Career Distinction Blog

Career Distinction Video Tip: Google Yourself

Kirsten Dixson — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:20:11 -0400

Bonuses for Purchasing Career Distinction this Week (through July 31, 2007)

Kirsten Dixson — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 11:35:45 -0400

Purchase Career Distinction from Amazon.com this week (through July 31, 2007) and email your receipt to offer@careerdistinction.com. As a thank you, we'll send you our interactive, on-demand presentation on how to build your brand online or give you an annual Reach Branding Club Membership for just $48.50--that's half off the regular membership fee. The online branding module is included with RBC membership, so it's your choice.

With virtual coaching on every aspect of our comprehensive process to define, express and manage your personal brand, tracks for careerists or entrepreneurs, networking opportunities, access to teleseminar recordings, and much more, the Reach Branding Club is an incredible value.

If you've already purchased Career Distinction for yourself, consider buying one for a friend or colleague. It's good Career Karma!

Thank you in advance for your support!

Purchase Career Distinction.
Learn more about the book.

Second Online Identity Certification Program Begins October 9th

Kirsten Dixson — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 12:42:00 -0400

Posted by Kirsten Dixson

Are you a career services provider who needs to learn everything there is to know about helping your clients and candidates with the fact that they will be Googled in the hiring decision process and in networking situations? If so, are you happy with your own online identity so that you may credibly help others with theirs?

The response to Reach's pilot certification program for Online Identity was incredible. We sold out with 40 participants. It's great to see that so many career management experts understand that online identity is now a critical competency in our profession.

Many people are talking about online identity. Now, you have the opportunity to take action and differentiate yourself from other coaches, resume writers and career management consultants--while increasing your income. And, don't worry, you do not have to be a programmer to be effective.

As a founding partner of Brandego, I have devoted the past three years to defining the gold-standard in Web portfolios and blogs to clearly express people's personal brands. Now that Brandego is a division of Reach, we are ready to evolve our model and extend the impact of our proven process by certifying forward-thinking professionals like you.

Reach is the only source for this innovative training, and in this five-week program you will learn how to:

Analyze your client's baseline online identity and determine where they are on the digital scale
Use personal branding to develop stand out websites and blogs
Determine who should have a website or blog or both
Plan content and information architecture
Develop a design brief and collaborate with professional designers
Set up and custom brand a TypePad blog
Partner with top-notch designers and programmers to develop a website
Write copy for the web
Leverage custom web design to develop a suite of brand identity materials
Package and sell online identity offerings to increase your revenue
Use Basecamp to seamlessly manage these projects
Help your clients extend their brands online beyond their primary site
Implement the critical basics of search-engine optimization and marketing
Choose and register the right domain name
Handle hosting and maintenance
Work with clients who have digital dirt

Since you are Googled every day as prospective clients and partners evaluate you, you will go through this program working on improving your own online identity.

All live training sessions will be conducted via webinar with audio on our telephone conference line. Each call will be recorded.

This program also includes two on-demand modules and documentation for future review. We will update materials as technology changes. You will also participate in an annual re-certification program (just $97 to attend a live webinar) to ensure that you are on top of the latest developments in online identity.

To ensure that Brandego and Reach continue to be associated with quality Web development, those who become online identity certified will have their first independent project reviewed by us. We will provide a written assessment of what was done well and where there are opportunities for improvement. It is expected that recommendations will be implemented.

Those who complete this program and demonstrate that they understand how to create a stellar, on-brand web presence, will get access to:

Brandego's design and programming resources
Listing on Brandego website (those who are dually certified in personal branding will be listed as such), benefiting from our online identity PR campaign
Reach's online identity e-list
Sample agreements and proposals
On-demand modules that you can sell (available September 2007) to do-it-yourselfers
The option to purchase our online identity keynote at 50% off
The opportunity to partner with other Reach Online Identity Certified providers who can manage parts of the projects that you prefer to outsource

This five-week program is scheduled for October 9 to November 6 from 11:00-12:00 PM Eastern Time.

The regular price of this program is $997. You can get early-bird registration now for just two payments of $400 (the second payment will automatically charge to your credit card in 30 days). Reach Personal Brand Strategists get it for $497. Email Kirsten if you are a Strategist who would like to register or if you are interested in becoming a Reach-Certified Personal Branding Strategist. If you sign up for our comprehensive certification program in July, you get this Online Identity Certification program free.

Our September Online Identity Certification Program will sell-out soon. Be an early adopter! Register now!

Web 2.0 and Your Personal Brand

Kirsten Dixson — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 13:45:14 -0400

Posted by William Arruda

Web 2.0 is important to you personal brand because it enables both individuation and connectedness. We stand out by what makes us unique, yet we forge bonds with those who share the same interests, passions and goals. Web 2.0 creates a space for self-disclosure (personal brand expression) and voyeurism (evaluation peers, connecting with partners). This supports many aspects of the personal branding process we describe in Career Distinction:

being recognized for our individuality
connecting with others who share our passions, dreams or attributes
experimenting/taking risks and moving outside our comfort zones
learning about ourselves from interacting with others (often strangers)
developing visibility of our unique promise of value among members of our brand communities

Web 2.0 has made the internet an indispensable tool for career management. Have you taken advantage of all Web 2.0 has to offer?

Director of First Impressions

Kirsten Dixson — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 11:50:00 -0400

Posted by William Arruda

As part of our visibility plan for Career Distinction, I appeared on NECN (New England Cable News) on the show Wired. When I arrived at the studio, I was greeted by Patrick Galvin – NECN’s most compelling brand ambassador. His official title – Director of First Impressions. Clearly NECN understands the importance of first impressions. Patrick greeted me with a warm welcome and shared with me the history and accomplishments of NECN. It said a lot about his personal brand and the brand of NECN. By the time I arrived in the studio for my interview with Leslie Gaydos and Jim Braude, I had already been turned into a raving fan. First impressions are powerful.

Patrick is a valuable asset to NECN and he is building a powerful brand or his own.

Do you always strive to make a positive, on-brand first impression?

Apple’s Raving Fans

Kirsten Dixson — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 11:44:41 -0400

Posted by William Arruda

I was walking down 5th Avenue yesterday and was delighted to see a long, long line of people waiting outside the Apple store to be among the first to get an iPhone (for those of you who don’t know me, Apple is one of my favorite brands). They were waiting for the privilege of paying $600 for a phone! That’s the power of a strong brand. Brand loyalists become brand ambassadors and then become brand cultists. And few brands we know have attained the cult status that Apple has.

As personal brands, we can learn a lot from this long line of Apple evangelists stretching down 5th Avenue. We need to offer something that is differentiated. We need to apply our differentiation to everything we do and we must never rest on our laurels – always advancing and staying one step ahead of the competition.

Our Amazon.com Ranking!

Kirsten Dixson — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:26:08 -0400

With your help, we were able to achieve #111 (Sales Ranking) out of the 4,000,000 or so books at Amazon.com. And, we accomplished our goals on the careers list too. We were the number one bestselling job hunting book today, 5 on the general careers list, and 19 in the business and investing category. And, with all that action, we topped at 11 on the Amazon movers and shakers list. Not a bad day!

Did you know that only 5% of the 185,000 books released each year sell more than 5,000 copies? Getting a book published with major publisher like Wiley is an awesome way to build your personal brand, but it is major undertaking (that may be putting in mildly). We're in it for the long haul, so thanks again for buying Career Distinction today and for your continued support in helping us spread the word.

We'll be celebrating in Boston tomorrow!

Join us for lunch in Boston this Wednesday?

Kirsten Dixson — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:23:08 -0400

Posted by Kirsten Dixson

On June 13th, William Arruda will be delivering the luncheon keynote for the AMA Boston. This event is open to the public, and everyone who registers will receive a copy of Career Distinction. I will be there too, and we look forward to meeting you there. You can get all the details and register online here.

Get Bonuses for Buying Career Distinction from Amazon.com on June 12th

Kirsten Dixson — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 15:05:58 -0400

Posted by Kirsten Dixson

Help us make Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand an Amazon.com Bestseller on June 12th. Purchase Career Distinction from Amazon.com on June 12th and email your receipt to offer@careerdistinction.com. As a thank you, we'll send you our interactive, on-demand presentation on how to build your brand online or give you an annual Reach Branding Club Membership for just $48.50--that's half off the regular membership fee. The online branding module is included with RBC membership, so it's your choice.

But, that's not all. You'll also get access to one of two scheduled one-hour group Q&A sessions where we will answer any question you want to ask us about your own branding efforts.

Will you mark your calendar to help us reach our goal on June 12? If you've already purchased Career Distinction for yourself, consider buying one for a friend or colleague. It's good Career Karma!

Thank you in advance for your support!

Purchase Career Distinction.
Learn more about the book.

Interview with Andy Wibbels, Blogging Expert

Kirsten Dixson — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 13:59:21 -0400

William Arruda and I were thrilled to have Andy Wibbels as our guest expert on yesterday’s Reach Branding Club teleseminar. Andy is a blogging evangelist and the author of Blogwild! We believe that a blog is the best way to build your brand online (explained in Chapter 11 of Career Distinction), and Andy certainly reinforced that. This is Andy's quote from page 131:

Blogs allow you to stop hiding behind a stilted/stifled brand and allow you to show up fully engaged with a warmer, more authentic personality.

In addition to creating an incredible offer (get free, short guide to starting a WordPress blog in 15 minutes) for our listeners, Andy shared the following gems:

You can use a blog to publish information faster than you ever could before
You can use a blog as your primary website
People buy from people they like
Blog readers are primarily aged 30+, affluent, research purchases online, and are not scared of a “buy button”
50% of MySpace users are over 30—they are not just “angst-ridden, horny teenagers”
Always be obvious online—make the title of a blog post what it really is since “search engines don’t understand puns”
Know the purpose of your blog and make sure that it has a well-defined niche
Have fun with blogging, and show off your passion for what you do

Andy Wibbels is also a great example of a strong brand in his own right. His “rambunctious” personality shines through in his writing and presentation style. He truly uses who he is to stand out and accelerate his success. As Andy put it, “Showing that you are a human being gives you a competitive edge.”

Listen to the full recording for more including:

Ways to find inspiration for what to write
Tips for promoting your blog
Ideas for monetizing your blog

Want more? Our next free Reach Branding Club teleseminar is July 18 at Noon Eastern Time. If you are not already on our email list, subscribe here to get your invitation. You can always unsubscribe with one click any time.