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7 Ways to Boost Your Career in 2017

I was enjoying a beer over the holidays with a friend and sharing our recollections of the past year and what we had to look forward to in the coming year. Dan had his best year ever, he hit his sales numbers about two-thirds of the way through the year, earned a huge bonus and enjoyed promotion to a senior account manager role.

His boss was expecting to see him take a higher profile role in the team with added responsibility, he was going to be traveling more, and his new sales target appeared atmospheric. He didn’t know how he was going to fit it all in. He was dreading 2017.

If the end of 2016 for you was anything like it is for Dan, you found yourself having to try and wrap up some key projects, drive in some final numbers, perhaps even complete performance reviews and other year-end tasks.

Then, before you can catch your breath or even start to worry about work, you were straight into planning, preparing and, hopefully, enjoying the holidays with family and friends and not getting despondent from all the negativity that many people felt this past year, in particular, brought them.

You must be exhausted already! Kicking off another year can be a daunting proposition. A new year brings a fresh set of challenges and almost a feeling of starting all over again. It doesn’t have to be that way. First things first, bid a final farewell to the last year, you can even use the 15 questions from the Review Your Year With No Fear Workbook to feel entirely complete, get your copy by clicking here.

Now for 2017. How do you find the energy to kick off another year, build your personal brand, maintain momentum and ensure you don’t get bogged down or distracted to still achieve what you want to in your career?

Here are seven ways to boost your personal brand and get things done without feeling overwhelmed.

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Time for a LinkedIn Check-Up

  LinkedIn’s change to the user interface now seem to be slowly rolling out, but it is taking time, so if you have changes that need to be made to your profile go ahead and do them. Then set yourself a weekly reminder to double check if the look of your profile on desktop has changed over to the new design. According to some of the LinkedIn experts that already… Read More »Time for a LinkedIn Check-Up

Who Is in Charge of Your Day? – Here’s a clue – not you!

Question: Who sets your daily agenda? Answer: Everyone else!!! The challenge you have is all the other demands that you let flood into your day and hijack it! E-mails – Research says on average, per user, you receive around 100 plus e-mails per day – 15% of which are spam, or useless, but the rest have some level of expectation for you, even if it is just reading and deleting.… Read More »Who Is in Charge of Your Day? – Here’s a clue – not you!

Why Have My LinkedIn Recommendations Disappeared?

This week’s LinkedIn tip is a result of a question coming from Dean. “I have clients that have posted recommendations for me on my Linkedin profile. I have noticed one is missing. Do you know why this would be?” There are a couple of possibilities; Whenever LinkedIn are tweaking the platform (which is often) random glitches seem to occur. With the impending user interface changes, this might be the reason. I… Read More »Why Have My LinkedIn Recommendations Disappeared?

Why I Hate My Job

Tomorrow will be my last presentation this year. In total, I will have delivered over 20 keynotes, workshops, and online webinars on personal branding in 2016. Often the core message is the same, and then I adapt the content to the particular client and event. I am often asked, “Don’t you get bored?” I remember discussing this with a colleague some years ago and he told me that he always… Read More »Why I Hate My Job

3 End of Year Actions for Your LinkedIn Profile

As we enter the final 30 days or so of 2016, your thoughts may turn to the new year, fresh perspectives, new ambitions, and goals. Your professional online presence should be one of those areas that you take a moment to review and ensure you are set for 2017.  For many of you, your digital impression is gathered by others from your LinkedIn profile first. As we still await the new… Read More »3 End of Year Actions for Your LinkedIn Profile

The One Question I Always Get on Personal Branding

brand-called-you

Image Fast Company Magazine August 1997

Next year will see the 20-year anniversary of the Fast Company magazine article “The Brand Called You” by Tom Peters. This was two years before his book series, which included “Brand You 50” were published. Most recognize the article as the ‘birth’ of personal branding or at the least the first time that the concept of having a personal brand appeared on the business radar. When you Google “Brand Called You” the article still appears at the top of the rankings. Read the article here

Many people still minimize the power of personal branding and some label it as egotistical and ridiculous. The criticism is legitimate towards those who have likened branding yourself to branding a bar of chocolate. In fact, the intention is to show the contrast between a person and a corporation when it comes to branding.

It probably took ten years after that article, for the notion of owning your personal brand to be embraced as an accepted way of managing your career, business, and even life. Celebrity branding has exploded with constant exposure and an unquenchable thirst for more. This leaves many people feeling inadequate unless they too garner the same visibility. Sadly credibility can sometimes take a back seat.

Social media has been both a blessing and curse and can be blamed for some of the hype, expectation, and disdain that personal branding attracts. But fault can also lie at the feet of the ‘gurus’ and experts who tell you to “Fake it until you make it” or encourage you to turn your social media streams into a one-way flow of personally branding me, me, me that should never be turned off.

When it comes to personal branding the one question I always get is

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Does Your Personal Brand Have a Purpose?

The Inukshuk is a symbol that has always resonated with me – “A guide for the right direction”. Sometimes one of the hardest parts of the work in defining your personal brand is identifying your purpose. Mother Theresa was a great example of someone with a purpose- to help the poor in Calcutta. Another is Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque du Soleil, with his dream of providing water to… Read More »Does Your Personal Brand Have a Purpose?

URGENT – Do This With Your LinkedIn Account Now!

According to the LinkedIn expert in the UK, Mark Williams, who I mentioned last week, the new user interface for LinkedIn is coming out to most of us this month. He had a podcast on this last week which is very useful – click here to access. Something I recommend you should be doing at least quarterly is a download of your connections and data. Mark has advised that once the… Read More »URGENT – Do This With Your LinkedIn Account Now!

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly of Brand Trump

good-bad-ugly

Since the advent of social media, I doubt there have been many events that have garnished as many comments, engagement, and mainstream media column inches as the US Presidential election, and in particular about Donald J. Trump.

I have often cited Trump, the businessman, as an example of a strong personal brand. He often followed the three C’s of branding – Clarity of message, Consistent delivery of that message and Constantly working at getting that message heard and noticed in his business dealings.

Without getting into an intense political debate, it could be argued that he delivered on the latter in his political run, but missed the mark on the clarity and consistency.

There is going to be a lot more said and written about this election, his presidency, as well as the hours spent analyzing why and how he became the 45th President of the United States.

So what were the plus and minus aspects of his campaign from a branding perspective?

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