PodCamp Boston
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Mitch Joel
Building Your Personal Brand: The Power of Conversations
You need to be passionate about everything you do! How many hours a day do you spend working? Podcasting? Most of us do it to get out of our work. He wants us to bring this passion to our work.
Works during the day with fairly big brands on how to hold conversations. You can translate all of this into being more effective in our personal lives.
Why is personal branding important?
Be a better husband, wife, family member. Be a better community member. Make more money in our work.
Words account for only 7% of communication. Your personal brand is screaming so loud you can hardly hear what you are saying. Your personal brand already is! How you dress, what you do, what you do for a living, who you connect with.
A brand is a bunch of emotional things that we connect to. E.g. establishing the Apple brand. How do you establish a brand? You have to figure out the differentiater.
Why is personal branding so easy? Because we are all so different.
Internal conversation - leads to business and marketing. First:
Find the real you.
If you are interverted, connect more to people like you. Most people have never heard of him, and yet he speaks to lots of people because he is connecting with people like him.
Have you tried to write out your own story? Write that story and connect to that story--it will show what makes you truly unique. You need to have your story out, try your story out on people you trust. So often people have a different idea of you than you have of yourself.
The power of a great internal conversation. Companies have internal conversations, too. Harley-Davidson does not actually sell motorcycles. They sell a lifestyle, the open road, "the ability of a 43 accountant to dress in black leather, drive through small towns and have people be afraid of them." (Harley-Davidson executive)
What are your values, your goals, your beliefs? How many of your shows are the mental tattoos on people's minds? When your show comes out, you want them to want to listen to it right away. If someone listens to your show they connect with you.
Elevator pitch - 30 seconds to explain what you do. Four simple steps to make your pitch work.
1. State very clearly what you do.
2. Very short.
3. Has to roll off your tongue, sound natural, as if you just came up with it.
4. It has got to be memorable.
Elevators are a euphemism for life.
Be the one who stands out, make sure you are the one people remember. For your personal brand to really explode, you have to listen. Podcasters tend to have verbal diarrhea; you have to listen, listen to your listeners.
ALWAYS talk to strangers. Get out there, you can build hundreds of people in your audience just by talking to the people here at this conference. He is going to spend time people he doesn't know. He is not going to be one of those people talking to just the two only people you know. It's all about who you know. It's also about who knows you.
Plug into other people, not just your computer. Connect into people, and you will get people thinking about you.
He wants us to attend THREE social networking events in the next week. Turn to the person behind you and sit down to have coffee with that person later. If I can understand what you need, I can help you get it. Help people with their goals. You can do this by connecting people online.
"Would you like to sit next to you at dinner?" - The Economist (ad)
Your ability to give and give and not care if you get anything back in return...give abundantly, give of your time, be part of the community. Don't expect to get anything back.
Mentoring is important. Mentors can be family, friends, community, business. A lot of us are his mentors. Everyone in this room is now your mentor. You need to rely on this community. The one to many conversation.
First time in the history of the planet you now have the ability to personally have a one-to-many conversation because of the web. We now have connectivity. You've got to be connected. Everyday people can now go about our day-to-day lives to truly effect change in the world.
You can go wherever you want, and you try to find people like you. The internet - what other media allows you to find people? What other media allows you to have this conversation? Six degrees of separation/six pixels of separation - people are now intrinsically connected. How does our personal brand help you to connect with people?"
"Your brand isn't what you say it is. It's what Google says it is." - Chris Anderson (author of The Long Tail)
Forbidden - woman on the west coast has over 1.4 million friends on myspace.com
LinkedIn - power of using the channels to build your connections.
***Just remember stuff lingers forever on the web.****
6 points:
- establish yourself as an expert - don't just podcast but blog, write articles, speak.
- Be seen and known as a leader.
- Be known as an innovator.
- Separate yourself from the competition. Book: Blue Ocean Strategy
- Gain professional statute
- Build your image e.g. Bono is constantly building his image- how he look is as important as what he says.
What is your personal nametag going to say??
The rules have not changed. Make friends, tell the truth, do your homework.
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