Blog Posts by Personal Branding Blog

YouTube's Next Up stars are an elite group of lip-dubbing, indie-band interviewing, and action-comedy producing grassroots talent pulling in okay bucks from not only YouTube's partners program, but also a cash prize that came from making the Next Up list.

No one is suggesting that being a YouTube phenomenon is a good job. Or, that it's easy. Or that it's anything other than an aspiration with worse odds than earning a spot in the NBA.

Plus, your parents weren't hoping for this. I promise. Not with that geology degree from MIT. Or even State. Or wherever you went and whatever you got the day you graduated.

Yet, consider the field of competition for a paltry return on effort. Hard to imagine but true: your average three minute upload competes with 72 hours of other video uploads added to YouTube every minute. Every minute. 72 hours of video. My calculator makes that 103,680 hours of new content uploaded each day.

Good luck on your cuddly cats sleeping with their arms

Salespeople and entrepreneurs alike frequently settle for small sales when in fact their sales could have been more frequent and larger in scale. Why does this happen and how may it be avoided?

People buy from those they know, like and trust. Paying attention to details upfront establishes the quality of your relationships. A level of trust develops that ultimately determines your outcome.

Let's first take a look at some of the details normally overlooked. Instead of allowing the day to fade away without being productive, maintain a prioritized list of tasks to be completed each and every working day. Included in the list should be time allotted to work on completing your bigger projects. These minute tasks leading to the completion of your big projects may be regarded as your daily business vitamins.

As you become established, requests begin to pour in for partnering on a variety of levels. With your prioritized list in mind, only commit to those with whom you know well

What is the image you have when you think about waves and a sale? I picture a speedboat out on the ocean with little wave streams following the flow. The imagery for me relates to business due to the fact that we now build followings online. So the question becomes do our connections follow our lead as if we were the speedboat? Following our lead refers to being attracted to what we have to say as well as what we have to offer. And if not, what is being missed?

You would know if your lead is being followed online by the responses you receive and the increase in numbers following you. Are you checking steadily for the number of responses for each venue such as blog or video, and whether the interest is going up or down? Also, what is your actual feedback being received saying? Do some of your postings receive rave testimonials or unusually high Re-tweets or re-postings?

It's interesting that Facebook named the statistics found on our pages for blog postings, video views, and

Recently I judged a brand personality competition for Newsweek/Daily Beast's special issue on the top 100 Digital Brands, along with 4 other branding experts. Beyond my vote, the editor asked for an answer to a hot button question for people who are just launching their brands. That might be you.

Does the Internet need more self-promotion? On the whole, does it serve a collective good? Here's what I had to say to Newsweek/DailyBeast.

What I know is that many of the best personal brands haven't yet surfaced on the web. Sure, there's branding stars among us today. However, much like a frontrunner shooting out at the head of the pack in a horserace, most early entrants who shot up to the top of the branding consciousness will soon fade as the distance demands unending endurance. Perhaps like smart gamblers, today's big personal brands will take their winnings off the table, and move on to something else (perhaps a Fiji island or a venture capital firm).

Why? Personal brands

No matter what you do, you are going to be paid better if you take on these five additional tasks in your company. In addition, performing these tasks is akin to getting a work insurance policy, that is: play these five roles and guarantee your status as the most valuable member of your team.

1. Trainer

Learn something that you can teach other people. It could be a hard skill like creating WordPress blogs or a soft skill like writing thank you letters. It may or may not be directly connected to your job description, but having something that adds value - and gives you something special that you can teach other people - means you are capable of helping your organization grow in a way no one else can. Plus, if there was ever a most valuable player on a team, it's the person who is capable of learning and helping others do the same.

2. Mentor

Assess what you do well, and find someone who could use guidance and encouragement from you. That might mean you reach outside

Because the US post office is trying to stay alive amidst threats of major cuts from Congress, and with postage being so expensive even at bulk rates: I took advantage of USPS' new EDDM program, in an effort to see if my company could be an even better corporate citizen.

EDDM allows you to help postal workers keep their jobs by doing their work. In other words, you print, sort and package your direct mail so it's ready to deliver to each carrier's route. All the post office "workers" need to do is put it in the right cubbyhole for each carrier. Other than being "verified" by a "supervisor" who takes your money for postage, it bypasses the "post office staff" pretty much. All you need is the mail-delivering post people on each route to put the mail in mailboxes.

The planning and execution on your end is harder than it sounds, involving a ridiculous mount of photocopies, rubber bands, and paper cuts on your intern's hands. Sorry Mel.

Why?

We tried EDDM out locally for

IKEA would be a master of the "I'm sorry …" approach to customer no-service. It's tough to get it all wrong like IKEA does, but a global brand can only try.

Here are the five principles of really terrible, awful, no-good brand management.

#1: Produce a catalog and website that advertises products not in stock most of the time, with no way to order them online or by phone.

#2: Stock items in very small quantities in the retail stores so that from the moment the consumer checks stock online, it's going to be gone when the consumer arrives to buy it.

#3: Don't have a system for consumers to buy an item ahead of time and then pick it up.

#4: Program a voicemail system that takes several hours to negotiate until an actual live person says, "I'm sorry I can't help you."

#5: Produce a lot of marketing so as many consumers as possible can have this experience.

There are a lot of retail brands that try their best to be stellar examples of equally really terrible,

Because I teach Pitching the Perfect Presentation at UCLA Ext., I'm always asked for tips and techniques about public speaking, which apparently more people fear than they fear death.

I have an effective approach to tamping down your nerves and rising to meet your audience's desire to be educated and entertained. I stole this trick from the method we use to prepare guests and hosts for interviews on television and radio.

The stolen trick

The trick? Prepare a question guide for yourself. Imagine you're interviewing the most interesting you.

Start this way. Simply write down the top 5 to 10 questions that are likely to open up a discussion about the most important issues surrounding your topic. Then, to put it into a presentation format: simply answer each questions with facts, examples, success stories, analogies, statistics, testimonials and even dramatic quotations from sages you feel support your desired course of action.