If you had told me two years ago that I would have a blog, a Facebook page, and be tweeting almost daily, I would have said you were nuts. If you had told me I would be teaching courses at my university on personal branding, I would have said “what’s personal branding?”
Now I am convinced that understanding and leveraging social media operating principles and tools is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your business. But you will never learn the benefits by sitting on the sidelines or by having someone else describe it to you. To get the full benefits you have to jump in and do it yourself – no excuses.
To fully leverage your strategic value you have to understand what people are doing online, and more importantly why they are doing it. If you get that information third hand, it will always be filtered through their experience and their agenda.
In this video, I describe my own motivations to get started with social media. After you watch it, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
P.S. This video was recorded about a year ago
Related Posts:
Personal Branding: The Motivation To Do Something Different
Personal Branding: Blogging – Just Do It!
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Hi Bret,
That is right, my take in personal branding, is “it does not matter who you know, what really matters is who knows you”.
That is the power of social media, it allows you to quickly leverage on your connections, expand to the universe of people of the web, and more importantly keep your self updated on other people moves, learn from them, share with them, understand them better and also to be vigilant of structural, cyclical changes that could impact our careers and businesses. For example, I am have been reading lately about China and how they are going after the #1 spot in the world. That really gets me going to become better at what I do, thinking forward 5yrs, 10 yrs, 20 yrs of what and where I plan to do or be.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
December 27th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
I concur completely concur, Juan. Thanks for sharing! Bret
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Bret, I always find your perspective and story to be so interesting. Life threw you a curve ball and you got angry which is the common thing for so many people to do. The difference here though was that you then decided to do something with that anger. You misused that negative energy to create something very positive.
Trust me, if you would have told me 3 years ago I’d be rubbing elbows with the people I am now, I would have told you you were crazy. I’d have a podcast with listeners in over 40 countries you say? I would have looked at you like you were from another planet. Truth of the matter is we never know where things might lead us but it is the intent to make a change in ourselves and the courage to actually make the first few hard steps that makes all the difference.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
December 27th, 2010 at 11:15 pm
We are talking about you in class tonight, Kade. Very much looking forward to hearing from you in two weeks. Thanks! Bret
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Kade Dworkin Reply:
December 27th, 2010 at 11:25 pm
Now that has me scared. Should be fun though.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
December 28th, 2010 at 12:38 am
You will, as always, be a big hit. Thanks! Bret
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Bret,
This is an outstanding compact video post with a vital message for all of us, regardless of age. For Gen Y, whacked by the Great Recession, building your personal brand is essential. However, it’s one thing to be tech savvy, as are many Gen Yers; it’s quite another to know how to communicate your message.
For those of us much, much older who are either starting new post-retirement careers (my case) or lost their retirement savings during the financial meltdown, creating a personal brand using social media as the platform is the new CV.
Liked you, I’ve been trying to understand this paradigm shift; it’s been an exciting yet brutal learning curve for me over the past 20 months.
Those who embrace this new world of social media will benefit and prosper if they stick with it. It’s going to be one heck of a wild learning ride. Ten years from now we’ll look back and laugh at the infancy of social media in 2010.
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