Whether you are an entrepreneur, business professional, or someone looking for a new job, being able to clearly articulate your personal brand's value proposition will help place you top of mind, compelling your audience to want to do business with you over your competition, and ultimately achieve your goals.

What is your personal brand's value proposition?

A brand's value proposition is the promise of value delivered to its audience. While this branding element is typically focused on corporate brands and products, you don't need to be a Fortune 500 company to apply these same principles to your personal brand – especially when you convey your value proposition in terms of the emotional benefits to your audience.

The Three Value Propositions

Product Leadership aka "The Innovator"

A person who exemplifies this type of method is all about delivering better products or services and is typically focused on new technologies and techniques. Think Apple. They are often at the forefront of their industries and considered to be thought leaders. Their products and services are typically at a higher price point than their competitors, but due to the superiority of what they offer, their clients are happy to pay the premium.

The Innovator's personality traits are based on being unique. Words to best describe their brand essence (and what should be conveyed through their marketing messages) could include: elite, trendy, influential, creative, innovative, cool, coveted, rare, authoritative, and essential.

Operational Excellence aka "The Commoditizer"

This is a person who embodies the spirit of WalMart. They deliver value by offering their products or services at a lower price and mainly compete on cost. They look for ways to streamline and systematize their expertise, and pass along the savings to their clients.

The Commoditizer is all about competition. Words to best describe their brand essence include: competitive, aggressive, ease, prevailing, smart, fast, broad, and unswerving.

Customer Intimacy aka "The Wowzer"

This person is focused on creating an extraordinary relationship with their customers and focuses their value position on solving client problems through a variety of products/services or special, customized programs. Customers come to them because they can expect a 'wow' experience that the competitors do not. Disney is a company that prides itself on delivering a magical, fun experience to their customers from their theme parks and destination resorts to their movies and stores.

The Wowzer loves to please and words to describe their brand may include: supportive, approachable, warm, caring, concerned, resourceful, loyal, and interested.

Applying Your Value Proposition to Your Brands Strategy

When selecting your value proposition it may be tempting to say that you successfully do all three but not only is that nearly impossible, it would benefit you to not to be all things to all people. To position yourself that way would dilute your brand message and confuse your audience. Instead, focus on one key value proposition to incorporate into all of your branding, key messages, and personality themes. Once that message is clearly communicated, you can then bring in a secondary, lesser value proposition to promote in your brand theme, if necessary.

Keep the conversation flowing what is your personal brands value proposition? Do you think someone can really deliver on all three without diluting their brands message?

• 17 Creative Ways To Promote Your Personal Brand Through Video
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Secrets of the Fortune 500: How to Discover Your Personal Brand's Value

One of the most overlooked uses of keyword competition analysis is to define your brand. Website owners usually choose keywords that are either too broad or too narrow to attract their ideal client. Typically, their keywords are chosen without regard to expected search queries or expected search engine rankings. Promoting the content structured around these keywords usually results in very little organic search traffic.

• Proximity Trust: How To Get Google's Branding Trust For Your Site

Who's Buying What?

A valuable use of keyword research is to compare the relevance of the products and services the website owner currently provides to the services buyers are seeking through searches.

Very often an adjustment in keywords will result in higher search traffic. An increase in the quality of the site visitors usually accompanies the increased traffic as well.

The process of using keyword competition analysis to define your brand can be compared to a funnel. At its widest opening are the broad keywords that are hard to rank for but generate substantial website traffic. At its narrow opening are the longest keyword phrases that are easy to rank for but generate very little website traffic.

Where Are They Buying It?

• My name is James and I'm addicted to branded search: Google & Brands

Using competition analysis to define your brand can be useful at any promotional stage. Website owners can use this methodology to determine:

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Using Competition Analysis to Define Your Brand

Google uses the concept of brands — not actual brands — as a signal for ranking.

Brand = Trust.

It's what tips the scales in that split second where we decide between the known and the unknown.

Where does that trust come from?

Prolonged Proximity = Trust

To people, prolonged proximity builds trust.

It is the basis for the "can you watch my luggage?" dialogue in transportation waiting rooms across the globe.

Prolonged Exposure = Trust

Prolonged exposure acts the same way.

By seeing a brand name — be it personal or a company — time and time again, we grow recognition.

Recognition in turn grows into trust.

Build Your Brand

To build your website into a brand, cause prolonged exposure.

Ask: how can I prolong the exposure to my brand on my web site?

Prolonged Exposure Through Adjectives

Use your brand name as an adjective: "The Monday Morning Ford Fiesta Special", "The Apple Promise", or "The BBC Newsletter".

Prolonged Exposure Through Design

Use a logo that doesn't cloud the brand name.

Feature the brand name at the top and at the bottom of the page.

What Else?

What other ways are there to turn a simple visit to your site into a brand indoctrination session?

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Proximity Trust: How To Get Google's Branding Trust For Your Site

Unless you know HTML and understand SEO, you probably don't know much about the rel= "author" tag. In this article, I am going to give you everything you need to know about the tag including what it is, why it is important and the possible future scenarios in which this tag will be used to enhance your personal "brand" (meaning you) know matter where you write. This is especially important if you are involved in content marketing and are trying to make a name for yourself.

For the person who doesn't know HTML, the rel="author"/rel="me" is nothing more than mark up language that helps the search engines define who the author is. I will give examples later in this article to illustrate the "look" of it.

Before I get into what it looks like and how to apply the mark up language, I want to help you understand why you should even care. Let's pretend that you are an expert on parenting and have written articles for a variety of websites on the subject.

Before the rel="author" tag, the articles you wrote on the web were fragmented and disjointed, with no centralized place to establish that all the articles you wrote came from YOU.

The result was you could very well be an expert in the field but beyond your own website, there wasn't a way for the search engines to connect the dots of all the various places that you wrote for.

The rel="author" markup centralizes all the articles that you have written that are scattered across the internet into one place.

That centralized place is your google profile. (we will get into that when we explore the "how's")

Why should this matter?

There are a couple reasons why this should matter. The first reason is that when you successfully implement the mark up language, whenever someone uses search and you happen to be in the results, your profile picture could be right next to your article which may raise the chances of a click through visit.

Another reason why it should matter to you is that by verifying that you are the original author of a page, you will more likely be credited as the author. �This is important when you start to consider all the websites that currently like to curate content found on the web and do so in a not so nice manner (by scraping and not giving attribution). �In essence, you would be giving your content a leg up from being stolen and ranking ahead of you in the search engine rankings.

The biggest reason is what could happen in the future. Some have theorized that in the future, Google could assign a ranking value to your google profile that could boost your individual articles up .

Author profiling, the author tags that Google is using, they might be asking is this person an authority? If Rand Fishkin links to you with anchor text about SEO, Google may in the future decide Rand Fishkin is an expert about SEO. That link is so much more important then Joe Schmoe SEO because they know his author profile.

-Source: SEOMoz

In other words, if you are aiming to be deemed an expert by the search engines, then your author profile page could be the connection between all your articles "out there" and your expertise. �In essence, your expertise will follow you wherever you go on the web.

How to apply the rel="author" markup.

I have read several technical "how to's" on this subject but most would go over the heads of the people that matter most in the equation- the authors. �Most require messing with .php files on your website, which for many, can be the reason why you wouldn't want to even try to add it. Fortunately, the steps are much easier to implement than us "geeks" would have you know.

If you are using this for your own website, then there are three steps.

1. Add the mark up to your "about me" page (you do have one of those, right?) with the rel="me" tag and connect the link to your google profile. (you can include this anywhere on the page.
2. Add the mark up to each of your articles pointing to your "about" page on your website with the rel="author" tag.
3. Include a link to your website in your google profile (make sure to check the box that says "this page is specifically about me")

It would look like this-

• On your about page- <a href="google-profile-url.com" rel="me">your name</a>
• One each of your articles- <a href="yourwebsite.com/about-page" rel="author"</a>
• On your google profile- Link to your about page (make sure to check the box that says "this page is specifically about me")

If you are writing articles for other places, the step is a 3 step process.

• (step 1-on the individual articles) <a rel="author" href="website-you-are-contributing-on/your-author-page">link-name</a>
• (step 2-on the author's profile page for the website) <a rel="me" href="google-profile-url.com">your name</a>
• (step 3-on your google profile) Link that points back to your author page.

Why Google is requiring a "profile" page.

The basic reason is that the profile page will complete the loop and verify that the article is indeed the authors. �The thought process behind this is that if it isn't you, you wouldn't have access to the profile page. Obviously, there are other reasons why google would want to be included in the loop but that is another story altogether.

Summary

That is really all there is to it. There are some caveats though. If you are guest posting on other webmaster's websites, then you may have to wait until everyone catches up. This is especially true with websites that use wordpress (the platform automatically strips out certain HTML). Google is currently working with many of the more popular website platforms to automatically include the markup in the future.

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Everything you need to know about rel="author"

Today we're going to expose three “lies” entrepreneurs tell themselves on why they don’t need a personal brand and explain the reality behind each.

Personal branding (applying the techniques that corporations use for their products to market oneself) is a hot topic in the blogosphere and I’ve seen many misconceptions used to dismiss it.

#1: “Personal Branding Is A Trendy Way Of To Cover Up My Faults.”

The term “Personal branding” originally appeared in the 1997 Fast Company article “The Brand Called You” by Tom Peters. The piece discussed the idea of treating yourself as the CEO of Me, Inc. to get further ahead in your career. However, the idea of positioning oneself as a brand has been around since the first entrepreneurs realized they needed to differentiate to succeed.

This is not about covering up your faults or trying to be someone you are not. Your audience will see through a fake persona. A strong personal brand is based on being strategically authentic, while highlighting your best qualities for connecting with your audience.

#2: “I Am Who I Am – I’m Not Covering That Up To Be A Brand; Besides, Why Would I Limit Myself To A Few Qualities?”

Treating yourself as a company doesn’t mean you have to be stale and boring. Your brand should communicate the various dimensions of your personality. And, as you grow, your brand evolves with you.

There was a time when I believed talking about my love of Beastie Boys lyrics or communicating with my playful sense of humor would seem unprofessional. In some scenarios, it is, but I found that when I correlate song lyrics to business it encourages a fun environment. I’ve incorporated these various elements of my personality into my brand; in doing so, I’ve received more business from people I enjoy working with who also appreciate my unique point of view.

#3: “Personal Branding Is Only For Celebrities And The Self-obsessed.”

Personal branding is not for everyone. The truth is not everyone has drive or even a vision for what they want out of life. But I do believe that the concept works for those looking to achieve something in his or her life. It is not self-obsessed to have a goal and put a plan in place to achieve it, and I don’t believe it’s self-obsessed to take the time to understand who you are and how you use that to help others (which is what most people are really looking to do when they have a vision).

Effectively communicating who you are, what you stand for and what differentiates you will increase the chances of your success, and if you’re ready to use your most compelling qualities to your advantage, personal branding is for you.

So, do you really need a personal brand?

In reality, it doesn’t matter if you think you need a personal brand. The fact is you already have one. It’s how people perceive you.

It’s your turn to share your thoughts…Are any of these myths true?

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Exposed: “I Don’t Need a Personal Brand”

I'm occasionally struck by businesses who accidentally develop a really memorable brand.

"The Brand"

I found myself in an ice cream shop near our new office. On entering the door the young lady, who is the proprietor, greeted my family and me. She said "Welcome to The Adventure". I thought it was pretty ambitions, but what the hey.

We went through the process of ordering our ice cream and probably quite a bit into eating ice cream-you can tell we were preoccupied-before I came to a realization. The name of the store was "The Adventure"!

At which point I asked the proprietor "when you were coming up with the name for your store, did you have in mind that you would greet people with 'Welcome to The Adventure'"?

She told me that it hadn't occurred to her until right after the first time she said the words.

Accidental branding genius!

I was reminded of the story I've heard about one of the Beastie Boys' albums. The album was called "Hello Nasty". The story goes that the beastie boys were represented by a publicity firm named Nasty Little Man, and that when one calls Nasty Little Man when the receptionist answers "Hello Nasty"!

Beastie Boys

Branding genius!

I know I'll never forget that story. Was this the intent did the founders of Nasty Little Man no when they named their business that their receptionist will answer the phone that way? They may have, of course. They are a hip publicity firm. But maybe not.

The sad part of this story of the story is that notwithstanding her accidental branding genius the proprietor of "The Adventure" does not appear to have claimed her Google places page. Sadly, not Local SEO Genius.

I've racked my brain trying to come up with other examples. Sad, but true, it's the rare brand content be truly memorable. It's not uncommon for people to be memorable and it's not uncommon for ideas to be memorable and sticky. But not so much the brands.

The bland brands prevail.

Do you have a bland brand?

Think about it. How do you interact with customers? Are you memorable?

Join me! It's a new mission. Let's become branding geniuses!

Photo Credit:

• "The Brand" by Hanan Cohen – Translation on Flickr

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Accidental Branding Genius

Your Facebook business page is an opportunity for your audience to learn more about your brand. Here are the top five areas of your page that you must focus on to engage your Facebook fan and strategically market your brand.

1. Utilize your profile picture

Your Facebook profile picture is initial opportunity to demonstrate your brand to your followers.

Choose a high-quality image of yourself and work with your graphic designer to design a custom designed banner that is consistent with your brand. You have 180 X 540 pixels  of space to work with; so, take this opportunity to express your core message: who you are, what you do, and for whom you do it for.

2. Create a Facebook landing page

Facebook landing pages are your prime opportunity to welcome your fans and tell your brand story. Gary Vaynerchuk’s landing page literally tells his story and is a great example of using this medium to promote yourself to your audience in a fun way.

There are a number of services and applications available that will customize your Facebook landing page that fits with your brand and your budget. Many of the do-it-yourself applications offer a free trial, so be sure to play around and investigate before you decide on one to use. For more information, check out Orli Yakuel's comparisons in her blog post "The 12 Best Ways to Customize Your Facebook Pages" for Tech Crunch.

A key element to creating a fan page that converts visitors to fans is the “like-gate” feature. This basically requires page visitors to “like” your page in order to view the content. By nature, most people are curious and want to feel that they are a part of something exclusive. A few strategies you can use to play this up are to offer your fans:

• Exclusive discounts and coupons
• First look at product announcements
• Video reveals
• Giveaways and contests
• Free resources including tips, white papers, articles, etc.

3. Get creative with photos

Pictures are a visually appealing and fun way to engage your audience. Pam Lawhorne, The Social Maven, does an excellent job of staying on brand by incorporating her pictures with her colors and tying them into themes  with her “entrepreneur of the day”, “question of the day”, and “30 days of gratitude” campaigns.

Another creative tactic is to make use of your Facebook photo strip. The photo strip consists of the five default photos at the top of your page. Companies are using this to highlight their products, introduce team members, and to further tell their brand story. Check out this Social Fresh’s blog post for ideas to incorporate this into your business page.

4. Effectively use your “info” tab.

The “info” portion of your business page is another opportunity to connect your followers across all of your social media platforms.  Do not assume that your fans know that you are available on other social media outlets and include links to your blog, twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.

5. Keep your content fresh and relevant.

A golden rule of personal branding is to keep yourself in front of your audience at all times.  Having pretty pictures and landing pages are great, but without a constant, clear message that relates to your followers, it is a waste of time.

To develop fresh content, ask yourself:

• What keeps your audience up at night?
• How do you solve their problem?
• What are related topics of interest that you can link to?

Here are a few strategies to keep a constant presence:

• Schedule your status updates in advance with a service such as MediaFeedia.com. A word of caution… while this will help keep your posts consistent and constant, you still must log on and interact with your audience – answer comments, reach out to your audience, and build relationships.
• Create a Google alert on the related topics that you identified so that you can easily link to relevant articles and blog posts that are of interest to your audience.
• Create a weekly or daily theme to help focus your message or questions. For instance, I am known for incorporating pop culture and lyrical references in the delivery of my messages on personal branding so I created a pop culture question of the day, you can find an example on my Kimberly Bordonaro Personal Branding page.

So, what did I miss? How are you using your Facebook business page to market your personal brand and engage your audience?

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5 Ways To Market Your Personal Brand With Your Facebook Business Page

Video is 2011’s hottest trend in personal branding. The development of technology in smart phones and portable videos with instantaneous access to upload video to the Internet has accelerated this trend across many social media and marketing platforms. According to ComScore, a global Internet information provider that analyzes consumer behavior for successful marketing, sales and trading strategies, 170 million Internet users in the United States watched online video content in February 2011, averaging 13.6 hours per viewer.

So how can you utilize video in your personal branding efforts? Here are 17 creative ways that you can promote Brand "You":

1. Biography/Story Telling :
   Tell your brand story, explain your unique promise of value, and stand apart from your competition.
2. Email:
   Make your emails more personable. Send a video email instead.
3. Reality:
   Film from a documentary angle and show your client what a day in your life is really like. This is a great way to add some humor to your videos.
4. Employee Introductions:
   Set up an interview format and highlight the reasons why your employees are the best at what they do and able to help your clients.
5. How-To:
   Establish your credibility with short, instructional videos.
6. Product Demos:
   Let your customer take a virtual “test-drive” of your products and services.
7. Dear Abby…
   A fun way to answer frequently asked questions.
8. Special Events:
   Highlight your awards, employee picnics, client appreciation parties, and so much more.
9. Behind The Scenes:
   Similar to the reality angle, give a behind the scenes tour of your speeches or special events.
10. Testimonials:
    Interview your raving fans.
11. Client Thank You:
    Thank your raving fans.
12. Video Brochure:
    Pull your clients in with emotional marketing and highlight the benefits they receive from your products.
13. Tours of Location/Facility:
    Take the viewer on an open-house style tour of your facility. If you are a Realtor, take them on a tour of your open house.
14. Contests Announcements:
    Generate excitement with the announcement of your most recent contest.
15. Video Courses/Workshops:
    Video take your workshops and sell them online to create additional streams of income.
16. Vlog (Video Blogging):
    Add video commentary to your blogs.
17. Creative Advertising – Show your video advertisement on your website, at sponsored events, on your local cable network, and of course your social media outlets.

Keep the conversation flowing… What did I miss? How are you incorporating video into your personal branding strategies?

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17 Creative Ways To Promote Your Personal Brand Through Video

Curiosity Didn't Kill the Cat…It Just Caught Its Attention

Photos are personal, and people will be able to connect with a brand when they are able to get a visual of what the brand's personality is. Twitter is one of my favourite places to go to gain a sense of what a business or brand is really like. When I see a business posting photos of their office environment I'm intrigued. I like knowing what's going on behind the scenes, and if it's something I feel I can relate to, or connect with, I'm more opted to follow them more closely.

Sharing photos with fans is also a great way to draw attention to your business. Why? Because people LOVE creeping photos. Just ask any avid Facebook user (so…basically the population of the world). If you're surfing around Facebook and happen to come across a new photo album, OMG – it's like, way more interesting than reading that status update from that guy you went to high school with. Photos draw attention. So share some!

Don't Blend In

Your streams will look way more interesting with a little visual art. You can put faces to your brand – hopefully happy ones, and a behind the scenes look at what your business really does. Sharing photos through social media is a great way to show people what you are all about – because sometimes, especially on Twitter, people are just following you for the sake of following you. And you don't want that. You want people to follow you because you have a great brand, and your followers love what you do. So get that point across with some photos.

Start Uploading, and Showcase Your Brand

The great thing is that social media is making it super easy for you to create brand awareness – so you should probably take advantage of it. Almost all social media dashboards, whether it's for your Smartphone, or your desktop, or whatever new device you're using, there's usually an option to upload a photo with a Tweet, or to share on Facebook. So – start getting visual!

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Let's Get Visual! Visual!

And how are you trying to change the world?

This post shares some recent observations about how personal stories are becoming increasingly important in driving the success of your marketing.

I mean, we all know who Sergey Brin is and how Google is trying to organize the world’s information.

Tony Hsieh and his mission to change customer service at Zappos.

And we know Mark Zuckerberg is the face of Facebook and what he’s doing trying to accomplish with the social graph. Hell, the story is so good they made a movie out of it.

I think I know more about them and what they’re up to than the people on my street!

Why do we know so much about these people and their missions?

1. We live in a world where collectively we trust corporations less and each other more.

90% of people trust recommendations from people they know. 70% trust opinions of other people they don’t even know. And 14% trust advertising. Years of having their trust broken by big companies and organizations combined with the ability to forge stronger wider personal connections thanks to the social web has shifted trust from large faceless organizations to organizations that powered by real people doing amazing things to change the world.

2. People love to read about other people.

It’s that simple and the proof is as close as the gossip mags in the checkout line and the reality shows on t.v. We’re obsessed with each other! And it’s not only in the checkout line because ‘gossip’ in the world of business and marketing is just as strong. If you share who you are, how you’re trying to change the world and, in the Facebook era, if you can put a face to your faceless corporation we will be interested. And it works just as well – perhaps even better – on a local level than a national one because people are more likely to do business with people they’re friends with.

3. Personal stories make the abstract easier to understand.

Personal stories are easier to remember than vague mission/vision statements because they are told in chronological order and within an emotional context we can relate to. Once upon a time, Microsoft was the underdog and Bill Gates was the rebel geek up against IBM but, sadly, since he left, it’s become faceless and we no longer seem to be on their side. A University of Chicago study last year found that products that had ‘Brand biographies’ that contained a disadvantage vs. an adversary yet passion to overcome the odds were chosen 71% of the time vs. products that contained no such story. And because personal stories are more memorable they are retold. Which, in these days of sharing content, the ability of your story to travel is a key measure of success.

So, whether you’re a big enterprise or a small one, jump out from behind that facade and let’s connect.

We’re more interested than you think.

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Who Are You? The Power of Personal Stories In A Social World