Personal Branding Weekly – Editor’s Note:
We had a great interview with Ryan Holiday and guest blog posts from Brian Hawkins and Glassdoor this week! Our ever stellar author team brought to you Olympic-sized conversations and tips about thinking, working and volunteering globally. All with a focus of leap frogging your career, personal brand and opportunities. In case you missed this week, here are the posts:
- What Color is Your Brand? by Deborah Shane
- Personal Branding Interview: Ryan Holiday by Dan Schawbel
- Business People Suck at Technology Startups by Jun Loayza
- 4 Common Resume Personal Branding Mistakes by Phil Roseberg
- Choosing The Perfect Avatar for Branding Success by Heather Huhman
- Entrepreneurship Will Leap Frog Your Career by Elinor Stutz
- Think Globally: Get Outside of Your “Four Walls” by Aaron McDaniel
- Want to Get Hired? Find an Internal Sponsor! by Skip Freeman
- Beyond ‘Engagement’ in the Social Media by Oscar del Santo
- Tip #9: How to Talk On-Camera by Manoush Zomorodi
- Build Your Brand on a Shoestring Budget by Erik Deckers
- Top 5 Reasons You Never Back After Applying for a Job by Meghan M. Biro via Glassdoor.com
This week’s Personal Brand Outlook
• You’ll get to nominate us – so stay tuned so you’ll know for what!
• Ways to avoid looking desperate in your job search
• How to overcome horrible bosses with your personal brand
• Why it’s vital to be a ‘good sport’
• Many other focused posts to help you in managing your personal brand. Plus, we’ll hear the latest from the Young Entrepreneur Council.
Focus on Who You Know
Leveraging your brand advocates harnesses and focuses the power of word of mouth for your personal brand.
What is Word Of Mouth Marketing?
It is when someone is so excited about you, your product or service that they eagerly and highly recommend you to their friends as a result of their personal experience.
Current social media platforms like Facebook.com and Twitter.com are considered to be modern day versions of word of mouth communication systems.
Why Does Word Of Mouth Marketing Work So Well?
There are many different reasons why it works so well, but here are three of the most common and why you need to consider maximizing your ability to make full use of it:
Credibility – Instantly you borrow the other person’s credibility when they are speaking about you to their circle of influence. People who know, like and trust them automatically project a portion of that trust on you when you are endorsed, even by way of introduction, by their friend/contact.
No Automatic Resistance Barriers – When people hear or see a claim generated by the source of the claim they are naturally skeptical and their guard or defenses automatically go up. This is not the case when they hear about something from a friend or someone who they know and trust.
Viral Marketing Potential – Your contacts and brand advocates will be far more likely to spread the word among their family, friends and associates especially when you have an exciting, funny or very creative idea to share with them.
Personal benefits of focused word of mouth:
+ It helps you build a stronger bond between you and your contacts.
+ You can create a very positive impression in the mind of your contacts.
+ It keeps you top of mind and memorable.
Be sure to thank your advocates
Show that you value them by going the extra mile in helping them achieve their goals. The key is to be proactive and give them more than what they expected with no expectation of anything in return. Stop and make time to take a sincere interest in their projects, goals or other positive things like community events and other projects that they are working on or involved in.
This is a very good and very effective relationship-building step. To be most effective, you must take a genuine interest in what the other person has to share with you and not be simply focused on your own agenda.
What have you done or what would you recommend to someone who really wants to focus on their personal brand advocates?
Author:
Maria Elena Duron, is managing editor of the Personal Branding Blog, CEO (chief engagement officer) of buzz2bucks.com – a word of mouth marketing firm. She helps create conversation, connection, credibility, community and commerce around your brand. Maria Duron is co-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.
