7 Things You Can Do To Build An Awesome Personal Brand

The term branding has long been relegated to companies, but today almost every individual has a personal brand. Not many of us have consciously cultivated these brands, but they exist nonetheless. A digital footprint in the sands of time and space crowd sourced by friends, colleagues, and bosses. According to an AVG study, 92 percent of children under the age of two already have a digital footprint.
The question is no longer IF you have a personal brand, but if you choose to guide and cultivate the brand or to let it be defined on your behalf. Here are seven ways to start building an awesome personal brand.
Start thinking of yourself as a brand
What do you wish for people to associate with you when they think of your name? Is there a certain subject matter in which you want to be perceived as an expert or are there general qualities you want linked to your brand? Once you understand how you wish your brand to be perceived, you can start to be much more strategic about your personal brand. This doesn’t mean you can’t be human. On the contrary, as Michael Simmons writes, authenticity is key in the digital age. A strong personal brand can yield tremendous ROI whether you are working with an organization or leading one. Here are some examples of individuals who have built up authentic and powerful personal brands: Michael Port, John Bates, Mike Michalowicz, Dave Kerpen, David Meerman Scott, John Jantsch, Dave Carroll, and Barry Moltz.
Audit your online presence

You can’t mold perception without first understanding the current status. In other words, Google GOOGL +0.09% yourself and setup alerts for your name on a regular basis. Have a fairly common name? Consider using your middle initial or middle name to differentiate. Cultivating a strong personal brand is just as much about being responsive to what is being said as it is about creating intellectual property.

Secure a personal website

Having a personal website for yourself is one of the best ways to rank for your name on the search engines. It doesn’t need to be robust. It can be a simple two to three page site with your resume, link to your social platforms, and a brief bio. You can always expand on the website with time.

Find ways to produce value
We’ve all been there. Someone in your network posts something utterly mundane or ridiculous, and you wonder what compelled them to do so? A medium is not a substitute for a message. Find ways to add value to your audience by creating or curating content that’s in line with your brand.
Be purposeful in what you share
Every tweet you send, every status update you make, every picture you share, contributes to your personal brand. It is an amalgamation of multiple daily actions. Once you understand how you wish your brand to be perceived, you can start to be much more strategic about your personal brand.
Associate with other strong brands
Your personal brand is strengthened or weakened by your connection to other brands. Find and leverage strong brands which can elevate your own personal brand. Start with the three C’s: company, college, colleagues. Which school did you attend? Are there groups you can join? An alumni newsletter you can contribute to? What hidden opportunities are available within your company which you have yet to tap? Consider submitting a guest post to the company blog or look at other digital assets you can connect to your brand.
Reinvent
A strong personal brand is dependent on a strong narrative. In other words, what’s your story? Take a second to think of celebrities you know who have a strong personal brand. Mark Cuban. Martha Stewart. Richard Branson. They are all have a very clear story and a consistent brand. If you have multiple passions or areas of interest, a narrative becomes even more crucial so there can be unified theme. If you need help defining your story, I highly recommend reading Reinventing You by Dorie Clark.

Most importantly, remember that a strong personal brand should be ubiquitous and ever evolving.

SEX IN ADVERTISING

Simply put, sex in advertising is the use of sexually provocative or erotic imagery (or sounds, suggestions and subliminal messages) that are specifically designed to arouse interest in a particular product, service or brand.

Typically, sex refers to beautiful women (and increasingly, handsome men) that are used to lure in a viewer, reader or listener, despite a tenuous a non-existent link to the brand being advertised.

Throughout History, Sex Has Been Used As A Selling Tool.

It's been said that as human beings, we have a lizard or reptilian brain that responds to certain primal urges. Food is one. Sex and reproduction is definitely another. This underlying, pre-programmed disposition to respond to sexual imagery is so strong, it has been used for over 100 years in advertising. And the industry, while abusing it more and more, would be foolish to ignore the draw of sexual and erotic messaging.

Back in 1885, W.Duke and Sons, a manufacturer of facial soap, included trading cards in the soap's packaging that included erotic images of the day's most popular female stars. The link between soap and sex is slim at best, but it worked. And ever since, brands have purposely linked themselves to suggestive (or downright blatant) sexual imagery in the search for new customers. In particular, alcohol, fashion, perfume and car advertisements have created strong links with sex.

Does Sex Actually Sell?

Yes, sex sells. It's a fact. Popular mens magazines like Maxim and FHM have experimented often with their covers. Overwhelmingly, when a sexy, semi-naked woman appears on the cover, it outperforms an image of a male star, even if that star is someone men want to read about.

When ads are more sexually provocative, men in particular are irresistibly drawn to them. It's simple genetics. Men respond to sexual images. And if your ad creates a sexual situation, it will get the desired response.

Sex Also Turns Off Customers

There's a fine line, and all too often these days brands are stepping way over the line.Consumers are human, they will respond, but they're also smart, well-educated people who will soon realize that they're being manipulated. People may buy your product one or two times due to the erotic interplay, but if the product isn't any good, you won't hold onto the customers for long. Not only that, they'll feel cheated, talked down to, or outright patronized. And that will take a much greater effort on the part of the advertiser to regain that trust.

The Future of Sex in Advertising

Sex is here to stay, and it's getting more blatant with every passing year. The rise of the internet over the last 20 years has produced a direct line for much stronger, graphic sexual material to enter consumers' homes. And they're responding to it. Pornography,while not used in advertising in its traditional sense, is a multi-billion dollar business. As the rules around sex and consumers become more relaxed, you can guarantee that sex will become a bigger part of our advertising landscape.

The Bottom Line - Use Sexual Ideas Only If It's Appropriate

If you are advertising a male deodorant like Axe (Lynx in the UK) or lingerie like Victoria's Secret, you'd be a fool to overlook such a strong selling mechanism. But if you're trying to sell a lawn mower or a new sofa with nudity and sex, you're doing your product a serious disservice. Yes, you'll get attention. But it's the wrong kind of attention, and won't lead to a bigger and better brand. Sex, used sparingly and judicially, is a strong selling tool. But abuse it, and you will ultimately lose out.

How Real Time Analytics Can Transform a Brand

The last few years have transformed the way organizations utilize data. Today, the volume, variety and velocity of data is taking the business world by storm. Organizations that are able to understand and act on the data – based on analytics, but with the relationship at the forefront – will emerge as winners.

Social media, cloud and mobile have added a layer of urgency to the big data wave. As the velocity of information increases, there’s a need to process the data, analyze it for use cases that matter to a business and to make strategic decisions based on those insights. However, gathering real-time data from various structured and unstructured sources and analyzing it is not easy, especially while keeping it human at the same time.

Smarter organizations understand this and invest in people, process and technology that enable them to use real-time analytics for strategic and operational benefits, while always keeping relationship enhancement at the forefront. Real-time analytics is not just for smarter marketing, but also for cutting inefficiency from operations, improving customer service and for watching trends that can impact the bottom line.

7 Key Ways To Promote Your Personal Brand

By now, you understand finding the perfect job requires more than simply writing a resume and posting it online. In fact, if you are going to take the “apply online” approach, you should spend no more than two hours per week at it. Less than 5% of jobs are ever posted online, so if you are going to find your next job fast you need to spend your time elsewhere.


The successful and savvy job seeker will develop a compelling personal brand and spend 75% of their time (or more) promoting it. Here are seven key ways to promote your personal brand:

1. Buy Printed Business Cards:

Now number of job seekers who have absolutely NO way of letting other people know how to contact them other than by shoving a resume in their face. And no, the ones you print at home on your own computer are NOT good enough! Business cards are inexpensive. Sometimes you can even get free business cards from places like Prints Made Easy or free shipping from stores like Office Max.
As for what to put on your card? I recommend the minimalist approach. Put your name, e-mail address, phone, and LinkedIn profile address. You don’t need a title or a cute picture. Get a non-glossy finish and leave the back empty so people can jot down notes about you.

2. Develop A Concise Elevator Pitch

Give just enough information to make people want to ask you to tell them more. Don’t focus on your past, instead focus on your future. Nobody cares you have 15 years experience in micro-processors. They want to know what you can do for THEM now! Be memorable, but not flippant or “cutesy.”
Lastly, rehearse it at least 100 times out loud BEFORE you use it in a group. You want it to be polished, but not too formulaic.

3. Show Up

You have business cards and a concise elevator pitch, but what good are they if you sit all day at the computer? Plan a strategy to show up in places where your target audience is (i.e. potential employers in key companies within your target industries) or where the people who know them will be.

4. Listen And Build Trust

Networking is NOT about you. It’s about building a relationship. It’s about helping people in your network of friends and colleagues connect for mutual benefit. It’s about finding out what someone else needs and helping them.

5. Complete Your LinkedIn Profile

This is one of the most important online tools you will have. A great resource for learning more about how to beef up your LinkedIn account is from Joshua Waldman with Career Enlightenment. Check him out. He’s is THE premiere professional on this topic!

6. Follow Up

Develop a press kit you can send if asked. Better yet, create a blog (I like WordPress). Online you can store video clips, PDF files, work examples and much more.

7. Send A Thank You Card

Every career coach from here to Katmandu tells their clients to do this. It’s an inexpensive way to keep you on the top of someone’s mind. Personal, handwritten cards get past the usual gatekeepers and are absolutely read by their intended recipient.

 

A Breakthrough Approach to Brand Creation

A new approach for creating brands has been proven more
effective than brand positioning.
This new approach is based on the power of storytelling. Some
marketers, most notably McDonald’s, have recognized the
need for a storytelling approach. Until now the effectiveness
of this approach had not been validated.
SDS is at the forefront of ground-breaking empirical research
that demonstrates the superiority of brand stories. Our efforts
include actively contributing to an extensive 3-year study
conducted by The SDS Research Foundation (SDS) titled, “On
the Road to a New Effectiveness Model.”
SDS has built upon the findings of this research and the
principles of storytelling to create a breakthrough approach
to branding.
We call this approach SDS Branding.