building a personal brand is NOT an option. Relying on one employer to see your career through to retirement is a particularly painful form of career suicide.
  
• Become an expert in some area of your work. The more knowledge and ideas you have, the more valuable you are to your employer.
  
• Demonstrate that expertise with a blog, or at least some other type of basecamp.
  
• Build a following. Use tools like Twitter and other social media to get the word out about each new bog post, each time you speak to a group or each time your name is mentioned in the media.
  
• Don't expose your company's dirty laundry. Don't use your platform as a way to vent about company policy or your idiotic boss. It won't help your brand and it could only makes you look small. Not to mention the fact that it could wreck your career.
  
• Use your blog as a basis to form contacts in your industry. Interview other experts, and cite articles in industry trade publications.
  
• Build up your own company whenever you can. Without being a shill, find ways to make your firm look good whenever you can.
  

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I just re-read a great article by J.T. O’Donnell called, Brand or Be Branded (Are YOU Willing to Risk What Shows on the Top Fold?) in which she uses a case study of a college graduate who was unable to get a single job interview after months of trying.

After looking over both her resume and her cover letter, which O'Donnell deemed could be improved but were not so problematic that they were responsible for her stalled job search, the real problem turned out to be her web presence:

So, I decided to complete an Internet search on her – just as 4 out of 5 hiring managers do today. I put in her name and the school she graduated from. What popped up in the results shed some light. The #1 item in the results was her Facebook picture. It was a blurry photo of her in a sweatshirt and her eyes were closed. Okay, so it was nothing terrible, but it also wasn’t a powerful first impression.

And besides, what followed was much worse…

You see, her Facebook photo also happened to be the ONLY thing that popped up about her. Nothing related to school, nothing related to volunteering, nothing related to her field of study…absolutely nothing. In fact, the next 10 entries thereafter were for someone with the same name but different middle initial who currently writes a very open and direct blog about an alternative lifestyle subject.

So there you are, not only had this young graduate not bothered to put information about herself online, her own brand was being co-mingled with that of a person with the same name whose personal brand was somewhat questionable.

The solution is to add and create online content. Again quoting from the article:

Any person, at any age, at any time in their career can build a strong online career identity. The reality is you only need 5-6 good things to come up in a search so the top fold (the uppermost portion of the computer screen that shows the top search results) is filled with positive items about you.

O'Donnell then goes on to provide 4 very good tips for creating content that will flesh out one's online brand.
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I am convinced that everyone who is serious about building a personal brand needs to make use of four tools: blogging, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

As I have previously written in my article, 38 Rules For Creating a Personal Branding Blog, a blog is almost a given for job seekers or people who need to become recognized experts in their fields.

That said, I realize as a practical matter that not everyone has the time or inclination to create their own blogs. One of O'Donnell's ideas provides a neat end around for having one's own blog. Her suggestion is posting frequent comments on blogs owned by others.

Thoughtful and insightful comments on blogs will gain an internet presence that in some cases may be used in place of one's own blog.

This still requires an active participation in the blogosphere. Find some worthwhile blogs that focus on topics you are both interested in and that will further your own brand.

However, this is only a substitute for having your own blog.

Imagine if this young graduate had written a blog on her field of interest for several months. It might still not raise her Google visiability significantly, but the link to this blog would have made a great addition to her resume.

A prospective employer would almost invariably look up the blog and find several articles that demonstrate her interest and understanding of her field. Can you imagine how that would have impacted her job search?

But what if you have something absolutely negative about your online profile?

Tara Hunt writes about such an example in her book, The Whuffie Factor. This is an all-too-common example of a young lady who foolishly allowed her boyfriend (and soon to be ex boyfriend) to come into possession of an erotic video of herself.

I almost don't need to finish this story because you already know that the ex posted her video online and it quickly became the very first thing to be found when someone conducted an online search for her. Talk about personal branding poison.

Getting such a video removed from the web is almost impossible. As soon as it is removed from one location, it is bound to pop up in three others. For most people this would be career poison.

Fortunately this young lady, although obviously foolish in her love life was pretty savy when it came to the internet. Her response was to create lots and lots of postive web content to overwhelm the negative video.

Before too long, the video was almost impossible to find online because of all the other information she posted about herself. Her strategy was that if she couldn't remove the video, she would just bury it.

So back to blogs. I firmly believe the day will come in which a blog will replace the old fashioned resume. It is the only true way to build a dominating personal brand online that will feature all your best ideas and insights. It is a place to show the world your expertise and get employers and clients knocking on your door. (Yes, I get several head hunter calls a week as result of this blog, and one day I might accept if the offer is good enough).

Facebook and MySpace. Is there a college student alive who doesn't have a Facebook (or MySpace) page? Yet, some parents and educators still oppose these sites.

A better approach would be instead of discouraging Facebook or MySpace pages, parents and educators should instead educate students that,like blogs, these sites can be showcases of one's skills, interests and preparation to enter the work place.

YouTube videos can not only rocket a person to the top of search engines, they can be used to create a better personal brand. In addition to recording the latest skateboard face plant, students could also record themselves giving white board tutorials on various serious topics.

Imagine a student taking a difficult economics class posting a series of tutorial videos about topics covered in the course. Not only would these videos help other students as they study the same material, they would also be very impressive to future employers.

All this holds true for working professionals who must market their services and expertise. Prospective clients are just as, if not more, likely to look you up online before deciding to do business with you.

This makes it vital to create conent to post online. Blog articles (yes, again), videos, comments on other blogs, a LinkedIn page, a Facebook page, etc. are all ways to build a personal brand online.

Creating content is only limited by one's creativity. There are so many ways to flood the web - and therefore one's online brand - with positive information about your knowledge, ideas and abilities.

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1. First, understand that a blog is absolutely essential for 99% of us who want to build a personal brand. Unless you already have the kind of visability and celebrity that enables you to freely pesent your ideas to the world, a blog is the only platform that will allow you to create and present information to your target audience. And even if you already have noteriety, a blog is the only platform that you can have complete control over.
   
   
2. Build your entire personal brand so that your blog is the hub of all your online activities. Everything you do online should link back to your blog. This is the ultimate place you want to lead readers to gain exposure about you and what you have to offer prospective clients or employers. This means that when people find your blog, they will find you.
   
   
3. Identify your niche by asking yourself "What problems am I very good at soliving?" Your answers to this question will determine the brand you present to the world. Define yourself as a solution to certain problems.
   
   
4. The reason this is an effective way to define your brand is because no employer or client ever hires anyone because of what they do, or how much experience they have. Ultimately they only hire people because they have problems that must be solved.
   
   
5. What do you write about? Keep a notebook or voice recorder with you and make note of any ideas, solutions or tips you think of. Set a goal to come up with 5 of these ideas per day. If you do this for a few months, you will never run out of things to write about.
   
   
6. Get used to thinking of yourself as an expert. If you are a solution to the problems you defined earlier, and you have a notebook full of ideas, solutions and tips, you are most certainly an expert. Don't be shy about it.
   
   
7. Create a minimum of 3 to 4 posts per week. No one said personal branding will be a walk in the park. It will take some effort and a commitment to the project to get it done.
   
   
8. However, your posts need not be lengthy or difficult. You can post short, 2 to 3 minute videos of yourself (a Flip camcorder costs under $150, and you can often find them for much less) discussing your ideas. In fact, your entire blog can be a video blog and you need not ever write a single article.
   
   
9. Other easy blog posts can be list articles (like this one), Frequently Asked Questions, or you can simply post a link to an article you found on the web with 2 or 3 paragraphs of your own thoughts on the subject. Don’t make your posts difficult, just make sure you add new posts regularly and consistently.
   
   
10. Don't make coming up with new blog posts an onerous job. Think like the late Paul Harvey. He was more a "news aggregator" than a traditional journalist. He came into the newsroom early every morning and pulled stories from the newswire services (this was before the internet). Then he selected the stories to talk about on his broadcast and added his own brief commentaries to them.
    
    
11. Study your targeted audience. What information do they need? What problems do they want to solve? What pain do they want to get rid of? What goals do they want to accomplish? What changes do they want to make in their businesses or their lives? What changes are impacting them that they must adapt to (or even be made aware of)?
    
    
12. What do you write or talk about? Don’t just talk about what you do or what you sell. That is a sure way to turn off your audience. Instead, look at the previous point about what your audience wants and needs. Draw from those questions for your material. Put the focus on your target audience, not yourself.
    
    
13. Don't worry that you are giving too much of your knowledge away. You can never over-educate your audience. All that will happen when you share your ideas and information is that you gain more credibility in their eyes.
    
    
14. Make your blog a resource of useful and actionable information for your audience. Give readers a reason to bookmark your site and keep coming back again and again.
    
    
15. In keeping with the previous point, create a recommended list of quality resources. This goes way beyond a simple blogroll. Single out specific articles and videos created by others that you think would be useful to your audience.
    
    
16. Have you noticed that I keep referring to your audience? This is deliberate. Stop thinking of them as prospects, customers, clients or potential employers. Think of them as consumers of the content you produce. And get used to thinking of yourself as a publisher.
    
    
17. Once you have a new article of video posted to your blog, tweet about it. Use Twitter to help people find your blog and drive traffic to your individual posts. With Twitter, you blog need not languish in obscurity. You can get readers in a matter of weeks rather than months and years.
    
    
18. When you send out a tweet, make it simple. A good personal branding tweet will consist of two things: a headline to offer a benefit and grab attention, and a link pointing to your blog post.
    
    
19. Use a “URL shortner” like bit.ly or tweetburner.com when you tweet that allows you to track how many people actually clicked on your link and visited your blog post.
    
    
20. With Twitter, there is no reason your older posts should ever stop working for you. If these older posts are still relevant, recycle them with tweets driving more traffic to them. If you took the time to write them in the first place, never let them lose their usefulness for you.
    
    
21. Always have an opt-in form prominently displayed on your blog to capture your readers’ email addresses. The main purpose of your site is to build an opt-in email list. One-time visitors do you absolutely no good. But with an opt-in list, you can induce them to be regular readers.
    
    
22. Entice readers to opt into your list by offering a newsletter or “Tip of the Week.” For example, financial planners and accountants can offer a “Money Tip of the Week.” Other professionals can offer a “Safety Tip of the Week” or “Wellness Tip of the Week.” You can also offer a free ebook or other digital product in order to get subscribers.
    
    
23. Once you have a list, keep them in the loop. Send them an email at least once a week and make your newsletter informative and useful.
    
    
24. Use your blog as a platform for networking. You can take the strategy of “informational interviewing” to a new level by asking experts if you can interview them for your blog. Although informational interviewing is typically taught to job seekers, you need not be looking for a job to use this approach. It not only gains you new contacts, it elevates you as a peer in their eyes. Plus, it also gains you access to that person’s audience and followers as well.
    
    
25. Use great headlines for each blog post. Here are some great resources by Brain Clark's Copyblogger.com: How to Write Magnetic Headlines.
    
    
26. Use great opening sentences for your posts as well. Another great post from Copyblogger is 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang.
    
    
27. Provide links to the other places you hang out on the web: Your Facebook page, your LinkedIn page, your Twitter username, your Google Profile, etc. Become interconnected on the web.
    
    
28. Don’t regard other bloggers in your field as competitors. When you find a great article on someone else’s blog, praise it on your own and link to it. You will quickly find that bloggers are a generous and supportive crowd if you treat them with respect.
    
    
29. Look for ways to meet these other bloggers in the offline world. Attend events or organize one of your own. If nothing else, create a free teleseminar in which you can have an exchange of ideas for both of your audiences to listen in on.
    
    
30. Leverage your blog as a way to get speaking engagements to various offline groups and organizations.
    
    
31. Comment on other blogs with links back to your own. Not only is this a great way to gain new readers, it is also another way to network with that other blogger. Sometimes you will write your own post based upon a post you found on another blog. When you do, trackback to that blog and build a conversation on the topic.
    
    
32. When you disagree with another blogger, do so without becoming disagreeable. Be polite, but make your own point. Establish your own, unique point of view.
    
    
33. Find material to write about by subscribing to the RSS feeds of other blogs, Digg.com, YouTube, Delicious.com, or alltop.com, to name a few.
    
    
34. Also, set up Google Alerts feeds to have new material emailed to you on your topic each day. Once you set up a Google Alert for your keyword, Google will notify you when a new item appears on the web under that search term.
    
    
35. Put your blog and Twitter URLs on your business cards and resume.
    
    
36. Use a service like blog2print or to compile some of your best blog posts into a hard copy booklet. Send this out with your resume, letters asking for speaking engagements or consulting proposals.
    
    
37. Make sure your Twitter and Facebook personal brands are consistent with the one you are building on your blog. Tweet about the same kind of information. Update on Facebook with the same audience wants and needs you address on your blog. I'm not one who says you cannot have family photos on the same Facebook page you do business on (people like to see who you are before they do business with you), but keep these things in the background, in good taste and make sure they do not detract from your personal branding efforts.
    
    
38. Even if you have never aspired to writing a book, you may find that your blog is writing a book for you. Just write your 3 to 4 new posts every week and before long you may have a publishable book on your hands. In addition, you blog will be creating a platform or readership for your book before you ever get it written.
    

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1. Twitter is the ultimate networking tool, it can help you reach out and make meaningful connections with more people, faster, than any other way in existence. If you believe in networking in your offline business world, take it online with Twitter.
   
   
2. As long as you have something interesting to say, Twitter can help you create relationships with high level people you could never reach in the offline world. Twitter can literally get you access to people who would otherwise be insulated by many levels of gatekeepers.
   
   
3. Twitter can drive instant, targeted traffic to your website, blog, Facebook or LinkedIn page, or your Google Profile.
   
   
4. You can target your Twitter network by keywords, topics of interest or by geography.
   
   
5. Twitter is not just about blasting out your message to anyone and everyone. One of the biggest values is what you will learn. By listening to others, you will find out more than you could ever learn from any other resource.
   
   
6. Twitter can help you become a recognized expert in your field. If you consistently find and send out useful, helpful, problem-solving information, you will gather a following and become an authority.
   
   
7. Sharing quality information is one of the best ways to build relationships. Twitter is the online equivalent to clipping out informative articles and mailing them to people who might be helped by that information. Except Twitter makes it easier, faster and it’s free.
   
   
8. Use Twitter to get the word out fast. Example: A pizza restaurant in New Orleans built a list of local followers within a certain zip code. Whenever they “tweet” about a special offer their phone instantly rings off the hook.
   
   
9. You can do market research and get instant feedback on Twitter by conducting surveys. Twitpoll.com is an excellent, and easy to use, app for conducting surveys on Twitter.
   
   
10. Twitter is the perfect tool to turn strangers into contacts and contacts into friends. You really can develop quality relationships if you are helpful, generous, share and considerate (you know, all those things you were taught in kindergarten).

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I just found two very informative ebooks that I wanted to pass along to you. The first is Personal Branding by Colin Wright.

Wright bases his ideas on his own personal experiences of starting a one-man design studio in Los Angeles. One example of his personal branding strategy was the name he gave his studio, "Colin Is My Name," a clever conversation starter that inevitably fixes his personal and studio names in the minds of potential clients.

The second ebook (below) is a case study called, Tribal Waters: Embracing Consumer Tribes.



This is a fascinating study of how companies are applying the principles of Seth Godin's remarkable book, Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us.

I hope you find both ebooks helpful and interesting.

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