THINKing

Hidden Gems

OK, I’ll admit it: since Labor Day is approaching I’m taking the lazy way out today and dredging up some excellent old posts that for some reason didn’t get any traction. Have a great holiday.

Fighting For The Middle Ground

Tell Me A Story

I Spy: Top 7 Links For Online PR Espionage

Customer Diss-Service

Your Personal Brand

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Undiscovered Gems

There is a ton of content on THINKing that has not yet been discovered by our more recent followers. So, I thought I’d serve up some of those undiscovered gems today. Enjoy.

Creativity & You

Shallow Brands

Remember, You Are Naked Online

Content Marketing On Steroids

Leadership 101

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Links - 4/9/2009

Today’s post is for sharing a few things I’ve come across in the past couple of days, and to resurrect a post or two from our dusty archives that speak to job-hunting. Let’s get going:

Even In Recession, There Are Jobs In Media

How Not To Get A Job With Social Networking

How Not To Get A Job

Remember, You Are Naked Online

Out Of Work? Don’t Be That Guy

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Hidden Gems

I was checking out the statistics for my blog recently and found a number of excellent posts had had very little traffic. So, here is our first edition of Hidden Gems that will resurrect these overlooked posts:

Brand Euthanasia

Fighting For The Middle Ground

Client Media Relations Misconceptions

How Is Your Personal Brand Batting Average?

The Elasticity Of Truth 

Let me know what you think of these gems, please.

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New Business 2009

Are you out looking for new business? Who isn’t? I wrote a series on the topic some time back. You may want to check it out if you missed it the first time around.

New Business Primer - Part 1 - Introduction to the new business primer.

New Business Primer - Part 2 - An organization’s brand identity must be a reflection of three things: market perceptions, the organization’s acumen, as well as its aspirations. Positioning is where these three elements overlap.

New Business Primer - Part 3 - My marketing mentor, Bill Loeffler, once said the the best new business program is doing great work for current clients. He was right.

New Business Primer - Part 4 - Let’s get past this strategic stuff and to the tactics that got you in front of prospects. First on my list of ways to get in front of prospects was referrals.

New Business Primer - Part 5 - Here is the best piece of advice I’ll ever give you, although at first blush it may not seem that astounding: focus. Did Harry say “focus”? Yes, he did. Wow, that’s deep!

New Business Primer - Part 6 - Let’s talk about social networks. In order to be most effective, you must select three to four networks and focus your efforts there.

New Business Primer - Part 7 - Cold calling is a waste of time and there are better ways to spend your time.

New Business Primer - Part 8 - Network It. Now that you have your client defined and you have looked at your list to identify those folks who can help you, you need to contact them.

New Business Primer - Part 9 - PR professionals know about reputation. But so often they don’t spend any time building their own reputation and brand. Step back and take a look at yourself as if you were a client.

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A My Creative Team Christmas Present

Here are some helpful links from My Creative Team. Merry Christmas.

Top 8 Links On The Business Value Of Twitter

20 Online Media Relations Links

Top 17 Media Relations Links

Personal Branding White Paper

Media Relations White Paper

One-A-Day Marketing Vitamins White Paper

Subscribe To The THINKing Blog

BONUS CHRISTMAS LINK

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Born Branded?

Lisa Hoffmann got me thinking the other day when I read her blog that declares we are born with a personal brand, also known as personalities. Yes, I agree that we do have some “branding” at birth. But to say we are who we are and that’s the end of the story is just wrong.

That is saying we have no control, that we are predestined to be who we are, no matter what. This attitude is one of the reasons America has turned into a nation of victims. “It’s not may fault,” we say. “My mother didn’t hug me enough.” Or, maybe she hugged you too much. Either way, you bear no responsibility for the way you turned out if you accept this premise.

Humans have the power to transform themselves, to be the kind of people they want to be. We hold the key to our personal brands. As Frank Outlaw says:

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

You can be only who you are if you so choose, or you can be someone better.

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Remember, You Are Naked Online

Here in the Charlotte area a number of teachers are in danger of losing their jobs because of online indiscretions. They posted objectionable items in their Facebook accounts. Last time I checked Facebook was the fifth most visited site on the web with millions of visitors each day.

Did these teachers not know that? Anyone can see what you are saying. When you utilize social media, you are naked online for all to see. If they are that dumb, should they be teaching our children?

I’ve seen many - mostly younger - people airing out too much online. Savvy HR people Google candidates before hiring them. How would you look in an HR search?

This gets back to personal branding, a topic on which I’ve written a lot. A brand rests on truth, not on a thin veneer of calculated actions. So, like any good brand, you must nurture and maintain your reputation. All of your actions - offline and online - add up to form your personal brand. As Warren Buffett said,

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you will do things differently.

It’s a little late for the Charlotte, NC teachers to heed that advice or to read my white paper on personal branding. But you may want to give it a whirl.

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Social Media Best Practices

The OnlineMarketerBlog threw out the challenge for us to discuss our social media best practice. The blog’s author, DJ Francis, called me “impressively tenacious”. That’s politically correct for cranky, I think! Anyway, here goes.

Social media is public relations. PR is about dialogue, always has been. Social media allows us to extend our conversations beyond our limited geography. Despite that, the best practices haven’t changed from PR to social media. My best practice was said in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: to thine own self be true.

What I mean by this and what Shakespeare meant may diverge a bit. I believe that you must be yourself. No false persona. This is the PR advice I have always given clients and used myself. I don’t want to be one person at work, another at home, another with my friends, yet another online. To have a consistent brand, you must always be the real you. You must not let various publics define you.

This is why we so often dislike politicians. They say one thing in California, another in rural North Carolina. They let the audience and the occasion define what they say and how they say it. This is decidedly not being true to yourself. This also is probably why I’ll never be elected to anything. Want to know where I stand on an issue? Just ask me.

It is just too hard to juggle different selves. Even more so with the advent of social media where everything you say is recorded for posterity and fed by RSS, Twitter, and Friendfeed for the world to see.

So, be yourself. End of sermon.

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Personal Branding Revisited

Photo Courtesy of America’s Library

You know that THINKing often covers the topic of personal branding.

Chris Brogan has some interesting thoughts on personal branding, particularly where it comes to translating that brand into the online environment. Says Brogan,

The easiest answer is that you might want to be memorable, and you might want to transfer your real world reputation into the online world. A strong personal brand is a mix of reputation, trust, attention, and execution. You might want to build a brand around being helpful (what I hope my brand means to you), or being a creative thinker (Kathy Sierra, for instance) or being a dealmaker (Donald Trump), or being a showman (David Lee Roth), or whatever matters most to you, and also what you are capable of sustaining.

A personal brand gives you the ability to stand out in a sea of similar products. In essence, youʼre marketing yourself as something different than the rest of the pack. Do you need this? I donʼt know. Do you like to be mixed in with the pack?

Brogan has written a new free e-book on personal branding that you should download. It has solid advice on strategic and tactical moves you can make to enhance your personal brand. Don’t forget the My Creative Team personal branding special report.

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