I ♥ TWITTER - 3D typography, originally uploaded by flexgraph.

Love and loyalty is fleeing. As people we are finicky and our loyalty changes daily. One day we love Myspace, the next day it’s Facebook, and now it is Twitter.

Twitter is a simplistic communication tool powered by people. It allows you to irresistibly engage the Twitterverse with your personal brand in 140 characters or less.

Definition of Twitterverse: A geographically disperse community of connected passionate people sharing content in its most organic form a Tweet.

Eleven Reasons to Tweet for Personal Brands
1. Passion Principle: The ability to re-tweet, share, and connect to what you are passionate about.
2. Real-time input: Time stamped input. Allows you to input time sensitive responses. (Maximizing the Moment)
3. Transparency: People get to follow your thoughts
4. Brevity: Helps you hone your sales pitch ability. Create great re-tweetable sound bytes.
5. Brandability: Twitter Background, Bio, blog URL, thoughts, expand your network, add to your email signatures, and include on your business cards.
6. Listening: Connect with people without interrupting with search and feeds.
7. Virtual Mentorship: Learn from thought leaders and be mentored for free.
8. Mobility: Connect with a mobile device without being attached to your computer.
9. Free: The cost is sweat equity. It doesn’t get any better than that.
10. 24/7: Twitter is always open and someone is always online.
11. GRUSTLE-Ability: You can Tweet with your Grind and your Hustle.

Bonus Twitter Personal Branding Tips
o Create a 140-Character Twitter Resume/Bio.
o Use your Twitter address as a URL
o Let your personality shine through.
o Attend Tweet-Ups.

Twitter is one of the best online personal branding tools ever. It is a free service with the ability to outperform paid marketing initiatives. It allows you to search emotionally charged content in real-time with people who are passion about your area of expertise. The simplicity of 140 Characters or less in building a personal brand is awesome. In the comment session leave your Twitter handle so that people can connect with you. Happy Tweeting!

Dougie Under Glass, originally uploaded by Ryan Brenizer.

The New Transparency. Does Google know your name? Are you transparent? The perspective of this blog is not focused on telling you to become transparent, but to heighten your awareness that actively participating online makes you naked, exposed, and searchable. Let’s start by defining the subject of this blog:

o Transparency is defined as the state or quality of being transparent.
o Transparent is defined as characterized by visibility or accessibility of information especially concerning business practices. (One of the definitions)

I am sure you are being told you need to be transparent. Have you heard the quote, “Clear is the new black.”? I hope not because I thought I created it, but you understand my point. Transparency is less of a decision and more a by-product of being online and being active in social networks and in the blogosphere.

The Birth of the Online Personal Brand
Social networks in the beginning were simply way to communicate with friends and share content and have evolved into a platform to brand products and people. Being online has become a full-time job, listed below are some of the task:

o Securing eBrand Assets: Domain Names and Social Network URLs.
o Avatar Managements: Uploading consistent avatars across all your social networks.
o Online Reputation Management: Monitoring your online presence.
o And the list goes on . . .

My Rant about: Private v. public

Is there a public versus private Internet? I was a part of a discussion last week at dinner with Oz Sultan and some other friends and this term was tossed around. Needless to say there isn’t a private Internet, everything goes into the public domain. As a personal brand your life is lived in stream. There is no compartmentalizing who you are, you can’t live one way online and another offline. Your digital footprint is in Google and can be traced. In fact if you don’t have a presence online you are not relevant and employers and other decision makers probably aren’t interested in getting to know you. YOU don’t exist.

A person doesn’t need to ever talk with (email, DM, IM, or face-to-face) you to understand how your think, what you like, or what things are important to you. Listed below are some of the ways people can read who you are.
o Tweets
o Facebook Messages
o Friends/Contacts/Connections
o Tag Cloud
o Comments
o Blog Post
o Photos

My Random Thoughts on Transparency:
o Don’t be a Social Media Bully: Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t say in person.
o Be Constant: Constancy is one of the hallmarks of a successful brand be the same online and offline.
o Character is Important: Be true to yourself. Reputation is managed but character is lived.

How transparent are you?

I witnessed the University of North Carolina winning the NCAA National Championship at Ford Field in Detroit, MI.  After the game I paused to create a branding moment.  One of the major tenets of branding is consistency and there are very few college basketball programs with the storied history of North Carolina.

What does the Carolina Blue represent?
o    National Championships: 1957, 1982, 1993, 2005, 2009
o    Michael Jordan:  The greatest player ever.
o    Dean Smith:  Retired as the winning coach in Division I history at the time.
o    Players:  James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Vince Carter, Kenny Smith, and the list goes on.  Players going to the league.
o    Nike/Jordan Brand Product

The expectation for the Carolina basketball program to win is enormous. When people see you online or face-to-face what are there expectations of you?  It’s time for you to make history.

Interesting talk by Evan Williams of Twitter at the TED Conference where he talks about the unexpected uses of Twitter. The success of Twitter has been chronicled as it has hit the mainstream media. At this point in my life I couldn’t imagine going through the day without my laptop or blackberry to check the pulse of the world through the eyes of the Twitter community.What grabbed me the most about his talk was the fact that Twitter started off as a side project. The first word that comes to mind after watching the video is the word GRUSTLE.

GRUSTLE is the combination of a daily Grind (job) and a Hustle (your passion) and most people are caught between the two. Most peoples side project is their passion, which I believe fuels their success.

The average person is one side project away from their greatness. What side project are you working on?

Twitter Time in Royal Oak, originally uploaded by Hajj Flemings.

The Detroit Twitter community has grown and recently captured the attention of the media. Stephen Clark (@sclarkwxyz) of Channel 7 News covered the latest tweet-up in Royal Oak on 02/27/09. Detroit is not known for social media nationally, but has always been a city of first.

Detroit First

Innovation: Thomas Edison (Light Bulb)
Mass Production: Henry Ford (Automotive)
Techno Music: Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May, and Eddie Fowlkes, (Belleville Four)
Hockey’s Origin Six: Detroit Red Wings (11-Stanley Cups)
Pop and Soul Music: Motown/Berry Gordy (50th Anniversary)

The automotive industry was the silicon valley of its time and is responsible for single handedly created the middle-class. There is a new spirit of entrepreneurship, creativity, and innovation brewing in the motor city and the twitter community is determined to be apart of the movement.

Michigan Tweet-Up Facebook Groups
Detroit Tweet-Up
Mid-Michigan Tweet-Up

Partial List of Attendees:
@davidlingholm
@coreyperlman
@anahidlisa
@corab
@klavaute
@davemurr
@damnredhead
@hajjflemings
@PublicCityPR
@themusicmafio
@damonhenry
@detroitvoice
@hubertgam
@andre1929
@andreafog
@keithstonehouse
@bchesnutt
@charliecurve
@karenevanstm
@jwphillips
@genebrady
@davepeckens
@montilee
@turbobrown
@rumblestrip
@sclarkwxyz

For a complete list go to the Detroit Tweet-Up Facebook Group

Check out the video on Channel 7 News: Twitter Time Video Clip.

Mind Share- by Hajj E. Flemings, originally uploaded by Hajj Flemings.

Market share versus mind share is a question for the ages. Is market share for personal brands important? Can personal brands grow market share? How do you determine if your personal brand is stronger than someone elses? For most people it would be hard to calculate market share and would be meaningless if identified?

Market Share

Market share is the percentage or proportion of the total available market or market segment that is being serviced by a company or by a brand.

o Coke has 43.1% of $65.9 billion soft drink beverage industry.

This makes it very easy to define how much of the soft drink beverage industry that Coke-Cola owns.

Mind Share

Mind Share is owning a slice of mental real estate in the mind of your customers or potential customers. Personal branding has a lot to do with creating a top of the mind experience and making your name synonymous with the industry or space that you want to occupy.

For Example
o Tiger Woods = Golf
o Seth Godin = Marketing
o Anderson Cooper = News

Capturing Mind Share

How does a personal brand capture mind share? That is a great question and I am glad that you asked. Mind share is captured through conversational capital. There are many touch points of a brand that create brand impressions that simulates awareness.

Brand Impressions

o Social Network (SN) Connections: Adding Friends, Connections,
Contacts.
o Twitter Conversation: Humanize your brand and connect.
o Post Video Content
o RSS Subscription
o Email Distribution
o Blogs: Blogging, commenting on others blogs, number site of visits
o Sales: Products/services that connect people to your thoughts.
o Downloads/Views: Podcast (Video/Audio) and video content
o Face-to-Face Interaction: Speaking engagements, networking events, meetings, and presentations.
o Write a book: Traditional book, eBook, and/or audio book
o Web 2.0 Cards: Social media cards by www.BrandCardz.com, my personal favorite.

Results of Capturing Mind Share

Mind share is not about numbers, one can easily artificially inflate the number of social network connections, downloads, or view.

o Fame
o Notoriety
o Trust/Creditability
o Brand Awareness
o Inflated Ego
o Opportunity
o Influence
o Followers
o Stalkers

Converting Mind Share into Personal Brand Value

One of the challenges of personal branding is to convert mind share into value or basically creating a business model to monetize your new found brand awareness. Let me know your thoughts on you how you convert your personal brand into value!!!!

hustle, originally uploaded by lomoD.xx.

I am sorry America, Wall Street is not coming to save us. It’s time to GRUSTLE.

GRUSTLE is the combination of a daily Grind (job) and a Hustle (your passion). Most people are caught between the two and are looking for a way out, but there is only a way IN: put IN work and INvest in your dreams. In my book ‘The Brand YU Life’ the first degree (or principle) is ‘Identify Your Passion’ which is the cornerstone of Grustlin’.

Definitions

Grind: A grind is a job; employment; typically your primary source of income.

Hustle: A hustle is your passion, what you would love to do full-time and what gives you the most satisfaction. It is what you typically do after you work your daily grind.

In your mind you know you can make money with your hustle, but you question whether you can make a living. This blog post was inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk’s Hustle 2.0 blog post. He basically stated that you can do them both the grind and the hustle. Most people who read my blog have a job and a passion and I am here to challenge you. You have the same 24-hours that Gary V has, he has just found a way to get more value out of his time.

I am in the same boat as you I work a full-time job and work my passion after hours staying up to at least 1AM or 2AM on most nights then having to be at work early the next day, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I don’t sleep a lot I take naps in between waking up and living my dream. The development of my personal brand has allowed me to focus on what I love to do and do it well.

What has always made America great is the spirit of creativity and entrepreneurship that has always rested on the great minds, leaders, and thinkers of our time. It’s time to get your GRUSTLE on.

Grustlin’ Since 1971. Hajj E. Flemings

Presidential Inauguration Weekend, originally uploaded by Hajj Flemings.

Sunday, January 18, 2009: This is Hajj E. Flemings reporting live from Washington D.C. during the Presidential Inauguration weekend. Hundreds of thousands of people poured into downtown D.C. on Sunday to be a part of history, the sight of this made me reflect on the subject of ‘Branding’. More specifically the ‘Re-Branding of America’ and what it means not only to us as Americans but the world. As we transition from one administration to another I would like for you to think about the Brand of America and what it means to you. I reflected on this today in Caribou Coffee on 12th Street in D.C. where I met journalist Jackie Mays from South Africa and we talked about the days events and the renewed enthusiasm we saw. Will the world’s most recognized Personal Brand on the planet be able to positively Re-Brand the country that we love?

It is 2009 and the Internet is buzzing with experts providing their predictions and trends for the year.  I wanted to provide my thoughts on personal branding to help set the tone for an exciting year.

Predictions/Trendspotting

1. Creative Economy:  Creativity will be to the information age what manufacturing was to the industrial age.  Individuals dependence on being a company man working 30-years at one company or until death do you part will cease to exist.  The integration of creativity into business ideas and career will become a necessity and not an option.  As a personal brand you will need to think creatively in developing strategic partnerships and ways to stand out.  After everybody has updated their Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter pages, established a blog, added followers, and followed all the same tips what is next?  Creativity.
2. Purpose/Mission:  People will start to seek opportunities or careers that give them greater satisfaction that they have a true passion for.  This is primarily due to the instability in the economy and the reduction of jobs that were more lucrative in good economic times.  High paying low education jobs are a thing of the past.  People will now look at opportunities that align with how they are wired and what they were designed to do.
3. ‘Personal Branding’ Term Commoditized:  The term ‘Personal Branding’ will become more commoditized and genericized.  The term has significance and value when implemented, but I believe the term itself will be overused and misused.
4. Traditional Journalist Become Commodities:  The voice and influence of bloggers and social media experts increase.  Newspapers are losing money with traditional newspaper printing and are looking for ways to compete with the new media.  Traditional journalist will have to integrate social media and effectively establish their personal brand.
5. Personal Branding Experts Commodization:  With the increase of social media gurus the line between personal branding experts and social media experts is blurring.  The personal branding industry will become oversaturated and the cream will rise to the top.  Those of us in the personal branding industry will have to work harder to cut through the noise.
6. Establish ‘Blue Movement’:  The need to develop the ‘Blue Movement is critical.   ‘American Made’ needs to be established as the new luxury product. The ‘Green Movement’ has been very successful because big business have bought into it can the same be done with the ‘Blue Movement’?
7. Twitter Relevance Increases:  Twitter will gain relevance as a search and primary news source. Business opportunities with strategist business models and usages will continue to be developed.
8. Personal Brands being Healthy:  Being healthy is just as importance as your ranking in Google.  You can have all the money and influence in the world but without good health you have nothing.  Being fit spiritually, mentally, and physically is critical. Learn to have balance and think holistically because you are the sum total of all your parts.
9. Passion Becomes King:  People doing what they love.  Passion is the fuel that drives you to do what others are not willing to do.  We all have the same 24-hours but passionate people find out how to get more out of their time and produce higher quality results.

I want to challenge and inspire you to shine in 2009.  Have an awesome year and share your predictions for 2009 in the comments section of this blog post.

Virtual Mentors, originally uploaded by Hajj Flemings.

How many people do you currently mentor? Is that number 1, 2 or 10? Whatever number you identify you have underestimated the impact of your mentorship program. As a personal brand you are a virtual mentor for many whether you realize it or not. You are inspiring, challenging, and helping those less experienced than you to develop by indirectly speaking into their life.

Wikipedia defines Mentorship as a developmental relationship in which a more experienced person helps a less experienced person, referred to as a protégé, apprentice, mentee, or (person) being mentored, develop in a specified capacity.

When was the last time you read a blog post or followed someone on Twitter and the light went on for you? When was the last time you saw a video that someone loaded into YouTube, or read a book and the light went on for you? When was the last time you received a DM from someone, or read a link that someone posted on Twitter and the light went on for you? These brief points of interaction can be as impactful as spending 3 or 4 hours with a person in a face-to-face mentoring session.

My Virtual Mentors

With the expansion of social networks, blogs, podcasting, teleseminars it is possible to mentor virtually millions without having a personal relationship with each mentee. As a personal brand strategist I am a virtual mentor with the goal of impacting the lives of 1 million people. So I thought it would be interesting to share with you some of my personal virtual mentors. Most of whom I have never met face-to-face, don’t have an in-depth business relationship with, or DM them 10-times a day, but have been impacted tremendously by their work.

o Guy Kawasaki (@GuyKawasaki): Author of Reality Check (and eight other books)/Founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures and Co-Founder of Alltop.com
o Seth Godin: Marketing Guru/Author of Tribes (and eleven other books)
o Hill Harper (@HillHarper): Actor on CSI/Author of Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest your Destiny
o Chris Brogan (@ChrisBrogan): Social Media Guru/President of New Marketing Labs/Author of ‘Trust Agents’ (Due in Fall 2009)
o Rohit Bhargava (@RohitBhargava): Author of Personality Not Included
o Kevin Carroll: Author of Rules of the Red Rubber Ball & The Red Rubber Ball at Work.
o Malcolm Gladwell: Author of Blink/Tipping Point & Outliners
o Vincent Hunt (@Vincent Hunt): Creative Guru
o Nancy Duarte (@Nancy Duarte): Author of Slideology
o Wayne Sutton (@Wayne Sutton): Social Media Strategist

Basic Elements of a Virtual Mentor

o Have a product/service within their Niche: A book, audio content, workshops, or seminars that centers around your specific message.
o Blog/Social Network Presence: It allows people the opportunity to connect with you, get to know you, and humanizes your brand.
o Be Authentic: Be who you are. Be authentic. People follow interesting people.
o Have the right Associations: Following or friending the right people can create mutually benefital business relationships. Leaders attract leaders.

I want to thank my virtual mentors for the REALITY CHECK, that assisted be in developing my TRIBE, to MANifest my DESTINY, while being a TRUST AGENT, with my PERSONALITY INCLUDED, while playing with my RED RUBBER BALL @ WORK, presenting my brand with SLIDE:OLOGY, while BLINKing, in 140 or Less, and being SOCIAL like WAYNE.

Who do you mentor? And what do your mentee say about you?