Be Yourself – Your Best Self!

I was asked by a journalist recently what’s the best piece of advice I ever received. And my quick reply was: Be Yourself. It was great advice I received and advice I give virtually every day as part of my personal branding message.

‘Be Yourself’ is such a powerful a phrase, it has been expressed in so many ways by so many people. So I decided to find my favorite quotes on that theme and am sharing them with you via Twitter.

I already posted my first three tweets (the first is from me):

• “What makes you unique, makes you successful.”
• “Be yourself because everyone else is already taken.” Oscar Wilde.
• “The most exhausting thing you can be is inauthentic.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Follow me on Twitter @williamarruda to read the whole collection; and remember to use #beyourself and #personalbranding, if you’ve got room in your 140 character tweets when you share your own quotes, when commenting and retweeting.

Here’s to being yourself – your best self!

Personal Branding Trends for 2013

Every year, I write a series of Blog posts with my personal branding predictions for the coming year. This year, I continue the series with a lot of enthusiasm as there are many exciting opportunities that will simplify brand building in 2013. On The Personal Branding Blog, I’ll be highlighting these ten trends – one at a time – so we can discuss them. Please share your thoughts, experiences and resources so our entire Reach Personal Branding Community can benefit from your wisdom.

If you read all ten trends, you’ll see some common threads. For example, LinkedIn features prominently in many of the entries because they have evolved their offering significantly over the past months – making your LinkedIn profile an even more valuable tool for personal branding. The importance using of multi-media, and using it well, is also a notable theme.

As you review these 2013 brand-building opportunities, consider how you’ll incorporate them into your strategy for increasing your influence, achievement, and personal brand value!

This first trend focus on the evolution from content creation to curation. You’ll find it here.

Wishing you an amazing (and BRANDED) 2013!

2013 is Coming. Are You Ready?

It’s that time of year when – in addition to preparing for the holidays – you’re probably thinking about the coming year. There’s nothing like the end of one year to spark contemplation about the next. Hopefully, the holiday season will give you a break from working in your career to work on it.

I propose you make 2013 the year of your brand!

To start, think about the one major goal you have for 2013, document it and post it somewhere you will see it every day. Then, share it with a friend or colleague and ask him/her to share their goal with you. Sometimes, it is easier to focus on a goal and accomplish it when you have to answer to someone else. Schedule regular entries in your calendar for next year to check in with your friend or colleague to help them stay on top of their goal and ask them to do the same for you.

Personal branding starts with focused aspiration. So know what you want to accomplish in the coming year and make a plan to make it happen.

Wishing you an amazing holiday season and a super start to 2013!

Authenticity and Branding

When Martha Stewart went to jail in 2004 for lying to investigators about insider trading, many said the Martha Stewart brand was finished. Yet, she emerged from prison even stronger than ever. That’s because we don’t look to Martha Stewart as the most ethical stock trader. She is the Domestic Diva. We equate her with all things ‘home.’ Her legal issues – although highly publicized and widely discussed among her fans and detractors – didn’t permanently tarnish her brand. If we had learned, however, that she didn’t create her own recipes or that she couldn’t make paper mache snowflakes, it would be extremely hard for her to recover!

Lance Armstrong, on the other hand, has directly violated what his brand is all about. We saw him as the perfect sports star – someone who overcame a major health crisis and through hard work, discipline and commitment became one of the world’s most impressive and revered athletes. Now, with the ongoing news stories about alleged doping, the Lance Armstrong brand is in crisis. It will be extremely hard for him to recover because it seems he is not who we thought he was. Nike and other former supporters and sponsors see this and have severed ties with him. His story is an important one. It highlights the importance of being true to yourself and honest with those around you.

Branding isn’t about creating an image for the outside world. It’s not about trying to fool people. It’s based in authenticity.

Are you being true to your brand?

Career Resources

Over the past decade, we have worked hard at Reach to offer a variety of no-cost, brand focused resources to help you uncover and express your brand. Over time, we have consolidated and refined our resources based on your input, and we currently support:

• Personal Branding TV [www.personalbranding.tv] – the largest multi-media web site focused on personal branding.
• The Personal Branding Blog [www.thepersonalbrandingbog.com] –tips and advice from Reach and the Reach-certified Personal Branding Strategists.
• 360Reach Personal Brand Assessment [www.reachcc.com/360Reach] (Basic accounts are free!).
• Online ID Calculator [www.onlineidcalculator.com] – a tool that calculates your online personal brand.
• YOUnique (this newsletter) [www.reachpersonalbranding.com/blog-2/blog/].

If you haven’t checked them out, please do so and see how you can use them to increase the value of your personal brand.

Voting ended on August 31st! Thanks to everyone who nominated a Reach site!

If there’s one you find particularly valuable, I’d appreciate it if you let the folks at Forbes know. They are creating list of the most valuable web-based career resources. You can nominate your favorite here, send a tweet to @JacquelynVSmith or send an email with your vote to careerwebsites at forbes dot com.

It will only take a couple of minutes!

Thanks in advance for your vote…and for being a part of the Reach Personal Branding Community.

All the best!

I’ve been spending my summer finalizing Ditch. Dare. Do! (with Deb Dib) and making sure my clients have what they need because I’ll be doing a lot of travel this fall. In fact, I’m calling it my Autumn World Tour. In the coming months, I’ll be traveling to Beijing, London, Paris, Madrid, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Geneva – and I’m sure a few other cities as well!

What’s remarkable about this is not the number of frequent flyer miles I will earn (although it will sure help towards my Executive Platinum status!), it’s that personal branding is growing in visibility and popularity across the globe.

When I started Reach Personal Branding over a decade ago, people outside the U.S. would say “Oh, that’s so American” when I would tell them about my vision for personal branding. Today, we have hundreds of Reach-certified Personal Branding Strategists in 31 countries on six continents. I want to acknowledge our Strategists from outside North America. They are pioneers in their respective countries and incredibly devoted. Many of them participated in the certification program at 2am or 3am their time – calling into the group teleconferences and contributing every week when most of us are sound asleep. They impress me!

Personal branding is not a fad. It’s a proven philosophy for managing your career and your life. And it’s not just for American’s anymore!

So here’s to a small world filled with an ever increasing number of personal branding enthusiasts.

William’s Words By William Arruda
A note from the Founder of Reach Personal Branding.

Personal Branding Works

I received an email from Lynn Stratton, the editor of my and Deb Dib’s new book, Ditch. Dare. Do! The subject of the email was ‘Thank You’ so I was assuming she was thanking us for paying her invoice. But this is what was in the body of the email:

I wanted to shoot you a quick email to let you know that when I finished reading your book again this last time, I decided to put your plan to good use. I made some changes to my online profile–pretty striking changes–and as soon as I did that, I began getting more new clients than I know what to do with.

People ask me all the time why they should build their brand. And my answer is: Personal branding works. It gives you clarity about what makes you valuable, enables you to reach the people who need to know you, helps you achieve your goals.

Of course, it only works if you practice it. I know many of the readers of this newsletter are as passionate about personal branding as I am. And I know there are others who have been reading the newsletter but have not fully integrated personal branding into their strategy for managing their career or business. To the latter group I ask this one question:

“What are you waiting for?”

Happy branding!