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Have you reached your commercial limit for LinkedIn searches?

A client contacted me this week because for the first time they had seen the notice, whilst doing LinkedIn searches, “You are approaching your limit for searches”. One day later they were told that was it for this month unless they wanted to upgrade to one of the top end accounts. This seems to be happening more and more, which suggests that LinkedIn is changing the way free accounts can… Read More »Have you reached your commercial limit for LinkedIn searches?

Lessons From Discover Your Personal Brand Conference – The All Star Panel

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This past weekend I had the opportunity to speak again at the Discover Your Personal Brand Conference.  DYPB 2016 was different from 2014 in a number of ways.

The focus was more toward small business and the caliber of speaker, panels and attendees was awesome. There were many inspiring young Canadians in attendance that really gave me a lift about the future of our country. All held within the back drop of Telus’ state of the art office in downtown Toronto, an environmental LEED building, bursting with technology and balanced with space and light.

The opportunity to attend conferences is always a big investment, even if its local so it was great to get such a rich experience. 

After introductions from the motivating conference organizer and founder Bobby Umar and keynotes from the always excellent Mark Bowden and inspiring Real Food for Real Kids founder Lulu Cohen-Farnell the highlight of the first evening for me was the Personal Brand Leadership All Star Panel. They were;

Cameron Gordon, Head of Communications, Twitter – Moderator
Erin Bury, Managing Director at 88 Creative
Jennifer Ettinger, Founder & President at Fit Your Style
Jagmeet Singh, MPP, ONDP Deputy Leader
Bobby Umar, Founder, Raeallan & DYPB

Full bios and more details on the schedule http://www.dypb.ca/schedule/ and other speakers can be found here http://www.dypb.ca/speakers/ 

Here is a Summary of the questions and panel answers;

Read More »Lessons From Discover Your Personal Brand Conference – The All Star Panel

Do you have a face for video?

This week saw the announcement of the roll out of short 30 second video specific content from LinkedIn’s 500 or so Influencers, including the CEO Jeff Weiner. This is a screenshot above of his reply to the question – What is your personal vision statement? and in the comments my reaction. This was part of LinkedIn’s announcement on their blog – “When an Influencer you follow posts a video, that… Read More »Do you have a face for video?

5 Helpful Tips For After Attending a Conference

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Travelling to my first European speaking engagement in Slovakia really opened my eyes to the benefits of being a ‘Conference Guerilla’. I was travelling almost 14,000 km in the space of 4 days to speak for approximately one and a half hours. Just like when going on vacation, I tried to clear the decks before I went. In the end a few things had to get left unfinished and I had to accept that.

It was most important to me to ensure that everything was taken care of back home. This was key to being able to focus on the conference and my wonderful girlfriend really stepped up and took on the responsibility for my two kids.  I am really grateful because I knew they were in good hands.

There are three distinct phases of conferences – Pre, During and After. In ‘How to be  a Conference Guerrilla – Part 1’, we looked at the pre-Conference activities and in ‘How to be  a Conference Guerrilla  – Part 2’ we discussed optimizing the time while at the conference.

Overall I felt that Pre & During I did a fairly good job. What I tend to find though is that once I return home, it can all start to fall apart.

So what happens once you get back home or to the office?

Read More »5 Helpful Tips For After Attending a Conference

Will Volunteering Boost Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn?

Adding volunteer experience can be a great way of communicating your personal brand to your professional network. Three benefits to you of being able to see other peoples volunteer experience; You can see who in your industry, voacation or network has similar interests to you. Particularly if you are looking to connect with that person, it is another area of commonality in which to make that first approach. You can search by… Read More »Will Volunteering Boost Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn?

Are You Ready to Hog the LinkedIn Publishing Limelight?

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“Have you been published? Do you have a book?” are common questions I am asked when I deliver keynotes and workshops. I should collect my approach to personal branding into a book, and the idea has crossed my mind a million times, but I seem to have as many excuses not to.

I had an interesting discussion with a fellow speaker at a recent conference when we talked about this whole notion that a book does not generate significant revenue, but can help clarify in your own mind what you stand for and can help clearly position your expertise and knowledge.

My first ever blog post was December 2003, so it’s not that I don’t like writing or run out of things to say! I am also one of those people that prefers the kinesthetic feel of a physical rather then digital book.  Market research suggests that the old fashioned book is not the rapidly dying media that some would have us believe.

But our social media streams are increasingly becoming a visual collection of videos, high quality images, You Tube links and GIF’s (Graphics Interchange Format).

“Visual media is the new headline.” – Unknown

The poll that I ran in one of my articles showed the following results when it came to the various visual media that people used as part of their publishing;

Read More »Are You Ready to Hog the LinkedIn Publishing Limelight?

Are You Getting the Full Story on LinkedIn?

Just like many other social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn is not giving you all the stories or even the latest posts and updates from your network, far from it. What you are actually seeing on your LinkedIn home page are the top stories and posts (and sponsored updates). So even though you might be thinking that Joe So-and-So has disappeared, they haven’t, its just LinkedIn has decided they are… Read More »Are You Getting the Full Story on LinkedIn?

Get Noticed And Appreciated By Your Boss With These 7 Personal Brand Exercises

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It is critical to your success that others know about your personal brand and what it stands for, here are 7 ways to help you do that.

Jane was a Senior VP at one of the banks. She had been there for 15 years with regular career moves and promotions.  Now she was frustrated because  her last performance review made her realize that her desired promotion to the C-suite was blocked.

She came to me for coaching and we soon determined the reason why she was not being considered for this key move. She was invisible. Not to her colleagues or boss in the local office but to the people making the C-level decisions in New York.  The solution was clear. We had to raise her profile in New York even though she was not based there.

We put in place an action plan to raise her credibility and visibility with the decision makers.  Within 9 months she was promoted to the CFO role.

This was a classic case of the right people not knowing about Jane and her personal brand. This may be the very reason that you too are not progressing in your career or getting invited to join the latest project or team. More of the ‘right’ people need to know about your personal brand.

Here are 7 key things about your personal brand that you need to ensure everyone (who matters) knows about you;

Read More »Get Noticed And Appreciated By Your Boss With These 7 Personal Brand Exercises

Is LinkedIn Premium Membership Worth it?

This past month I ran an experiment, not too scientific, but effective enough that I stopped. For one month I cancelled my Premium LinkedIn membership to see if it made a difference. It did, the general level of interest dropped. Now there could also be a number of other outside factors I am not controlling but its enough for me to see the value in what I do in having… Read More »Is LinkedIn Premium Membership Worth it?