Book Recommendations
from Bret L. Simmons

From Bret's review: "This is not Bob Sutton’s best book, but if you’ve never read one of his books this is the one to start with because Bob really summarizes the most important ideas and evidence that have appeared in all of his previous books, articles, and blogs. Those familiar with Bob’s work will recognize that there is not a whole lot of new stuff here, but that’s OK, because it’s still the best stuff you are going to find about how to be a good boss."

Order now from Amazon!

From Bret's review: "Despite its flaws, it is a good book. It will make the list of optional readings for my MBA class this fall because I think it will have an impact on the students that read it. The book is very well written with excellent organization and a very conversational style. The best thing about the book is the numerous excellent examples Liz gives to support her points, coming from her years of experience as a top executive and consultant."

Order now from Amazon!

Personal Branding: Integrate Your Activities

October 7, 2009 by Bret L. Simmons · Filed under: Personal Branding

Everywhere you go with your brand in social media, you should have a consistent display of your name, your photograph and your purpose. The most important sites to operate on are Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and a blog. Linkedin and Facebook are low hanging fruit, so you don’t have a personal brand if you are not doing these correctly. But you can’t leverage the full potential of personal branding until you start blogging and connecting with others on Twitter.

All of this stuff takes time to do well, so it’s important to work smart. I spend all of my time blogging and on Twitter and rarely even login to Facebook and Linkedin. Yet because I integrate my activities, my Facebook and Linkedin pages are updated with fresh and valuable content daily.

Integration is simple. Set up your blog to autofeed to Linkedin, and set up your Twitter to autofeed to Facebook. This way everything you blog ends up on those sites without you having to login and update.

I don’t recommend autofeeding your blog to Twitter because you want to control when you post your blog to the Twitter stream. Twitter is like a rushing river, and to use it effectively you need to know when your most important connections are likely to be logged in to Twitter and monitoring the feeds. For me, a lot of my best connections are two to three time zones ahead of me and they check their Twitter streams first thing in the morning. That means I need to have my blog post ready to load to Twitter between 5 and 6 am my time on the west coast. If I miss that window, then I know the other heavy traffic times on Twitter are around noon and early evenings so I will hold off posting my blog link to Twitter until then.

Integrate your activities on Twitter and you will save yourself a lot of time. If you can eliminate time as an excuse for not properly engaging in personal branding you are much more likely to make a commitment to it. And you should make a commitment to personal branding – it is one of the best things you can do for yourself professionally and personally – and its free!

Personal Branding: Some Simple First Steps

Personal Branding: How and Why I Use Twitter

Consistently Contribute Value

Personal Branding: The Power and Peril of Being Personal on Facebook

The Google Background Check

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Tags: blogging, facebook, google, linkedin, Personal Branding, twitter
Posted in Personal Branding