This building a personal brand is pretty involved.

I am finding that I have to monitor several different social networks and post frequently.

I am also finding that the time of the day that you post can make a huge difference.

My time online happens late late late and most people are done networking and are winding down for the night. Because of this I don't think that my posts get noticed much.

Of coarse it could be that I just don't post things that people feel compelled to respond.

Face to face seems to be so much better but I am determined to get this social networking thing down to an art.

If anyone feels compelled to offer suggestions you can do so anonomously on my blog site.

Today I read another article about further building your brand of you inc. In this new networking world it is vitally important that each of us build our social network through all of the following means:

Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter
Your blog
You website
Face to face when possible

Each of these elements must be interlinked and should reference to each other.

Additionally when you post or send email you should have a kind of signature that people can select and get to your website and/or blog.

I am still trying to get better at this and share what I learn with others. I just wish others would share more of what they learn with us.

For now I just keep trying to build these virtual relationships and hope that I am not an annoyance.

I probably have not shared anything that is that earth shattering but realize this....if you are still in the workforce, know that employers are now using tools like facebook, linkedin, and twitter to check potential employees out!

They are looking to see if you are controversial, are you a complainer, do you appear to be a potential leader or are you already showing leadership?

If you are a small business owner you get the same treatment from your potential clients.
They want to see what people think of you, what do they think of your services, do you have fans, are you endorsed?

Take the time and build your virtual front door.

Make sure all your profiles are updated.

Ask your customers to give you an endorsement.

Update you blog and website on a regular basis. (I need to work on this one too)

We are all busy but this tool is not going away and is here to stay.

Embrace it.
Till next time.

I am a Co-Founder of a networking group called Referral Networking.

I am also the Vice President of Programming for a American Business
Women's Association Express Network called, Texas Vineyards Express Network.

I am a small business owner as an Independent Associate for a statewide electric company that I will not name because of advertising restrictions...but people that know me know what company I represent.

My email signature contains my electric company. I have made sure to build my brand with the company I represent but I am still missing so much more in building on my personal brand.

I seem to have developed some kind of tunnel vision that has made me feel that I can only associate my personal brand with one entity...my electric business.

I had an interesting conversation today with a pretty successful business owner and one of the things she pointed out to me was that her personal brand is everything she decides to dedicate herself.

Think about this. The doctor has a signature that effectively is a instant resume of his education and skills. In your head you are thinking doctor as in MD for medical doctor but what about a PHD. He might have a doctorate in mechanical engineering or maybe he's a dentist. Eitherway his signature provides a instant resume to anyone reading it.

What is in your signature. I think I should be adding that I am the Vice-President of a chapter in a national organization and the co-founder of a local organization. Is that not part of my brand?

How about it, are you involved in other organizations that can build on your brand? Can you help people to know you better by indentifying some of your passions?

I think this can be overdone. You might have been a eagle scout, involved on a church board, on the board of a networking group, and owner of a small business. Putting all of that in a signature may be overkill. If I was trying to make connections in a PTA I might add some of my social titles.

The point is business is now built through social networking and that social networking is spilling over into the common networking world.

Email is so widely used now that part of your personal brand should be contained in your signature. Which can contain your instant resume.

Think about your brand, "You Inc." and what your signature says.

Do you have some cute quote attached to your signature? Does your signature say anything about your passion and tell the reader a little more about "You Inc."?

Feel free to share your thoughts I look forward to hearing from you.

OK, I admit it. I am guilty of the same sin that seems to affect many of the small business owners and even employees.

The holidays get closer, time seems to actually speed up, suddenly I am behind, the holidays are getting closer, I need to get ready for family, I need to get shopping done, I need to continue to grow my business but, but, I need to think about the people in that are most important to me and get my house and home ready for the two big days......HOLD IT!...wait a minute, it is only two big days and it is going to take two months of my time?

What happened? Why does it seem like I have neglected my business. The truth is...well I have somewhat. I admit it, I am guilty of letting myself get sidetracked too much. I probably spent too much time, I probably spent too much money, I probably sent my cards in the snail-mail too late and everyone is getting them after the holidays. I probably....................well, as they say, hindsite is 20/20. I probably could have done better.

Here is the point of this post.

Are you feeling the same way? Are you chastizing yourself a little for not being as efficient as you should have been over the holidays?

I have news for you...it's OK! Keep it in perspective, what is most important?

All of us have a limited time in this life and at the end of this life, there will not be business people recalling the wonderful time they had with you over the holidays. There will be family and friends, remembering how much they loved and enjoyed you during the holidays.

One the family holidays are over. Do you have a plan for tomorrow? Are you performing up to your own standards?

Set your goals, write them down (this is really important), and then don't just think about it, you must take action.

In fact you need to take purposeful action, otherwise you may find yourself faced with making a long and painful goodbye to your dreams.

I'll never forget a story I once heard....I would like to share it with you.

One day I was looking at the ads for yard sales and I found a sale that was being done by the Devil.
According to the ad, it seemed that the Devil decided to go out of business and he was selling off his possessions.
Out of curiosity, I decided to go and see what could possibly be for sale from the Devil.
When I arrived, I found a large tent and inside it were tables with various items displayed. Below each item was a label indicating what it was. As I wandered around looking at the items displayed I saw many items that looked new and hardly used such as fear, anger, and sadness. I then suddenly came across one item that did not have a label and was obviously used. It appeared rubbed, beaten, stained and chipped.

Right about this time, the Devil himself approached. He looked haggard and old and inquired if I found anything I wanted?

I quickly responded, that I had not but I asked if I could inquire as to the one item with no label that appeared to be used so much.

The Devil got a look on his face of reminiscence as he explained, "That one item is the most valuable item that I use. It always works and never fails. I did not label it because the price is great and only serious inquiries will be considered. You see that one item is, discouragement. Once discouragement begins it almost never retreats.

With that explanation he turned and walked away.

I quickly left also, a little wiser.

Yesterday, I attended a short presentation on Social Networking. The information was great and I am excited to share what I learned with you.

When I consider social networking, I compare it to the ATM machine. When ATM machines first came out there were alot of people that felt uncomfortable about using the ATM machine. They did not want to use a machine because they did not trust the machine to count the money properly and were worried about getting short changed. They also felt that it was a privacy concern. Then there were those that just felt the machine was too complicated to learn and just wanted to stay with what they knew and trusted, the teller at the bank.

I can take each one of those issues and tie them to online social networking. With social networking people felt that if they hire someone to help them manage their social networking that they will be short changed because of money spent and no results. Then there are those that are concerned about getting involved in the social media world because in order to participate they would have to become too personal and be sharing with others things they would rather just keep to themselves. Finally, there are those who just don't understand the social networking commerce and feel that it is too complicated and time consuming to participate. Sound familiar?

Lets say someone refuses to use the ATM, they can still access their money and make withdraws and deposits. It will take a little more time and effort such as driving to the bank and doing business, during the banks business hours.

The same is with social networking, you can still grow a business. It will however take more time and effort.

Starting and blending all the elements of social networking together is the leap we all must make if we want to grow a strong business that will fit into the new Information Age. In order to participate and prosper we must make a decision to learn it and do it.

What I learned yesterday is "at this time eight elements" to the social networking strategy.

#1 Facebook
#2 LinkedIn
#3 Twitter
#4 Articles
#5 Ezine or ENewsletter
#6 Video media such as Youtube
#7 Blog and it was suggested it be a domain you own. (If you don't know what a domain is just ask me I can help you)
#8 SEO or Search Engine Optimization

These eight elements can be worked together to create your social presence on the world wide web. My prediction is in the future there will be tools and programs developed to manage these elements from a single source. For now you have to do each independently and it is time consuming.

Speaking of time, what if we were to breakdown traditional network marketing time consumption and social networking time consumption.

With traditional networking you have to drive, attend meetings, have 1 on 1's. There is alot of time devoted to planting one seed. With Social networking you have to write, and write and write and there is alot of time devoted but you are planting many seeds.

Between the two they do take alot of time but the market penetration with social networking is far more effective than with traditional networking.

Social networking is about using all the necessary elements and bringing each of these together to create your presence on the world wide web.

If you want to start a campaign then the first thing you must do is find a niche. Determine a niche that you can have plenty of material to write on and you must be a teacher. Make yourself the expert of your niche.

Also find places to answer questions and then drive traffic to your blog or to your articles. Alot of people know I write articles and alot of my articles are about all kinds of elements that may or may not have anything to do with networking or electricity. In fact not long ago I wrote an article about Making Hard Candy. If you want to check it out here is the link: Making Old Time Hard Candy.

My goal is to build on my name and for me most of my topics are about networking, electricity, technical issues, and other stuff. You may want to stay more to your profession and or niche when writing articles and if your goal is to drive traffic to your web site then the Helium site I used is not for traffic. I mostly use it just to publish articles and get my name known.

To drive traffic you want to article websites such as ezinearticles.com, ask yahoo, even LinkedIn can be used for driving traffic to your blog.

At this point this post is beginning to get into how to drive traffic and that needs to be in a future post.

Till then.
See ya

Something I have noticed over the summer is the influx of new business owners?

When talking to these new business owners most of them are volunteering that they recently became unemployed.

We all know have a fairly good idea about what is going on in the job market. As small business owners we control the market by shear numbers and hold the keys to moving the economy and our business forward. The question is can we use the current economy to help not only our business but the people that have had their lives changed in the past few months.

Employers in the U.S. cut 467,000 jobs in June and unemployment rate rose from 9.4% to 9.5%, the highest since August 1983. The payroll decline surpassed its forecast and followed a 322,000 drop in May, according to Labor Department figures released recently in Washington.

Payrolls were forecast to drop 365,000 after the 345,000 decrease initially reported for May, according to the median of 79 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News last month. Estimates ranged from declines of 150,000 to 500,000. Job losses peaked at 741,000 in January. The jobless rate was projected to climb from 9.4% to 9.6%. And, by the end of the year,
unemployment is predicted to reach 10%, according to the survey.

With all this doom and gloom there is gain to be had by all. I recently attended a network meeting (this was a very new group), of the 8 people that attended 4 of them had either their spouse laid off or themselves laid off in the past 3 months. These individuals made a decision that they were not going to be idle and wait for a job. They were going to create a job.

These are the people we want to align ourselves with no matter what kind of business you own. We want to help these people become profitable because not only are we helping another human being, we are putting money in their pocket that they will spend or invest in each others business.

And it doen't stop there. They know people they worked with and they likely talk to them. If someone has a great experience in the private sector, they share it. They will talk about you.

The point is, this is all about attitude and making lemons into lemonaide. Helping each in the marketplace is all part of the business network mentality.

The current economy is creating an amazing opportunity for all. Look for ways you can spend time, spend a little money, invest in each other, and reap rewards for possibly years to come.