PERSONAL BRANDING WEEKLY
Do you know how to prepare for an interview now? How do you feel about the importance of cultural fit and your VPs (they’re just as important as VPs are to a business)? These are just some of the topics covered in this week’s Personal Branding Blog articles along with a couple of stellar articles and insights from the Young Entrepreneur Council.
- You are a Company, Even as a Job Seeker by Henrieta Riesco
- Obsolete Information Brands Job Seekers as Obsolete by Phil Rosenberg
- Personal Brands: What Does Complaining Cost You? by Nance Rosen
- Preserving Your Personal Brand During a Power Outage by Heather Huhman
- How to Become the Preferred Vendor by Elinor Stutz
- Tips for Personal Brand Building Success with SlideShare by Roger Parker
- Keep Your Brand Name Intact When a Reporter Calls by The Young Entrepreneur Council
- How to Build a Powerful Resume by Jun Loayza
- Making Sense of All the Recent Changes on LinkedIn by Skip Freeman
- Parent Entrepreneurs: When the Personal Crowds Your Personal Brand by Manoush Zomorodi
- Should Working from Home be Banned? by Jeff Shuey
- ‘Cultural Fit’ and Your Personal Brand by Peter Sterlacci
- 9 Lesser-Known Strategies for Building Your Brands Credibility by The Young Entrepreneur Council
- Visualize Your Success and It Will Come! by Beth Kuhel
- 5 Ways to Prepare for an Interview by Ken Sundheim
Join us next week as Dan shares his latest podcast; we cover the 5 resume mistakes that are career killers; we focus on how the brand is about the person and some great tips on how to become an expert at anything. We look forward to your comments!
EMAIL STILL MATTERS
Social sites, blogs, and even video have become a primary focus point for brand marketing, email is still one of the most important and should be addressed with equal etiquette.
Junk mail
Annoying your readers by overfilling their inbox is perhaps one of the most common problems when it comes to email. It’s easy to send out message after message, hoping that they’ll read the content. But the truth is that getting stuck in the “spam” folder is the worst social nightmare. Once you’re here, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever get out.
Best practice is to use email in moderation, such as regular updates and specific topics (direct customer replies). Be careful what is in your auto-reply or automatic content, such as newsletters. These can be helpful, but when used inappropriately, they can become a burden on the recipient’s inbox and leave your content dumped in the trash.
This leads to the importance of watching the “reply all” button. This should be used only when necessary and only when it’s going to the right individuals. This can be an easy way to confuse other correspondents within your lists. Always be aware of who is getting what, such as carbon copies.
Simply said
Another issue is an extra email can be one too many. Cover your bases when generating your email content and think about what you want to say before you hit the send button. Have you addressed all the important topics? Sent the appropriate links? You don’t want to have to generate multiple emails to cover the same subject. It’s cumbersome and can quickly leave everyone working harder to get the same message that could have been accomplished in just one email.
Short and sweet sends the best message. But that doesn’t mean you should take shortcuts. The message should still have good content and most importantly, clarity. Cover the topic and focus on it to not distract from the actual topic.
A clear subject
This comes second to “who sent it” as to whether an email will be even opened. Does your subject line address something of value and relevant to the person you’re sending it to?
Timing
Sending an email early Monday morning is the worst time for one that you want read, for helpful information, or replied to. Think of what your Monday mornings are like and what it’s like to open your inbox with a landslide of emails to delve through. I send things like reports that I know will be kept and read at the reader’s discretion on Monday mornings. Anything else, I wait for a little bit later in the day when there’s a better chance that they’ve cleaned their inbox and will see my email right away.
Do you have any email best practices that have served you well?
Author:
Maria Elena Duron, is managing editor of the Personal Branding Blog, CEO (chief engagement officer) of buzz2bucks– a word of mouth marketing firm, and a professional speaker and trainer on developing social networks that work. She provides workshops, webinars, seminars and direct services that help create conversation, connection, credibility, community and commerce around your brand. Maria Duron is founder and moderator of #brandchat – a weekly Twitter chat focused on every aspect of branding that is recognized by Mashable as one the 15 Essential Twitter Chats for Social Media Marketers.
