Tag Archives: branding

Learn How To Differentiate Brand “You”

We all have a brand.  Some of us just may not know it. And that’s not a good thing.  How are you going to shape and control your brand if you’re not even aware of it?  Or put some energy and focus into getting it right?

You know the answer to that.

You’re not.  And you should.  We all should.

And to achieve successful branding we need to be able to differentiate our brand from all the other brands out there.

Why do you think you never see Christianne Amanpour interviewing a group of, say, automakers, from Detroit? Because that’s not her brand. She’s created a name for herself in exploring and analyzing the issues behind international hot spots like the Middle East.  Or you might see her donning a burka to covertly explore tormented and male dominated society in Afghanistan.

Why do you think Martha Stewart‘s version of The Apprentice took a nose dive?  Because Martha Stewart is not usually thought of in a board room making decisions.  She’s thought of baking the best and most beautiful cherry pies.  Or picking a soft, signature color for a living room.  That’s why her association with KB Homes works.  Because people can see Martha and her expertise in that setting.  Martha Stewart may be a mogul, but people don’t perceive her that way.  Because that’s not her brand.

To examine branding a little more closely let’s take a look at food conglomerate Kraft Foods which sells hundreds of different food items in 155 countries.  Everything from A1 Steak sauce to Jello, Planters Peanuts, Velveeta and Wheat Thins.

Ok. A little further down that food chain, General Foods International is a subdivision of Kraft Foods and it produces several different flavors of instant coffee, everything from Cafe Vienna, Dark Mayan Chocolate, Hazlenut Belgian, Orange Cappuccino and Pumpkin Spice to Viennese Chocolate Cafe.  Not much chance of mistaking Dark Mayan Chocolate with Pumpkin Spice, right?

And it should be the same with each of us.  Our potential audience, customers or clientele should know instantly whether we are Dark Mayan Chocolate or Pumpkin Spice, metaphorically speaking.

For instance, I operate a number of websites, one of which is called AdvancingWomen.com.  It deals with with career and financial parity for women by electronically mentoring them so they have the tools and training to get better jobs or start their own businesses.  Occasionally we mention women running for political office, because, research shows, women legislators will pass laws more supportive of women. Fighting for equal pay would be one example.  No one on the web confuses AdvancingWomen.com with a dating site.  No one goes there for gossip or make-up tips.  We are what we are.  And people know what we are.  We may have a small slice of a large pie, but we do have a slice.  We don’t aim to gobble up the whole pie and lose even our slice in the food fight that follows.  As Esther Dyson, venture capitalist and digital guru said, “More companies die from indigestion than starvation.”  In other words, they take on too much and flame out or stumble down trying to handle it all.

So the bottom line is: Look deep inside yourself and decide who you are.  Narrow your focus.  Concentrate on that. That will be “Brand You”. Broadcast that and you will succeed.

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Personal Branding – Conveying The Essence Of Professional Brand “You”

When I talk about creating Brand “You”, I’m not talking about creating a fictional super hero or heroine who is larger and more perfect than life and can achieve any task. I’m talking about digging down deep to unearth the real you; to focus on what is unique about you, your personal style  and your unique talents and achievements. Use those achievements to buttress your case. Then broadcast it to the world.

How do you do that?

Remember, everything about you becomes part of your personal brand.  How you walk and talk. How you dress. How you interact with others.  All of these hundreds of different pieces out there become transformed into “Brand You”.

Let’s start with the pieces.

Develop your own style. Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlitt Packard and one of the most visible women in business, knew style was critical.  When asked by a young girl how to dress, she declared, “expensive and decisively.” Fiorina dressed, looked, talked, and acted like a leader. She developed reputational power by tackling critical issues and getting results, moving boldly and quickly.

Edit what you write  to achieve a lean, powerful, professional “Brand You”.  Yes, it’s great if you’re a good mother, father, aunt, windsurfer, rock hound, won your high school debating contest, have a white picket fence, two dogs and a cat, but it’s not relevant to your professional brand.  Leave it out. Trim it down.  Put in only your marketable attributes, then condense for impact.

Posting To Social Networks. Take a deep breath and consider what your  boss might think before hitting the submit button.

Don’t you think talented, incoming Obama administration director of speechwriting, Jon Favreau, would like to take back that one split second when he or a friend hit the submit button and sent to Facebook those photos of himself  at  a party where, evidently, the booze flowed freely? One was a photo of Favreau dancing with a life-sized cardboard cut-out of secretary of state-designate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.  Another where he’s placed his hand on the cardboard former first lady’s chest ( groping her) while a friend (appears to be nibbling on her cardboard ear and ) is offering her lips a beer?  Oops!

That’s the kind of mistake that can kill your career quicker than you can say “John Edwards”.  Even though many women are howling for his scalp, Favreau is young enough that he may get a pass on this one. (Although Obama surely can’t be too pleased. Did we mention the word “distraction” while he’s trying to put together an administration?)  But you don’t need to make this kind of mistake. Aside from the other obvious implications, it makes you look stupid.   I mean what could the response be? “Gee I thought you never went on the Internet.”  “I thought only my friends would see it.” “I wasn’t thinking”.  No kidding.  Just don’t put up anything you wouldn’t want your boss or anyone else on the  planet to see and you won’t have to worry about it.

Visibility And Alliances

Polishing your story, condensing it and getting it out there in both the real and the virtual world are the beginning.  Networking to form alliances will help you take it to the next level.  But at it’s core, what sums you up for the world, is the professional brand you’ve created and conveyed.

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10 Tips To Put Your Personal Brand On Your Resume

Now, more than ever, in these bleak economic times, with many legacy companies either drastically downsizing or dropping like flies, it’s a good idea to have your resume up to date. And, as we’ve said many times, the whole idea is for you to stand out from the crowd, which is getting tougher with so many jobless out there, forcefully expatriated from corporate America.

Dan Schawbel writes a blog on personal branding….and we’re all about personal branding in your career…and he shares some thoughts on the best way to put your own unique brand on your resume: Personal Branding Toolkit – Part 3: Resumes « Personal Branding Blog

“1) Design your brand. Instead of using a standard template, use a branded template. A brand you template! If you have Microsoft Word or another word processing program, then you might notice shapes and colors at the top. If you don’t already have a website, blog, business card, etc, then you need to think about what colors you want to use, as well as what type of job you’re applying for. In the picture below, a woman is applying to be a “Cosmetic Nurse Specialist.” At the top of her resume, she has a picture of someone putting cosmetics on a patient. The rest of the resume has shades of pink. The resume comes off as “soft” and “gentle,” with the colors, picture and shapes used. To me this is effective.

Brand yourself with a resume

2) Don’t use your picture. I agree with my friend Chris Russell that pictures can’t be on resumes (even though I’d love to put mine on it). A personal photo is a distraction. Recruiters give you about 30 seconds to impress them with your experience and you don’t want 10 of those seconds to be eyes on your picture do you! Don’t come off as someone who is trying to get a job because of your looks. Companies are scared to deal with your picture because of discrimination laws and lawsuits.

3) Links rock. I haven’t seen many resumes with links EVEN from people that have blogs, social network profiles and other websites. It blows my mind! Why not have a link to your site. If the recruiter likes your resume or has further interest in your credentials, a link acts as a supplemental piece of marketing that will help you sell yourself without saying one word.

4) Experience trumps education. Don’t believe for a second that your degree and “deans list” on your resume is going to get you a job. Recruiters are starting to discount GPA for resumes! Listen, a resume is all about showing recruiters that you have had proven success, eliminating risk on the companies part. In life, experience is everything and if you don’t have it, you will leave to lean towards your education. Make a point to put your work experience in the top part of your resume because that’s what employers really care about.

5) Show some class. The quality of paper you use shows how serious you are about the position and can be used as a differentiator. Purchase quality paper and print your resume using it because more applicants use standard printer paper.

6) Create the multimedia you. How much information can you really get from a stupid resume? Not much. I’ve written about video resumes a lot and believe in them, as long as you are passionate, energetic and have some showmanship. If you plan on videoing yourself sleeping or eating chocolate than you might want to reconsider.

7) Get Linked-In. This is another topic I’ve touched on without a dedicated post. LinkedIn is a resume, cover letter and reference list all in one, which makes it exceptional. It is a virtual resume, with the same fields as a typical resume. It is a cover letter because you have space to explain where you’re at in your career, what you want to be and summarize your qualifications. It is a reference list because it’s searchable by recruiters and you can endorse others (managers, peers, etc).

8 ) Grow it. A resume is useless if it shows the brand you from 1938. You need to constantly update it as you grow, finish projects, switch organizations, etc. Always keep it up-to-date so it represents the “present brand you.” Feel free to grow your resume online as well, by creating a webpage dedicated to it or blending it onto a blog. I’ve seen people add social media elements(Facebook, Digg, Flickr, etc) to resumes such as Christopher Penn and Bryan Person, who have sharing features. Think about it this way; if someone finds your resume and has heard of an opening at a different company, they might share it using a social media tool!

9) Summarize it. If I were recruiting someone for a position I wouldn’t care about a resume. I’d ask for your blog, but for everyone else, I think a summary of your credentials is very very important. At the top of your resume, I’d like to see 3-4 sentences that showcases all your top achievements and your career objectives.

10) Customization. Aside from customizing your resume to fit your brand, you need to tailor it to the position your gunning for. The resume below is for a Oracle Certified Professional. Think about it, if you are branded as this type of expert, won’t it be clear to recruiters immediately once they see this resume? Aside from this, you should use keywords and experiences that match the position you are trying to fill.”

Resume tailoring 101

Your personal branding toolkit

1) Business cards
2) Portfolios
3) Resumes
4) Cover letters

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My Mother, My Mentor: The Perfectionist Goal

La Parroquia, Church of St.

Image via Wikipedia

My Mother was not an entrepreneur, but she taught me some things that still are with me today and guide me in business as well as other areas of life.

My mother was a perfectionist.  Long before laser levelers, every picture or painting in our home hung perfectly straight, centered or lined up by countless measuring of rulers, yardsticks and tape measures.  Forget that “eyeballing”.  That was for a different breed.  My mother wanted it straight, and that meant measured and verified straight.

When times were hard, in the beginning of her marriage, she went out and taught school to help support the family. When times were very good, she made the home and family her work.  That meant the silver sparkled and the mirrors gleamed.  And she intended that her children should shine too.

When I was in the eighth grade, we were given an art assignment that lasted over the whole year.  We were to take each age of art, from cave to contemporary, and create a scrapbook with essays of each period and it’s major artists. This was accompanied by copies of major paintings by representative artists and our comments on them.  Ultimately, it became a challenge to look at the paintings and figure out what was unique about them as our paintings started to number in the hundreds. This process of just looking at the paintings long enough forced us to begin to see them and understand them on a different level.  When most of the other kids turned in their scrapbooks  they were meager books an inch or so thick.  Mine, however, with my mother spurring me on each evening, turned into 5 huge volumes, 6 to 8 inches thick, with hand painted cover sheets for each period, featuring such elaborate items as the crown jewels of England, or an 18th century coach.

Did I become an overachiever ?  Did I have a choice?

My school actually created special awards for some of the things I did which were pretty much “over the top”, like how many tickets I sold for events, which really had nothing to do with my education.

But what I learned was to put in the extra effort to do things as well as I possibly could, to go beyond expectations to achieve another level of results.

And I tried to instill that in other colleagues.  I had a surgical clinic and recovery villas with a partner in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato Mexico.  I would tell the maintenance staff I wanted the silver to sparkle and the mirrors to gleam so that when clients walked in they would have to put on their sunglasses.  I knew I had succeeded when I heard the staff start training new employees by telling them, in Spanish,they : “wanted the silver to sparkle and the mirrors to gleam so that when clients walked in they would have to put on their “anteojos” (sunglasses).”

Although we had the best surgeons in Mexico, one of whom held the top position in a U.S. surgical association, many clients told us: ” As soon as I walked through door, I knew this was going to be where I wanted to be”.  Why?  Perfectionism. If you’re conscientious about the small things it conveys the message you will be conscientious about everything.

How does that apply to the Net or to blogging?  I think it applies to all business and careers.

You are trying to “brand” yourself — to unearth what is different and unique about you that your competitors don’t have. That could be whatever your talents, abilities and professional skills are — let’s say you’re creative and know everything about web design or fund raising or estate planning —plus — you will always go the extra mile.  You will come up with concepts or research no one has ever heard of; you will track down that lost document; you will work late in a crunch, or get a project completed and executed over a week end if a client’s website has crashed.  That can be the strongest part of your brand.

My mentors with my art project were both my mother and my teacher and many lessons flowed from that. On a personal level,  It transformed me into a life long art maven, haunting the best museums in the U.S. and wherever I traveled in the world, learning even more about aspiring to be the best. I also learned to solve problems in businesses by just looking at them long and hard enough.  At the dawn of the Net there was no choice but to learn html coding.  I just looked at it long and hard enough until it became clear to me how to do it…at least until newer and easier processes came along.  And I’ve continued daily to strive to do my best in business, where, like life, you always fall short, you never reach perfection but the sense of gratification and fulfillment is in the constant striving.

If you don’t have a mentor who inspires you with ambition to do your best, get one.  If you’ve had one, pass it along and become a mentor.  If you need one and are still looking, let AdvancingWomen.com be your virtual mentor. Write and tell us what you need to know and we’ll try to help. And please do share with us your lessons and your thoughts.

For more, read:

Entrepreneurs: Set Sail, Watch Out For Dragons
My Father, My Mentor : The Entrepreneur Seed
Match Your Entrepreneur Story
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Does Your Logo Capture The Essence of Your Brand? If Not, It Should

Logo Design and Branding Points To Remember – AdvancingWomen.com

A good logo design is highly instrumental in establishing a business brand and creating a long lasting impression among its customers. It should be able to create a powerful impact on the viewers and successfully exude the nature and attitude of a business. Ideally, a company logo design should be able to communicate your company ethos, principles, mission and the nature of product/service offered, to the viewers

AdvancingWomen.com went through a lot of soul searching creating it’s logo, working alongside  Lara August, branding guru and Creative Director of Robot Creative, an award-winning creative marketing firm in San Antonio, Texas.  We settled on the above graphic of a woman in the act of leaping over, or transcending a barrier, which is what AdvancingWomen.com is all about, supporting women in leveling the playing field, crashing through the glass ceiling and transcending those obstacles and barriers we all face.

Lara August had this to say about our logo:
“AdvancingWomen.com‘s  logo needed to work well when used as a masthead on their website, when reduced to a thumbnail to accompany their syndicated articles on the internet and also when standing alone in printed materials for seminars. A woman stepping over a barrier in a very modern, sleek style helps convey their meaning with a professional finish.

The stripe format is extremely versatile and works great at the top of their website, as well as on paper. The otherwise corporate mark is given a feminine touch with its vibrant colors – hot pink and bright orange.”  A tip of AdvancingWomen.com‘s hat to Lara for her creation.

And Sandra Sellani has some interesting points to make about the thoughts you might want to put into creating your own logo:

What Does Your Logo Say About You? |  Ladies Who Launch.

Sandra Sellani, a member of the Orange County, CA, Incubator, the author of What’s Your BQ? (Brand Quotient), and principal of The Sellani Group Brand Strategists gives the following savvy advice about creating your logo:

7 Ways to Avoid Logo Liabilities

“Be financially prudent when possible, but don’t pinch pennies on your logo. Use these seven steps to creating a logo that reflects your company’s image in a distinctive and memorable way:
1. Avoid “clip art.” Clip art consists of no-cost or low-cost graphics that are available to pretty much the entire world. Use it and I can guarantee that someone, somewhere, will be using it too. Choose a clip art flower for your landscaping business, and it might just pop up on the Web site of a wedding chapel or a mortuary.
2. Hire a professional designer. This doesn’t have to mean spending a fortune. Identify several designers who will work within your budget. Interview them, review their portfolios, and ask about the rationale behind each logo they designed in the past.
3. Don’t change your logo (if you can avoid it). Especially if it’s well-recognized. You’ll be tossing brand equity out the window. Consumers don’t want your logo to change any more than you want to see the pink arches of McDonald’s. If your logo is outdated, consider a face-lift to keep it recognizable and relevant. The Morton Salt umbrella girl has been around since 1914, and despite six “makeovers” is still perceived as the icon of a trusted brand.
4. View your logo in black and white. Color can hide a bad design. Also, there will be many occasions when your logo will be reproduced in a one-color format—for a newspaper ad, a promotional pen, or an embroidered T-shirt. If it looks good in black and white, it will look good in any medium.

5. Colors communicate messages about your brand and should be selected accordingly. Purple may suggest wealth; dark blue, authority; white, purity. Your designer will recommend colors that reflect your image.
6. Don’t be trendy. Logos should have a timeless look. Jumping on the latest trend can come back to haunt you (like a woman I know who, in hindsight, regrets going with the “Miami Vice” color scheme).
7. Be consistent. Have your designer create a logo standards manual which indicates the exact specifications of the logo image, size, font, placement, and colors. Don’t reproduce your logo without adhering to these guidelines.

Long Live Your Logo

There is much more to consider with the design of a logo and other visual elements of your brand. Get it right the first time and create a logo that you can live with for the life of your business.”

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