On the panel with me are Adam Audette from Merkle and Dave Lloyd from Adobe, and I’m thrilled to hear them speak too, as I’ve had huge respect for their expertise over the years and can’t wait to hear what they have to say on the subject.
So come and hear my session on Personal Branding at #Share16 in San Francisco 26th Oct and register with discount code 10%2HearMe >> http://brtedg.co/2aqA10E
Last week, I had the pleasure of addressing 40 young women aged between 16 and 19 at Expedia’s head office in Bellevue, WA.
Earlier in the year (and out of the blue), I had received an invitation to speak at the GirlsWhoCode.org Program near Seattle (one of 78 locations around the US) about my experiences in the tech world, so I offered to talk to them about personal branding.
While my job and career has always entailed enticing consumers to spend more time on the internet (searching and viewing great content), since having two young daughters of my own, I must admit I’m terrified they will make a mistake with their usage of social media sites that then hampers their career at some time in the future.
So, my talk was on how to build a safe personal brand online with great thought and discipline.
I have to say, it was one of the most rewarding hours of my speaking career with lots of nodding heads, ah-ha moments and some great questions at the end.
One young lady even followed up via email apologizing for being on her phone the whole time as she was deleting “silly” old Photobucket accounts she’d set up in 7th grade!
All the girls seemed to love the program Girls Who Code had set up, and the interns at Expedia chaperoning them were really first class as well.
Can’t wait for my girls to be old enough to join in the program, it really does seem like an excellent way to spend the summer holidays!
The eight-and-a-half minutes went super-quickly but we got good feedback from people who saw it live and on Twitter & Facebook that I’d struck the right balance (didn’t get too techy) and got the authenticity message across well.
Below are a few more pictures of the studio before we went on air, a Green Room shot of me and PNW gardening legend, Ciscoe Morris, and pics sent to me by friends!
As digital channels get more cluttered with companies trying to capture the attention of consumers, engagement is a key metric for measuring whether your content is having any effect and helps lead your efforts toward more meaningful dialogue with your target audience.
With the rise of digital and social media in the past few years, the internet has presented professionals with a magnificent opportunity to build, polish, and own outstanding personal brands. It’s also becoming more and more important for individuals to understand the practices and disciplines of personal branding to present themselves in an approachable, endearing and enduring way both in the digital world and in-person.
Personal branding benefits you and your business by:
Establishing Credibility & Thought Leadership
Growing Your Network
Attracting New Opportunities
Increasing Sales
Helping You Reach Your Business Goals
This Introduction to Personal Branding is based on a blog post series from last year. It is a one-stop-shop introduction to personal branding outlining the key concepts and strategies with actionable tactics you can employ immediately in order to start becoming more discoverable, shareable, and memorable within your industry.
The book is designed to be short and clean to read (under an hour,) and with the new edits you will get a systematic and well-designed step-by-step crash course in personal branding fundamentals.
Here’s a sneak peek of the highlight chapters:
Establish Your Professional Purpose
Embrace and Expound Your Experience
Analyze Your Competitors as You Build Your Personal Brand
Get a New Headshot – Your New Image Starts with an Image
How to Craft Your Personal Branding Statement
Make Your Personal Brand Discoverable
How to Re-engineer Your Digital Presence
Take 5 and Practice Writing
How to Learn to Listen and Practice Empathy
Social By Design: Make Your Personal Brand Stand Out. Always.
Who is this book for?
CEOs, Executives, and Business Owners who want to position themselves as industry thought leaders and stand out from the competition.
Individual Contributors & Academics who want to get ahead in their careers and want to understand how to have their expertise and experience be more discoverable.
HR & Training Managers who want to understand personal branding to help train employees on social media branding and social selling.
PR Agencies & Exec Comms Managers who need inspiration and training on personal branding strategies for their clients, CEOs, or themselves.
In November, I gave the keynote speech at a gathering of financial advisors in the UK.
The brief was to inspire the assembled into thinking more creatively about how to use digital to get their clients to save and invest more.
I was very honest and told them it’d taken me until my 40’s to actually take some advice on my financial future. Sure I had a few pensions I’d been paying into during my time at Microsoft and before, but I’d never taken the time to understand life insurance or really figure out what I needed to do in order to retire at 60 as I’m kidding myself I’d like to.
During the question and answer session after my speech I was asked what I’d do if I was marketing financial services, so I said I’d tell some stories through video and online that actually resonated with the target audience of twenty-something’s instead of trotting out boring forecasts of how little I was going to have to spend in 25 years time.
Enter www.FeedThePig.org who recently created The Chase ad that I just spotted on TV this weekend and others like this, just as brilliant, spot called The Game.
Created by the American Institute of CPAs and the Advertising Council here in the US, I think it is a fantastic campaign and something I’d wished I’d had access to all those years ago when I were but a wee lad!
For over a year now, I’ve been lucky enough to act as Brand Ambassador for Majestic here in the USA, and speak at conferences about their incredible “big data” toolset.
My remit is to help broaden the audience for the brand and get other digital marketers enthused about getting smart with link data and using it for more than just SEO (search engine optimization).
I’ve done a couple of presentations this year and a couple of blog posts too about how best to use what Majestic has to offer, and on Friday 6th December at 9.30am PST (5.30pm GMT) I’ll be delivering a webinar on how businesses can use their tools for influencer discovery, digital PR and competitive analysis.
If you’re interested in hearing some top tips, feel free to register for FREE below:
I remember my first post on the Microsoft adCenter Blog (now Bing Ads) was similarly titled to the above. I’d just got back from about three conferences in a week that had crept up on me after a drought of face-to-face contact with people in the industry.
Well, 7 years on and this summer has been pretty bonkers in that regard.
Then it was off to San Diego for #SearchLove organized by those lovely guys from Distilled. There, I was asked to speak about the book and kicked off proceedings by Celebrating the People Behind the Pixels. It was one of those conferences where your brain bleeds with the influx of new and scintillating information. Thanks to them for the invite. I’ve only just recovered!
Finally it was back to San Francisco for SES and a solo session on The Marriage of PR and Social Media, which went well enough for me to hopefully get asked back in the new year for their New York event.
Next week I’ll be in New York for SMX East and then Vegas for Pubcon, so you can imagine how the missus feels about it!
During the BrightEdge event, I was interviewed by the fabulous Murray Newlands from Search Engine Journal which you can view above. I was talking about how you can use Majestic link data to discover influencers for PR outreach, especially as it’s so easy to see competitor link information.
I’ll also be spending 3 weeks with the family in the UK during November for meetings and a couple speaking gigs, so will be getting a few pints of real ale and pork pies in to satisfy my cravings!
If you’re in London in November, let me know as I hope to meet up with some old faces while I’m there!
This was one of the entertainment highlights of the day for me that the assembled throng marveled at and gave the first standing ovation to.
Jarle Bernhoft is from Norway and generates the most incredible “retro-soul” sound as a one-man-band through great playing and a clever sequencing of beats, notes and crisp, clear vocals.
Jarle Bernhoft Lost in Music
Stop whatever you are doing and spend the next 12.32 minutes watching this incredible performance.
If this site has piqued your interest in hiring Mel, either as a speaker for your event or as a consultant for your business, contact him now to start a conversation about how he can help...
