Short post tonight about other blogs. In both cases, the blog owners found me – and that’s probably not that easy, since my fame is mostly recognized by that guy who looks back at me in the mirror every morning. And surprisingly, since I’m not very active there, Twitter has been one of my major sources of referred readers.
Personal branding isn’t hard. The techniques I teach are within the grasp of almost everyone. I won’t say that it isn’t time-consuming, but the amount of time you spend on your personal brand is completely under your control.
As you get more experience, you will find some shortcuts. For example, WordPress, which is the software that runs this blog, does a Twitter entry every time I post a blog entry. And Facebook has a Twitter application that posts my tweets to my Facebook wall. So one entry – my blog post – generates “what am I doing” on these social networks, FriendFeed, and probably more, come to think of it. (Click on the links above to see my public profiles on those sites.)
Why do you need to know all this? Because when you’re thinking personal branding, you’re thinking about how to market a product, and that product is YOU. So, for heaven’s sake, please try to do it right!
And here’s what happens: first the great people at blog.brand-yourself.com found me and asked me to write a guest blog for them weekly. Wow, that made me feel good (and generated a blog entry here). But just the other day, a new Twitter friend @jacobshare (Jacob Share) found me, and he’s started tweeting me making suggestions about how I can promote myself better and smarter. That’s good. My product is ME, and I need to let others know why/how Me, Inc. is special.
Why is that important? Remember, your goal (if you’ve read my stuff or been in one of my workshops) is to control the Google results on your name. Showing up on popular blogs helps that! If those blogs are richly linked, that’s even better. It’s all part of your personal search engine optimization program. And at some point, if you keep doing this, your name is going to come up prominently in other searches, like “personal branding.” That’s why it’s important to write comments and maybe guest posts at blogs that are important for your particular subject matter expertise.
Why should you care? If you’re looking for a job, you’ll vastly increase your chance of being found – let’s face it, Craig’s List just ain’t what it used to be. And if you’re selling your services, people will be able to find you because you’ve left a track record as a subject matter expert.
Please check out Jason’s blog at http://jobmob.co.il/ and Brand-yourself’s blog at http://blog.brand-yourself.com (I’ve got a new post there today). There are some other blogs I recommend, which you can find at the bottom of the right column of this blog. You might want to try them all.
My great friend Glen Zamanian suggested I end my posts with a request – and I think he’s got a great idea.
If you find my blog posts useful, or if you have a related success story to tell, please add a comment to the Success Stories section of my blog. Your positive feedback is my only charge!
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