According to Ira Chalef, courage is the ability to step forward through fear. One of the manifestations of courage is pushing beyond your comfort zone.

I require every student in my social business and personal branding courses at The University of Nevada to make a brief “about me” video to post on their blog at the end of the semester. Considering how little guidance I give them, some of my students have produced impressive videos. Kendra Wilson’s video busting the myths about snowskating is the best one I’ve seen so far.

But my favorite video was made by Caitlin Durkin. Before I even hit the “play” button, I knew it must have taken tremendous courage for Caitlin to make this video. She pushed WAY outside of her comfort zone to do this, and I admire and respect that kind of courage.

Sure, it’s just a video, and not a perfect one at that. But I think it demonstrates that Caitlin understands that if she wants to have courage in the “big” things in her life and career, she has to find courage in the small, seemingly insignificant details of routine assignments. Caitlin could have sat at her kitchen table in front of a laptop and recorded a video that was “good enough.” Instead, she took a one hour drive to the shores of Lake Tahoe and spent considerable time recording this video while strangers wandered by and stopped to watch what she was doing.

Caitlin flexed her courage muscle and gave herself permission to shoot for excellence. I am very, very proud of her. As you watch the video, please feel free to shout out loud “hell yes!”

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I started a four session training course in personal branding yesterday for the great folks at ProNet Reno. In this first session, I covered the principles of personal branding and inbound marketing. In my opinion, the proper operating principles are the most important but also the most overlooked aspect of relational marketing, which includes personal branding.

In the next three training sessions we will discuss platforms, practices, and then evaluate the progress participants make over the next 6 weeks. It should be a great training session!

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I had the honor of speaking to ProNet Reno today about Personal Branding. I was impressed with the quality of support this group provided its members that are searching for employment. It was a serious business meeting with a serious group of folks.

I hope some of them will take my advice and change their minds about what it means to assume responsibility for marketing yourself with these new tools of content generation and engagement. Never before have we had so much opportunity to be able to document and target our value – what we can do uniquely well to help others address opportunities and solve problems that matter to them. It’s our value, not our personality, that makes us remarkable. But creating content and marketing that content is a paradigm shift in the way to establish and maintain a career. I hope some of them will give themselves permission to be excellent by choosing to do things others are not willing to do (e.g. blog).

Now is the time to establish your digital citizenship. Companies that fully grasp the potential of social business will be looking for people have a demonstrated track record of being professionally personal in their increasingly connected social networks. Focus on increasingly associating your name and face with searchable and shareable content that is valued by others and you will never again have to fear being either invisible or irrelevant.

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Andrew Hanely wrote a great guest post today for Jason Falls entitled “That website ain’t gonna visit itself.” The article gave five excellent suggestions for ways to build a community of visitors and commenters at your blog.

You are not entitled to visitors just because you blog. Building community at your site requires an investment of time, effort, learning, and patience. It starts by doing for others that which you want them to do for you. If you are not subscribing to, tweeting, and commenting on the blogs of other’s, you have simply not earned the privilege to host an engaged community at your own site. You are not Seth Godin, so get over it and get to work!

I have to confess that I never heard of Andrew Hanely before today (sorry, Andrew). But I subscribe via RSS to Jason Fall’s excellent blog, and today Jason put his brand on Andrew’s brand by inviting him to guest blog. I read the article, vetted it, and then shared it with my community of followers on Twitter. I signaled Andrew that I had done so by adding his Twitter address to the Tweet. Andrew and I are now connected on Twitter, and I now also subscribe via RSS to his blog. That’s an example the networking Andrew described in his blog post.

Blogging really is like training for a marathon. I’ve run eight marathons, and each required detailed planning, a commitment to execution, and a passion to learn from others how to improve. I never took a class on marathon running. Once I decided it was a goal I wanted to accomplish, I bought a few books to learn the basics and then just started doing what the books advised. I networked with other runners and asked a lot of questions. It’s a tremendous amount of work but also extremely rewarding. The process, while not easy, is relatively simple and anyone that puts their mind to it can do it. The same is true for blogging.

One way I learn from others is by subscribing to blogs on leadership, management, and coaching – the kind of community of folks I want to host at my own site. My blogroll provides a list of some of these blogs I subscribe to and recommend without hesitation.

But I also subscribe to blogs about blogging and social business because they are a rich and robust source of learning how to improve my own skills. I don’t list these in my blogroll because the readers of my blog don’t come here to learn about blogging, but a few of my favorite ones are as follows:

• Build a Better Blog by Denise Wakeman
• Brand-yourself
• Convince and Convert by Jay Baer
• Junta 42 Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi
• Remarkablogger by Michael Martine
• Social Media Explorer by Jason Falls
• Web Ink Now by David Meerman Scott
• Brass Tack Thinking by Amber Naslund
• Brian Solis
• Hubspot
• Kikolani
• Problogger by Darren Rowse
• Scott McKain Viewpoint
• V3 Integrated Marketing by Shelly Kramer
• Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel
• Tentblogger
• Youintegrate by Kneale Mann
• Top Rank

Did I miss your favorite blog on blogging or social business? Do you have any other suggestions about how to build community with your blog? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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In January 2011, I taught another 3 week class on personal branding to undergraduate and MBA students at The University of Nevada, Reno. It was one of my best classes ever, and students like Mackenzie Heys, Gian Sorreta, Jessica Plassmeyer, and Christian Fey worked hard to create great sites that reflect their work ethic and professionalism.

And then there was Jessica Torres. Back in January when Jessica told me what she was going to blog about, I was not impressed. But in 5 short months, Jessica has built her site My Time As Mom into one of the most impressive pieces of work by a student I’ve ever seen in my entire career.

My course only gives students the most basic framework they need to get started blogging and tweeting. It’s only through initiative, effort, and high personal expectations that any student can take what I show them and create a brand that truly testifies to the fullness of their character and talents. Not only did Jessica learn how to create a remarkable blog for the audience she intends to reach, but she also helped others in my next class do the same. Jessica’s blog routinely gets 10 times as many comments as mine, and her Twitter Klout score is 5 points higher than mine.

Jessica, I am very proud of you. Thank you for taking the little that I taught you and running with it, and for encouraging others to do the same. People like you are the reason I love this gig.

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A version of this post originally appeared on The Student Branding Blog, March 1, 2010. I’m reposting it here today because today is the last day of my first semester long course in personal branding for MBA students at UNR.

There is no book that I have recommended more than Peter Senge’s “The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.” It’s a bit abstract, however, abstract thinking is an important skill to develop and I would encourage you to struggle through it.

The fifth discipline is systems thinking. Systems thinking is the ability to “see the big picture,” to understand cause and effect, and to know how to take actions today that will produce significant and lasting results now and in the future. I firmly believe that anyone who masters the discipline of systems thinking will be a much better leader than someone who only sees their situations as snapshots.

My copy of Senge’s book was given to me in 1994 by my mentor, Mary A. Newman.  Mary was one of the professors I met during my master’s degree studies. Not only did Mary turn me on to systems thinking, she was also the one that encouraged me to go on and get my Ph.D. – something I had never even considered doing before I met her.

I did not know it in 1994, but I see clearly now that Mary helped change the trajectory of my life. If I had never met Mary, I am certain that I would not be writing the blog post you are reading right now. Before I met Mary, I never considered that professors could be friends with their students. Now that I am a professor myself, I count several of my former students as good friends.  Mary and I have been friends now for over 16 years.

We can only see how people changed our lives by looking in our rear-view mirrors. When it becomes clear to you that someone had a profound effect on your life, make sure to take the time to find them and thank them.

Always be aware of how things you do for others in the course of your life might seem small at the time but could end up having a huge impact. When you give yourself to others simply for the opportunity to help them in some small way, you become truly remarkable.

Don’t miss the big picture. If you want to have a remarkable brand a year from now, you have to give yourself permission to behave like a remarkable person today. Seeing your personal big picture is hard enough; assuming responsibility for changing it requires real courage and wisdom.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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If your business still has not embraced the tremendous strategic opportunity of the massive cultural shift being driven by social media, then you need to read Gary Vaynerchuck’s new book “The Thank You Economy.” Even if you have gotten started with social business, you might not be doing it correctly or at least have great room for improvement. This book can help because Gary articulates the powerful operating principles as well as anyone because he practices that he preaches.

For the record, I asked Gary for an advanced review copy of the book but he told me he was out. I got my hands on one anyway through one of Gary’s employees, Kade Dworkin, who always has Gary’s back. Thank you, Kade!

Gary writes exactly the way he speaks. He is passionate about what he believes and he does not pull his punches. I love that! The book is full of great quotes – here are two about social business that I really like:

When you know without a doubt that you’ve made good hires, it’s easy to give employees the freedom they need to give the kind of one-on-one customer service that will resonate in The Thank You Economy. Create a culture of openness. Let your employees blog and tweet as much as they like. And let them be themselves. Authenticity is a huge part of what makes social media initiatives work. (Chapter 4)

Quality content is king. Always. But from now on, quality content must be followed up with quality engagement. You had better be ready and waiting to engage your consumer online when they start Googling and tweeting Facebooking to find out more about the awesome content they just experienced, because that’s how our consumer culture works now. (Chapter 6)

Gary understands that operational excellence is the foundation of customer engagement. Gary’s core message is that you have to care – about your customers, about your employees, about your brand – with everything you’ve got. People will only care about you to the extent that you care about them.

There’s only so low you can go on price. There’s only so excellent you can make your product or service. There’s only so far you can stretch your marketing budget. Your heart, though, that’s boundless. (Chapter 1)

Thank you for saying that so well, Gary – I strongly concur. Take the time to read Gary’s new book. You will be thankful that you did.

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Because I treat Facebook like a tool and not a toy, I have a pretty liberal connection policy. Even if I don’t know someone personally, if I have a reason to want to know them (e.g. they own a business in Reno) or we have at least one good shared connection, I usually accept the “friend” request. I use Facebook to build bridges, not walls. And I never post anything, anytime, anywhere that I would not be comfortable with anyone seeing, so privacy is not an issue for me.

I have a life, and I am connected to over 700 people on Facebook, so I do not read my homefeed because I simply don’t have time. I scan it quickly occasionally to see if there is something I want to “like”, but because things that end up in my homefeed originated on someone else’s profile, I treat it as noise and not a signal.

But if someone posts something on my wall, that’s a signal that I am forced to read and respond to because everyone that visits my profile will see it. If the post is rude, offensive, or spam, I will break the connection by unfriending them. I figure if folks want to muck up their own public profiles that’s one thing, but when they put graffiti on the wall of my house it’s something altogether different.

This happened to me yesterday. Someone I don’t even know personally posted something that I found offensive on my wall. When I unfriended him, he sent me an e-mail and told me I was an ass for doing so. Go figure.

I love this advice from Guy Kawasaki in his new book “Enchantment“:

Don’t take any crap. If you give people the benefit of the doubt and they violate you, don’t tolerate it. My theory is that if you think someone is an asshole, most people who are silently observing the situation think so too. This is called Guy’s Theory of Perfect Knowledge of Assholes. If you don’t take any crap, you will enchant the silent observers who like that you have the courage to push back. Just don’t make your reaction personal; criticize the opinion, thinking, or perspective, but not the person. (pp. 114-115).

Facebook for me is a necessary evil. The overwhelming majority of interactions I have with folks on social platforms are civil if not positive. But every once in a while, stuff happens. No worries.

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I’m speaking today about social business to the Northern Nevada Chamber of Commerce. This is only the second time I’ve given this talk, and today will be a larger but still very friendly audience. I’ve added some new slides based on experiences I had just yesterday, and also a few quotes from Gary Vaynerchuck’s new book “The Thank You Economy,” which I hope to review on March 8.

One thing Gary says in the book which I will emphasize in my talk today is that if your business has tried social media and reached the conclusion that it does not work, then it’s probably because of one of the following:

1.     Your product or service is not any good

2.     You are doing it wrong

If you have a remarkable product, and a remarkable team of people to share that product with customers, and you are truly practicing inbound marketing, then you will see results.  Here is something Gary says in his book:

I care more about my employees than I do about my customers, and I care more about my customers more than I do breathing.

If your competitor is operating like this, and you are not, then no amount of social media in the world is going to help your business. It’s just a matter of time before your business reaps what your unremarkable operations have sown.

Worry more about running an exceptional operation than about being found. If you are remarkable, your customers, suppliers, and employees will spread that word through social media faster than ever before. Social media can help you both monitor the promises your brand makes and continuously improve those promises.

“The risk that your business will die before its time grow bigger every day that you don’t use social media” Gary Vaynerchuck (2011).

I am currently teaching 50 MBA students personal branding. It’s the first semester we’ve offered this course at UNR, and I believe it’s the first of its kind in the world. If someone else is doing what we are doing, please show me.

I LOVE this class because I sincerely believe that the skills I am teaching these folks have the ability to radically transform their lives and careers. It’s also unique in that I practice what I teach. When I require my students to blog twice a week and tweet three times per day, I plan to blog four times per week and tweet six to ten times per day.

Last night I gave my class the assignment of writing a recommendation for someone on LinkedIn. Recommendations matter, and I’ve found that the best way to get them is to first earn them for yourself and then to give them to others.

It was not a comfortable moment, but I told my class to not recommend me on LinkedIn. The reason is that I could never recommend them until the course is over and I’ve seen how they performed. I only put my personal brand on people that I truly believe earned it.

What matters most to me is what they do when the course is over. I hope they prove me wrong, but experience teaching this course to undergraduate students tells me that 95 percent of them will quit the first day they are no longer required to practice the skills I’ve taught them. Some will not even choose to clean up their Facebook pages during the course. Why would I put my brand on someone that spent four months with me and then sent me the signal that they didn’t value what I had done to try to help them?

I recommend people that have the vision and strength of character to do things others are not willing to do. I recommend people like Sharon Markovsky, Brandon Jones, and Jessica Torres because they continue to give themselves permission to be remarkable.

It will be my honor to recommend every single student in my class that takes the basic skills I’ve tried to teach them and not only continues to practice them, but applies them in ways that I can learn from them. I recommend excellence, not mediocrity, which is why I will never recommend a quitter.

Excuses are irrelevant.

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