SEO and Personal Branding websites
What does your Personal Beand look like?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a time or money thing. There are excellent internet media consultants that will populate the internet with your message and have you ranking well for selected keywords in a few months. We would be happy to recommend some excellent ones for you. Good programs start at $50,000 a year.
As we become a nation of smaller business practices that need to distinguish their expertise from other similar ones, this becomes an impractical necessity. Fortunately, if you are willing to invest some time on your own Personal Brand development, you can accomplish even better at a tiny fraction of the cost.
WEB 2.0 has turned Internet marketing upside down
Personal Branding has been around since 1981; however, the importance of managing your online reputation through social networks has made the concept more relevant than ever before. Our Do-It-Yourself Web 2.0 internet marketing strategy involves a specific set of layers that must be taken in order:
1) Manage your Name
2) Manage your Brand
3) Manage your Company name
4) Manage the Local Search Directories entries
5) Manage keywords
Notice that the order is now the opposite of how we approached internet marketing years ago. We used to focus on buying keywords and our personal name was of no consequence. With the rising importance of social computing, customers and search engines both want to know who you are. Your name should dominate a web search for it. When I first tried an internet search on my name, "Bob Fariss", the result was a page that said I misspelled my name and gave results for "Bob Farris" instead. So I first took the responsibility to first manage my own name with social media profiles and other personal websites.
Then it hit me, I had no Personal Brand. The company I work with, Murphy Business, also had not really established a brand that I could use to distinguish myself. After some reflection, I realized I really wanted Personal Branding that said more about me than the company at this stage anyway. But what was that?
Personal Business Models
In the new upside down world of internet marketing, the place to start discovering a Personal Branding message needs to be more about the individual and less about the company or service. What unique values can we give our clients that is different from others like us?
I have had the opportunity to be an active contributor in a new book on career reinvention, Business Model YOU scheduled to be published in early 2012, presents the development of a Personal Business Model. Creating this remarkable one page graphic challenges you with techniques designed to document a life purpose in terms of what problems you can solve for others. Unlike the organizational based Business Model Canvas, the Personal Business Model starts with YOUR natural and developed capabilities. Classic organizational models start with the market and its needs. This upside down approach mirrors the changes in internet marketing thinking that also drives the need for Personal Branding.
Working with Personal Business Models
It's not an easy task to start with yourself. The book takes the reader through 3 essential processes. First, a Reflection on where you are and then why you got there. Once you have a feel for the purpose that has been driving your career, you have the opportunity to Reinvent. This is the fun part. How can we change assumptions and perspectives to better utilize the YOU we have so carefully documented in business terms? New possibilities begin to emerge. Finally, the hard work comes, acting on a new possibility. It's easy to make false assumptions during reinvention. Now those have to be validated in the real world.
Business Model YOU is self contained manual taking the reader through the entire reinvention process. At the end, there is a Personal Business Model that illustrates who's needs you serve and how. This is basis for your Personal Branding. Those needs may be served in your own business or using organizational resources; however, they are done in your unique way because of the way YOU are. This model lays the foundation needed to answer, "What is the Personal Branding message that communicates me?"
Personal Business Model Workshops
Business Model YOU is well written and illustrated, making the process very clear. For those who prefer something other than a Do It Yourself approach, Workshops are available on an individual or group basis. Often others are needed to help us best see ourselves. For those in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, these workshops are being developed for the University of Texas at Arlington Division for Enterprise Development. For others, the workshops are available via internet conferencing.
Personal Branding Websites
Customer Discovery is an essential part of the Business Model YOU methodology and here is where Personal Branding shines. Each workshop participant is given a Personal Branding website template to use with their personal insights as developed in the seminars. These websites are structured to bring out the unique Value Propositions of the individual. They then become a starting point in your own Customer Discovery process. A way to alter theory into reality.
Cost and Benefits
There are some website hosting costs; however, the the main costs are the time it will take to develop and promote what makes YOUR service, your personal branding message, unique. That time is not just a marketing effort; its the key to your personal business growth and development. As you continue to validate your personal brand on the personal branding website, it not only promotes your company website, it promotes your very thinking. Every customer interaction is richer as your expression of how you meet their needs gets stronger and stronger. This is not just a business development exercise; it's a fundamental personal career development program.
Getting Started
Learn more about our Personal Business Model Workshops and decide if this is the next step for your career. Or simply Contact Us right now.
As we become a nation of smaller business practices that need to distinguish their expertise from other similar ones, this becomes an impractical necessity. Fortunately, if you are willing to invest some time on your own Personal Brand development, you can accomplish even better at a tiny fraction of the cost.
WEB 2.0 has turned Internet marketing upside down
Personal Branding has been around since 1981; however, the importance of managing your online reputation through social networks has made the concept more relevant than ever before. Our Do-It-Yourself Web 2.0 internet marketing strategy involves a specific set of layers that must be taken in order:
1) Manage your Name
2) Manage your Brand
3) Manage your Company name
4) Manage the Local Search Directories entries
5) Manage keywords
Notice that the order is now the opposite of how we approached internet marketing years ago. We used to focus on buying keywords and our personal name was of no consequence. With the rising importance of social computing, customers and search engines both want to know who you are. Your name should dominate a web search for it. When I first tried an internet search on my name, "Bob Fariss", the result was a page that said I misspelled my name and gave results for "Bob Farris" instead. So I first took the responsibility to first manage my own name with social media profiles and other personal websites.
Then it hit me, I had no Personal Brand. The company I work with, Murphy Business, also had not really established a brand that I could use to distinguish myself. After some reflection, I realized I really wanted Personal Branding that said more about me than the company at this stage anyway. But what was that?
Personal Business Models
In the new upside down world of internet marketing, the place to start discovering a Personal Branding message needs to be more about the individual and less about the company or service. What unique values can we give our clients that is different from others like us?
I have had the opportunity to be an active contributor in a new book on career reinvention, Business Model YOU scheduled to be published in early 2012, presents the development of a Personal Business Model. Creating this remarkable one page graphic challenges you with techniques designed to document a life purpose in terms of what problems you can solve for others. Unlike the organizational based Business Model Canvas, the Personal Business Model starts with YOUR natural and developed capabilities. Classic organizational models start with the market and its needs. This upside down approach mirrors the changes in internet marketing thinking that also drives the need for Personal Branding.
Working with Personal Business Models
It's not an easy task to start with yourself. The book takes the reader through 3 essential processes. First, a Reflection on where you are and then why you got there. Once you have a feel for the purpose that has been driving your career, you have the opportunity to Reinvent. This is the fun part. How can we change assumptions and perspectives to better utilize the YOU we have so carefully documented in business terms? New possibilities begin to emerge. Finally, the hard work comes, acting on a new possibility. It's easy to make false assumptions during reinvention. Now those have to be validated in the real world.
Business Model YOU is self contained manual taking the reader through the entire reinvention process. At the end, there is a Personal Business Model that illustrates who's needs you serve and how. This is basis for your Personal Branding. Those needs may be served in your own business or using organizational resources; however, they are done in your unique way because of the way YOU are. This model lays the foundation needed to answer, "What is the Personal Branding message that communicates me?"
Personal Business Model Workshops
Business Model YOU is well written and illustrated, making the process very clear. For those who prefer something other than a Do It Yourself approach, Workshops are available on an individual or group basis. Often others are needed to help us best see ourselves. For those in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, these workshops are being developed for the University of Texas at Arlington Division for Enterprise Development. For others, the workshops are available via internet conferencing.
Personal Branding Websites
Customer Discovery is an essential part of the Business Model YOU methodology and here is where Personal Branding shines. Each workshop participant is given a Personal Branding website template to use with their personal insights as developed in the seminars. These websites are structured to bring out the unique Value Propositions of the individual. They then become a starting point in your own Customer Discovery process. A way to alter theory into reality.
Cost and Benefits
There are some website hosting costs; however, the the main costs are the time it will take to develop and promote what makes YOUR service, your personal branding message, unique. That time is not just a marketing effort; its the key to your personal business growth and development. As you continue to validate your personal brand on the personal branding website, it not only promotes your company website, it promotes your very thinking. Every customer interaction is richer as your expression of how you meet their needs gets stronger and stronger. This is not just a business development exercise; it's a fundamental personal career development program.
Getting Started
Learn more about our Personal Business Model Workshops and decide if this is the next step for your career. Or simply Contact Us right now.