A lot has happened since the last time I posted a “Schawbel Report” on the state of personal branding worldwide. The July edition had some great information on how education is evolving with social media tools, how the workplace is becoming more virtual and reputation management 2.0. I finally got around to doing my 3rd report. There is a lot of information here, but it’s all very important to your personal brand and that of your company.

The economy crumbles

The need for personal branding is directly correlated to the amount of competition there is for jobs. When there are fewer jobs available and more people vying for those jobs, personal branding becomes the only method for entry. We’ve seen a huge economic downturn this year, with no hope for economic stimulus in the near future, so understanding how to become more valuable and known for something is crucial to your survival.

• 6.5% national unemployment rate (4.8 in 2007) according to the (National Labor Department)
• 1.2 million job cuts since January 2008 (Barack Obama)
• 350,000 jobs will be shed this month, which is the largest since May 1980 – MarketWatch
• Corporate layoffs at Sun Microsystems (6,000), Citigroup (50,000) and Gannett (3,000) – TechCrunch Layoff Archives
• 1.3% more college grads will be hired in 2009 (lowest in 6 years) – National Association of Colleges and Employers
• 1.5 million graduating college students face stiff competition for a shrinking number of jobs – Courant

A new hope for job seekers!

Aside from scaring you, I’d like to offer you some new hope (think Star Wars with Luke Skywalker!). Instead of submitting your resume blindly to 100 corporate websites, as well as Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com, I think you need to add some other tools to your arsenal. Would you rather apply for jobs or have them come to you? With the internet, you can advertise your brand and have employers come at you with offers.

• Success stories with social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
• 20 tips for using Twitter in a job search
• David Meerman Scott gives his advice, by stating “You want to find a new job? You have to stop thinking like an advertiser of a product and start thinking like a publisher of information.”
• Mobile job searching is taking off, with JobCompass. It allows iPhone users to scour for jobs with extra emphasis on location.

Millennials are still an important focus

Millennials are extremely important right now, not just because there are over 75 million of them, but because businesses don’t know how to market to them or recruit them. Also, millennials require a lot of help with their brands because they are used to revealing their social lives to the wrong audiences, using Facebook.

• More than 33% of millennials are dissatisfied with the technologies their employers provide – Accenture
• 70% of millennials leave their first job within two years – Experience Inc.
• 42% of companies want to invest more in millennials than other generations – MarketingVox
• The most effective technique for targeting millennials is to participate in viral marketing and social networking sites – eMarketer

Branding through social media becomes required

For those who believe branding through social media is a fad, I must tell you that it’s just the beginning. Anyone who reads my new book next year (Me 2.0) will STILL be ahead of the curve. Companies, as well as millennials, are expected to have competency in social media or at least know that the tools exist.

• 85% of social media users think companies should interact with their consumers through sites such as Facebook and Twitter – eWeek
• 75% of U.S. adults use web technologies and tools to connect with other people and to share information. Adoption has grown from 56% just a year ago. – Mediapost
  

Social media is part of journalism forever

• 100% of millennial journalists (aged 18 – 29) believe new media/communications tools are making journalism better – Society for New Communications Research
• 87% of millennial journalists reported that bloggers are important opinion shapers
• 50% of journalists report visiting a corporate website or online newsroom at least once a week – Bulldog Reporter

Social networking mayhem

Social networks can be your best friend or worst enemy, but either way, people are using them to find information about you or their customers. They might even be using advertising services to put banner ads on your screen.

• 55% of top-brand CMOs said they’re not too interested in social networking sites for marketing – Epsilon
• 79% of consumers clicked on an online ad but only about 57% of consumers on social networks clicked an ad – IDC
• 55 percent of workers use social networking sites at work for personal reasons – 8e6 Technologies
• Virgin Atlantic launched an investigation of several crew members who allegedly criticized the airline’s safety standards on Facebook. – Brand Republic
• Patriots cheerleader was fired after her pictures surfaced on Facebook and U2 singer Bono was embarrased with pictures taken with underage girls – Fox News & TMZ
• 99% of the Amherst College freshman class is connected on facebook before classes started – InsideFacebook.com

Technorati blog trends for “personal branding”

This chart really won’t tell you much. To me, it’s all up and down based on it’s acceptance in the media and with bloggers. There have been quite a few posts this quarter that are anti-PB, which actually draws more people to post and is part of why you see more traffic in certain time frames.

Google trends for “personal branding”

Ever since I started this blog, the amount of mentions PB has acquired has been quite volatile. I’ve always seen a consistent degree of coverage from South Africa though and a moderate amount from the US.

• Top regions: South Africa, Indonesia, Romania and the Netherlands
• Top cities: Amsterdam, Netherlands, Toronto, Canada and New York, NY, USA
• Top languages: Indonesian, Romanian, Dutch and English
  

I want to wish you all a happy thanksgiving and would like you to enter my latest contest, when you have a minute.  I’m still giving away a few more free books!  Other than that, I have a few announcements from my friends and a few new books that I just finished reading.

Friend announcements

Jim Kukral is one of the top internet marketers around, as well as someone who constantly provides value through video and his blog. His latest creation is called TheBizWebCoach.com, which helps small businesses solve their biggest problem, time. Small business owners do everything from taking out the trash to marketing. So what they don’t need is another 200-page ebook to read or 12-set DVD guide to spends months learning. They need small, time-saving, quick and actionable tips and guidance about how to improve their business. That’s what TheBizWebCoach.com provides.

Rajesh Setty is a long-time personal branding evangelist and the author of “Beyond Code,” which has a forward by Tom Peters. He is giving away his entire book for free over the internet. This was a gesture from Rajesh because it’s thanksgiving and he wanted to give back in a big way.

Jason Alba just finished a 2nd edition of his book “I’m on LinkedIn — Now What???.” This book is available as an eBook and as a paperback book. The book tells you all the ways that you can use LinkedIn to enhance your career, find a job and locate new business. If you want to make 30% on the sale, you can sign up as an affiliate on happyabout.info/linkedinhelp.php.

Jack Humphrey, a columnist for Personal Branding Magazine and an expert in blogging and web 2.0 stuff.  He just launched a contest around his new site, BlogSuccess.com.  There are going to be incredible prizes, such as The Bellaggio Deluxe Package for Two Nights in Las Vegas for 2 people, which is valued at $3,500!  The other prizes include a 42 inch LCD Vizio HDTV, an Apple Macbook and a Flip Mino video camera.  The Blog Success JV contest runs from December 2nd 2008 until December 15th 2008 at 12:00 PM EDT.  The top 10 affiliates that sell the most Blog Success memberships will each receive highly valuable prizes.  The affiliate who generates the most downloads of our free Blog Talk Monitor software but does not make
it into the top 10 will also receive a prize.

Book recommendations

Scott Shane is a Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies, in the Department of Economics at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.  He just released his 12th book called Fool’s Gold?: The Truth Behind Angel Investing in America.

In Fool’s Gold, he draws on hard data from the Federal Reserve and other sources to paint the first reliable group portrait of the lionized angel investors. Surprisingly, he finds that angel investors are fewer, contribute less, and involve themselves in fewer start-ups than the conventional wisdom suggests. Most angels typically still have their day jobs, make investments of $10,000 or less, and take little or no role in assisting entrepreneurs build their companies. Drawing on his rich store of data, Shane offers recommendations to entrepreneurs and angels alike for the most productive use of angel investing, and suggests how policymakers can encourage it.  Massively researched and briskly written, Fools’ Gold offers the first real resource on this misunderstood aspect of our entrepreneurial system.

Leonard Mlodinow teaches about randomness to future scientists at Caltech. Along the way he also wrote for the television series MacGyver and Star Trek: The Next Generation.  He is the author of The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives.

A drunkard’s walk is a type of random statistical distribution with important applications in scientific studies ranging from biology to astronomy. Mlodinow leads us on a walk through the hills and valleys of randomness and how it directs our lives more than we realize. Mlodinow introduces important historical figures such as Bernoulli, Laplace and Pascal, emphasizing their ideas rather than their tumultuous private lives. Mlodinow defines such tricky concepts as regression to the mean and the law of large numbers, which should help us navigate the daily deluge of election polls and new studies on how to live to 100.

Personal branding news

Personal Branding Magazine

The big news next week is that the sample issue of Personal Branding Magazine Volume 2, Issue 2 comes out on Monday, for you to download free of charge. The full paid issue will be made available on November 1st. I will discuss this in depth next week and preview it for you.  This is your last chance to download a free sample of Volume 2 Issue 1, which is called “Millennials: Changing the Way We Do Business.”

2008 Personal Brand Awards

The winners of the 2008 Personal Brand Awards will be featured in the next issue of the magazine and blogged about next week. Everyone will be very excited about how was recognized this year. I hope it isn’t too much of a surprise!

My new book

Me 2.0 is 100% complete now and I’ll be speaking about it more in the coming weeks. I’m hoping to launch the book’s website on December 1st. In terms of process, galley copies for the media are being sent out next week and the book will be bound in December, ready for book stores next year. If anyone’s ever interested in the publishing process, shoot me an email. If you are a blogger and are interested in blogging about it, also email me and I’ll see what I can do for you.

Upcoming Events

Ypulse Mashup – Boston

My friend Anastasia Goodstein of Ypulse fame connected with me today about her upcoming Ypulse Mashup event in Boston. It will be held at Boston University on November 6th and 7th. Readers of this blog are entitled to a 30% discount off the sticker price if you use the promotional code “friend” when you register. You can register here and there is a Facebook event page here. Representatives from MTV, Fidelity, Fortune, The Boston Globe, Virgin Mobile, and more will be in attendance. My good friend Ryan Healy, from Brazen Careerist, will be speaking as well.  On the 7th, I’ll be holding a round table session called “Millennial Branding 2.0″ if you’re interested.

MIT SocialMediaCamp.us – Boston

On November 3rd, from 6 – 8 PM, there will be a social media bootcamp at MIT in Boston. The purpose of the event is to show how social media can be used to market yourself and position yourself on the Internet. I will be presenting with Carla Blumenthal, another millennial heavy hitter and Life Before Noon blogger. If you’re interested in what I’ll be talking about, it will mainly be a quick introduction to personal branding and then my personal story of how I’ve used social media to build a powerful brand. Carla will make a presentation about her personal experiences with social media as a college graduate.

Book review

Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina

Steve is famous for his personal development blog. He just released his book that is based on his blog and offers a lot of self-growth tips for you. In his book, he offers seven fundamental principles of personal development, as well as six areas from which each of us can improve upon. Today, I will review a few of his guiding principles for you, including truth, love and power.

• Truth: We grow by discovering new truths about ourselves and our reality. You can accelerate your personal growth by consciously seeking truth and deliberately turning away from false-hood and denial. Many people try and take shortcuts, but the best way to succeed is to understand that things take time and you have to be honest with yourself. If your thoughts, beliefs, and actions aren’t aligned with truth, your results will suffer.
• Love: Love is much more than an emotion. You have the choice to approach someone or avoid them alltogether. The decision you make to connect with another person is an act of love. Steve believes connections could be why we’re on this planet! He says that its our actions that cause us to link with some people and ignore others. If you want to grow, then you have to make this choice: to strengthen some connections and weaken others.
• Power: Steve defines power as your ability to consciously and deliberately create the world around you. If you don’t have much power, then you can’t satisfy your needs and desires, but if you do you can control your environment and prosper. With more power comes the ability to achieve your goals.

Steve Pavlina is widely recognized as the most successful personal-development blogger on the Internet, attracting more than two million monthly readers who value his unique insights. You can follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his famous blog.

I’ve wanted to do this post for a while and luckily I waited for the perfect time, when 4 of the biggest media players (traditional media) have embraced social networking. From a personal branding perspective, I recommend getting a profile on at least one of these if you have very little presence or are a “beginner.” I say this because these profiles will rank high and can protect you against any bad press in the future (when it comes to Google). Also, if you are looking to expand your professional network, then these networks will help you find the right people.

BusinessWeek

Business Exchange is BusinessWeek’s social network. There are over 3,000 news and blog items so far in this social network. You can read updated news, blogs, and resources about social networking all across this community. There are many familiar faces in this network, such as Anita Campbell, John Jantsch, Bryan Eisenberg and John Battelle.

Personal branding: The main benefit of using this social network is that, like the rest, it ranks high in Google because it’s supported by BusinessWeek.com’s PageRank of 8. Also, after you setup a profile, all of your actions (alongside your peers) will be syndicated on the main page, such as a blog post or an article you find. Very influential people are on-board already, such as the one’s listed above.

Fast Company

FastCompany.com is a free Website that features editorial content with a focus on business ideas and innovation. With more than 95,000 active members, the site is also a meeting place for a global community of forward-thinking business leaders.

Personal branding: The main benefit to your brand is visibility. Since this social network was the first of it’s kind for a traditional media source, there are thousands more users than the competition. The bad part about this is that it’s more competitive to get your blog postings listed on the homepage, but it’s possible! By blogging, answering daily questions and commenting on articles, you can be on the front page of one of the most trafficked media sites. Fast Company has a PageRank of 7 as well. You can connect with like-minded people by joining special interest groups and adding friends.

New York Times

TimesPeople is a new way to discover what other readers find interesting on NYTimes.com — and to make recommendations of your own. With TimesPeople, you can share articles, videos, slideshows, blog posts, reader comments, and ratings and reviews of movies, restaurants and hotels. Once you have signed up, TimesPeople begins to collect the public actions you take on NYTimes.com.

Other readers can choose to see your activity, and you can choose to see theirs. You’ll have several ways to begin building your network: use the built-in search box, select from a list of suggested users you might know, or import your e-mail contacts. And you’ll continue to expand your network simply by using TimesPeople and encountering other readers.

Personal branding: The main benefit from using this social network is that you can track down people who are interested in the same exact topics you are in an instant. You can learn more about other people and likewise, have something to talk to them about and give value. NYTimes.com has a PageRank of 9 and is probably the most respected source on the internet.

Wall Street Journal

Journal Community allows WSJ.com’s million or so paid online subscribers to comment on every story, pose their own discussion questions, e-mail one another and set up profiles that will allow others to see what they’re doing on the site. This social network is for business professionals, built around the content of the newspaper and web site but not limited to it.

Personal branding: The WSJ is restricting social network users to the one’s who are paying money, which is dumb. Other than that, if you are willing to fork over the money, this network is incredible for your brand. By commenting on posts and being active on this site, you are now connected with people from around the world. Profiles on this site will share a PageRank of 8.

Hot events

Brazen Boston

Brazen Careerist, a company started by Ryan Paugh, Ryan Healy and Penelope Trunk, is coming to my hometown (Boston). For those who haven’t heard of this company, they are an online community and career center for Gen-Y. The community boasts over 100 Gen-Y thought leader bloggers, whose combined insight and ideas are changing the world of work. For their 3rd community event, they will be in Boston on Thursday, October 2nd at 6:00 PM at M.J. O’Connor’s (27 Columbus Ave.). There is going to be free food and an OPEN BAR.

I’ve supported this community from the beginning, as one of the first invited, because they have all the right ideas and are putting them into action, such as using the power of social media to help young superstars have a voice. I’ll personally be at this event, so register ASAP.

GasPedal Scholarships

Andy Sernovitz, the word-of-mouth marketing guru, just informed me that people can sign up for his GasPedal Crash Course (GasPedal is his consulting company). They have spaces reserved for charitable organizations and bloggers. If you’re interested, he asks that you fill out the scholarship form and the deadline is today (sorry for the late notice). Personal Branding Blog readers receive a $250 discount using the blog code “thisblogisawesome” when you register.

BiztechDay 2008

BiztechDay is a no-fluff one day technology learning bootcamp for small business owners and entrepreneurs. It is the place for you to learn how to grow your business using the power of the Internet & Web 2.0 technologies. Technology should be an easy tool to improve your business. Tim Ferris, the NY Times Bestselling Author of the Four Hour Work Week, will be headlining this event. BiztechDay is the only conference that will get down and dirty with the Web 2.0 basics you need to propel your business to the next level.

This event takes place on Saturday, October 25th at the Hilton San Francisco Hotel. $50 discount ($249) using the code “Personal Branding Network.” Register at biztechday.com/register.

Author Pow-Wow

This event is for authors who are looking to build their personal brands and sell books. Held on December 9th and 10th in Chicago at the amazing Catalyst Ranch, this year’s event will be even more inspiring for authors, as we focus on a specific question: How Is a Good Idea Communicated?

At the 800-CEO-READ Author Pow Wow, authors engage in two days of sessions focusing on what a good idea sounds like to publishers, what a good idea sounds like to the media, to an audience, and to a speaker’s bureau. Additionally, how does a good idea look visually, how does it sound to readers, how is it applied to new media, and how does it sound as a story to apply to a number of different channels. There are currently 40 spots open, so register now. Hat tip to Phil Gerbyshak.

Reality Check

Guy Kawasaki has written yet another book that is required reading by any entrepreneur starting a company, especially in Silicon Valley. As Guy Kawasaki puts it, “If the two most popular words in your company are partner and strategic, and partner has become a verb, and strategic is used to describe decisions and activities that don’t make sense” . . . it’s time for a reality check.

Kawasaki has compiled his best wit, wisdom, and contrarian opinions in handy book form. From competition to customer service, innovation to marketing, he shows readers how to ignore fads and foolishness while sticking to commonsense practices.

The 100 Best Business Books of All Time

Jack Covert is the founder and president of 800-CEO-READ, a specialty business book retailer that began as a subsidiary of the Milwaukee-based Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops. Todd Sattersten is the company’s vice president. Both read countless business books every year and review many of them on their website and blog.

The 100 Best puts each book in context, so that readers can quickly find solutions to the problems they face, such as how best to spend The First 90 Days in a new job or how to take their company from Good to Great. Many of the choices are surprising – you’ll find reviews of Moneyball and Orbiting the Giant Hairball, but not Jack Welch’s memoir.

Supercapitalism

Robert Reich teaches public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. Supercapitalism is his eleventh book (See his NPR interview).

Reich urges us to rebalance the roles of business and government. Power, he writes, has shifted away from us in our capacities as citizens and toward us as consumers and investors. While praising the spread of global capitalism, he laments that supercapitalism has brought with it alienation from politics and community. The solution: to separate capitalism from democracy, and guard the border between them.

Personal news

I’d like to announce that Sunday is my 25th birthday (9/14/83). If any of you are in the Boston area let me know and I’ll give you details about where I’ll be throwing a party on Saturday night. It’s really jaw dropping to see that this year is already coming to an end.

This weekend I’ll be wrapping up my first book “Me 2.0,” which will be going into production on Monday. The process has been very long and stressful. It’s certainly not over yet. In fact, my book program will last till the end of May if not later. Wish me luck!

Note: If you’re interested in helping with my book campaign in any way, please let me know. I appreciate it.

Brand Camp University

Hajj Fleming, a fellow personal branding expert, author and speaker, will be hosting this event on September 27th in Detroit. My friend Scott Monty is one of the speakers at this event (he works for Ford in Michigan doing social media).

They are going to be speaking about personal branding in a web 2.0 world, search engine optimization, career development and more. Basically a lot of what I talk about here on this blog. You can sign up on Hajj’s fancy website.

Making It All Work

David Allen has developed another book as a follow up to his NY Times bestselling book “Getting Things Done.” This book will make life and work a game you can win. David Allen shows us how to excel in dealing with our daily commitments, the unexpected, and the information overload that threatens to drown us. Making It All Work provides an instantly usable, success-building tool kit for staying ahead of the game. This book addresses how to figure out where you are in life and what you need; how to be your own consultant and a CEO of your life; moving from hope to trust in decision-making; when not to set goals and much more.

The 29% Solution

Ivan Misner just came out with a brand new book that his #1 on Amazon, called the 29% Solution. Ivan is the Founder & Chairman of BNI, the world’s largest business networking organization. He has written 10 books, including the NY Times Bestseller Master of Sales. This book will help you develop your networking skills, increase your connections, and become part of the 29% of people who are seperated from the rest of the world by just six degrees. Ivan, and I, believe that your income is directly related to your ability to network your business for growth.

Creating Magic

Lee Cockerell, a former Executive Vice President of Operations for the Walt Disney World Resort, just released a new book called “Creating Magic.” He led a team of 40,000 cast members and was responsible for 20 resort hotels, 4 theme parks,2 water parks and a shopping and entertainment village. In his book, he talks about how outstanding leadership can create career magic. A leader can inspire employees, delight customers and achieve business results. Lee is big into social media, with his own Twitter account, blog and a website developed to Gen-Y called “Creating Gen-Y Magic.” Greg Rollett, is his Gen-Y blogger advocate.

Always Be Testing

Bryan Eisenberg, a NY Times bestselling author and co-founder of FutureNow, Inc. just released his latest book to help you get more leads, sales and profit from your existing website. This is an expert guide to Google’s free A/B and multivariate website testing tool, Google Website Optimizer. It will help you develop a testing framework to meet your goals and objectives, optimize landing pages, and you can even save $25 on Google AdWords with the included coupon inside the book. Not bad huh? Bryan also publishes one of the top marketing blogs, GrokDotCom if you want to check it out.

Book announcement

All, the next few weeks are going to be very busy, challenging and hectic for me as I go through the editing phase of my book, which is due to production in just a few weeks. If you email me, I will send a quick response, but save it in my inbox when my time frees up to give you the attention you deserve. From what I’ve heard, you might see it on Amazon come November, but it won’t be in book stores nationally until next April (2009). My good friends at Kaplan are going to be publishing it as well!

My book is on personal branding (go figure!) and is targeted at Gen-Y/millennials/students who are trying to figure out how to get the job of the their dreams, without desperately applying for jobs. Just about anyone can benefit from it though. As you know from reading this blog, there is A LOT of information to cover, but in the book you will find all the basics to help build brand YOU. The title you ask? I’ll be revealing that sometime soon.

Tim Sander’s new book rocks!

Are you saving the world at work? I am!

Tim Sander’s wants you to save the world at work. As you can see above, he has even designed promotional shirts for his new book, Saving The World At Work and a promotional video explaining how he’s going to market it (a must see for book authors). Tim is a personal branding evangelist and understands that companies succeed when they treat their people right. His new book, which you can pre-order on Amazon.com right now, comes out on September 16th, which is 2 days after my 25th birthday. His first book, called Love Is The Killer App was a New York Times and international best seller. Tim was also Yahoo!’s Chief Solutions Officer.

Tim believes that companies need to make a difference in society through products, manufacturing methods, environmental efforts and community outreach. He believes, and I agree with him, that companies that do not clean up their acts will be left in the dust. In Tim’s book, he makes a compelling argument for the necessity for businesses to appeal to their customers’ hearts as well as their wallets. If you can’t wait for the book, you can also subscribe to his popular blog.
Update: Tim is looking for editors for his new website. Apply here!

I’m speaking in Boston on Wednesday

This Wednesday from 6-9pm in Boston, I will be presenting LIVE to raise money for a non-profit called “OYFP.” It’s a free event and all are welcome if you’re in the area. As always, it will be video recorded and blogged about. The place will be at the Kennedy’s Midtown in Downtown Boston on 42 Province Street.

Appetizers will be available at a 30% discount for event attendees. A $3 suggested donation is optional.

Book recommendations

Stephen M.R. Covey just wrote an amazing book on probably the most important part of relationship networking, “trust.” It is called The Speed of Trust and Stephen draws on businesses cases from his years as a CEO, reminding us that there’s plenty of room for improvement on this virtue. His father, and very famous author, Stephen R. Covey, wrote the forward of the book. By focusing on building trust you will be more productive and live a more satisfied life. Trust, says Stephen M.R. Covey, is the very basis of the new global economy, and he shows how trust—and the speed at which it is established with clients, employees and constituents—is the essential ingredient for any high–performance, successful organization.

Srikumar S. Rao wrote a book called Are You Ready to Succeed?, which is based on a course he taught at Columbia Business School. It is a Buddhism-inspired self-help book with tools to effect fundamental changes and find inner peace. His goal when writing this book was to help people along the path of self-improvement and corporate enlightenment. This book will help you become at peace with yourself and make for a better life and work experience. The book is an international best-seller and has been translated into many languages and distributed in all continents. He has conducted workshops for and spoken before executives of Microsoft, Google, Lehman Brothers, McDonald’s, Chubb, IBM, United Airlines, Allstate and dozens of others.

Spencer Ante has been writing about technology, business and culture for more than 12 years. He is currently the computers department editor at BusinessWeek. His new book, Creative Capital, is a book about Georges Doriot who created the venture capital industry. It traces the pivotal events in Doriot’s life, including his experience as a decorated brigadier general during World War II; as a maverick professor at Harvard Business School; and as the architect and founder of the first venture capital firm, American Research and Development. It artfully chronicles Doriot’s business philosophy and his stewardship in startups, such as the important role he played in the formation of Digital Equipment Corporation and many other new companies that later grew to be influential and successful.

Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery and Mark Thompson’s book Success Built to Last is one remarkable book. Porras, who co-wrote the original Built to Last, teams with successful life coaching company co-founder Emery and top executive coach Thompson, to interview 300 successful people, tagged “builders,” to uncover the secrets of their winning life journeys. They interview extraordinary business people such as Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Jack Welch and Steve Jobs. You will learn so much from hearing from these leaders in this book it’s not even funny. Prepare to learn from the best.

Matt Richtel wrote a piece of fiction that will make you get HOOKED (that is also the title). Matt is currently a New York Times reporter and will be releasing another book soon. Here is a quick summary of his current book to “hook you.”

Nat Idle, a medical student turned journalist, sits in a San Francisco cafe when a woman puts a folded note on his table. Nat picks up the note, walks to the door to follow her, opens the note and reads: Get out of the Cafe, NOW! The cafe explodes. Sitting in the rubble, he discovers the impossible: the handwriting on the note appears to belong to his deceased ex-girlfriend, a powerful venture capitalists who died four years earlier. Thus begins Hooked and Nat’s frantic quest for answers. His search ultimately presents him with a series of surprises and twists and leads him to discover unnerving truths about himself, and the frenetically-paced digital world he inhabits.

It’s been quite a challenging week for me after getting a bad cold these past few days, but as they say “the show must go on.” Passion is a crazy thing, but it certainly allows me to keep going with all that I manage on a reoccurring basis. I have a lot of exciting announcements and recommendations today for you, before you indulge in weekend festivities.

Personal Branding Magazine Goes Print?

That is actually a true statement to some degree. I was originally going to plan this news for the November issue but got excited and executed appropriately. First, to clarify, if you do the paid subscription, you will not receive hard copies (a print magazine). We simply aren’t there yet, but I do understand that people consume information differently and would like more options for receiving the magazine.

So, today you are given the option to purchase individual issues and receive them in the mail using a new service called MagCloud (Hat tip to Vikram Rajan, a fellow personal brand’er). For $7.80 (includes shipping), the entire issue will be printed and sent to your residence. I don’t view this as expensive because, unless you purchase in bulk, it does cost a lot to print and ship it to you. Magazines like Forbes are able to mass distribute, thus lower the cost per issue. We don’t have that privilege yet. Go ahead and try it. Let me know what you think! Note, free samples are still available.

Need help starting a blog?

There are two people on the web that I envy for their blog building skills. They are both far more technical and savvy with WordPress than I am. At some point in my career, I’ll be going to these experts for help. Aside from these two, Vignet.com builds extremely high quality blogs and websites (such as Seth Godin’s Squidoo). Note that these solutions cost money, but the ROI is priceless!

• Cody McKibben is a Gen-Y blogger, consultant and freelance writer. His goal is to help you build a better blog and trust me, his work is impressive. The best way to demonstrate expertise or knowledge in the blog world is to build your own blog in style. See if you’re a web designer/developer than your own website must be remarkable because it sells your entire business (his or her website is a representation of what I’ll be receiving). Cody’s Thrilling Heroics blog is excellent and he deserves way more subscribers than he has. Cody also started a consulting blog business and has a blog for it. Be sure to check it out.
• Nate Whitehill is someone I admire. As with Cody, he does professional blogs for personal and corporate brands. His portfolio is strong, including his work on ShoeMoney’s and John Chow’s. For anyone who haven’t heard of these two internet mogul’s, they are extremely knowledgeable in SEO, blogging and internet marketing. Nate blogs himself and his business is called Unique Blogdesigns.

Personal branding articles

What to Wear to Work

Michael Mattis, a Social Media Manager at BNET just directed me to this feature article. It offers usable advice for dressing for success in today’s topsy-turvy, business casual world – a world that seems to be without rules yet has a set of has unwritten rules all its own. Under this topic, BNET offers four pieces of great content, including a best practices for entry-level dress podcast, 10 ways to upgrade your look (the appearance element of personal branding), five rules for style in a casual work environment, and how to order a custom made suit.

Web 2.0’s Impact on Your Job Search

Mark Cummuta blogs about career development for CIO Magazine. His recent post, “Web 2.0’s Impact on Your Job Search – Name Recognition? Or a Transition?” is quite interesting. “Web 2.0 is changing how we perceive each other. These tools give us opportunities to share and learn from each other. But as we all know, they also give us opportunity to see others’ basest traits. There is risk in opening ourselves to anyone, and the risks in Web 2.0 interactions expand those “someones”. Risk of identity theft, false representation, fraud, “flaming”, or even simple misunderstanding.” It’s important for us all to view other perspectives on the topic of personal branding, web 2.0 and career development.

Volume 2 overview

After an entire year of Personal Branding Magazine (4 issues), we’re back with an explosive and very timely issue. You will notice a few design changes in this next volume starting with the main banner, which now uses the consistent logo over/under the “R” to create a registered mark. Expect a lot more great articles from experts this year and I look forward to hearing your feedback. Today, we would also like to announce a newly created Facebook page for the magazine, which you can be a fan of and receive updates. If you’ve read the magazine, even a previous issue, there is now a Facebook group just for YOU.

Volume 2 Issue 1 – FREE sample available today (HERE)

This issue explores a new generation of hip and cool youngsters, known simply as Gen-Y, but also referred to as the millennials. The long anticipated and earned retirement of baby boomers has given rise to the millennials, who are over 70 million strong. The legacy workplace will cease to exist as this generation enters and recruiters must be prepared to change their ways or self-destruct. Some millennials have even started changing our world as we speak. These new-age entrepreneurs are tech-savvy and ready to make a difference. Are you prepared?

What’s in the free sample?

There are a total of five articles in the free sample, including a piece on relationships by Tiffany Monhollon, as well as a sizing up of the millennial group by non other than our Blog Marketing Columnist, Jack Humphrey. You will also find part of my interview with 23-year-old CEO and author, Ryan Allis. There is also a few snippets of interviews with the famous John Earle (Johnny Cupcakes) and one of the most popular authors and bloggers in Silicon Valley, Ben Casnocha. Each of these individuals have achieved success as a millennial and we can all learn something from them.

When is the full issue coming out?

Paid subscribers of the magazine (you can subscribe here) will be receiving their copy of this issue, in full length (26 articles) on August 1st.

Who contributed?

Experts, authors, coaches and bloggers such as:

• Rohit Bhargava, Author, Personality Not Included
• Carmine Gallo, Author, Fire It Up!
• Eve Tahmincioglu, Author, From the Sandbox to the Corner Office
• Alexandra Levit, Author, How’d You Score That Gig
• Trent Hamm, Editor, The Simple Dollar
• J.T. O’Donnell, Author, CAREEREALISM
• J.D. Roth, Editor, Get Rich Slowly
• Laura Zurowski, Director of Outreach, Marist College
• Jonathan Blank, Public Relations Manager, Capgemini

Special thanks to the staff:

• Selina McCusker reported on Johnny Cupcakes
• Scott Bradley interviewed Mike Michalowicz
• Miriam Salpeter contributed an article on the millennials
• Connie Bensen edited like a rock star (along with Miriam)
• Columnists: Jay Deragon, Tiffany Monhollon, Rick Mahn, Liz Pabon, Rob Cuesta, Nina Burokas, Maria Elena, Vikram Rajan, Donna Fontenot, Bonnie Kurka, Jack Humphrey and Jim Stroud

Thanks to the sponsors

A lot has happened since the last time I posted a “Schawbel Report” on the state of personal branding worldwide. The March edition shed some light into the spread of personal branding from the US to Australia to India. There is a lot of information here, but it’s all very important to your personal brand and that of your company.

Economy’s impact on your brand

• 81,755 layoff in June, up 47% compared with June 2007
• 475,948 layoff from January till June
• Gas prices continue to rise to $5 per gallon (projected to be $7 by 2010)
• In a survey of 539 U.S. workers, 44% of respondents said higher gas prices have affected their commutes.
• Commuting changes people are making as a result of higher gas prices include: looking for a new job closer to home (30%), working from office locations closer to home (29%), working fewer days of the week (26%), asking for increased compensation (25%), taking public transportation more frequently (23%), and walking or biking to work (18%).

Education is evolving – there is hope!

The State of Connecticut is piloting new technology co-developed by IBM, startup firm SkillProof, and Pace University to analyze thousands of job postings on corporate Web sites. The insight is helping state colleges and universities develop curriculum that better meets the skill needs of employers. The four job sets identified so far include actuaries, accountants and auditors, financial analysts, and financial brokers. There is an emerging high demand for IT professionals with business analysis skills.

The University of Minnesota polled it’s students recently about the internet. 94 percent used the Internet, 82 percent go online at home and 77 percent had a profile on a social networking site. When asked what they learn from using social networking sites, the students listed technology skills as the top lesson, followed by creativity, being open to new or diverse views and communication skills.

Georgetown University has created an online community specifically for alumni. The Web site includes an alumni directory, class notes and the Career Network, a searchable network comprised of over 1,800 alumni worldwide to share career advice and expertise, according to the Hoyas Online web site. The University of Massachusetts has set up it’s own community as well for alumni.

Recruitment gets a social media twist

77% of recruiters used specialist or niche job boards, while 38% had also moved to social networking sites and 5% had even set up a virtual office in Second Life office. Recent UK research found 62% of employers looked at social networking sites to check job applicants, and 1/4 admitted not hiring someone because of what they had posted online.

The virtual global office

• Best Buy has a social network called Blueshirtnation.com, which has attracted 20,000 users. The overall turnover rate at the company is 60%, while turnover of people using the site is just 8%-12%.

• IBM Corp. marketing manager Shari Chiara gets updates on what her colleagues are doing via a networking site called Beehive, where she posts her own photos and news.

• At Procter & Gamble Co., where employees link with one another on PeopleConnect, a vibrant online community has generated 385 blogs on topics from “greening” the Boston office to corporate humor.

• Starting this week at Nortel Networks Corp., a global group is using technology that offers a rich virtual world of 3-D settings in which colleagues can meet. Photo IDs pop up next to their avatars when someone moves close enough to talk.

State of the conversation

3.5 billion WOM (word of mouth) conversations occur daily in the US. Offline WOM accounts for 92% of these (75% face to face; 17% by phone), and email, IM/text messaging and chatrooms/blogs account for a combined 7%.

Companies are being called out on how they treat employees. Employees have two new places to talk about their experiences at work. Criticat and Glassdoor are trying to reveal the truth being working at companies, but how accurate are they?

Reputation management 2.0 and beyond

• Identity theft: A study by Survey Sampling International (SSI) found that more than 50% of Britons, Germans, French and Spanish were worried about identity theft and misuse of personal data.
• Mobile broadcasting: Now any second of the day (24/7 ladies and gentleman) your brand can move from reality to the internet, to 100,000 different websites, all for everyone to see. Services like Qik, Flixwagon, Kyte and UStream will prove useful for those brave enough to be fully transparent.
• Who is watching you?: Mashable’s Steven Hodson wrote a great post about how national security agencies are working with telecoms like AT&T to monitor all Internet traffic.
• Spam: In the past 12 months, more than 4/5 of social networking site users said they received unwanted (or spam) “friend” invitations, messages or postings on their social or professional network account.
• Social network regulations: 9/10 people think there should be tighter regulation of information on social networking websites, according to new research.
• Fraudsters: According to Symantec’s latest Internet Security Threat Report, for the second half of 2007, there were 87,963 “phishing hosts”.

Brand U 3D

Google has just launched Lively, a new social network built around the concept of each user creating an avatar and a personal virtual room that can be embedded anywhere on the Web. In my opinion, this service is much stronger than Second Life because it is accessible through your browser, instead of an application. This means, at least in terms of the workplace, you might be able to use it at work and it poses a great opportunity for companies. It is BRAND U, but in 3d, and in a virtual environment.

Organizations are adopting personal branding

A great example comes from the accountancy firm BDO Stoy Hayward. To gain a competitive edge in the marketplace, a manager took a course and started training staff. She offered personal sessions lasting around an hour and a half to senior members of staff. The sessions were so popular that workers returned to their departments enthusing about the training, and less senior staff demanded their own workshops, attending in groups of 25 at a time.

55% of consumers want ongoing conversations with brands. 89% of consumers would feel more loyal to the brand if they are asked to be in focus groups.

Gen-Y makes decisions

• In the workplace: Nearly 73% of Gen-Yers surveyed said they are concerned about being able to balance a career with personal obligations. 51% of Millennials surveyed believe professionals entering the workforce should have to spend only one to two years proving themselves in entry-level positions.

• As entrepreneurs. Half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job. Today, 80% of the colleges and universities in the U.S. now offer courses on entrepreneurship; 60% of Gen Y business owners consider themselves to be serial entrepreneurs, according to Inc. magazine. Tellingly, 18 to 24-year-olds are starting companies at a faster rate than 35 to 44-year-olds. And 70% of today’s high schoolers intend to start their own companies, according to a Gallup poll.

Blogs blogs blogs

• Average blogger age: A BIGresearch study found that the average age of adult bloggers is actually 37.6. 55% of millennials (ages 13 to 24) surveyed read a blog.
• Newspapers and blogs: A full 95% of the top 100 US newspapers now offer reporter blogs (up from 80% in 2006), while 58% of the top 100 magazines provide this service.
• Blogs for editorial staffs: A limited-scale Prospero Technologies study from late 2007 found that 78% of US businesses that use social media applications included blogs for their editorial staffs.
• Blogs to measure sentiment: A survey of US journalists by PR Week, PR Newswire and Millward Brown, 57.7% of respondents said they used blogs to measure sentiment, and 51% used them to gauge how their competitors were covering stories.

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