insights and ideas
for elevating your
digital brand presence
In this edition:
Digital Brand Presence
and Legal Services
Professionals
Brand Personal Labs:
What’s New in LinkedIn
January 2010
welcomeWelcome to the January edition of Brand Personal Perspectives. The first quarter of the year is made up of short days, long hours, and broken resolutions. You should also be making Q1 your time for a fast start. You may be tempted to use this time to clean up after the year-end whirlwind. But before taking too much time to put your 2010 plan into action, remember this: a good year depends on having a good first quarter, and a good first quarter depends on a strong start. So get the ball rolling today before these first few weeks of the year pass you by. Put your new digital ads to the test. Be diligent in contributing to your blog and social media streams. Grow your network and ask who else you should be talking to. Don’t miss that newsletter deadline. Live your brand and expand your set of supporting stories. The second quarter is around the corner and the traffic signal has changed—the color is green. |
digital brand presenceAND LEGAL SERVICES PROFESSIONALSThe downturn in the economy has increased the intensity of an already competitive market for legal services. Lawyers, now more than ever, need to be focused on the positioning and deployment of their firm’s brand as well as the branding of the firm’s professionals. Whether you plan to grow or just get back to where you were two years ago, you will need to answer some key questions about your clients, your firm, and your practice. Your Clients The market for legal services is dynamic, and a good law practice is nimble enough to adapt to change. You already have a pretty good idea of where demand is strong and growing, but how much do you know about the prospective clients in this corner of the market? Who are they? What problems are they trying to solve? Where do they live and work? What Internet sites do they visit most frequently? What search terms do they use when they’re looking for legal help? In many cases, these questions and more can’t be answered until you’ve taken the time to discover and synthesize the various aspects of your personal brand and your firm’s brand. What do you do and how do you do it? Why would a client prefer to work with you rather than the 20 other firms that look similar to yours (at least in your clients’ eyes)? Once you have discovered, synthesized, and expressed what you are passionate about, building a picture of your new client base becomes a more focused and easier exercise. Your Brand Promise Keep in mind that your clients are looking for help for a reason. They have a problem to solve and want to hire a legal professional who is not only expert and efficient but also pleasant and easy to work with. They don’t have a lot of time to find the lawyer best suited for their situation, and they have a hard time telling the difference between law firms anyway. That’s where your personal brand and your firm’s brand must work together to help the prospective client decide to choose you. Your branding makes it easy to understand what you do and how you do it. Your brand promise is easy to grasp and have confidence in. Your firm must be different from the other firms—and different in a way that is meaningful to the client. For example, the client may not care about a $100 difference in fees but might be ecstatic about the fact you have offer extended hours on Thursday nights. Your Brand Presence Building and maintaining both a broad and hyper-local presence on the web is important to you and your firm. Prospective clients must be able to find you at the point in time when they are looking for help. That’s why it is important for you to understand who they are, which Internet sites they frequent, how they search, and when they search. Once they know you exist, prospective clients are going to check you out, and they are going to start with Google. You need to own your Google search results page—control what appears and where prospective clients go from there. Make it easy for clients to learn more about you and your practice. Your web profiles need to be clear and consistent with your brand messaging. Your website, blogging, and social media presence should build confidence that you can get the job done and are desirable as a professional service provider. Once your prospective clients’ confidence is built to the point that they are ready to send the email or make the phone call, it should be easy for them to contact you and get a prompt reply. The first few hours and days are critical to building a solid working relationship, and a good, well thought out digital brand presence will meet that need. Growing your practice in a tough economy is hard, but not impossible. The good news is that the Internet has leveled the playing field when it comes to firm size and market share. Lawyers who take a proactive approach to defining, building, and deploying their personal brands along with their firm’s have a better-than-ever chance of outperforming their peers. |
brand personal labsWHAT’S NEW IN LINKEDINLinkedIn continues to add new members at a rate of one million every 12 days. If you haven’t been to the ubiquitous B2B networking site lately, you’ll find that a lot at LinkedIn has changed. Here’s a recap of some of the more important changes: Deleting Old Profiles Do you have multiple profiles and want to consolidate down to one? It used to be that you were out of luck—LinkedIn didn’t permit the deletion of profiles. That policy has changed in the past year, and you can now dispose of profiles you no longer want. Go to Settings and select Close Your Account under Personal Information to clean up your LinkedIn presence. Of course, that assumes you remember the password for your old account. If you don’t, you’re still out of luck. Turning Off Other People’s Updates Are you connected to someone who shares way too much information? You can now hide their updates. The next time an update comes through, mouse over to the upper right-hand corner of the update and click on “Hide [user] from your Network Updates.” Your stream will now be clutter free, and the offending updater will never know! New Nav Bar LinkedIn is replacing the old, clunky navigation with a more powerful and streamlined navigation bar that features several drop-down controls. For example, now you can manage your groups without having to wait for multiple page loads. A particularly useful feature of the new navigation is that you now have complete control over the order in which groups appear. Faceted Search Searching LinkedIn has become more powerful with the addition of selective search criteria in an area on the left side of the page. LinkedIn calls this new feature Faceted Search. The new search capability offers dynamic filters that are automatically generated based on your actual query results. These filters enable you to quickly and easily set up custom queries across 50 million LinkedIn profiles based on 9 dimensions: current company, past company, location, relationship, industry, school, groups, profile languages, and when the person joined LinkedIn. Other Changes Other new capabilities include integration with online storage service Box.net and an application for the iPhone 3.0, and a new Blackberry app is also on the way. Stay on top of the latest LinkedIn developments by subscribing to the LinkedIn blog. |
cheryl sylvesterDISCOVERING YOUR BRAND DNA
Where should you start that discovery process? Most executives and mid-career professionals with corporate experience have engaged in some forms of self-discovery through their career development. Those tools, like Myers-Briggs, DISC, and others, can be a starting point to discovering your brand DNA. First, discover your strengths StrengthsFinder 2.0 is the updated book version of the online test in Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths, and it was ranked #4 among the top business books of 2009. The StrengthsFinder model comes from Marcus Buckingham and the Gallup organization’s many thousands of tests with individuals over many years, so it has theoretical validity. The StrengthsFinder model is another way of becoming aware of what I would call “essence”—the timeless aspects of an individual, their natural approach or way of doing and being. From a leadership development perspective, the premise of the strengths model is that you should build on who you already are. From a personal brand perspective, your personal brand DNA is also based squarely on who you already are. Personal brand potential Using the StrengthsFinder tools, you will discover five core themes. To access the online tool, you must purchase the book to receive your unique password. Once you complete the process, you will be presented with your five core themes. Knowing these themes can help you discover and be clearer about your personal brand DNA. In working with leadership clients who have used the StrengthsFinder insights, Uncovering brand DNA For example, if your theme is “Arranger,” you can become aware of how you have used this strength in the past and how this theme shows up in various aspects of your current life and work. You can then consider how this strength forms part of your personal brand DNA and how you can build your business or career based on this strength in the future. I encourage you to become aware of your strengths and how they form part of your personal brand DNA. Your brand DNA, in combination with your skills, experience, and passion, will lead to your personal brand. And as follow-up to discovering your strengths, you may want to consider brand coaching as a useful investment. Brand coaching can teach you to articulate, illustrate, and communicate your strengths through your personal brand communications. So, get started discovering your strengths—and your personal brand DNA! |
The meaning of the word discover goes back to the Latin dis- and cooperire, meaning “to remove the covering; completely uncover.” The word has come to mean “seeing or gaining knowledge of something previously unknown” and “finding out; bringing to light.” You discover, i.e., “uncover,” something that is already there, and you bring it to light. So it is with your personal brand DNA.
michael vermillionBLOG OR WEBSITE?
The answer is both—or it could be neither. We’ll explain. What’s the difference? Traditionally, blogs and websites not only were used for different purposes, but they also used different technology. Today, the technologies are beginning to merge and the differences between blogs and websites are also beginning to disappear. So think about blogs and websites in terms of application. A website is a permanent home for the high-level information about you and your organization. At a minimum, the website is going to include information such as an overview of your business, a description of your products and services, and how to contact you. Most likely, this information is not going change very often and will only occasionally need to be updated. A blog is more current and dynamic. Essentially a chronological series of updates, a blog is a good way to keep your digital presence fresh and to engage your audience. A powerful feature of a blog is the indexing capability, which enables readers to browse your content catalog for a particular keyword or category. So which do I need? We recommend that our clients maintain both a blog and a website. The website anchors the web presence while the blog keeps things current. Keeping a blog and a website is easier than it sounds. We like WordPress as an all-encompassing technology platform. This open-source blogging tool also easily adapts to delivering a website presence, so you will only have to invest in learning to use one new piece of technology. Why did you say neither? If you have a “consumer-facing” business or organization, want to start small, and are in a hurry, forget the blog and the website and stake your claim on the web with a Facebook page. In our recent article on using Facebook for business, we wrote that Facebook enables members to open their pages to anyone on the web—and that’s the key. In addition, Facebook provides enough bells and whistles to get any business or organization off the ground and onto the net. Bottom line To establish and maintain a serious digital presence, go with both a blog and a website. To keep things easy, use a platform like Wordpress that can support both applications. If you are just getting started, don’t let technology or money get in your way. Establish your digital brand presence with a Facebook page and upgrade to a blog and/or website at a later date. |
For people who are just getting going with establishing a digital presence, one question that comes up early is this: Do I need a blog or a website?
aboutBRAND PERSONALBrand Personal is a service that works with high-achieving professionals and their organizations to realize their goals by leveraging their personal brand power. It’s like having your own personal coach, branding expert, strategy consultant, and digital marketing agency working together as a team fully dedicated to your professional success. Visit Proven System – Exceptional Results to learn more about our process and success stories. Cheryl SylvesterCheryl Sylvester is the president of Your Brand Coach and a co-founder of Brand Personal, where she has created an approach that is a synergy of high-level brand communications and one:one leadership coaching. A brand communications strategist and certified professional leadership coach, Cheryl has 20+ years of experience working with companies and clients, including McDonald’s, HP, Monsanto, Novell/PlateSpin, BMO, H&K, and Ogilvy. Her love of brands and brand people has created success for her clients and earned her recognition as one of the Profit W100 female business owners in Canada. Michael VermillionMichael Vermillion is the president of Far Hills Media and a co-founder of Brand Personal, where he works with clients who set big goals, have 10% in the bag, and are determined to get to 10x. He has worked at the intersection of technology, brand, and innovation for 25 years and created over $6 billion of market value along the way. Former employers and clients include mega companies like Procter & Gamble, Lilly, Georgia Pacific, RR Donnelley, BellSouth, Dun & Bradstreet, and EDS. Mid-sized, privately owned firms and a venture-backed start-up are also part of his background. SpeakingMichael Vermillion and Cheryl Sylvester, co-founders of Brand Personal, speak on a regular basis on the topics of personal branding, digital marketing and the importance of digital brand presence for professional success. To inquire about availability for your group, please contact us by email. WorkshopsThe Brand Personal team regularly conducts customized Digital Brand Presence workshops for corporations, associations, and conferences. Check out our Corporate Programs page and call 1-800-385-1513 or email us for more details. Contact UsThe best way to contact us via our website. Additional contact information: New York office: 1440 Broadway, 23rd Floor, New York, NY 10018 Toronto office: 550 Eglinton Ave. W. #23008, Toronto, ON M5N 3A8 Main phone number: 1.800.385.1513 (US and Canada) +1 646.308.1440 (Outside US and Canda) |
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