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?

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!!!!

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?

Speaks volumes about you, originally uploaded by chilcott.

We live in a digital world where we text, IM, DM, blog, and email, but at some point you will have to come from behind the laptop, cell phone, or monitor and face the real world. Technology is nothing more than a tool it doesn’t solve problems by itself it takes the human interaction of your personal brand to communicate and connect real people and great ideas.

As wonderful as you are you are you are not the first person to think about the idea you have. Trust me. Branding is about packaging an idea in a way that is digestible and engaging. Everyone wants their audience to consume their thoughts and ideas and leave them clamoring for more while passionately spreading them to others.

At the end of the day you have the responsibility of bringing your idea to light and communicating it in the real world. Becoming comfortable speaking in front of people is something that I recommend all personal brands, but he only way to get better is practice, sorry you can’t outsource this function.

Growing up I stuttered. I could hardly talk, but one day I made a decision that I wanted to be a better speaker so I took every opportunity to get in front of people speaking for free to improve my speaking ability. At first I had to type out 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper and memorize every word, then I converted to note cards, and now key ideas on a screen. It has been a long journey but has paid great benefits. Simply put you will have to turn up the volume of your brand and speak there is a world waiting to hear you.

“All brands speak it is not an option but a responsibility.”
Hajj E. Flemings

Keys to Presenting your Personal Brand

o Be Creative. Add visuals, stories, case studies, and interesting points.
o Study other great speakers or presenters.
o Be a Story Teller. People are more engaged when you are telling a story versus reading bullet points. (Hint: Most people can read the worlds on the screen.)
o Be You. Your personality is crucial in bringing your idea to life.
o Be Visual. Whenever it is appropriate or feasible work to incorporate and communicate your thoughts visually.
o Think like a Tweeter. Less is more, keep it simple.
o Be interesting. There are too many copies, please be an original.
o Be Accurate. Your credibility is at state.

Thoughts from the Experts:
o Nancy Duarte (@nancyduarte): “Creating great ideas is what we were born to do: getting people to feel like they have a stake in what we believe is the hard part.”
o Chip & Dan Heath: Six Principles of SUCCESs: Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories. (The SUCCESs checklist, is a tool for dealing with communication problems.)
o Guy Kawasaki (@GuyKawasaki): 10/20/30 Rule (10- Slides/20- Minutes/30- Point Font)
Tips for Creativity:

o Istock Photo
o Flickr
o Slideshare.net: Great resource for ideas

Resources
o Great Speakers:

•TED (Technology Entertainment Design) www.TED.com
•Kevin Carroll
•Mitch Joel
•Seth Godin

Brand Gap

My Favorite Tools

• Keynotes Software
• Apple Laptop
• Kensington Wireless Presenter

Must Reads

Slideology: Nancy Durate has created a masterpiece on slide presentation.
Reality Check: Guy Kawasaki has some great incite on presenting.

I have embedded my presentation from 2008 Brand Camp University: Personal Branding 2.0 Conference at Lawrence Tech University on Personal Branding.

Some of the top young professionals in the region put their imprint on the 2008 Mackinac Policy Conference (MPC). The state of Michigan has declared that one of its top priorities is to attract and retain young professionals. By deciding to make this demographic apart of the most powerful conference in the state, a major step was taken. Detroit Fusion, a diverse group of young thinkers and leaders comprised of the Gen ‘X’ and Millennial generations, was not only present, but on the agenda and welcomed by everyone.

If the state of Michigan is committed to changing the dead manufacturing model that built the middle class, a transition to a knowledge-based economy is required. The economic obstacles that we face provide a great platform to redefine the new economy. The same way Ford, GM, and Chrysler built the middle class and the economy of our region with manufacturing, new industries and infused thinking will build the new economy in Michigan.

Michigan’s top-leaders realize the talent they are attempting to attract and retain has to be part of the conversation. The seat of innovation has always come from the entrepreneurial mindset of great thinkers that were not weighed down with the weights of tradition but challenged and uplifted with the idea that human capital is the currency that drives any economy.

The inaugural class of young professionals from Detroit Fusion realized that the conference was only the beginning. I believe that every person has to take ownership to be change agents and brand evangelists of ‘The New Michigan’. Young professionals must be fully engaged in the process with input and resources to help infuse life into a stronger Michigan. The 2008 Mackinac Policy Conference and Detroit Fusion, through the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, was the first step in that process.

Mackinac Policy Conference + Detroit Fusion, originally uploaded by Hajj Flemings.

I recently watched a commercial entitled ‘When You Let Everyone Play…Nobody Wins’ by ‘The Ladders’ which is an online job search provider for $100K+ jobs. The commercial embodied a topic that I planned to write on for a while that I term, ‘Maximum Capacity’. The video is a scene of a tennis match that is soon flooded with amateurs/people so that no one stands out. Have you ever felt in life and at work that it is impossible to stand out it the crowd? This video is funny but it is very real and very true. With the changing job market, downsizing, and outsourcing we all at times feel like we are stuck. There are more than 6.5 billion people on the planet and you are a mouse click away from your farthest competitor, so how do you stand out?

Personal branding is the new human capital, I will be developing a series of blog post on this topic covering the following content:

o Human Connections (Relationships)
o What’s my Human Capital?
o Your brand story

I will talk about how to develop your personal brand to increase your new human capital.
Are you ready to stand out?