I love hearing your personal branding success stories, so if you have one, please email me (dan.schawbel@gmail.com) and I’ll post it on this blog. I’ve blogged about seven success stories on this blog and look forward to hearing each one. I like inspiring others with personal branding success stories.

Here are a few from the past

• Using Facebook to get a job
• Using Twitter to get a job

I had the pleasure of speaking to another ambitious millennial recently, by the name of Lewis Howes. I would personally say that I dedicate most of my time to Twitter and this blog. I haven’t been using Facebook or other social media sites as much as I have in the past. Lewis and I spoke on the phone and he’s a good friend of Connie Bensen, who is the coeditor of Personal Branding Magazine and one of my close contacts. Lewis told me that he’s had crazy success with LinkedIn and I thought that was unheard of. Today, he tells his story!

In the beginning…

Over the last year I would say that 90% of my business opportunities have come from building my network on LinkedIn. At first, I was a little confused with the networking platform because it was different than Facebook and Myspace, but I shortly began to realize the potential it had.

What I did to make me successful

Initially, I completed my profile as it suggests you to do, then I started to reach out to other professional athletes and individuals who worked in the professional sports industry. Since I had played one year of Arena Football already, my initial goal was to build relationships with other football players, agents, and scouts, and network my way onto another team.

I wanted to separate athletes from everyone else in the industry so I created groups like the Professional Athlete Network and the Sports Industry Network to build my database and differentiate the two. I then asked my network compelling questions, provided useful feedback, made key introductions, started a newsletter including unique industry information, and built a site with additional resources to help people in my database achieve their professional goals.

My achievements

Since I was willing to make those important introductions, offer unconditional advice, and help others land jobs or build their business, people started seeing me as a valuable connector.

Because I worked on building my personal brand on LinkedIn, I now:

• give speeches to various associations and businesses
• write for a sports industry magazine
• receive sports sponsorship and marketing opportunities
• host live networking events to LinkedIn members

I also get free products to test and review, and receive free trips around the country to attend events. Various inventors bring me their products and ideas for my day job where I work as an inventor and intellectual property broker. I have close to 1,500 direct connections, and 20,000 other connections from the various niche groups I created.

Without the LinkedIn platform I would have to say most of this would not be possible. Take into consideration that this did not happen over night, but these results are possible for anyone who is willing to put in the effort.

What I recommend that you do

For those who do not have the time to build their network, I suggest focusing on three things:

• Complete Your Profile — What you write on your profile is the most important thing because your LinkedIn page shows up towards the top of the Google search results. Think of it as a resume on steroids; add all of your important key words and achievements and leave out the roids J
• Answer Questions — I know a guy with 12 connections and a half-completed profile, and he answers a question a day. In the last 30 days he landed three new freelance jobs because of his helpful answers. This takes 30 seconds a day, but if done right, it could identify you as a leader in your industry and land you more business.
• Recommend Others — “But, Lewis, isn’t the goal to get recommendations on my profile?” This is true because the more others vouch for you, the more potential clients are willing to hire you because they trust in your experience and services. However, I say make recommendations first because this does two things: your name and a thoughtful recommendation show up on another person’s profile, and eight out of ten people you recommend will return the favor. It takes a few minutes, but leaves twice the impact.

——
Lewis Howes is the founder of SportsNetworker.com, a business-networking portal for the sports industry. He is an inventor at trident-design.com, and has worked with numerous products from the initial ideas to manufacturing and licensing. Howes speaks to groups and associations on the power of using LinkedIn, and provides LinkedIn consulting sessions for individuals and companies. His book entitled LinkedWorking teaches how to achieve your professional goals while on LinkedIn and will be released in January, 2009. Feel free to connect with him on LinkedIn or contact him at lewis@sportsnetworker.com with any questions.

I love hearing your personal branding success stories, so if you have one, please email me (dan.schawbel@gmail.com) and I’ll post it on this blog.

Today’s source of inspiration comes from one of my good friends, Scott Bradley. Scott, just like Jason Alba, Ann Handley, Chris Russell, Tiffany Monhollon, Adam Salamon, Rebecca Thorman, Paul Gillin, Drew McLellan, Maria Elena Duron, Rick Mahn, and Connie Bensen, knew me before I was written about in Fast Company and my success snowballed up until what you see today. They’ve been with me still and I appreciate it. Scott is the Marketing Director for Personal Branding Magazine.

Scott is a special, passionate and intelligent human being. As one of the great networkers of the millennial generation, he understands the most important rule, “give before you receive.” Today, Scott talks about how he scored his current job, after being a Boston College student and working full-time at Macy’s in New York. I know Scott quite well and told him he wouldn’t last there (and that he would start his own business). I should have bet him money!

In the beginning there was FACEBOOK

My personal branding success story starts at Boston College my junior year. I had just taken over the Boston College Entrepreneur Society, and aside from providing an entrepreneurial voice on campus, I wanted to also bring speakers to speak with the members. Over the course of the two years I brought somewhere between 2-3 speakers a month and with each speaker I invited, they received an article in our newspaper. About 95% of the speakers that I invited came from networking on Facebook.

During the beginning of my senior year, I was contacted by Mike Michalowicz, on Facebook, who invested and still invests in young entrepreneurs. He wanted to come and speak to our group about entrepreneurship and share his entrepreneurial success story. As someone who had built and sold two multi-million dollar companies, one being sold to a fortune 500, there was no way I could not invite him. After his speaking engagement, I invited him out for a beer where I got to know him further. We immediately clicked, and stayed in touch from there.

Job interviews suck!

Around this same time, I was interviewing for jobs for after I graduation and just recently secured an opportunity with Macy’s Home Store in NYC. As I was excited about this opportunity, I knew I would always work on my other entrepreneurial projects to eventually get out of the corporate world and on to doing my own thing helping millions of people.

But wait there is hope

Around December of my Senior year during my Christmas break, Mike Michalowicz approached me and told me that he was writing a book and that he needed some help. Me being the give-to-give guy that I am gladly offered to help him with feedback and making the book the best it could be. The initial title of the book was called “Launch,” and then later was changed to “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.”

I read the manuscript, and then got back to him with my feedback. When I thought that was all I could contribute to the project, he then came to me during the spring time and told me, “Ok Scott, the manuscript is done, the title has been changed…now we need help figuring out our marketing strategy and how we are going to leverage social media to build our audience of hungry buyers.”

Because I love marketing, social media and building relationships with people through many of the social networking sites, the marketing ideas FLEW out of me. Before I knew it I had built the entire backbone of the marketing structure for the campaign, and structured the website in a way that would foster continual engagement, provide value, and in turn sell books to spread the message!

First day on the job

As I started my job with Macy’s, I went into the executive training program. After I had contributed all of the time that I had to Mike’s project…I decided that I was going to be with him the entire way to reach and achieve his goal of selling 1,000,000+ books and further changing millions of peoples lives in the process. Now mind you, I was still working for free.

I started my Macy’s job on June 23^rd and from there my life began to get a little crazy. My days began at 6AM when I woke up, and didn’t end until 12PM at night. I would literally be coming home from work at 6:30pm and continued to work on Mikes project to make it a true success. After launching his website July 2^nd it was a full blown pre-launch with the Facebook group that is 1300+ members now, and further an opt in list to boot!

Escape from corporate America – live your dreams

And then the day came…2 days before my graduation from the training program at Macy’s…At 8:30 AM I see that Mike is calling me. I pick up and say “Your calling quite early this morning…whats up?” First words out of his mouth… “How much is Macy’s Paying you?…I say XYZ.” He then goes, “How about I give you XYZ and ABC and you start with me full time as my right hand man who manages the brand/marketing/pr to launch this book?”

My jaw dropped to the floor…and to make a long story short I came to the end of the day and gladly accepted.

From time to time, I like to post success stories to show you that personal branding DOES work. If you have your own story, please email me. Today, Paul will be talking about his story on how he transformed his life by establishing his brand and then realizing that he should be constantly meeting new faces and communicating his value. To view more success stories, please click here.

Who is Paul Singh?

Paul has been an entrepreneur for nearly 10 years. With two successful startups under his belt, he is a process guy at heart and now focuses on helping startups and small businesses systematize the way they build their own path to getting ahead. His blog, Results Junkies, now reaches thousands of people every month and he’s currently writing a free ebook (coming in October 2008) that outlines a systematic, entrepreneurial method for succeeding.

Paul Singh’s story

Having bootstrapped my own ventures from the ground up, I managed to convince my younger self that networking was a waste of time. I routinely toiled away for hours on end, hiding behind my laptop deep within datacenters and coffee shops in the DC Metro area and actively avoided nearly every opportunity to meet other entrepreneurs.

Fast forward nearly 10 years when I joined PBwiki as the Director of Support and was immediately challenged to build my own personal brand. I wasn’t exactly sure where to start but I began blogging twice a week and stumbled across Dan’s personal branding blog. I spent a weekend reading through nearly every post but, being a process guy, needed to systematize the way I would tackle my own rebranding efforts. I ended up creating a simple, five-step plan to rebranding yourself and found it to be more useful than I ever imagined.

My advice to others would be to simply get started, today – as with most things in life, you are your own worst enemy. You can choose to continue reading about personal branding to no end and dreaming about your “ideal” job or you can force yourself to spend at least 10 minutes to get started right now.

Today, I am PBwiki’s Director of Information Systems and routinely attend networking events in the San Francisco Bay Area and the DC Metro area. In fact, I specifically set aside a $3000 budget per year to travel between the coasts to keep in touch with entrepreneurs that I’ve met at these same events. Having a strong, consistent personal brand has led to a number of unexpected opportunities, new friends and a decent amount of side income as well.

The point is that you need to own your personal brand and you have to get started today. You’re unique, just like everyone else — start capitalizing on that uniqueness today and watch yourself get ahead in life faster than you ever imagined!

I love following Jeremiah Owyang’s blog. He is very creative for starting a “People on the move in the social media industry” series of posts. In Jeremiah’s last post, I saw a really good note about someone getting a job by using Twitter and jumped on it. I haven’t heard too many stories of people getting a job through Twitter. I emailed Chris immediately and he sent me his story, which is well written. He also asked if I wanted commentary from his new boss and the woman who recruited him on Twitter. So below is a compilation of everything. Just about anyone can learn something from this. From my perspective, I would enjoy a world where you didn’t have to submit to job boards, where you could bypass hierarchies and speak directly to the applicant/recruiter.

Chris Kieff, Director of Marketing, Ripple6, Inc.

I’ve changed jobs from being an independent consultant to becoming the new Director of Marketing with Ripple6, www.Ripple6.com. One of the interesting things about this is that I found my job on Twitter. I’m doing an interview with John Lawlor today on his Blog Talk Radio show about how that happened. It’s at noon eastern today but you can download and listen anytime http://snipr.com/btr-smc-12.

I spent several months looking for work after losing my job in January 2008. I went the usual route of job sites and resumes, etc. And I started writing my blog, www.1GoodReason.com, which gained me some exposure. The blog is the thing that gained me the best attention and consideration. At the same time I worked hard on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Doing everything everyone advises you do to, I was twittering, friending and linking; answering questions etc.

I went on numerous interviews and found 4 different companies that all wanted to hire me for a new position as a “Social Media” person. And each of the 4 companies, when the rubber met the road ran into a hiring freeze. Now maybe this is the new age lie in the current economy but since they were hiring very visible people in the Social Media space it is pretty easy to tell that they are or are not hiring, and they haven’t yet.

So as the last job fell through, and that prospect decided to freeze their hiring and asked me to possibly consult with them, I sent a “Tweet” on twitter, something like this “New Job just fell through, but got a new client“. One of the 1000+ followers I had collected over the past 6 months responded to me with something like, “Hey we’re looking for a social media marketing guy, you interested?“

We started a conversation that lead to a job as the Director of Marketing. Here’s the kicker, I had applied to the job, by sending an email to a job posting they had made a few weeks before. So my resume didn’t make it through the screening process, but my Twitter had gotten through the noise and into the short list.

Katie Bessiere, Director Client Services & Strategy, Ripple6, Inc.

Note: Katie found Chris on Twitter after he tweeted. She was already one of his followers!

I’ve used twitter for advertising open job positions multiple times now, and have found some excellent candidates that way. The message reaches the right people through twitter primarily because it uses my own social network ties to spread the word. I may be broadcasting to a smaller set of people, but they are a more valuable and more relevant set. I was actively monitoring twitter for job candidates when Chris sent his tweet out since I myself had sent several out about open positions in that same time period.

Twitter is certainly not the only effective social media outlet for finding people by any means; I’ve had success with others as well (Facebook and Linkedin, for example). The central tenet of all of these is the same though: using your own network to spread a message. Research has shown that weak ties are the most valuable source of informational and instrumental social support, so it should surprise no one that the phenomenon would repeat itself online or that the candidates found in this manner would be equally if not more qualified for the job.

Rich Ullman, SVP, Marketing, Ripple6, Inc.

Note: Rich is Chris’s new boss!

At first I thought it was ironic to find Chris this way, but it was quite appropriate. For weeks, if not months, I had ruled out candidates with impressive backgrounds and experience because they had less than a dozen connections on LinkedIn. That wasn’t a measure of their talent, but of their ability to adapt, adopt, and understand the medium and what Ripple6 does.

By coming to us from the ground up, it was one clear sign (but not the only one) that he knew how social technologies work, empower and change people. For our niche of the industry, that’s imperative today. And for others, it’s not that far off.

Maor Kaplanski is the top personal branding evangelist in Israel and is finally ready to tell his success story. He positions himself as a Personal eBrand and Online Reputation Management Expert. He is the first to establish the term personal eBrand in Israel through his Blog INTERNETISHI. Over just a few months, the blog attracted many readers and many people in Israel today know what “Personal Branding” is.

Following the success of the blog, Maor has been written about in the papers TimeOut Tel Aviv, Ha’Aretz and Maariv. Maor has successfully positioned himself in the SEO field and opened a new company called eBrand.co.il, which offers unique services and products for the Israeli audience.

Background

In the course of the last year and a half I’ve spoken to a number of people who told me that the perception and application of the principle of “personal branding” changed their lives dramatically. My story is similar, since I branded myself within the “personal branding” field.

Only a year and a half ago my personal brand was completely different. I mean that both in the sense of my external branding (the way other people perceive me) and my internal branding (I didn’t feel so good about myself).

I had a job that I loved as a writer and editor of the sports section of the newspaper Maariv, but I felt I had no fast options of promotion or of improving my pay and conditions. At last, I took a deep breath, mustered the courage and after 7 fun years (but unrewarding) I left the press and decided to go into the commercial Internet world.

But then I found I wasn’t alone and that the competition is hard. These days, there is some growth in the field in Israel but for every position there are some 100 candidates. I understood that in order to gain advantage over other candidates, I had to make myself stand out.

Personal brand discovery

Then I read an interesting article about how 77% of potential employers check names of job candidates in Google, before inviting them to an interview. That’s when it hit me: I had to stop sending my CV automatically to all kinds of employers and instead try to make them get to me – search for me!

I realized that I had to convince employers that I was more than just a standard page of a CV/resume. I realized I had to brand myself, my name – to make those employers realize I am no longer just a sports reporter but an expert of commercial Internet. “How does one go about doing that?” I asked myself, “How the heck do you brand yourself?”

I typed “Personal branding” in Google in Hebrew in order to find information or services in the field. To my utter surprise I found less than 10 results, none of which explained the term “personal branding” properly. I realized that “personal branding” is, in fact, not an academic term, so perhaps there isn’t a good enough reason for anyone to write about it professionally.

In September 2007, in what seemed as a gimmick to me, I decided to open a Blog called INTERNETISHI (as part of my attempt to assert myself in the commercial Internet world) on the topic of: “Personal eBrand”, in the hope of branding myself as an eBrand and Reputation Management expert, thus setting myself apart from the other people in the online marketing field.

Until then I didn’t know the term in English but when I typed “Personal Branding” in Google I nearly dropped from chair: thousands of results of web sites, Blogs, forums, movies, pictures, personal sites and portals dealing with a topic that is much more than a hot trend – Personal branding!

I was mesmerized by Dan’s Blog where I found interesting and fascinating information. I was happy to host him on my Blog for an Interview post where I found that, in addition to roots, we have much more in common in the sense of our ideas and views on personal branding in general and on eBrand in particular.

Success = confidence + happiness

The past year was the happiest year of my life. I have not only evolved professionally and financially, but also made a lot of new friends from all over the world (both online and offline). I found a field I am passionate about, that I can lead and most important, I gained self confidence. I’ve improved the way I perceive myself and the way others perceive me. All of this is thanks to Personal Branding.

Who is Katherine Banning?

Currently living in the US, Katherine is a member of the National Trust (UK), as well as English Heritage, the Royal Oak Society, Friends of Kew, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation (US). An energetic and enthusiastic professional, she plans to graduate from Eckerd College with a degree in Museum Studies in 2008, and hopes to return to Washington DC to attend graduate school with a concentration in Museum Studies and Historic Preservation.

Katherine Banning’s Story

Museums are my passion. In college, I majored in Museum Studies and took all the courses I could find in Cultural Heritage Conservation and Historic Preservation. I took honors classes, volunteered for extra research assignments, stayed on the Dean’s List, and worked very hard to learn everything I could about my favorite subjects. But as is often the case, I had guidance only on fulfilling my majors, not advice on establishing a career. I’d never heard of Branding.

It was by happy accident that I took an Arts Marketing class taught by Marshall Rousseau, Director Emeritus of the Salvador Dali Museum. Professor Rousseau assigned a book called Museum Branding, by Margot A. Wallace, and I read it voraciously. It was fascinating to think of museums as just like people, with identities of their own, often in need of image consultants.

With that idea in mind, I googled “Personal Branding” and found Dan Schawbel’s site. I followed his advice and bought my own name’s website, before anyone else. Then I jotted down some fundamental ideas from his blog: have the same photo on all social networking sites, create a tagline, and get busy building a Brand. Despite my schedule, (I work two full-time jobs while going to school and volunteering) my online Brand quickly and easily became a reality.

Although I still have a lot to learn, and my site could do with more content and some polishing, it’s a start. With each blog I read from Dan’s Personal Branding RSS feed, I feel better informed, and I’m grateful for the head start. I have Professor Rousseau to thank for opening my mind, and Dan Schawbel to credit for helping me focus my efforts. Personal Branding isn’t just online marketing – it is our duty to ourselves, these days. Frankly, it should be taught at every college.

Who is Willard Barure?

“My name is Willard Barure and I am a global brand. I am outgoing , good humoured and emotionally stable although i am not seeing anyone at the moment. I am a University student and i am an establishing stand up comedian who is lloking to elevate myself to an international actor`s status.I am also a gender activist apart from being a talented musician and poet.”

Willard Barure’s Story

“I first met Dan when I was thinking about re-branding myself as a Marketing Student ready to launch a successful career path and my quest for Knowledge led me to Dan through his personal Brand E-blog issues. I have to say I was blown off by what Dan was talking about, never in my life had I imagined myself as a brand vis –a –vis a corporate brand and I never imagined that my e-blogs could actually create lasting impressions and as such shape the total brand experience ,me.

With this new view I began consciously positioning myself as a marketing student with visible distinctive competencies and I practically created my own network using blogs like Hi5.com and Facebook.com which helped me to become a stronger brand. I say this because I used this platform to successfully run for a post in The Student Representative Council at Midlands State University, Zimbabwe. I also played a major role in helping to redress toxic masculinity traits amongst male students her at Midlands State University and the intervention programme was recognized as the best practice model by Oxfam Australia. There is no price for guessing whose face was chosen for the Cover page; mine, plus my profile was featured in the case study.

As I roll out my career path I have developed a passion for event management, and I am the Founder and President of PRACTIKAL, a creativity student welfare organization (www.practikalminds.cfsites.org). I am looking forward to finding an internship in one of the reputable firms in America so I can gain invaluable experience in a much faster paced economy and can strategically position myself as the global brand.

An interesting thing to note is that although me and Dan were born in the same year, 1983, he has already achieved far much more than I have, I guess this is because he has mastered the mystery of identifying, creating and understanding the personal brand.”

I’ve written 267 posts on personal branding in just over a year and today I have yet another reason not to stop (don’t worry this blog will last till I die). I’ve started to get more and more emails telling me how my advice has helped others succeed. Bob Tarne emailed me last week to tell me that my advice has helped him get a new job, after being laid off. Realize that some, if not all, of your readers are incorporating your advice in their own lives. Stories like this, make me proud to be investing my soul in personal branding. If anyone has a similar story and would like to share it with me, please email me at dan.schawbel@gmail.com.

Who is Bob Tarne?

Bob is a consultant, writer, and speaker focusing on helping clients improve their business performance. He works for Lombardi software. He is also a certified project manager (PMP), Certified Scrum Master (CSM), and Six Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB). [Note: I'm a certified Six Sigma Greenbelt and know how hard it is to become a black belt]. He has always worked in the technology field. Outside of work, he enjoys travel and meeting people from different cultures. He has even climbed Mt Fuji, completed an Ironman Triathlon and about a dozen marathons.

Bob Tarne’s Story

“I’ve been blogging for about 2 years now, but at first I wasn’t very consistent. After reading Dan Schawbel’s blog, I started to make the effort to post at least once/week since the start of the this year. I am also consistent in my profiles in Facebook, LinkedIn, Gantthead (an IT PM site) and on my blog, including the same picture. I have also made more of an effort to write for other project management sites, including Projects at Work and The Center for Business Practices. My message across all of these sites focuses on less traditional ideas in project management, such as combining project management and six sigma etc. My next article for Projects at Work (to be published this month) is about using virtual reality tools like Second Life in project management. I also Google myself to make sure I know what’s out there about me.

The company I had worked for was not getting any new business and so I started looking around for a new job at the start of the year. I really ramped up my search in April when I was put on temporary layoff. I landed my job with Lombardi software at the end of the month and started my new job this week. During my search, a number of companies I interviewed with indicated they had read my blog. I also know they looked at my profile in LinkedIn. Lombardi indicated that as they were considering candidates, the content of my blog was one of the things they considered when they decided to hire me.

My advice to anyone would be to start working on your brand now, before you need it. If you find yourself looking for a job, it’s too late to build your brand (Note: it’s never too late, but it will just be more challenging). It’s the same with networking; promote your brand now so people know who you are in case you need their help later.

On a related note, I used tools like Google and LinkedIn to research people I was interviewing with, so that I knew something about them and could ask some questions that showed I did my research. I think this also impressed folks. It seems like an obvious step, but not everyone is doing it.”