Personal Branding Predictions: Top Ten for 2010 | Search Journal

Personal Branding Predictions: Top Ten for 2010 | Search Journal

Every year since William Arruda founded his company, Reach, in 2001, he has made predictions about how the world of personal branding will evolve in the coming year. Here are his top 10 for 2010! (just click on the link above to be connected to the article at SYS-CON Media)

Cut Your Job Search Time in Half | Wireless Developer's Journal

Cut Your Job Search Time in Half | Wireless Developer's Journal

"Careers on Ulitzer - The December 2009 Reach Personal Branding Interview on Thursday, Dec. 10 at noon EST features tips and techniques from David Perry and Kevin Donlin, co-authors of Guerilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0.

In this guest expert interview with William Arruda, founder of Reach Personal Branding, David and Kevin will discuss job search secrets that have enabled their clients to land good jobs in less than half the time of the national average."

Enjoy Building Your Personal Brand - Branding You

Branding yourself is the same as creating a "business image" and it is the most powerful way to gain advantage over your competitors. Having the advantage can only be done if you have the best, most unique and strongest image that shouts confidence and is wrapped around your personality. Who are you? Do you want to stand out in the crowd? What do you want to be? Get noticed? If you have not considered these thoughts, perhaps, it's time you began to seriously image and focus on developing yourself as a "brand".

Personal branding is about understanding your uniqueness in combination with your rational and emotional attributes - your strengths, skills, values and passions and knowing how to use them to differentiate yourself and guide your career decisions.

With that being said, here are some basic tips to get you on your way:

1. your personality and style; you can brand yourself in just about anything just remember to include your personality and style. Example: a female boutique owner looks and acts like a female boutique owner, right?

2. be original; go the extra mile to be different. People notice originality. It may make the difference in getting more customers than your competitor.

3. be outstanding in a way that makes you stand out; do your best to be the best at something;

4. be subtle and not someone who is looked at as someone who is craving attention;

5. be confident and assertive but not arrogant. Be humble, even if you excel at just about everything this
behavior can be perceived as a jerk.

6. be outstanding in something you really like to do;

Branding is no longer exclusive to companies and products.In a world where everything is branded, you need to think about yourself in the same way. Your branding mission is to "bring out the artist" in you..that which is unique, strong, valuable and marketable.

Are you considering an Internet marketing business or are already doing affiliate marketing and want to collaborate with a special team of remarkable mentors? Please visit the following link to learn more http://networkmarketingstorm.com _________________ Prepare to effectively brand your business in 2010. The Brand Unearthing Phase for Networkers, Coaches, Trainers, Solopreneurs, Consultants, Representatives, and other entrepreneurs and small business owners is available beginning in January 2010 through the Unearth Your Brand Excellence Workbook & E-Course Program. Unearth Your Brand Excellence is a powerful preparatory course to building a brand foundation for your business to set yourself apart from other businesses who seemingly offer the same products and services. In addition, the program is specifically designed to give you the tools to effectively communicate your unique brand promise. Are you ready for brand excellence? More information and updated website coming soon at www.lisahromada.com/

Your Employees Are the Brand | .NET Developer's Journal

Personal Branding news post from the Personal Branding Guru, William Arruda ~ "Your Employees Are the Brand"
"Companies are embracing the idea of employees delivering on the corporate brand promise in ways that are authentic to them."

My favorite commercials are those that showcase the real people who contribute their unique strengths and talents to a company/business. Each of the commercials in the post showcases "people" as making a significant contribution to the company/corporate brand. A new world of work is emerging and companies, small businesses, and even entrepreneurs are catching on to personal branding and its effects on the success of business. Branding is about making an emotional connection with the public and what better way to make that connection than to use real people with real stories.

Check out this post:
Your Employees Are the Brand | .NET Developer's Journal

Online Personal Branding - Three Key Ways to Promote Your Expertise Online

Your brand, whether it be your personal brand, or your business brand is a key piece of your business model that is needed to successfully market your business. Once you've created the right brand, promotion is the next step to using your brand to gain the attention you need for your business.

The top three ways to promote your brand are blogging, blogging and blogging. Seriously, blogging is truly important to your business. The top way to make your mark is to name your blog well and then start posting two to three times per week in your area of expertise. A well-branded blog will get you found more easily on the web when potential clients search for information and solutions to their problems that you provide.

Establishing yourself as an expert through your content also extends your brand. This helps to create perceived value, and you will be seen as a leader and expert in your field. You can do this by blogging, writing white papers and using personalization in everything you do. The most important part of this is being consistent and continuing to do this over and over. Blogging is the perfect platform to show and tell your expertise on a regular basis.

White papers, or special reports, are another way to promote your business. You can repurpose blog posts to create your white papers, or use the content from your white paper on your blog. You do not have to reinvent the wheel.

The third area of promotion is through personalization. Be as personal as you can in your business. Create videos talking about your business, providing tips and be as transparent and authentic as possible. Post your videos on your YouTube Channel for wider distribution. Of course, you also want to post your videos on your blog!

Doing these things will help you and your business get noticed. Staying consistent and keeping your blog content fresh is one of the most important aspects of using a blog to promote your business. This helps the search engines to find you and keeps your potential clients and customers up to date and in the know as well as keeping them interested in what you have to offer.

Those who follow your blog will see you as an expert in your area of expertise and will come to you for the information that they need on that particular topic.

You have to remember that blogging is marketing your business so you must make it a priority in your business. Be committed, stick to it, and watch the results that it can deliver for you.

And now I would like to invite you to claim your free instant access to my report on Better Business Blogging so you can learn more valuable tips for extending your brand online with a blog. Visit http://www.betterbizblogging.com

From Denise Wakeman, Founder of The Blog Squad and Online Marketing Advisor.

Unearthing Your Unique Promise ~ From Small Business Branding to Entrepreneurial Branding

The branding – and re-branding – of a small business is much like that of an entrepreneurial business. It’s about extracting your business’s unique promise of value in the most authentic way possible and then clearly expressing that promise of value through your work, daily communications, and brand messaging. This is not the easiest process at times simply because the Unearthing process asks you to take a close look at and contemplate on what you value and specifically stand for in your business.

I am currently in the process of taking part in the re-branding of a small business. A wonderful company who understands the power of branding through authenticity and importance of strategic positioning within their market. The first step is the Unearthing process and this is often the most difficult, especially when there is an existing brand in place. Often times, when businesses have an existing brand in place for a number of years, there are understandably emotional attachments to it and the process of unearthing a truly authentic brand becomes more difficult. The goal, however, is still the same – determine what rings most true for you in your business, so that you can attract the right clients who value you and your business.

The same difficulty often comes when entrepreneurs, coaches, trainers, consultants, etc. begin the process of Unearthing their brand or even re-branding themselves for the purpose of making their business more successful, attractive and profitable.

At this point in the process of re-branding this small business, the company is reviewing their current core values and positioning statement to determine whether it still holds true for them.

The following process is what I introduced to help Unearth the core values that really ring true for them and it can help you too in your business:

1. Write out your current core values (or if you don’t currently have core values set in place, it’s a great time to think about what those are). Next to each core value, I want you to write the definition of what that core value actually means. For example, let’s say that one of your core values is innovation. A definition of innovation is, “the act of introducing something new; introducing new things or methods.”

2. Next, for each core value, I want you to write how you or your business demonstrates this core value. What are the tactics that you use to demonstrate innovation? Are you coming up with new products to introduce to the marketplace? Are you introducing new technology or a new way of doing something?

3. Once you have your core value, definitions, and your tactic, write down what your outcome is for this core value. This outcome must answer a problem, concern or need for your ideal client. So, the outcome for innovation could be that you introduce a new product or service that addresses a specific need of your client. For example, you might introduce a client program that guarantees to improve lives through helping your clients lose weight in healthy and enjoyable ways.

4. So, now that we have all of these current core values written out and defined, we will take a look at each one more closely to determine whether the business practices these core values on a daily basis. This is the best way to determine whether it is a core value.

What’s so special about Unearthing your core values?
Determining the core values for your business helps you to provide a clear understanding of who you are to your clients. It helps to build credibility and loyalty, not only internally with employees, but also with your clients and those people who can benefit most from what you do.

Determining your core values is only one step in the Unearthing process to building a more profitable and authentic business. For more information and to begin extracting your brand, the Unearth Your Brand Excellence is starting up in January 2010. You can choose the workbook/guide to unearth your brand or the e-course for added support.

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Prepare to effectively brand your business in 2010. The Brand Unearthing Phase for Networkers, Coaches, Trainers, Solopreneurs, Consultants, Representatives, and other entrepreneurs and small business owners is available beginning in January 2010 through the Unearth Your Brand Excellence Workbook & E-Course Program. Unearth Your Brand Excellence is a powerful preparatory course to building a brand foundation for your business to set yourself apart from other businesses who seemingly offer the same products and services. In addition, the program is specifically designed to give you the tools to effectively communicate your unique brand promise. Are you ready for brand excellence? More information and updated website coming soon at www.lisahromada.com/

P.S. As a special gift to my subscribers, starting December 14, 2009 I am starting the “B.E. ~ 12 Days of Giveaways!” where each day, I will be giving my wonderful subscribers valuable information (I will keep it short as I know your time is precious!) to help them start off the New Year with brand excellence (B.E.) a clearer vision of what they want 2010 to hold for them and their business.

If you're not yet a subscriber, you can sign up at lisahromada.com ~ As a bonus, you receive 15 articles from my e-book!

Brand Discovery Phase – The Most Important First Step Toward a Strong Brand Foundation

In the last few weeks, I had been productively busy participating in the preparation for a brand discovery presentation to a panel of corporate clients. As I was helping to prepare for this presentation, I took note of some things that I wanted to share with you about this important phase in the development of your brand. Many of the exercises and principles for corporate groups, I also apply when working with consultants, trainers, nutritionist, and other small business owners and entrepreneurs.

First, let me give you a little more information about preparing for this brand-changing presentation. As part of this presentation, the preparatory materials included: a PowerPoint presentation, written report outlining the results from the brand discovery, and initial logo identity comprehensive designs.

So, what goes into the brand discovery phase and how can it benefit you to explore this phase in depth for your own business?

Brand Discovery

• Exploration and Finalization of Core Values – Your core values are the core principles that guide you in your business. In everything that you do in your business and everything that you express in your marketing must always link back to this ‘backbone’ of your brand and what you stand for in simplest terms.

• Identification of your short and long-term goals – Know who you (your business) are today, compare it to where you were, and form a vision of what tomorrow (and the coming years) holds. What is your vision for your business in one, five, and ten years?

• Get clear about both your strengths and your weaknesses – To accomplish excellence and stand out, you must understand what your strengths are in your business and what can potentially be holding you back from achieving your goals.

• Ensure that the external perceptions of your business align with the inner perceptions – You may know what you stand for in your business and what you do to bring results to your clients, but are you clearly conveying it? As part of the brand discovery phase, it is important to acquire feedback from your ideal audience, often referred to as your target market. There are multiple ways to do this; as with the brand development of the corporate client I mentioned above, a extensive phone survey was conducted. Other ways of doing this include: online surveys and customized and anonymous email surveys.

• Collect internal and external feedback to create a positioning statement – Also known as your mission statement, your positioning statement is meant to clearly express who are you, what you offer, and for whom in a compelling way.

These are just a few of the main steps you must take within the brand discovery phase. This phase leads you to the next phase in your brand development, the Brand Expression phase. The discovery phase must happen before you can successfully market your business. This phase acts as the foundation for all that you do in your business and the basis of your brand expression.


Prepare to effectively brand your business in 2010. The Brand Development Phase for Networkers, Coaches, Trainers, Solopreneurs, Consultants, Representatives, and other entrepreneurs and small business owners is available beginning in January 2010 through the Unearth Your Brand Excellence Program. The Unearth Your Brand Excellence is a powerful preparatory course to building a brand foundation for your business to set yourself apart from other businesses who seemingly offer the same products and services. In addition, the program is specifically designed to give you the tools to effectively communicate your unique brand promise. Are you ready for brand excellence? Information coming soon at www.lisahromada.com

One Simple Way To Quickly Wean Off Of 1-on-1 Clients

One Simple Way To Quickly Wean Off Of 1-on-1 Clients

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