I strongly believe there is a sense of flow to personal branding, life and your business. Like tides, you can guide the water into channels but you can't control it. Your business has a flow. Your sales profit and loss are the most obvious indicators of how you affect your businesses flow.

Access the situation.

The best way to view your personal brand is to step back and view the situation. Create a visual diagram of where you are at. Take the position of a stranger looking in for the first time.
1. Is there direction?
2. Is there a current working plan?
3. Is there new technology out there that might make this process more streamlined?
4. Is it time to restructure your staff? Do you need fresh blood? Maybe new partnerships?
5. Can you grow your network and gain new perspective?

Determine a road map.

6. How do you get from point A to point B with out losing focus?
Building communities don't happen over night. They grow like a garden. If you don't plant seeds, only weeds grow and take over. In my case it's multiple project and lack of focus.


Road bumps.

7. What are your 3-month, 6-month, annual goals?
8. How can you quantify your results?
9. So what if it all fails by traditional standards. Is there a more intuitive way to measure ROI of your efforts?

Challenges are great! If you falter get up and try again.

10. Whats plan B?
11. Who do you know that can help you?

Give back and paying it forward.

Because I'm a big believer in social karma, it seems the natural order of things to connect individuals whom might benefit through knowing each other. These are all touch points that make it easy to build better relationships and relate to others through commonality.

How I remember who you are.

Jeff Pulver told me once "Your only as strong as your network." There is great depth in that statement and it carries over between personal relationships and corporate communities. My personal goal is to introduce myself to four new individuals a day, more individuals if I'm at a convention or event. In corporate communities it's reaching out to strangers, providing solutions, offering more creative content on a site, keeping the flow, and connecting across various social platforms usually to strangers.

So, if we ever meet face to face, tell me what you do in 4 sentences or less and give me your business card. It is those four sentences that really describe what you have a passion for and it is how I will remember you. In corporate communities your level of engagement determines the relationships you share with others. It controls how your brand is viewed and what people's initial impression is.

Starting Now.

I'm jumping in. You may want to move at your own pace. Evaluate your answers to the above eleven steps. Where are the gaping holes? What can you fix now and what can you build on for future goals? How can you use this new appetite for success and determination to improve yourself?

Photo Credit: Flowery 


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