This is the final post in a series about blogging your personal brand. I’ve written a post for beginners, as well as intermediate and advanced users. Please review those posts before reviewing this one.

1) Podcast your brand on your blog

Whenever I talk about podcasts, I typically think of video, but many bloggers choose to record their voice or an interview through the telephone or a voice recorder and then publish it. You can do the same and there are services that will aid in the publishing process, such as PodBean.com. Audio podcasts are great for people who are scared to show their face or are in situations where they don’t have the necessary equipment to shoot video.

Video is the best way to interact with your audience, especially if you’re charismatic and personable. People can get a sense of you from reading your posts, tweets and social network messages, but when it comes to real interaction and emotional connection, video is king. Purchase a webcam or a video camera and hook it up directly to your computer using a USB connection. If you want to be a professional, and possibly interview other people for an internet type show, then you may want to buy a microphone, a sound amplifier and possibly an HD video camera (they cost less than $1,000 now).

Then you’ll want to get the video on the top video sharing websites in the world. To do this, all you need to do is upload it on TubeMogul, using the name, description and keywords that you feel will be optimize the video for search engines (as well as the video sharing search engines). TubeMogul will put your video on YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, and more.

Finally, you’ll want to use the embed code from the video on either sharing site to use on your blog. You can either post the video as a blog post or decide the transcribe it, in addition to placing the video on the post.

2) Lifecasting

The two best “lifecasting” sharing sites are Qik and UStream.tv. I recommend getting comfortable doing audio or video podcasting before you decide to do live video. When it comes to live video, you have to be authentic, and be cautious as to what you say and do. When you sign-up for one of these services, you are given your own branded web page, where you can use your phone or your webcam to film yourself or other people. While you are lifecasting, people can view this page and see you live, while having the ability to type messages to you. It’s your ability to get to know your audience more and visa versa.

The end result of your time spent lifecasting is a video recording that you can embed on your blog as a post. If you choose to do this, you should give a summary of how your session went!

3) Start your own mailing list

If you want to start a mailing list, then make it different than your blog. A lot of the best bloggers use mailing lists to give their most loyal subscribers additional tips and strategies for signing up. Typically, your readers or viewers that care enough about you and your material will signup for your mailing list to receive more content. Before starting a mailing list, you should think about how busy you are and if you’re able to spend time on such a project. Also, you’ll want to decide how many emails you want to send in a specific period of time and the value that list will receive.

Your mailing list and blog should market each other, which means you’ll want to add links to cross-promote both and any other products or services you want to sell. I recommend the following three email marketing services for your mailing list: iContact, Get Response and Contact Contact. For an example of how a newsletter is attached to a blog, please review Shoemoney’s blog.

4) Place advertisements

There are many different kinds of advertisements you can place on your blog to drive revenue (passive income). Before you start calling, emailing and Facebook’ing possible blog sponsors, you’ll want to create an advertising page on your blog, so people can see the sizes of the ads, what they’ll be receiving in terms of traffic/subscribers and the different options and packages you have.

To find advertisers, you should Google terms relating to your blog and click on company’s that are paying for AdWords. You can also find good sponsors by emailing people who comment on your blog and through natural (organic) search. Email them your pitch and then a link to your advertising page, so they can make a quick decision.

I’ve seen a few different kinds of advertisements on blogs:

• Text links
• 125/125 graphic (possibly animated)
• 468×80 header banner
• 180×180 single post banner
• Product / website review posts
• Sponsored blog posts

You should charge based on your monthly visitor stats, feed subscribers and overall blog credibility and reputation. If you want to see how much traffic you’re bringing in, I recommend Quantcast. Alex Shalman has a great advertising page on his blog if you want an example.

5) Setup an affiliate program

Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. You only get paid for when you people click on advertisements on your site and pay for a company’s products or services.

There are many affiliate programs out there, such as Amazon Associates and Yahoo! Affiliate Programs. Don’t expect huge returns unless you already have a lot of inbound traffic to your website. The money you make from affiliate programs (possibly with other bloggers) will help fund your ongoing blog initiatives and upkeep. If you have deeper interest in affiliate marketing, then you should visit Zach Johnson’s blog.

6) Poll your readers

As a blogger, you should be interested in what your readers think of your blog, the types of posts you’re doing and any topics they would like to learn more about. Also, you may just want to poll them to gather quick feedback, to measure your success or out of curiosity. The best poll service for blogging is Polldaddy, which is actually integrated into WordPress.com now.

7) Build a team blog

A team blog is a blog that has multiple authors. The are a lot of benefits of having multiple contributors to your blog, such as having a variety of voices, more content and saving your time for other purposes, such as marketing the blog. If you’re an expert blogger, you should have a strong network of fellow bloggers to select for your team blog. Using WordPress, you give bloggers permission to write entires and then submit them for your review. You should give them the right to use their avatar, name and a link to their own blog.

I’ve seen team blogs with over 10 authors and they are highly successful. Blogs like Mashable, TechCrunch and The Huffington Post have a lot of bloggers, which allows them to become more of a business media site. You can do the same!

8 ) Use your blog at a platform

A blog can lead to bigger and better things. The most notable are speaking engagements and consulting gigs. By showcasing your interest in receiving those opportunities, you are more likely to garner them. So setup pages with those titles on your blog and if you’ve spoke or consulted in the past, use endorsements, video and a topic outline to show people what you’re made of.

You can also use your blog to sell more of your products, services and introduce people to other sites you own. Your blog will allow you to promote anything you want!

9) Write an eBook / book

After writing hundreds of blog posts, you will naturally want to tie your writings into a book of some sort. Some of you will try and get a literary agent and a publishing deal in order to get your ideas out there, while others will draft an eBook that captures many of your posts. You can sell the eBook and market it on your blog. If you’re interested in having a physical book, you’ll want to have more original content for that, but the eBook doesn’t have to always be original.

10) Start more blogs

When a single blog (or team blog) isn’t enough, you can always start multiple blogs. Obviously, it’s going to take up even more of your time, so think through your current situation before you make the jump. There aren’t too many bloggers who are willing to have yet another blog to build content for. The one’s that do, usually do it on a completely different topic to satisfy their other passion.

Today, I spoke with Gretchen Rubin, who just might be the happiest woman on earth.  She shares her happiness tips everyday on her world famous blog (over 17,000 subscribers), while blogging at the Huffington Post, being an author of several books and, soon, taking over the world.  In this interview, Gretchen reflects on 2008, gives you tips for 2009, shares some of her blogging strategies and then analyzes her own personal brand for all of us.

Gretchen, for 2008, can you sum up some of your advice on how to live a happy life?

If you want to live a happier life, I’d suggest you start by thinking about the elements of my “First Splendid Truth” – to be happy, you should think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.

• First, ask yourself – what makes me feel good? What brings me joy, energy, enthusiasm, engagement, satisfaction? Ok. What can I do to bring more of this into my life? E.g., you might start a film club with six other movie-crazy friends.
• Second, ask yourself – what makes me feel bad? What brings me anger, resentment, boredom, frustration, guilt, remorse? Ok. What can I do to lessen this in my life? E.g., I have tried very hard to give up gossip.
• Third, ask yourself – do I feel right about my life? Am I leading the life I feel that I’m “supposed” to live? Do my choices reflect my values? Am I heading in the right direction? I switched from law to writing, because although I had a great experience as a lawyer (for instance, I clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor), I felt that I wasn’t doing what I was “supposed” to be doing.
• Fourth, ask yourself – does my life have an atmosphere of growth? What’s changing for the better? In what way am I learning, growing, helping, and making things better? (more on this topic in Question #2)

What are your top 3 suggestions that people can use for living a happier life in 2009?

• First, although happiness seems like a transcendent, abstract principle, start with the physical reality of your own body: work on getting enough sleep, some exercise, and eating healthfully. These habits matter! If this seems overwhelming, start small: turn off the lights 15 minutes earlier each night, take a ten-minute walk outside each day, eat an apple at lunch. You will really see a boost in energy – and energy is a great foundation for happiness.
• Second, ancient philosophers and modern scientists agree that the key to happiness is relationships with other people. Take time to see your friends and family, show up, reach out to new people, try to be helpful, make connections – anything you can do widen and deepen your relationships will boost your happiness.
• Third, one aspect of happiness that I didn’t recognize when I started my research was the importance of a factor that I call “the atmosphere of growth.” We’re all happier when something in our life is changing for the better: we’re learning something new (taking a Photoshop class, working on our golf game); we’re helping something grow (a child, a business, a garden), we improving something flawed (cleaning a messy closet, volunteering to help an organization get its books in order), we see positive change in our life (getting a raise, getting out of debt, starting a new relationship, healing a rift). As that list suggests, there are many ways to foster “an atmosphere of growth.” Make sure your life includes this aspect somewhere. It helps bring you enthusiasm and energy – without it, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, trapped, cramped, stagnant.

Your happiness project consists of twelve commandments.  What are your three favorite and why?

Actually, I think all my commandments could be summed up in two: “Be Gretchen” and “There is only love.” In the end, I’ve found that although it sounds like a cliché, it really is true: as long as I remain faithful to myself (not who I wish I were) and as long as I try to act with love, I have the foundations of a happy life.

As an individual blogger, you’ve succeeded more than almost anyone.  How are you able to stay committed, original, vocal on your blog?  What are your secrets for growing a readership?

Thanks for those nice words about my blog! I’m very lucky, because the topic of happiness is inexhaustible. I never worry about running out of things to write about. I never lose interest in the subject, myself.

I do try to discipline myself to keep things interesting for readers. I ask myself a series of questions when I post: am I being funny? Am I giving good information? Am I tying into recent events? Am I telling stories? Am I providing links to interesting material and highlighting the valuable writing of others? Am I showing what it’s like to live in New York City? Am I being honest about my own nature and perspective? Am I being critical of anyone other than myself? Obviously, I don’t hit each note every time, but I keep those goals in mind.

I also post six days a week – I think that’s important to keep a blog lively.

I try to reach out to other bloggers who write about related subjects. This is good for my blog and also wonderful for me personally – I have lots of new blog friends, some of whom I’ve met, but most of whom I haven’t met – and that has enriched my life tremendously.

Once a week, I write a post in “tips” form, a format that’s very popular on the internet. I think that has helped me get picked up in places that exposed my blog to new readers. I also cross-post twice a week on the Huffington Post, post original content twice a week on RealSimple.com, and starting on January 12, I’ll cross-post on Slate. I love each of these sites, and I’m thrilled that I get a place there myself. And obviously that’s good exposure for my writing.

How have you built your personal brand over time and what’s next for the brand called Gretchen Rubin?

The goal of my book and my blog is to help people understand happiness better and to start their own happiness projects, so that they can help themselves become happier. As such, my brand is to be engaging, informative, accessible, light-hearted, and encouraging.

So, for example, I tell people that if they’d like to see my personal Resolutions Chart, of the resolutions I keep as part of my happiness project, they can email me for a copy (just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. — no need to write anything more than “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line). By sharing my experience, I hope that I can inspire other people to do a happiness project of their own.

I also use Facebook, Twitter (follow me at gretchenrubin), and a monthly newsletter to connect with readers. I love these new tech tools, which weren’t available to me when my other books came out. I try to use my presence there to reinforce my availability, my ability to point people to interesting, useful information, and to connect other people.

Because my book, The Happiness Project, isn’t coming out until December 1, 2009, its publication is what’s next for me.

——-
Gretchen Rubin is a writer working on The Happiness Project—an account of the year she spent test-driving every conceivable principle about how to be happy, from the wisdom of the ages to current scientific studies, from Aristotle to Ben Franklin to Martin Seligman. On her Happiness Project blog, she reports her daily adventures on her way to becoming happier.  Rubin is a graduate of Yale Law School and was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. She was clerking for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when she had the epiphany that she really wanted to be a writer.  Her bestselling Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill and Forty Ways to Look at JFK are succinct, provocative biographies.

We’ve spoken about how your network will soon be a job qualification back in October. I think it’s even more than that now, taking the economic climate and the rise of social media as a mainstream vehicle into account. Your network, which is naked online and seen by employers and your management, will become one of the most important promotional items for your company or prospective company.

We should all have a marketing mindset now.  If you don’t, it’s time to start reading this blog and acquire one!

3 different perspectives

The corporate perspective

Company’s are going to be cutting back on marketing budgets for 2009. Most company’s already have set their budgets and they are significantly lower than a year ago this time. Also, marketing departments are being downsized, which means there are less people to get the message out. The problem is that they still need to get their brand out there, in order for people to 1) remember them 2) think positively of them 3) have them in their evoked set (a top-of-mind product/service).

The employee perspective

Employees, especially in the marketing department, are in desperate need of support. With a slim budget, they are still forced to see a return on each dollar they invest in their marketing programs. Many employees aren’t accustomed to social media yet and are still resorting to investing every dollar they have into interrupting random people, hoping they decide to, at a minimum, visit their website. Employees are going to be very irritated and shocked that proving ROI next year is going to be difficult. Most have not taken the past year or two to build out their online network by developing lists that they can market to themselves.

The potential hire perspective

Over a million people have laid off, but how many have taken the time to build up their social lists? I bet very few. Most job seekers are still convinced that the old way of job seeking (how to get a job through social media) is the way to go and, sadly, most fail as a result. Sure, they create a LinkedIn profile and submit their resumes to corporate websites and traditional job banks, such as Monster and Careerbuilder, but they don’t understand that we’re almost in 2009! Attraction-based (or inbound) marketing is the best long-term strategy for never applying for jobs and getting job offers on your doorstep. The few potential hires that are socially-connected should be rewarded with job offers.  They do have to fulfill the job requirements and be exceptional.  That will never change.

Employees MUST BE the brand in 2009

There’s no doubt it my mind that each and every employee is a brand ambassador. There aren’t sign-up forms for employees. The second you accept your job offer, you hold the corporate brand for life. Management has to push their vision at you and make you love your work, despite economic uncertainties. If you meet someone for the first time and tell them you work for XYZ company, you better be able to articulate what the company does, what your role is and smile at the same time. If you commit a crime and do something dumb, at some level, it can hurt your corporate brand. This is the reason why company’s don’t like hiring people that have criminal records.

In 2009, you and your company can only succeed if you live and breath the corporate brand.

Benefits of hiring socially-connected employees

• Marketing from the inside out for free
• More connections equals higher productivity
• Stay ontop of trends
• Save money on hiring employees with quick and trusted referrals
• Free consulting, tips and resources from people in their network

Layoff marketers who aren’t socially-connected

This might sound harsh and many of you might get upset, but the reality is that there are many more job seekers (3.3) for every job now.  That being said, it’s easy for a company, especially a small company, to add and remove workers on-demand.  Unless the marketer has provided exceptional ROI over a long period of time, their job is in already in jeopardy.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve put in 10 years or even 25 at your company either.

Marketers that are socially-connected can help you market for free, when you have almost no money.  Wouldn’t you rather hire these individuals, than keep those who can’t help you do this?

Are you socially-connected?

Recently, I was interviewed by Rick Burnes of Hubspot about my upcoming book, Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success. As of today, my book is doing very well on pre-orders, ranking #26 on Amazon for job hunting bestsellers, #54 for web marketing and #70 e-commerce.  I want to thank everyone for helping promote the book so far and for your ongoing support throughout the past few years.  The coolest thing is that the book doesn’t even come out in stores until April 7th of 2009, which means there seems to be a big need for it already!

Part 1 of the interview:

Part 2 of the interview:

Today, I spoke with David Armano, who is a well-known blogger and visual expert.  He’s best known for his marketing diagrams and speaks at a lot of industry events.  I spoke to David about how he’s grown his personal brand, what it takes to become known in a cluttered world and tips he has for bloggers who are just starting out.  One of the main themes in our talk was how he separates his personal brand from his employers brand and how he’s able to make both brands mutually benefit over time.  I’m in a similar situation to David, so it was helpful to see how he’s handled it.

David, in terms of the way you branded yourself online, do you feel you owe much of your success to your visual drawing? Was there some sort of viral effect with them that got you noticed?

The visuals absolutely had a great deal to do with the visibility I am fortunate enough to have. My first few blog posts were mostly about user experience and brands. There’s a lot of people talking about these topics. Then one day, I did a visual and I noticed that other blogs started using it on their sites and they would link back to me. And as I did more, I noticed the same pattern. Over time, I started building a reputation for doing this—and I enjoyed dong them. People saw value in the visuals—many use them in their presentations. One visual in particular that I created is called “influence ripples” and it pops up all over the place.

The visuals themselves have helped me to build my personal brand as they are often times immediately recognizable, but what’s more important is that I try to provide value with them. There’s a lot of change going on in the spaces between social media, marketing and even the user experience and what I try to do with my visuals is take something potentially complex and boil it down. Those who find value in this, use what I put out there and in return reward me with their attention and eventually trust. But like any brand it has to happen over time. I’ve done hundreds of visuals and posts over the past 3 years which I hope contribute something to the larger conversation.

How are you able to separate your personal brand from that of Critical Mass, your company? What parts intertwine and has your company benefited from your exposure/visibility/credibility?

On my blog it’s fairly separate as is my personal Twitter account. I make it clear when writing on my blog that it’s my personal opinions. But there is a good deal of intertwining. When I write for Ad Age, it’s predominantly for Critical Mass, but obviously I bring my personality to it. That’s one way the agency benefits from it. I also have relationships with journalists at BusinessWeek and Adweek that were originally initiated from blogging. I see the relationship as mutually beneficial. Whenever I speak at an event, I represent Critical Mass (the name of the agency is on my slides) though I often times get invited to speak because of my personal profile. But in reality, it’s co-branding.

People know me from before I worked with my current employer and that’s just a reality. I get a good deal of leeway in my job and really enjoy the people I work with, so the bottom line is that I try to treat the “co-branding” very respectfully and not take it for granted. If you are going to be in a position like mine, you have to always be looking for opportunities to have your company benefit from your profile. If they are comfortable with it, it can be beneficial to both parties.

What are your top 3 tips for bloggers who want to market their content to the right people?

• A. Focus on the content
• B. Play to your strengths
• C. Get out there in person

First thing for bloggers to realize is that their content has to be solid. They can find an undeserved niche or chime in with the masses, but there has to be something there that gets people coming back. The best marketing for a blogger is the blog itself and what others say about it vs. what they do. People will recommend good bloggers, it’s that simple.

Secondly you have to play to your strengths. Some bloggers are amazingly extroverted and social, they respond to every comment they get and engage people all day long. Others are organized and create useful lists. Still others are great on video. Find out what your strengths are and develop those vs. trying to be like others. And lastly making connections—meeting people in real life is incredibly important.

“Just like with all networking, once you’ve met someone in person it makes a more lasting impression and goes a long way.”

You use “//” and Brogan uses “[ ]” as part of your brand. Why?

I’ve been doing that since long before blogging. Partially it represents the // in Http:// which I think pays homage to my passion for the interactive medium. But also, I just think it looks cool.

What are some personal branding lessons you’ve learned over your career?

Great question. When I first started blogging, I did not feature my photo on my blog, or even on Twitter at first. I wanted to rely on the visual manifestation of my brand (logo, visuals etc.). I was wrong on this. I’ve since changed both and understand the power of a “face”. For a personal brand to be truly effective, people have to feel like there is a “person” behind it. A simple photo helps move you in this direction and it was something I learned on the fly. I’ve also learned that a personal brand can begin by accident, but it takes some work and strategy to have something that really represents something you feel comfortable with. It’s different for everyone and at some point you have to ask yourself “what do I want to be known for”?

So I make fairly calculated efforts in what I talk about and how I talk about them. While I often times talk about social media, user experience and marketing—I also try to communicate visually as much as I can, because my true passion is in the communication. I really enjoy solving problems visually. So I am learning that in order for this to be my “personal brand” I need to be careful not to over indulge on all of the “Web 2.0” talk.

“Lastly I’ve learned that having a personal brand that is sufficiently visible requires working in an environment where your employer not only comfortable with it but want to tap it somehow. This is the best case scenario and can work for everyone if both parties reciprocate.”

———
David Armano has over 14 years experience in the communications industry with the majority of his time spent in digital marketing and experience design. An active thought leader in the industry, David authors the popular Logic + Emotion blog currently ranked in the top 25 of the “Power 150” as listed by Advertising Age. David’s writing and visual thinking has been cited by respected sources such as by Forrester, Crain’s and landed him in BusinessWeek on several occasions including their “Best of 2006”. David leads an interdisciplinary group of designers, writers and content strategists for the Chicago office of Critical Mass, a marketing agency focused on creating extraordinary experiences.

This is the third post in a series about blogging your personal brand. I’ve written a post for beginners and one for intermediate users. Please review those posts before indulging in this one.

1) Host your own blog

Instead of borrowing someone else’s space and redirecting your domain name to that space, you have the ability to install WordPress on your own host. In January, I’ll be switching over to PersonalBrandingBlog.com instead of my PersonalBrandingBlog.wordpress.com because I want to own my blog entirely, have more control over the page elements, make money and turn it into a larger property. Advanced personal branding bloggers should strive to make the switch and not freak out about losing content or subscribers. As long as you are using Feedburner.com for your RSS feeds and have exported your content, you should be all set. The only issue you’ll have is that you will lose “Google juice” to your previous site.

For instructions on how to successfully install WordPress on Godaddy, please go here. If you want to save money on your Godaddy domains and host, please go here and remember to choose “Linux” hosting.

2) Select or design a unique theme

There are literally thousands of WordPress themes across the net built by some savvy professional designers and programmers. You might not have the funds or expertise in order to get a custom blog template made, but there are free themes floating around as well. When you start researching and discovering themes that you enjoy, remember that some themes are geared for specific purposes. For instance, there are “magazine themes” for people who have teams of content contributors, covering various categories. You want to not only select the best looking theme, but one that you can handle using.

If you perform a Google search on “top wordpress themes,” you should have more than enough to choose from.

3) Choose plugins

After selecting a theme, you will want to install a few necessary plugins. They will help enable people to share your content (more traffic and subscribers), as well as make your blog more interactive. Here are my favorite plugins:

• Akismet is a spam filter that checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they are spam or not, also checks the trackbacks for spam.
• Sociable enables small icons from various social bookmarking sites (like Digg, del.icio.us, reddit, etc) under the posts on many blogs, so people can share your content freely.
• Get Recent Comments gets the excerpts of the latest comments on your blog and displays them on your sidebar
• Popularity Contest is a very useful plugin that lets you automatically highlight your best posts to your readers.
• Related posts generates a list of related posts based on the text of blog entry.
• Subscribe To Comments allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.
• Twitter Updater automatically sends a Twitter status update to your Twitter account when you create, publish, or edit your WordPress post.

For more plugins, please go to the WordPress main page.

4) Integrate your social networks

As an advanced user, you better be on social networks. Since everything in social media is considered a list, you’ll want to leverage your blogs success to increase the readership of your other properties. This may include your accounts on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, SlideShare, Upcoming, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Digg, Flickr or FriendFeed. There are thousands more, and you should promote only the top 5-10 that you use the most often. If you include too many, people will completely tune them out and if you include too few, it will seem like you aren’t a power user.

Use either text or graphics to promote these profiles. For icons, please go here.

5) Search engine blog optimization

Search engine optimization for your blog is critical for a number of reasons. First, everyone uses search engines to learn about new things. Second, search engine ranking showcases authority. Finally, having individual posts ranking high can help build the brand of your blog. Your goal is to rank number one for your name, as well as your topic. Think about the keywords that reflect your topic and use them throughout your headline, subheadings and body. Use links within your posts to link to other posts you’ve written and try as hard as you can to write good enough content that people will link to it.

There’s also a WordPress plugin called “All in One SEO Pack,” which will help you optimize your posts for search engines. It helps to own a domain name with the keywords you want to rank high for, as well as a blog title that reflects those same keywords.

6) Try a few different types of posts

There are many different types of posts you can have on your blog. Experimenting with a variety of posts keeps people guessing and interested in your blog. You could scrape the blogosphere or a traditional news site for an interesting fact or article, then quote it and respond to it in a post. You could also email a few bloggers, asking them all the same question, such as “what is your prediction for 2009, and formulate a blog post around their answers. You could become the aggregator of news for a specific topic and links your five favorite blog posts of the week. A series of posts around a theme, such as this post, tends to work well too.

7) Allow someone to guest blog

As an advanced blogger, you are given the right and hopefully the authority, to reach out to other bloggers and give them the opportunity to guest post. As your blog becomes more popular, people may just come to you and ask to guest post, but when you are in infancy, you will have to be pro-active. The benefits of a guest post on your blog are that you save time from writing a post, it’s a great way to network with other bloggers and it’s a new voice on your blog.

8 ) Interview your favorite blogger

I’ve interviewed close to 100 people on this blog. It’s the single best networking tactic I’ve used in my entire life. I couldn’t have done it until I was a more advanced blogger though because I needed a promise of value to other people. You’ll want to interview people who are more successful than you are or that can provide some knowledge in an area where you aren’t an expert. You can do the interviews by either phone, through email or in-person (video). It’s really up to you and depends on your schedules.

9) Get ranked

A great way to gain visibility for your blog is to get ranked. There are a number of different sites that rank blogs out there, such as the AdAge Power 150, the Junta 42, the Viral Garden’s Top 25 Marketing & Social Media Blogs, the 2009 Bloggers Choice Awards, and the Big List of SEO Blogs. There are tons more, but these are the ones I’m most familiar with in the blogosphere. The purpose of submitting your blog to these lists is that you get added visibility and there’s an opportunity cost if your site isn’t on them.

10) Form content partnerships

If you don’t have partnerships with other websites, you are really missing out because your content will be isolated in one specific area. Every time I post, it ends up in Reuters, Hoovers, Chicago Sun-Times, Forbes, Brazen Careerist, CollegeRecruiter.com, HRM Today, Social Media Today, Marcom Professional, Sign-on San Diego, The Examiner, and Packets Online. Obviously forming these relationships took a long time, but they give my blog more credibility and my posts more movement. Just like submitting byline articles to magazines, you want to start small and work your way up. Research your topic area to find websites that might want to syndicate your blog and reach out to them accordingly.

Reader question

“I have recently gone solo and started a consulting business (with a handful of employees)… from a social networking branding perspective (i.e. twitter, blog etc.) should I concentrate on building myself or my company brand.  I know the answer is both, but which one first and foremost would you recommend, for example should my blog, facebook page, twitter names be me or my company.  What would you suggest?” – Joe Newbert

My analysis

General branding thoughts

When it comes to consulting, your customers want to deal directly with an individual that they must know, like and trust.  They are paying to work with a company, whose reputation is attached to each individual.  This means that, depending on how the consulting business is laid out, you’ll need each consultant to have the necessary skills (and/or complimentary skills if there are group projects) in order to provide value for each customer.  Hopefully, you’ll be able to over-deliver and get repeat business.  With consulting, you are offering up your expertise, as well as the consultants you hire, and they become your best salespeople for your corporate brand.

Brand strategy recommendations

There are two main things you need to know.  First, you want to protect your personal brand, your corporate brand and the brands of everyone who is working for your consulting company.  Second, you want to focus on personal brands over the corporate brand because, in consulting, transactions and relationships are 100% between people.  Below are some strategies that will help you achieve both of these:

• Reserve your name, all of your consultants names’ and your corporate name on Twitter.
• Ensure that everyone you work with has a Facebook page and a LinkedIn profile.
• Purchase your corporate domain name, as well as your personal domain name (yourname.com) and tell your team to purchase their own as well.
• Start a team blog under your corporate domain name, while positioning yourself as the top contributor because you are the CEO.  Allow each of your fellow consultants to blog on behalf of your company, while giving them the freedom to start developing their own blogs for individual use.
• Get a camera and film personal introductions with you and your fellow consultants.  Use these video intros to send to potential clients.  You can even do a holiday greeting video as well!
• Splatter your pictures across all social media sites and make sure to list your corporate brand name and the area of expertise you/they have.

Verdict

A personal brand is more important than the corporate brand in consulting businesses.  Since your company has more than one personal brand, you have to ensure that each consultant you hire aligns with your corporate brand in order to be successful.  From a social media branding perspective, you should demand that each consultant establishes themself using the tools mentioned above (including you), while tying everything together into a cohesive and impactful website.

How would you handle this situation?

Now is your chance to respond to Joe’s question.  Do you think he should start with the corporate brand first and then work on his personal brand?

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Today, I spoke with Leo Babauta, who is one of the most well-known and respected bloggers in the world. He blogs at Zenhabits.net and has been writing for decades on work concentration and management. We talk about his success story, why it’s important to work smart (not just hard), how to stay afloat in the bad economy, what it takes to have a killer blog and the steps he’s taken to build his personal brand over time.

A few years ago you quit smoking, lost weight, tripled your income, started a successful eBook company, created an extremely successful blog called Zen Habits, and began to truly enjoy your life. How did you do it?

One thing at a time.

Seriously, as I talk about in The Power of Less, I’ve found myself to be much more effective at achieving goals and creating new habits if I focus on one goal or habit at a time, and concentrate the full power of my focus on it. I also used a number of effective habit-change principles that I learned through quitting smoking to create each new habit — to learn more about this, join The Power of Less New Year’s Challenge on thepowerofless.com.

So I focused first on quitting smoking, then on running, then on waking earlier so I could run, then on eating healthier, then on becoming more frugal and eliminating debt, and so on. One habit at a time, then focus on the next thing. Before I knew it, the list of accomplishments was incredibly long — more than I ever dreamed possible within a year or two.

It is possible to do more with less, even under intense corporate pressures and a poor economy?

It’s absolutely possible, as I’ve proven and as many others have shown as well. Not only is it possible, it’s even more imperative with intense corporate pressures and the tough economic times we’re facing.

“If you don’t do more with less, you’re liable to lose your job or go into bankruptcy.”

With intense corporate pressures, you have to learn to focus more, and become more effective with the time that you allocate to work. You can spend that time by being incredibly busy, doing a ton of tasks, but at the end of the day having little to show for all of your busy-ness … or you can spend it by focusing on just a few really important, high-impact tasks that will do a lot for your business in the long run. Which is a better use of your time — the high-volume, low-impact approach, or the low-volume, high-impact approach?

With the tough economy, you will also need to learn to cut back to the essentials, so you are not sacrificing quality of life as you become more frugal. It doesn’t cost much to be happy and live an incredible life if you have the things you really love and value in your life, and cut out the rest. I’ll soon be releasing an ebook companion to The Power of Less, called “Thriving on Less: Simplifying in a Tough Economy”, on my site thepowerofless.com.

How do we break our goals down into manageable tasks?

Start by focusing on one goal at a time. Pick the first goal on your list of goals — the one that will have the most impact, that you can accomplish in the next year — or even better, in the next 1-3 months.

Then, for that one goal, focus on just the next task you have to complete. If it’s a task that will take an entire day or several days, break that task into a smaller task that will only take an hour or less — 10-30 minutes might be even better, but no more than an hour.

Then focus just on that task, clearing away all distractions, until that task is done. Move on to the next task and finish that one, and so on. You can’t do more than one task at a time anyway, so it’s better to stop trying to switch between tasks and focus on one task at a time, and become more effective.

You have around 80,000 RSS subscribers to your blog. For any new blogger starting out, what would you recommend to them?

Start small. Don’t worry about getting thousands of subscribers – just worry about writing your next incredibly useful post. Creating great, useful, valuable content is the only way to get new readers — if your writing is great, you can attract visitors and keep them. Be genuine, write about what you know about, and be passionate in your writing.

Once you have a dozen or more really useful articles, do guest posts on other blogs, as often as possible. Again, write really useful guest posts and you’ll attract readers to your blog.

How have you built your personal brand over time? What do you think people know you the most for?

I started by thinking about my core message — what was I excited to write about, and what desires in my potential audience would that tap into? From these questions I created a message of simplicity, and I’ve tried to stay as consistent about that message in everything I do and create: from the title of the blog, to its design, content, headlines, to guest posts and comments and emails. If you’re not consistent, you will send a mixed message and your branding efforts will be diluted.

I also tried to find my target audience on other blogs and repeat my brand (Zen Habits) and message of simplicity to this target audience as often as possible. Read more about these topics on my blog for writers and bloggers, Write to Done, in an article called “Branding 101.”

———
Leo Babauta, is the famous Zen Habits blogger, which is one of the top blogs in the world and author of The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential…in Business and in Life. He’s been writing for 23 years and served as a staff reporter, newspaper editor, and freelance journalist for 17 of them. He has done freelance for some of the most popular blogs, including Lifehack.org, Dumb Little Man, Web Worker Daily, FreelanceSwitch and others.

I’ve been asked by a lot of people for an article that introduces personal branding. I went searching through my archives and found that I really didn’t have an up-to-date article that goes over personal branding at a high level. More and more educators are interested in this space and most of my posts are for someone with basic knowledge and skills. Before we step into 2009, I’d like to go over the basics of what you need to know to get started on your brand for next year. “Building my personal brand” should be on all of your new years resolution lists.

The history of personal branding

Tom Peters crafted an article for the August 1st, 1997 issue of Fast Company Magazine, entitled “The Brand Called You,” which explored the evolution of career development, and exposed a new mindset for the new millennium. Basically, instead of relying on a company for career guidance, it’s up to you to take ownership of the brand called you. Personal branding called for everyone to become a “free agent,” which not everyone bought into back then. Now there are tools available for you to grasp your brand and shape it (social media).

Web 2.0’s impact on personal branding

Before web 2.0 changed our world, it was really hard to get enough press to really stand out. There weren’t blogs, so you’d have to get your local newspaper, or mainstream media to write about you. You could go to a networking event and meet five to ten people each time. You could sit in your college class and meet ten new people. Web 2.0 amplified how we network, first impressions and personal visibility and self-promotion forever.

Me 1.0 was hidden behind a corporate brand, without an outside voice and not being able to afford excessive promotion (PR & advertising). Me 2.0, as I call it, is when you get to stand in front of your company, at the cost of your time and with the ability to carry your voice across the world in a matter of seconds (think Twitter). I’ve captured this change in my new book, rightfully called, Me 2.0.

Why personal branding was inevitable

There are two main reasons why personal branding is becoming a core part of our culture. Sadly, it’s nothing revolutionary! First, we are all being judged all the time, even when we’re sleeping (our online profiles are still up!). Second, we have to constantly sell our ideas to teachers, managers, venture capitalists, our friends and family, to make things happen in our lives. We have to convince them to take action.

Personal branding defined

In 2007, I gathered a group of international brand and career experts to collaborate on a single definition for personal branding. After analyzing the definition and reciting it in a few presentations back then, I felt it was too long, thus no one could remember it. For 2008, I shortened it to “how we market ourselves to others.” Personal branding is a process.

Personal branding: how we market ourselves to others.

The personal branding process (DCCM)

1. Discover: The first thing you need to do is to figure out who you are, what you want to do in life, while focusing on your strengths, passions and goals. After that, you should create a development plan that aligns your short-term and long-term goals and, finally, a personal marketing plan.

2. Create: There are traditional and non-traditional ways to create your personal brand. The traditional ways include a business card, professional portfolio, resume, cover letter and references document. The non-traditional ways include, a video resume, LinkedIn profile, blog, Twitter and your existence on the various other social networks. While you create your brand, ensure that the content, including pictures and text, are concise, compelling and consistent with how you want to represent yourself.

3. Communicate: After you’ve created your brand, it is only natural (and human instinct) that you want people to see what you’ve done. Depending on your audience (hiring manager, teacher, clients), you may want to tweek your materials accordingly. To properly communicate your brand, through self-promotion, you need to have your story down pat and find the right sources that would be interested in what you have to say. I would recommend promoting others before you promote yourself as well. Communication consists of guest posting on blogs, writing articles for magazines, becoming your own personal PR person (pitch to the media), attending networking events and speaking.

4. Maintain: As you grow, the brand people see has to grow at the same time. For every new job, award, press article, and client victory (to name a few), everything you have created has to reflect that. The reason is simple:

You want to use what you did in the past to get what you want in the future.

Also, as you become more popular, your reputation will be knocked around and tossed throughout the web, from blog post, to tweet, to video, and more. You’ll want to keep a close eye on where your name is. To do this, I have created a post giving you free tools to do so.

Personal branding depends on your career status

High school student: If you’re in high school, personal branding still applies to you because getting into a top college is very competitive. Your goal is to position yourself as worth of a top school, so getting good grades, good SAT’s, interviewing at schools, networking with alumni who can endorse you, writing a compelling essay and all things social media, will help you.

College student: A college student is interested in either getting an internship, starting a business or getting a corporate job upon graduation. They have to compete on experience and network extremely hard in order to get a job. They need to position themselves as superior relative to their peers. This means, becoming a leader in college organizations, meeting as many people as you can, forming a personal branding toolkit and starting when you’re a freshman are critical to your success.

Corporate employee: If you work for a company, and enjoy doing so, then personal branding becomes the cornerstone for how you move up the hierarchy and become recognized as a leader.

Entrepreneur: An entrepreneur needs to think about branding his or her company, as well as him or herself in the process of establishing a business. The entrepreneurs brand must reflect the company, yet be set apart from it simultaneously. The entrepreneurs brand is VERY important in securing venture capital. For instance, if Jason Calanis wanted seed money, he has a better chance of getting it than someone without a track record of success (he sold Weblogs Inc for millions).

Consultant: These individuals are obviously all about personal branding because it’s all they got. Many consultants brand themselves as masters of a specific trade (at least the good ones). They are able to track value and attribute it to the work they provide for clients.

3 laws of personal branding

Authenticity: You need to be yourself because everyone else is taken and replicas don’t sell for as much. Furthermore, you need to define your brand before someone else does for you!

Transparency: It’s better to be straightforward and honest, then lie, and have your actions work against you.

Visibility: The notion that if you aren’t known, you don’t exist.

5 benefits of personal branding

Promotions: Anyone who is ambitious and works at a company will want to move up. By building your personal brand, you become the best choice for a promotion.

Happiness: By aligning who you are with what you do and appending goals to it, you can turn “work” into a “hobby.” You can position yourself on a topic you love, so you get paid to do what you would count as a hobby.

Compensation: Personal brands command premium prices. Just like Apple and Gillette can charge more for products you can get for less, you can do the same.

Business: People want to purchase from other people who they know, like, trust. When you make those people happy that they chose you, by giving them great results, they will refer you to even more people.

Perks: Strong brands get perks. For instance, I get free books from authors and other bloggers get free products, such as limited edition Pepsi cans. Celebrities, like Halley Berry, don’t have to pay for anything because of who they are.

This year, I wrote an article called “5 Steps to Becoming the Gatekeeper of Your Personal Brand,” and today I’m telling you that you need to follow those steps immediately. In 2009, there will be new gatekeepers or those that own a niche on the web. Trying to own your own mainstream media news website is quite a lofty and ambitious goal, especially when you’re competing with titans such as the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Web 2.0 has allowed anyone to produce a media website, collect advertising revenues and build a strong readership based, which tends to be more loyal (RSS) than traditional readership.

It’s niche player time

In 2009, online viewers will be very spread out among a lot of niche sites that cater to special interest groups. Some call this the long tail theory, and I think it’s only natural that people cling to their interests and sort out what blogs provide the most value (entertainment or informational). We’ve already seen the rise of some gatekeepers, but they aren’t so much niche players anymore, as their industries have grown.

Here are some common examples:

I would consider each of these individuals career commanders and experts in personal branding. The best test for personal branding greatness is being top-of-mind. When I think of a certain topic, they came to mind. Let’s see which of them monitor their personal brand online by setting a Google alert to their name and responding to this post.

• Social media: Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang, Rohit Bhargava
• Marketing: Seth Godin
• Personal Finance: J.D. Roth, Ramit Sethi
• Entrepreneurship: Guy Kawasaki, Pamela Slim
• Technology: Robert Scoble
• Celebrities: Perez Hilton
• Careers: Penelope Trunk, Lindsey Pollak, Alexandra Levit
• Recruiting: Joel Cheesman, Chris Russell

Why gatekeepers succeed and you don’t

The more content these individuals create over a period of time, the more they will rank higher in Google and attract a larger audience. The value of their blog properties has increased over the years because they’ve taken a leadership position and have written about ideas that have spread through the internet (aka more links). Google values websites that have been around for a while more than fresh sites.

This means they have control over their subject areas and in order to be half as successful as they are with their blogs, you need to earn their respect (get a link from them from time to time). Otherwise, it will be extremely hard for you to succeed at their level because they own their domain. Since social media is much like high school, if you aren’t in the “cool crowd,” you won’t get as many links and it will be much harder for you to escalate to the top.

You can be a gatekeeper in 2009

In 2009, if you are new to the web, you have the ability to stand out and shine. If you are already a blogger, you may have to shift your strategy slightly. There are literally infinite niche’s out there that haven’t been claimed. One great way to do this is to conduct searches on Google for groups of keywords. Also, by following the hot trends, you might identify a great niche for yourself. Either way, you need to find a non-saturated area of the internet if you want to be found. First movers are always rewarded!