Announcing DanSchawbel.com: The Next Generation of Personal Branding Online

August 25, 2007 at 7:48 pm | In Career Development, Futures, Interview, Networking, Personal Branding, Podcasts, Positioning, Project Management, Reputation Management, Success Methodologies, Success Strategies, magazine, news, tv | 10 Comments

Over the course of the past 6 months, I have consumed every piece of knowledge on Personal Branding. I’ve been a product of Personal Branding as well as a spokesman on the subject. I decided after all of my ventures to build an example of what all Personal Brand websites should look like now and in the future. I call this the “360 degree view of a brand.” There were so many different area’s in my life that I wanted to share, so I created a storyline around all of them and the result was DanSchawbel.com. With the 360 degree view, you will view both my professional life, as well as my personal life, all from the same screen. The goal here was to share my learnings, passion and enthusiasm with Personal Branding, while explaining how you can have similar success. I also find it quite interesting that I have built my Personal Brand by preaching on that topic.

Personal Branding really fit my interests, goals, aspirations and strengths, so all my work in this area was well worth it. I’d also like to thank everyone in my network, as well as all of those who opened the opportunities I needed to succeed. There are a few select members of my network who have inspired me and have given me the confidence I needed to overcome obstacles and strive for excellence.

A special thank you to:

  • Alison Doyle: While first starting out on the scene, with a single blog and idea, I decided to publicize my work. Alison, the About.com representative for the “Job Search” area, wanted me to write an article on Personal Branding for her to content area. After seeing my work displayed, I decided to write for more and more places.
  • Jason Alba: With no links on my blog, I had no foundation for building up the property. I reached out to several bloggers who touched on Personal Branding topics (such as career development and marketing), although I found almost no blogs solely dedicated to the subject (which is why I started mine). Jason added me immediately and I started commenting on his blog and other blogs at this time. Now I find myself quoted in his new book and other projects.
  • Family: As I always tell everyone, support is a catalyst for success. It’s not easy to take risks, invest your time in new areas and take on so many projects at once. With my family’s support, I was able to emerge as a leader of Personal Branding, while still retaining my day job.
  • Mentors: Through each of my 8 internships and now into my full-time job at EMC Corporation, I had the pleasure and fortune to have great mentors. People such as Jason Mundy, Joe Markey, Bob Carp, Edward Meyer, Kevin Vacca, Robert DeAngelis, Dean Tsuvales, Marc Baron served as great mentors through my travels.

DanSchawbel.com Press Release

 

It’s almost hard to believe that I was able to build this website from scratch, while building my brand through other mediums, while working full-time at a Fortune 500 company. I appreciate any blog or media promotions you may help me with. I feel that this site will prove to the world that Personal Branding can navigate you to future success. If you have any comments or suggestions involving DanSchawbel.com, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

 

Thank you!

Develop a community to evangelize your brand

August 20, 2007 at 8:38 pm | In Futures, Networking, Personal Branding, Positioning, Project Management, Success Methodologies, Success Strategies | 8 Comments

Evangelism Personal Branding

What if there were hundreds of people around the world that all spoke your language and were willing to communicate your message to others you may not be able to reach? An evangelist is an individual who serves as the outside voice of your company. Evangelists are created through mutual interest on a given subject and are of high value to any corporate brand or Personal Brand. As you decide which niche you have a passion for, you should keep in mind who else has preached on that subject, through blogging or articles you read. In order to be more knowledgeable in your current position, you should seek the combined knowledge of those that surround you and bring them into your community. A blog is a great starting point for accomplishing this and when you build a community around your blog, you must strategize on how you will keep that network stable. You are one person and can only accomplish so much in a given day, which is why your community of evangelists will help virally penetrate the internet to communicate your brand message. In terms of a corporation, as a business grows, more assets must be hired to offset the accumulating workload. By branding yourself, developing content and gathering evangelists through networking, you are taking a crucial step in your career. That step is communicating your accomplishments and positioning yourself as a leader in not just your network, but to the larger population.

Take my magazine for example. Personal Branding Magazine is about the Personal Brands that write columns or send relevant material to be included in an issue. These contributors (you know who you are!) are evangelists to the concept of Personal Branding and receive recognition for their efforts. They are also aiding in the marketing effort by promoting it on their blogs. So not only are they sharing their valuable knowledge through the articles they write, but they are letting others know it exists.
Lesson: As you grow your network, you should discover new ways to collaborate with them and turn them from regular members of your network to evangelists.

Another great example of this concept is what William Arruda has done with his Certified Personal Branding Strategists. I’ve been blogging for quite some time and have great knowledge of Personal Branding, as well as those that share the same interest. William took his own position on Personal Branding and developed Reach (his business), where people who wanted to learn skills associated with the subject and take an assessment and become a consultant. What’s genius about what he’s done is that he is able to do more with less, by leveraging the combined knowledge, enthusiasm and reach of these individuals that pass the test. They are evangelists to William because they promote his knowledge through their websites and position him for success. He has even recruited them to take part in a special project, known as the 2007 Personal Branding Global Telesummit, which takes well known authors and speakers and brings them together, under the umbrella of Personal Branding. I’ve been leading the sponsorship team for this even and look forward to the results.

Here are some of Williams Evangelists:

There are over 200 evangelists, so I listed the ones I’m familiar with and are in my network. Through creativity and shared interests, you can create a valuable network of evangelists that appreciate and respect your work and are willing to tell others about it.

Final Note: Be the one that creates opportunities by bringing others together for a shared goal.

Personal Branding TV: Episode 6 – Entrepreneurship

August 15, 2007 at 9:33 am | In Futures, Interview, Networking, Personal Branding, Project Management, Reputation Management, Success Methodologies, Success Strategies, magazine, tv | 1 Comment

This week on Personal Branding TV I interview my uncle. Bill Schawbel is the founder and CEO of The Schawbel Corporation, a business he formed in 1981 through the acquisition of two divisions from The Gillette Company. Prior to founding The Schawbel Corporation, Bill Schawbel held senior management positions with The Gillette Company including President of Gillette-Japan and President of Braun North America. His marketing and management experience includes significant contributions to many of Gillette’s divisions within the U.S. and internationally with particular success in the areas of acquisitions and new business development.

The topic of Entrepreneurship will be discussed from the viewpoint of one of the most successful entrepreneur’s I know. For those of you who are new to this topic, you will learn how to get started, how to network and build business partnerships and the significance of philanthropy. In today’s society and with the growth in social networking, the barriers to starting your own practice have decreased and with the rise of Personal Branding, everyone is the CEO of Me Inc.

The Personal Branding Beginners Toolkit

August 9, 2007 at 11:54 pm | In Futures, Networking, Personal Branding, Podcasts, Project Management, Success Methodologies, Success Strategies, news | 10 Comments

Personal Branding Beginners Toolkit

When I started blogging I wish I had the knowledge that I have now on how to build a social community around a given topic. There are numerous individuals who are interested in creating their Personal Brand online, but have little or no direction. They see some bloggers with hundreds of subscribers, an authority of over 1,000 on Technorati and have even made news headlines. These individuals seek best practices from more experienced bloggers and in order to satisfy that need, I have created a Personal Branding Beginners Toolkit. This toolkit will either refresh the learnings that many of you have already obtained through experience or help beginners become better brands.

In order, here are the tools needed to build a strong Personal Brand foundation online:

  1. Avatar: A picture is worth a 1,000 words and your picture is imagery that separates you from anyone else in the world, except maybe a twin. Avatars are small photographs that are used to showcase your identity in networks such as Technorati, WordPress and MyBlogLog. To create an avatar, it’s as easy as taking a picture of yourself and condensing it into a file that is 128×128 pixels. Avatars are also used to verify who comments on a specific blog and are seen as the Personal Brand behind the content being produced, whether it be a comment or a post.
  2. LinkedIn: It’s nearly impossible to network with others, without knowledge and awareness of who you are and your experiences. Creating a LinkedIn profile not only helps to show off your talents, but acts as a networking piece where you can uncover new opportunities and push forward in your career. It’s also a key component of your brand, as what you do makes you who you are. Your LinkedIn profile should be visible on your website or blog, so that your visitors can identify who you are as they read your content. Also, they can now match up your avatar with your LinkedIn profile, for a better visual of your brand.
  3. Mentor: After creating your avatar, now it’s time to seek best practices from a mentor, in order to proceed in the right direction with the rest of the tools in the kit. The mentor or experienced Personal Brand expert can help you understand how to use the rest of the tools most effectively to further develop your brand and become successful in your niche.
  4. Blog: Blogs are not only the new PR, but serve as an interaction or touch point with your audience. Take a stand in a specific area, establish a community around that area and keep them coming for more. The composition of blogs is made up of posts and comments from readers. Blogs are regulated by RSS and all forms of social media are integrated throughout them as widgets. Before you start your involvement with other tools in your kit, focus on building your brand through your blog, so that you have a strong and loyal network of readers.
  5. FeedBurner: This tool is a requirement for any blog because it allows for the interaction from your blog to your reader to last for a longer duration. Members of your audience that are interested in you, your content or both will subscribe to your blog through RSS using the FeedBurner application. Feedburner uses “chicklets” that enable your readers to subscribe through readers such as Google and Yahoo!.
  6. Technorati: Now that you have a brand online and have the technology to let others interact with you and your website, it’s time to build a reputation and reach out to others who share the same passions as you do. With Technorati, you are able to search through topics that interest you and pull up successful blogs. It’s a great place to be notified when your favorite blogs are updated with new posts or when a blog author writes a post for your category. It’s also prime for building links and trackbacks to your blog.
  7. YouTube: In order to clearly articulate your brand and present your entire brand, podcasting works perfectly. Video is a way to show your brand through words, body language and content communication. It doesn’t get any better than that, especially because it allows your readers to match who you are online with offline. YouTube is the most common known service for video sharing and is a great addition to the tool kit.
  8. Social Networks: Last but not least, if you have built your brand, you need to communicate that brand to your audience. There is no better way to create community and interest in your topic than by social network involvement. You should concentrate your efforts within the most saturated and most commonly used networks, such as Facebook and Myspace, as you don’t waste effort in updating your profiles and tracking messages and friend requests.

Use this kit to build your brand, attract an audience and further your development one piece of your brand at a time.

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