You are a brand.  Your products or services are your brand offerings.  When you add something new to your offerings, that becomes your brand extension.

Let’s say you are a successful author.  You’ve written a great book on marketing.  You’ve promoted the book with advertising, personal appearances, traditional media and even social media.  Your brand, to the consumer, is “marketing expert.”  Now you’re ready to add something new to your services.  You might add consulting, coaching, webinars or live trainings.  But if you were to add a cookbook to your brand, you’d have a great deal of work to do in order to bring people along with you as you evolve your brand from business to baking.  BUT, if cooking is your passion and you’re using cooking as a metaphor for blending, mixing and creating a product, you’d have a brand extension.  If the book were about your favorite cookie recipes, you’d need a new branding strategy.

It’s possible for a personal brand to evolve and include a wide variety of products and services.  However, adding things far afield from a brand’s original DNA is best done once the brand is mature and the brand leader (YOU) is well established and has a strong and loyal following.

For the rest of us, annual evaluation and planning for our emerging brand life cycle is an exercise worth doing.  As you plan your growth, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Where’s the money? What is my most profitable offering right now? In other words, what are people buying from me now?  When people are willing to part with their money to purchase your products or services, that’s the simplest and purest market research.
2. Customer needs: are my current clients or customers asking me for additional information or services I don’t yet provide?  If those services or products are within your skill set, this is the proverbial low hanging fruit.  Put energy and time into providing your current client base with what they are already asking you to offer.
3. Next offer: after I’ve delivered my first product or service to a client, and I know they are happy, what do I want to offer them next?  This is the beginning of your funnel.  Take note of the needs of your clients. See if there are natural additional ways to serve your client base.  Repeat this question after every new product or service to create additional offerings.
4. Brand extension: once you’ve developed a client base the trusts you and is thrilled with what you offer, you can begin to stretch your brand. This is best done in increments.  Taking our example, the marketing book author might now write about sales by making the connection in the consumers mind between sales and marketing and letting marketers know they also have to be salespeople, especially if they are entrepreneurs or small business owners.  Next, our expert might branch out and claim mind share as a provider of information about product development, distribution and even sourcing.  He or she might divide upcoming product offerings into categories that provide deep knowledge in the how-to aspects of each phase of creating new products or services. Then our expert could create speeches, live events, webinars, DVD series, more books and other creative delivery systems for those new products.

Brand development is like story telling. Don’t try to take your reader from “Once Upon a Time,” to “the wicked witch was dead” in two steps. Tell the full story. Lead the consumer through your thinking process by offering logical, helpful, inventive product and service development. And, every step of the way, double check to see that your brand development is ringing true with your customer base.

Do you have questions about extending your brand? Let’s talk.

Nearly every guru or expert mentions consistent engagement as a routine or habit that contributes to online success.

Ever since the publication of  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, people been fascinated with the notion that there are some common traits, habits, rituals or routines that all successful people embrace.  They extrapolate that by adopting these same routines or habits they, too, might be able to tap into their own path to personal and professional success.

In speaking with leaders in a wide variety of fields, I’ve come to realize that this is not entirely true.  The habits or routines followed by leaders are as diverse as are their talents.

Still, a recent Twitter conversation about daily habits and successful business leaders, prompted  me to ask 14 top performers in a wide variety of fields to share one thing they do, every day, they feel has contributed significantly to their success.

Here’s are the lessons I gleaned from what they shared.  The headlines are my interpretation of their routine or habit.

1.  Associate with interesting people

Robert Scoble, Robert Scoble, Blogger, Tech Evangelist and Rackspace Executive

“For years now my main habit is to have a different conversation, every day, with someone who is DOING something interesting!  I’ve kept doing that for years, and recording almost all of them, and that has enriched my life immeasurably (and my career, too). I make sure I always keep my calendar full with at least one conversation with someone different.”

2.   Pay yourself first

Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analyst, Altimeter Group

“Opening and responding to emails is often the act of paying someone else –instead I ‘pay myself first’ by researching, reading, and writing my thoughts on a blog each morning for about 2 hours before responding to email.”

3.  Make technology serve your needs

Ben Parr, Editor-At Large at Mashable

“I have a private wiki that I use to organize my entire life. It has a list of what I want to accomplish, my personal philosophies, important links and even my bucket list.”

4.  Clear your head and keep your energy high

Loic Le Meur, founder of Seesmic.com and LeWeb.net Conference.

“I run nearly every day. That makes me relax and take some distance about daily projects. While many think it’s tiring, when you get into it you actually feel an incredible energy kick for the entire day if you run in the morning. It makes me feel happy and nice to my coworkers and makes me forget about annoying things I would otherwise have a tendency to focus on.  Otherwise, I could not understand technology the way I do if TechMeme wasn’t there.”

5.  Eat your own dog food.

Laura Fitton, CEO/Founder Oneforty.com and co-author of Twitter for @Dummies

“I actually ‘eat my own dog food!’ Every day I use SocialBase (our social media productivity management software) to stay on top of my social media presence. It lets me easily track tasks and bookmark the tools and platforms that I need to keep updated every day. It reminds me of my daily, weekly & monthly recurring tasks, and gives me a jumping off point to execute them in one single spot.”

6.  Flex your spiritual muscle

Michael Stelzner, founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com and author of Launch

“I pray! I thank God for working through me, pray for inspiration and ask for encouragement during the difficult moments. The Lord has always taken care of me.  This is something I do in my car just before I walk on into the office.”

7.  Practice what you teach

Mari Smith, Facebook, Social Media & Relationship Marketing Specialist, Author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day

“Every day, I personally respond to as many messages as I can, whether by email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I do my best to make time to thank and acknowledge people. As Sir Richard Branson says, “lavish praise on people.” I agree wholeheartedly. People love to be heard and I pride myself on being inclusive and treating others as equals. At the end of each day, I can sleep peacefully knowing I’ve reached out and connected with as many people as possible and it ultimately all helps to build social equity.”

8.  Keep an inquisitive mind

Rieva Lesonsky, CEO GrowBiz Media

“One of the keys to my success, is I “explore” every day. I check Twitter, read the newsletters I subscribe to, go to my favorite websites. There’s so much information out there which can inspire or inform something I’m working on.  As busy as I may be, I make sure to do this every day.”

9. Replenish your resources

Gretchen Rubin, author of New York Times bestseller, The Happiness Project

“My habit: Getting enough sleep. Research makes it clear that sleep has an enormous influence on our mood, health, energy, athletic performance — lack of sleep may even contribute to weight gain! The top two reasons for people to be in bad moods at work? Tight work deadlines and lack of sleep. As a writer, my mental acuity and energy are critically important. I see a huge difference in my analytical capacity, my creativity, and my productivity based on how wide-awake I feel. It’s hard to turn out the light before I finish that chapter or answer one last email, but now I’m zealous about getting enough sleep.”

10.  Plan for success

David Zinczenko, Editor in Chief, Men’s Health

“I get in before the rest of my staff almost every day. It’s the only time that I can concentrate on writing, editing, and other close work. Once the team is here, it’s all about meeting and managing. I’m a nutrition guy, so I stock my office with healthy snacks and drinks like almonds, trail mix, dried fruit and coconut water. It keeps my energy up, and I don’t need to waste time running out to look for something to eat. And, I go to the gym almost every day at lunchtime, and read through emails on a stationary bike. It makes the second half of my day much more energetic, and I take less time—and get more done—during a workout than during most business lunches.”

11.  Trust your intuition

Maria Andros, The Video Marketing Queen, creator of The Social Media Traffic Blueprint and The Video Conversion Formula.

“I think that the biggest key to my success has always been strengthening my intuition on a daily basis. I download ideas and get inspiration for the content of all my programs much like an artist does. Often it’s very easy to let our analytical minds take over and keep us stuck. I feel that the more we are in tune with our inner guidance, the more we can make the right decisions to move our businesses forward. For example before I partner with anyone, or create a new product, I listen, for if it’s a hell YES or not. If not, I do not proceed, as that will only have a impact down the road. I have learned the hard way in the past.  I practice listening to my inner voice and my gut and it’s almost always accurate. I highly recommend building this muscle as it can make a great difference in your results.  I think that some of the most successful people in business are very in tune with their intuition and this helps them to stay on track and moving forward.”

12.  Banish the naysayers

Kathy Kinney, Actress and Author and literacy advocate

“I get out of my own way. ”

13.  Find your creative zone

Wally Lamb, #1 New York Times bestselling author of She’s Come Undone, and I know this Much is True

“Since I began writing fiction 30 years ago, I have always found the shower to be a place where my creativity is unleashed. I hit the ‘rain room’ each morning before I hit the button on the computer. The earlier the better–5:00 a.m., if possible.”

14.  Create space to think

Peggy Rajski, Academy Award Winning Director Of Trevor and co-founder of The Trevor Project

The daily habit that contributes to my success is morning meditation.  I’ve done it for over 20 years.  I usually sit for 20 minutes or more, but honestly, even 5 minutes does the trick.  I feel more resilient, ready to take on the challenges of the day, and less likely to experience ‘I think I’m going to kill you if you don’t do what I want’ versus ‘I think this is kind of funny that I can’t get what I want.’ But more often than not, I do get what I want–or understand that what I’m getting is what I need regardless of what I think I want.

15.  Cindy Ratzlaff, Author, Speaker, Consultant

It’s only fair that I share mine as well.  I set a success goal every morning, for that day.  I write it on a white board in my office and when I find myself being pulled off track, I ask myself “will this action serve today’s goal?”  If not, I set it aside until I’ve accomplished the daily goal.

Are there habits or routines you can incorporate in your own life to achieve a higher level of business success?  Please share and let’s see if we can enrich one another’s daily practices toward higher levels of achievement.

First, when you share valuable information through social bookmarking, you position yourself as a resource to your online community.  You train your potential customers to follow you to stay up to date and in the know on advances, news and strategies in their fields of interest.

Social sharing creates social influence for you and the original content creator.

When you comment on a blog post, and, this is important–add to the conversation by contributing additional resources, original thoughts or insights–you also position yourself as an individual or brand highly engaged in your field of expertise.  The more interesting your comments are, the more likely people will follow your digital footprint back to your home base and subscribe, follow, friend or bookmark you.

Share to Position Yourself as a Leader

When you read a blog post you like from a writer whose work you value or respect, leave a comment. By doing so, you provide a service. Google and other search engines pay attention to the amount of interaction that takes place on a website and the more interaction, the higher the social authority of that particular blog.

Think about it in this way.

1. You’re at a business conference where you hear a presentation about a new technology coming out of a brand new start-up.
2. You go back to your company and tell your colleagues to check out this new start-up because they have some valuable marketing tools that might help you on an upcoming project.
3. Your firm hires these new innovators for a project which is hugely success because of their new technology.
4. They grow and continue to innovate and help your whole industry.
5. You are a hero at your company and you, in turn, consider that original business conference to be your new “must attend” event.
6. HOWEVER,  if you attend the conference but tell no one about what you’ve learned, their start-up fails to thrive and grow for lack of customers  and eventually they don’t produce any new ideas or products and perhaps even go under.
7. Everyone loses; the start-up, your company, and you.

The same thinking applies to blogs. If you find a blogger is consistently providing you with valuable tips and strategies, then commenting is your way of encouraging Google rank them well and ultimately to help others find this blogger. So being a conscientious blog content consumer by subscribing and leaving comments is a way for you to contribute to the ecosystems you inhabit. And, in return, you garner social equity for yourself as an aggregator of useful information, a leader in connecting your fans and followers needs to resources they can use and as an informed player in the marketplace.

Bookmarking Benefits

Social Bookmarking is another responsible way to help spread valuable or entertaining information. In addition to leaving a comment, go to one of the many social bookmarking sites and recommend the blog post to others. Social bookmarks are a way for you to save links to posts you’ve found helpful, and others can subscribe to your bookmarks.  By bookmarking a blog, story or news article, you create a home for it where you can easily access it and refer to it again later.

This serves as a visibility strategy for you because you found the post or blog, and now, by bookmarking it, you’re telling other that it’s worth reading.  You increase your own social currency as someone who passes on great information and ideas, and you increase the visibility of the original blogger.

It’s Called “Social” Media for a Reason

Social Media is, at it’s heart, people engaging and sharing ideas with one another. So remember to consume information and pass on the tips and strategies that you find most useful. In this way you become a valuable resource to your followers, you become more visible to those you follow and you foster a sharing mentality throughout your network.

Some social bookmarking site you might consider using include:

* Digg
* Delicious
* StumbleUpon
* Reddit

Please let me know if you have a bookmark list so I can consider subscribing. It’s time to create conversations about YOU by creating conversations about others.

Can you put your core offering into one compelling sentence?

I always ask them, for the purpose of achieving those goals, to shift their focus from the end result to the first challenge; clearly stating their unique value to a potential customer.  This “why to buy” focus helps businesses center their marketing, branding and public relations messages around the most important point of all—their offering.

F.O.C.U.S stands for “Find Our Core Unique Service.”  Figuring this out helps companies address one of the four key elements of branding; variation.  Asking the tough questions, doing the research and creating clear, concise communications will save entrepreneurs and even bigger companies time, money and frustration.

Some questions to ask to help define the unique service or selling proposition are:

How is this service or product different from all others in the competitive set?

• Less expensive, more detailed, easier to use, more conveniently located?

Does the personality of this business or service give it something special?

• Is the business or service provider more highly qualified, more experienced, personally enriched by the product usage?

Why would someone choose this product or service from all other choices available?

• Better customer service and support, first to market, more stylish packaging, more rave reviews, higher perceived value?

Try to put your core offering into one compelling sentence.  This exercise will tell you if you’ve nailed your F.O.C.U.S.  I invite you to post your F.O.C.U.S. statement here and I’ll give you my opinion on whether or not your statement conveys your F.O.C.U.S. to me.  Go.

Secret Millionaire stars share some common practices entrepreneurs can adopt to create their own success.

Dani Johnson was homeless at 21 and a millionaire at 23. She now speaks, writes and conducts virtual home study courses and live events designed to help people get out of debt. Her story is compelling and inspirational.  The tone of her communications is all about having experienced the fear and frustration of financial debt herself. By sharing her personal story, helping people identify with her, then modeling a success route, Dani acts as a mentor, cheerleader and coach to those who follow her program.

James Malinchak is a speaker, consultant and internet marketer who models hard work and reward.  He is everywhere, all the time, with boundless energy and a message that you can create the life you want if you just have the will.  He’s a mindset coach and people aspire to the life he has created for himself through relentless hard work and strategically brilliant marketing.  Among other things, he coaches people on becoming paid speakers, something he is very good at doing himself.  He understands creating ambient awareness and brand connections. His newest offering is called the Millionaire Apprentice Program, which piggy backs his programs SEO nicely with the buzz Secret Millionaire is garnering, and authentically ties in by teaching the techniques that helped him become a millionaire.

Gary and Diane Heavin are the founders of Curves, the fitness franchise for women. They have a different model.  They’re not internet marketers.  The majority of their work is hands on, with people who buy a Curves franchise. They model the in the trenches, “do it with you,” style of business. Even though they’ve created the largest women’s fitness franchise in history and have become very wealthy in the processes, they still operate like entrepreneurs. Gary’s philosophy is “Entrepreneurs don’t get paid on effort. They get paid on results.” He and Diane believe “success is not about who runs the fastest but rather who gets up the fastest after they fall.”  This year they’ve teamed up with Zumba to create a new Curves Circuit with Zumba Fitness class to add to club offerings and are in the process of adding a diet counselor certification program through the Cleveland Clinic so clubs can provide better diet counseling to their members.

Ali Brown is a high profile coach for women entrepreneurs.  She’s offers a tiered system of coaching programs that go from free webinars all the way through a very elite high priced personal coaching program and she has clients lined up to work with her.  Her personal story of leaving corporate America and struggling as she launched her own business helps entrepreneurs identify with her and her “my gamble paid off and yours can too” mantra is appealing.  She models success, glamour and adventure.  And, she works hard.  From that first business in her living room, Ali has expanded her brand into a magazine, an online style boutique, women’s retreats, info-products and more.

So what lessons can other entrepreneurs learn from these successful self-made millionaires?

1. Poverty is a strong motivator in each of their success stories.  A driving passion to improve your life can be a powerful influencer.
2. Creating a business from the ground up takes more hard work than anything you’ve ever done before.  Persistence is the key.
3. Continued success lies in continued reinvention. Successful people never stop innovating.
4. Financial freedom is a strong motivator and there are millions of people who want and need the information you may have on how to create financial security. A down economic climate may be the ideal time to launch a business that solves a problem.
5. Sharing your personal journey helps others envision themselves as potentially successful.  People want to do business with successful people and modeling success can produce powerful results.
6. A great career or business is less about making the next sale and more about building lasting relationships.

If you enjoyed this article, I’d appreciate hearing from you. Please leave a comment below or on my Facebook page and share your thoughts.

We now produce a billion tweets per week.

We’re alerted to breaking news, disasters, celebrity deaths, political unrest and emergency procedures through Twitter.  We talk, real-time, to the CEO’s of major corporations and expect them to pay attention to what we have to say about their brands.  We rapidly spread the word about political unrest and change the colors of our avatars and our home country information in solidarity with oppressed people to help them keep their anonymity in countries where they could be in harms way just for Tweeting.  We share, and sometimes overshare, from our computers and our mobile devices, a billion times per day, all in 140 characters or less. Books have been written and published on Twitter. Poetry, especially Haiku, is flourishing on Twitter.

In short, we’ve fallen head over heals for the micro blog. We’ve got a lot to say in a few short characters.  But as much fun as Twitter can be, the power brands have figured out how to utilize Twitter to drive customer actions, to create brand loyal communities and to enhance their business reputation.

A good business strategy always includes listening and monitoring.  So in honor of Twitter’s 5^th birthday today, I’ve compiled a short list of sites that will give you insight into your own Twitter habits. These stats can provide you with a clear picture of when you tweet, what keywords you use most, how influential you are in your Twitter circle and help you determine your course of action moving forward.

Tweetstats: This site helps you graph your Twitter patterns such as number of tweets per day, tweets per month, tweets per hour and provides a great visual look that can help you understand your patterns.  If you’ve been effective with these patterns, you can replicate them.  If you’re struggling with your Twitter marketing, then you knowledge about your previous patterns can help you adjust.  The bright, full color charts are great for presentations, too.

Klout: Klout is a social influence score based on proprietary metrics and takes into consideration your influence style, how often your network retweets or interacts with you, the influential scores of your close network followers, unique mentions, number of followers and also factors in your Facebook community, blog subscribers and your LinkedIn tribe. In the past year, some high profile events have been known to use Klout scores to determine which bloggers to invite to parties and press events. It’s clear that the ability to measure social influence is important to companies and paying attention to yours, might be worth your time.  Klout gives you suggestions on areas in which you might put more focus to raise your score.TwitterCounter: This site gives you a visual map of your recent follower acquisition, a ranking among all Twitter users, predicts your growth over the next 15 days and gives you an estimate of the time it will take you to double your following given your historical data.  A paid version will give you significantly more information and this site is well worth a look.  I particularly like the live link on the right hand side to follow other Twitter users who have recently visited the site.

TwitterGrader: This site gives you a grade from 0 to 100, uses their own algorithm to measure your power, reach and authority or your actual impact in the Twitterverse.  It looks at the number of followers, the power of those followers, the number of updates from your account, the currency of those updates, your follower to following ratio, the engagement between you and your followers and then calculates a grade.

Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a web-based Twitter management tool that allows you to monitor multiple Twitter streams in a glance.  It also allows you to pre-schedule tweets to go out to your account at different times of the day.  Hootsuite just rolled out a new suite of very useful analytic tools to help clients monitor their account activity.  Ow.ly is the Hootsuite link shortener and you can now print out and share with clients, a nifty color pie chart analysis of exactly how many people clicked on a given link.  This is useful for tracking the effectiveness of your messaging and the actions that message was able to create.  The “Quick Stats” report gives user, at a glance, their top referrers, percentage of followers from any given country, and their most popular shared links.  These reports can be exported, customized and shared.

Twitterholic: This simple site takes a look at the date you joined Twitter, where you rank in terms of followers against others in their database and also gives you a ranking based on your location. This could help location based accounts see where they stand in their market.

Twitter, itself, gives you some great ways to monitor your marketing effectiveness.  Check your @replies, your DM’s and your @mentions daily for real-time valuable information about the effectiveness of your marketing message.

Using a variety of sites to listen and monitor your marketing and branding efforts on Twitter will give you an effective way to develop your own bench marks and success metrics.  The key is to monitor, measure, and adjust your business marketing strategy based on the valuable information that these and other sites can provide.  If you found this article helpful, I’d appreciate hearing from you.  Please leave a comment, ask a question or share any other sites you like to use, and be sure to wish Twitter a happy birthday today.

Brands can now post to Facebook as brands. This is huge.

1. Posting as a Brand: The most important change is that administrators can now post throughout Facebook, on both other pages and on profiles, as the brand. This means that if a brand could potentially comment on the Facebook page of a popular television show with millions of fans and gain visibility with those fans. Conversely, a magazine or television show could comment on the pages of their advertisers to thank them for their support and again, gain additional visibility. We’ll be watching for best practices in this area.  To use this feature, administrators can toggle between posting as themselves and as the brand simply by using a drop down menu at the top of the page under “account.”
2. Visuals: Just as on the new profile designs, business pages will now feature the panel of five most recent photos across the top of your page.  This means that brands must exercise particular care when uploading images.  When another brand or individual tags a company in a photo, that photo will now appear above their newstream, giving less control of the images a business wants to show and making it more essential to have someone monitor the page regularly.
3. Changing Categories: Many companies set up their fan pages using either the wrong category or one that no longer is a good fit for their growing brand.  For example, a business might have been local but has grown to be regional or national. Or, a speaker with national reach might have set himself up as a company but now wants to represent himself as a “person” and a consultant.  For the first time, business pages can now change their category.  This changes the fields under the info link.  If a person wants to be a local business, changing categories will allow him to enter store hours and location along with details on parking.  If a local business wants to become a consultant, the new fields will provide spaces to share product offerings and packages.
4. Featured Likes: A fan page can now, for the first time, “like” another fan page.  Companies can use this feature to associate themselves with sister companies, clients, like-minded organizations and industry leaders.  The pages a business page “likes” will show up on the left hand side of the brand’s page.  By clicking “Edit Info” to the right of a business page name, administrators can now select a feature called “Featured Likes” and choose the top pages they want to have shown on the left hand column of their page.  Again this will be useful for companies that include multiple brands and divisions.
5. Featured Page Owner: Under the “Edit Info” link, business pages may now designate one or more “Featured Page Owners” to be displayed in the left hand column. This can be useful for pages with multiple voices or owners posting.  This definitely gives a public and individual face to a business page, however, and for small business owners or others not wanting to share their personal profile link with the world, this is a feature to understand clearly before utilizing.
6. Filtered News: This is the feature that has people concerned today and hopefully Facebook will listen to the discontent and reverse this.  As of this morning, Facebook and Facebook alone controls the newsfeed of a business page, serving up posts they deem “most interesting.” This seems to create a feed where the posts with the most interactions show up first, leaving the brand without the ability to feature their newest updates first.  This one new feature is counter intuitive to encouraging brands to use Facebook to promote their businesses.  Without control over the order in which their messages appear to fans, a huge opportunity has opened up for outside developers to create something that better serves brands. (*UPDATE: March 5, 2011: Facebook has reverted back to allowing fan pages to post in reverse chronological order, after an uproar from users.)

Over the next week, there will be additional updates on the nuances of using Facebook fan pages to promote businesses.  We’d welcome the sharing of best practices here and feel free to include links to those pages as examples.  If you found this post useful, please let us know by leaving a comment.

Twitter lists are an underused secret weapon in social media marketing.

Use Twitter lists to find people to follow and to group influential people together on Twitter so you can quickly and easily see what they’re tweeting every day. Twitter lists can also be used to demonstrate leadership in your area of expertise and provide something of value to your followers by offering them a convenient way to follow others.  And, for those with locally based businesses, Twitter lists can be a powerful tool for alerting  people to your area of influence, location and specific interest.

Here are 11 ways you can immediately implement the power of Twitter lists in your business.

1. Connect with Industry Leaders. Create your first Twitter list and call it (Your Industry Here) Superstars. Go to your Twitter account and enter the name of one of the most admired leaders in your industry in the search bar at the top of your screen. Click on the “Follow” button under the picture or avatar of @industryleader. Next click on the downward arrow  just to the right of the “Follow” button and a drop down menu will say “Create a List.” Click on “Create a List” and a pop-up box will appear. Here you can name your list “@MyIndustry Superstars.” Underneath you’ll have the option to describe your list. Enter: “People and organizations in My Industry that are helpful, show leadership and really know their business.” Then click “Save List” in the lower right hand corner. Now @industryleader is on your list. Your new list will appear on their Twitter profile page, at the top right hand side of the page under “recently listed in.”  People added to your list will  know that you consider them to be a superstar or whatever attribute you’ve ascribed to your new list, giving you visibility with top industry leaders.  Contintue to add to your new list as you find and follow other inspirational or educational leaders in your field. As you add new followers, put them into lists such as “My Industry Resources.” Keep your most important keywords in mind when creating lists and incorporate them whenever possible. Your lists will each have a unique URL and are, therefore, indexed by search engines.

2.  Attract a Local Based Following. Use Twitter Lists to find and follow quality leads in your local area. Go to the search bar on your Twitter Account and type in #yourcityname. Click on one of the Twitter accounts that comes up mentioning your city. First add this person to a new list called “MyCity Resources.” Next, look to see what types of other lists mention this person. Look for lists that fit your “resources” concept. When you find one, click on the list link. You’ll be taken to that list’s page. Across the top of this list, you’ll see the words tweets, following, followers. Click on Following. A screen will pop up with the Twitter names of everyone on this list. Go down the right hand side of this list and click “Follow” for those accounts you want to add to your “resources” list. Once you click follow, you’ll also need to click the downward arrow to the right and check the box that tells Twitter to add this person to your “resources” list.

3. Use Newly Created Lists for Visibility: Go to your homepage on Twitter. You’ll see these words across the top of your screen: Timeline, @Mentions, Retweets, Searches, Lists. Click on “Lists.” Choose one of your newly created lists and click on it. Now, the only tweets showing in your stream will be tweets from people on this particular list.  You can quickly scan their activity and choose someone to retweet, comment on, praise or ask a question. Simply mouse over the bottom of the tweet you’ve chosen and you’ll have the option to retweet or reply. Do this for at least one or two different people on your list every day to increase your visibility, to demonstrate a desired relationship or connection with this Twitter account, and to be seen engaging with resources and leaders in your area.  Make sure your tweets to these accounts add value, and not noise, to the stream.

4. Share Your Lists: Share your growing “Resources” or “City” list several times a week on Twitter to attract people in your local area and people interested in your business. Click on your list. Copy the URL of that list from your browser window. Paste the link into the “What’s happening?” window on your Twitter page and send this message: Check out this great list of fun places to visit in MyCity! If you need to shorten the URL to fit it into the tweet, go to bit.ly, shorten the link, then copy and paste the new shortened link into the tweet.

5. Add Yourself to Your Own Twitter Lists: Increase your visibility by adding yourself to your own Twitter lists. Just as we recommend going to the pages of other Twitter users to find lists to follow, they’ll be coming to you. When they click down the list and follow people, one at a time, we want them to find and follow you. To do this, enter your own @yourtwittername into the search bar at the top of your screen. When your twitter name shows in the stream, click on it. The right hand side of the screen will now show your profile. The words “Edit your profile” will be on the left and our familiar downward arrow on the right. Click on the downward arrow and check off the boxes for any and all lists to which you’d like to add your own Twitter name. It’s that easy.

7. Connect with Others and Make Yourself Known: Request to be added to appropriate lists of other leaders in your industry or city. When you find a list that you’d love to be on, send a @DM or @reply to the person and say “I’d love to be added to your New York City Businesses” list!  You can reciprocate by adding them to your lists to complete the connection.

8. Broadcast Your Lists to the Listed: Let others know when you add them to your lists. Whenever you add a particularly high profile or valuable networking contact to a list, Tweet to them and tell them. “@IndustryLeader, I just added you to my Industry Superstars list.” Then include the URL. You’ve engaged with them, added them to a list, promoted your list and increased your visibility all while building a relationship with them.

9. Follow Whole Lists at Once: At the top of every list, there will be a button that says “Follow This List.” This will copy the entire list and make it available to you on your page so that you can check it regularly. It does not, however, follow each individual user. Use this for very large lists from professional organizations you might want to check in on but don’t necessarily want to see individually in your stream every day. This will create a link from your page directly to the Twitter account that created the original list. A small icon of their avatar will appear next to the list on your page. Strategically, this is another great way to honor the original list builder and is a valuable way for you to connect with very large lists and high profile creators.

10. Increase Your Lists: Invite Twitter followers to be included on your lists. “Hey Philadelphia. Let me know if you want to be on my new “Philadelphia Resources” list.

11. Broadcast Accolades: If you’ve received awards or been praised in the press, let others know via lists.  Create a list that includes everyone who received accolades and name the list appropriately for that award.

I invite you to take a look at examples of these Twitter strategies on my Twitter account, and please let me know if you’d like to be added to one of my lists.  If you use Twitter lists in a unique and powerful way, please share your strategies here so we can all employ them.  If you found this article helpful, please leave a comment.

I’m not sure I ever broke through the glass ceiling. I think I simply left the glass house to work in the fresh air.

On this particular evening, the topic was Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling.  This is a deceptive topic for me because although I’ve held corporate positions at an executive level, it wasn’t until I left the corporate world that I had the freedom to shape my projects from the top down, delivering superior results for my clients, through my own vision.  So I’m not sure I broke through the glass ceiling. I think I simply left the glass house and now operate in the fresh air.

Villanova has posted a recording of my talk on YouTube and I’d welcome your comments.

The four V’s of branding are essential elements to consider when creating and communicating your brand.

Voice
Your voice is your message and your tone. Think about how you want your brand to be perceived and experienced. Create a short list of three words that clearly lay out your tone. Are you sharp, fast, and pointed? Are you or your product smooth, easy and effective? Will you make your customers life stress-free, unburdened and organized? Choose your words, try them on for size and make sure they convey your brand promise.

Visuals
Now that you know your tone of voice, turn your attention to the look. Consumers have different learning styles. Some will immediately respond to your voice. Others will be swayed by your visual appeal. Match your imagery to your message to reinforce your brand promise. Remember that your brand promise begins with you, so invest in quality professional photography to put your best face forward in social media and on the web in general. When you meet clients, employers, or colleagues who have only known you on line, you want to hear, “I recognized you from your social media avatar,” not “Wow, you look so different from your picture.” A professional looking picture engenders confidence in your potential to solve a customer’s problem and that’s really what all brands do; solve a problem.

Value
Make sure that you know the competitive landscape for your product or service in your arena. Design your offerings, your desired salary or your product price to reflect true market value. Understanding your potential customer’s most urgent needs will help you here. In social media implementation, for example, clients can be expected pay more for campaigns that are a rush and a more reasonable rate if they’ve planned ahead. Price your services based on time and experience needed, resources required and fair market value.

Variation
Your service or product variation is your point of differentiation. How do you or your product differ from every other product or service that is offered? Some points of differentiation might be affordability, location, education, experience, testimonials, first to market, or fame. Spend time creating your list of ways in which you and your product can answer this question from your potential customer. “Why should I buy this product or service from you instead of someone else?”

Using the Four V’s to plan your brand strategy will keep you focused, honest with yourself and help you identify your personal brand strengths.