Sir. Eric Seyram A. Personal Innovation Evangelist | SmallBiz Marketing Strategist | Personal Brand

The first step in the personal branding process is to spend time figuring out who you really are and what you want from your life. Often, this self-analysis is the hardest part. Here are the building blocks of your brand that you need to identify: You distill that information into a concise brand statement and work to get every aspect of your life on brand: your website, professional bio, appearance, network, résumé, office space, and so on. · Needs: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a helpful tool that shows layers of needs from the most basic (physiological needs, such as food) all the way up to self-actualization — becoming everything that you are capable of becoming.    Values: These are core principles that give meaning to your life — a set of standards that determine your attitudes, choices, and actions. ·    Interests/passions: The things that intrigue and motivate you determine how you want to spend your time. ·   Mission: Everyone should have a mi

When it comes to managing an online-reputation crisis, remember this adage: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But if you're in the middle of a crisis that could damage your brand, warnings don't work — you need to take action. No matter what your situation, you will always do well to consider the following: Spot the issue as early as possible via monitoring . Respond to people in real time as much as possible. Never leave people hanging for long, or else they will tend to share more emotionally. This is how issues escalate. Be transparent via your brand . If there's a problem admit to it, apologize graciously, and tell what's being done to address the problem. Keep people up to date. As new developments arise, let people know online. Talk to your friends. During a crisis it's really effective to reach out to your brand ambassadors, as is appropriate. Don't impose on them, but if you happen to communicate with s

After you've established a system for determining what people are saying about you, your brand, and your industry (and possibly even your competitors reputations!), it's time to establish your online reputation. Developing your brand's voice is an art and a science all rolled into one. As you start establishing your online reputation, be sure to consider the following: Remember that quality of relationships trumps quantity of relationships every time . Hiring a college student to get 100 of their friends to "like" your page may increase your numbers, but isn't going to help you have genuine brand ambassadors. There are no sustainable shortcuts. Keep it fresh. If the comments on your blog and social networks are old, search engines won't be as fond of you. Share quality content on a regular basis for the best results. Focus where you get the best results . There will always be a new, hot social network, but it won't always be a good

Listening to what people are saying is the basis for all harmonious communication. When you can show people that you're listening — and engage with them in a way that makes them feel understood — is very good business. And doing so can catapult your online reputation to greater heights. As you pull together your reputation-monitoring strategy, keep in mind the following considerations: Set up Google Alerts. This is a free service that you can use to dive surprisingly deep into what people are saying about any search term — even your competitor's names! Research your best "search engine optimization" keywords . This might sound a little intimidating right now, but it's relatively simple. Keywords are the words that people type into the "search" window on their browser when they want to find you. By choosing the right combinations of keywords, you can hit the sweet spot ("optimize") and attract more people than ever. Have a l

Whether you're a business, an accountant, a lawyer, a blogger, a movie or music star, online reputation management is an important part of your personal and professional life. Due to the increase use of the Internet and social media, it's easy for people to disseminate information (good and bad) to an increasingly large audience. You should therefore be ready to establish a response plan, and build a solid online foundation for your reputation. And, above all, when crises arise, you should be able to take action quickly. It's essential for you to take charge of cultivating a positive reputation for your online brand. It can make the difference between getting the kind of professional opportunities you deserve and missing out, based on how you look next to your competitors online. When you're getting started managing your reputation online be sure to consider the following guidelines: Set reasonable boundaries for what kinds of information you will share

“Story is the language of experience, whether it’s ours, someone else’s, or that of fictional characters. Other people’s stories are as important as the stories we tell ourselves. Because if all we ever had to go on was our own experience, we wouldn’t make it…” ~ Lisa Cron Truth be told, not everyone learns all they need to know in Kindergarten. In fact, people learn over the entire course of their lives, and one of the primary vehicles for learning is stories. Indeed, in fairness to Robert Fulghum, it is precisely the stories he tells which teach the principles he covers in All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten. There is a reason for this. As Lisa Cron documents, in Wired for Story, there is solid brain science behind storytelling. Specifically, “Neuroscientists believe the reason our already overloaded brain devotes so much precious time and space to allowing us to get lost in a story is that without stories, we’d be toast. Stories allow us to simulate inte

These are actually all the elements about you that together create the perception. Your appearance Wardrobe is very, very important but not to the exclusion of the other image ingredients. Everybody always centers immediately on clothes when thinking about image. A popular fantasy is that if you bought an Armani suit you would automatically look a million dollars. The sad truth is that you will not look any different than in your own two-year-old High Street suit- and you will be a lot poorer! The answer is in the way that you choose your suit, how you apply the finishing touch- fit, co-ordinate, accessorize appropriately- and then complete the picture through top-to-toe grooming. Then you can still buy in the High Street but look and feel a million dollars- having saved a small fortune. It is also important that the feel and the cut of your clothes makes you feel good. If you are comfortable you are not constrained and that shows in your body language. Everything in yo

The look of Success Looking successful breeds further success. There is no doubt that if you look successful you will be viewed as successful. I am sure that you would prefer to do business with a person (or a company) with a proven track  record which seems to be frequently chosen and approved by others. Successful implicitly implies that you are good at what you do. Climbing the Success Ladder Faster Others with the same skills and ability as yourself but who already look the part may well receive the next opportunity or promotion. The advice often given is to look the part of the person immediately superior to you. If you do this, there will not even begin to be an issue about whether you look appropriate when the time comes for promotion. You obviously do. It will also help to get you noticed at the outset. Some organizations send men or women who are being groomed for greater things, but whose image is not compatible with that required at higher levels, to an imag

Your Story Might Be Yours, But Is It Really A Story? Have you ever stopped to think about all it took to become you? Like others, it’s likely that your teenage years launched you on a quest for identity that probably brought a fair amount of disorientation, experimentation, and even fear. And that was just the beginning! As you matured, you may have developed a sense of identity, but never quite shook the fear of not fitting in. Yet, somehow you ended up with a sense of identity that supports you. And if you’ve ever been through a structured assessment and introspective process you’ve probably attained even more clarity and confidence in your sense of self. Well, at least until confronted with the need to tell your story. At that point, self-knowledge probably seems to evaporate! Still, in today’s social media-driven world, if we want to connect with our audiences, we are increasingly challenged to tell our story. That’s a good thing. However, what is not so good is the

Know yourself to grow yourself. “I’ve always thought that a name says a lot about a person. So naturally, being named Howard, I always wanted to crawl into a hole.” Howard Stern You have to know yourself to grow yourself. Personal branding is based on authenticity. Strong brands are unearthed they are not created. It’s not about a fake image for the outside world.  It’s about understanding, who you are and what makes you exceptional. So you need to be introspective and understand who you are. So it’s important to ask yourself these few questions as you are being introspective in other to unearth your brand.  These questions are in three categories. And these are Motivation, Positioning, and connection. Finding answers to this questions is more like a situational analysis of your personal brand, and will enable to to understand where you are now and would like to be as far as your personal brand is concerned. These are some motivation questions you need t

Don’t think about yourself as a job title; and as one of them. Think about yourself as a unique selling brand. Are you a lawyer, an accountant, a banker, a doctor, a teacher, a musician, or an entrepreneur? Are you just one of them? And you are thinking, oh I have a career that will last me a life time and make me all the money I need. Think again. Well am sure you will realize that you are not the only one in that profession. Perhaps there are, and will be many more new entrants into your profession and area of work. If you are a student, or a graduate looking for a job, you will know that, there is a high rate of Graduate Unemployment: In Ghana for instance, the public sector employs less than a million of the over 20 million population and it’s the same phenomenon across the world. There is also a high level of Academic Cloning: and for each course or subject area of study, thousands of students come out of different universities every year with the same knowledge base

“I’ve always thought that a name says a lot about a person. So naturally, being named Howard, I always wanted to crawl into a hole.” Howard Stern Improving your self-image is important and like improving any skill, it takes time and practice. You can make use of the following tips and tricks to improve your self-image. -               List some of the things you like about yourself. This may include appearance and skills etc. -               Change negative feelings and thoughts of yourself by focusing on the positive ones. -               Ignore the negative descriptions made about you in school, at home and by friend. -               Remember the things people say about you and note them down. -               Examine whether opinions about you are truthful. -               Make any changes if you think they will help you. For example you can change your cloths and behavior. -               Accept things about yourself that true and learn to think about them