2

How Do You Fit in the Mix?

It would be safe to say that you remembered at least one portion of Erik’s story about networking and personal branding. When presenting your personal brand, you’re entering into an agreement with the individual experiencing your brand. You’re making the storyteller’s promise.

When storytellers tell a story, people listen. It’s extremely important that your story is not terrible. You don’t want to tell a story that people will hate or never remember. Stories are what drive memories. They are intricate to the development of a person, and they’re extremely important in the world of personal branding.

There is a story in each of us—our stories are what make each of us different. For example, Erik may have had an encounter with a wild animal at a local restaurant. The wild animal (let’s say it was a bear) stole all his food and proceeded to drink his beer.

This is a story, albeit untrue, but it’s still a story. The story is unique to Erik, and Kyle could never claim to have experienced the wild animal at the same restaurant under the same circumstances.

Click here to view code image

@kyleplacy: I did have a talking bear in a green tie steal my
            picnic basket one time, though.
@edeckers:  I think you're thinking of a Yogi Bear cartoon.

The stories that surround you are the first ingredient in building a strong personal identity that enhances your overall brand, whether you’re an influencer, a climber, a neophyte, or a free agent.

This chapter can help you define and build your personal story. You don’t need to write a book, maybe a few pages. It’s a guide to help you discover your personal brand story.

How do you start? Where do you begin this journey to further refine your personal brand story to help you fit in the mix? How do you define your identity? Read on.

The Basics of Building Your Personal Brand Story

The important part of building a personal brand is telling your story. That’s a phrase you’ll hear a lot from personal branding speakers: “telling your story.” (That’s because it sounds so much cooler than “narrating your personal history” or “relating your background.”)

It has also become an important component of content marketing, which is the art and science of persuading people through education. Good content marketers can tell stories about their products without boring you with a lot of data and features.

Telling your story is what sets you apart and helps you succeed in your marketplace and your career. Your life story, your professional story, or whatever story is most relevant to establishing your personal brand can help you stand out from those who never figure this out.

Writing Your Personal Brand Story

All autobiographies start with a single story. Norman Rockwell has a story, and Bill Clinton has a story. Both wrote their autobiographies, which helped guide their personal brands in the public’s eyes, and they’re filled with anecdote after anecdote.

Have you tried to write your own autobiography? You don’t need to write a book—just a simple bio. You might not even have enough content to write a book, but how about a paragraph?

Your personal brand story is your personal sales pitch. There are three different types: short, medium, and long—a 1-sentence pitch, a 100-word pitch, and a 250-word biography. Each is important because it helps you prioritize and figure out what is most important about you. What are you best at? What’s your passion? What skills help you in your career? What makes you you? The personal brand story is also used in your elevator pitch, which we discuss later in this chapter.

Prioritize Accomplishments

The hardest part about writing a personal brand story is nailing down the right accomplishments. Don’t fret. Most people don’t know where to start, either because they’re modest (don’t be; you can’t afford to downplay your accomplishments) or lack of direction. Write for the audience you want to reach.

We’ll give you some examples to work from. You don’t have to do this alone, and certainly not from scratch. Let’s look at Kyle’s bio and try to break down what is the best and worst in his personal brand biography.

Click here to view code image

@edeckers:  Wait, why are we doing your bio?
@kyleplacy: Because we opened the whole damn book with yours!
@edeckers:  Oh yeah. That was awesome.

“Author of three acclaimed books, Twitter Marketing For Dummies, Branding Yourself, and Social CRM for Dummies, Kyle Lacy is the VP of Marketing for Lessonly, a team learning software company in Indianapolis. He leads the company’s overall brand strategy, content marketing, product marketing, and thought leadership.

He has an in-depth understanding of the application of social and interactive media for both small and large businesses and regularly speaks on topics ranging from social media adoption to marketing trends across all digital channels. Kyle has been recognized as one of Indiana’s 40-under-40 by the Indianapolis Business Journal, Anderson University’s Young Alumni of the Year, and TechPoint’s Young Professional of the Year. He’s also a husband and father of one.”

Let’s break this down. The bio starts by announcing that Kyle has written three books and spends his time working in marketing at Lessonly. This immediately tells you exactly what Kyle does on a daily basis and gives you a sense of his skills and knowledge.

Next, it establishes his expertise: He wrote three books, regularly speaks at conferences, and has received several awards. His bio covers everything he thinks a potential customer or event organizer would need to know to engage with him in some way.

This all puts the ball in the reader’s court and asks that person to make a decision. It could be something small like deciding to follow Kyle on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn or hire him to give a talk. A good bio should answer any question someone may have, even if that answer is “no.”

Writing Your Personal Brand Biography

Each bio you write, whether short, medium, or long, has its place. You may be at a networking event, for instance, and have only five seconds to give your pitch—so use the short bio. The medium and short types of personal brand biography also have their places in the world of building your personal brand.

We’re really tired of elevator pitches, even though they’re all the rage with the networking gurus and sales coaches we talk to. Elevator pitches are 30-second speeches you’re supposed to give to explain who you are or what product you sell.

The problem is they’re about 25 seconds too long. If it takes you 30 seconds to explain yourself to someone, you’re probably not going to notice his or her eyes glazing over after the first 15 seconds.

Instead, you should look for a hook. Something interesting about you that you can state in a sentence or two. We’ve known several friends who have developed their interesting hook that makes everyone want to hear more—the embroiderer who could embroider toilet paper; the real estate agent who used to be a Hollywood sitcom writer; the PR person who helped Hollywood legend Carl Reiner self-publish and promote his book.

Imagine meeting someone whose initial introduction made you say “Oh, wow. What’s that like?” Imagine being that person. The introduction doesn’t even have to be terribly dramatic or exciting. Just something to pique another person’s interest. One thing Erik likes to say is that he knows a real rhyme for the word “purple.”

Click here to view code image

@kyleplacy: What is it?
@edeckers:  I'm not telling. People have to tweet me to find out.

Think of the coolest thing you’ve ever done, then build your brand story on that idea. Write your short, medium, and long story, and then practice it several times. Let’s say you’re a former newspaper reporter who is looking to break into the PR field. Here’s how your bio would look:

• Short: I’m a former newspaper reporter who covered Hurricane Katrina on the ground, and now I’m trying to get into public relations.

• Medium: I’m a former newspaper reporter trying to work as a public relations professional. I worked for the New Orleans Times-Picayune as a news reporter for four years, as a sports reporter for another three, and then covered the business beat for six. I’ve been spending a lot of time volunteering as the PR director for our local Oyster Shuckers Rehab Center, and I wrote a book about Thomas Gardiner Corcoran, one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s advisors.

• Long: I’m a former newspaper reporter trying to get into public relations. I worked for the New Orleans Times-Picayune as a news reporter for four years, as a sports reporter for another three, and then covered the business beat for six. I also served as president of the Louisiana Journalists Association and spoke at our annual conference about the growth of small-town media. In addition, I’m a part-time professional historian, and I wrote a book about Thomas Gardiner Corcoran, one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s advisors and part of his brain trust. Because it was a self-published book, I had to do all my own PR work. I scheduled a series of radio and TV interviews, and the book reached Amazon.com’s Top 1,000 for 16 weeks in a row, bumping some Twitter marketing book out of the ranking. Finally, I’ve been serving as the volunteer PR director for our local Oyster Shuckers Rehab Center, garnering about $100,000 in earned media.

The following guidelines should give you a good idea of what we’re talking about. And you’ll notice that the longer ones seem more suited for a written bio, rather than a verbal introduction. When you introduce yourself, you don’t need to recite your written bio word for word. Just make sure you hit the high points.

So what should you do and what should you say during your introduction? Here are a few points you need to remember:

• Introduce your professional self: What would you say to a stranger who asked who you were? Kyle would say, “I’m the VP of Marketing for a learning software company.” This helps in the development of your one-sentence biography.

• What do you do?: Of course, you have to tell people what you do, or they’ll have no idea how to use you in their current role. People need to know what you do before you discuss your accomplishments to further solidify your personal brand: “I am a writer and speaker who’s been covering digital marketing communication for 10 years.” You now have your one-sentence elevator pitch (more about that in Chapter 9, “How to Network: Hello, My Name Is…”).

• What have you accomplished?: What is the most important thing you have accomplished? For Kyle, it is writing three books and being listed as one of the top business professionals under 40 years old in Indianapolis. Don’t list all of your accomplishments. Just pick your top three and let them tell the story of your brand.

• Write in the third person, talk in the first: Your bio is used by other people. Your bio is for other people to tell your story. Be sure you write it in third person and make it sound like someone else is describing you. Just, please, don’t do this when you’re actually speaking to someone. It sounds pretentious.

• Ask a friend for advice: Don’t believe that you have written a perfect biography. We have each asked other people for their opinions of our personal brand biographies. Have someone else read yours. Ask them to tell you what’s missing and what should be taken out. Having another set of eyes to help with the process is going to be the difference between a good and a great bio.

• Don’t forget it: You cannot rest on your biography any more than you can use the same résumé that you left college with. You’re constantly changing and growing, and so is your story. Every project you work on and every client you work with will change your story. You’ll have changes in experience, skills, and opinions on your industry. Your top three accomplishments will change as you add new successes. And your career path will change. Your bio needs to change as well, both in the written and verbal form.

You need to use specific language and ideas when you’re discussing your bio. Please, oh please, don’t buy into that “use memorable, creative terms” or “use an opening statement that will make people ask questions” advice that some networking consultants give.

Many times they’ll tell you to use an elevator pitch like “We make your company more memorable.” The problem is, everyone does that. It could be a marketing or advertising agency. It could be someone who sells custom logo apparel. It could be the company that does full-color car wraps. It could be the guy who dances outside a store waving a giant sign telling people where to sell their junk gold.

The problem is, all these people will help a company stand out from the competition, which is why you need a hook and not some vague, generic mumblings that applies to nearly everyone in the business world.

How Do Our Heroes Use the Personal Brand Biography?

Let’s apply some of the storytelling principles to our heroes from Chapter 1. They’re all transitioning from their current roles to new ones and must state their desires and experience in their brand story. If you ran into them at a networking event, what would be their one-sentence pitches? Would you remember them?

• Allen (influencer) was an account manager for a marketing and advertising agency for 14 years but was laid off after his agency lost its biggest client. The layoff wasn’t his fault, but he was a casualty of the loss. What should his one-sentence biography say?

“I’m a creative director who used to work for one of the largest ad agencies in the state, where I created those Robin-Hood-sells-insurance commercials everyone quotes.”

What’s positive about this? Allen is creative and professional, has an established marketing and advertising career, and worked for a top agency. You would come away with the idea that Allen is good at what he does.

What’s missing? You could argue that Allen could have included something about the kind of job he’s looking for, but that could come in a follow-up sentence.

“And I’m looking for a job in another ad agency as a creative director.”

• Beth (climber) is a marketing manager for a large insurance company. She has been with them for 10 years, but this is her second insurance company. Remember, Beth wants to move up the ranks within the company and eventually become CMO. What would be a good one-sentence biography for Beth?

I’m a marketing manager for Inverness Insurance and have been ranked as one of the top marketing professionals in my industry for the past three years by Insurance Marketing magazine.

What’s important about mentioning that she is one of the top marketing managers in her firm? Is it true? We assume it is for one reason: She verified her experience by adding the recognition from a media source.

If you worked outside the insurance industry, you would have no idea whether Beth was lying, but you would trust the media placement. This doesn’t mean you should make up traditional media names to verify your existence. A liar is a liar, plain and simple. Don’t lie on your one-sentence personal brand story—or ever.

What is the difference between Beth’s written and a spoken one-sentence biography? For one thing, we hope Beth wouldn’t drop the whole “ranked as one of the top marketing professionals” phrase in the middle of a conversation. That sounds a little arrogant. However, it’s perfectly acceptable to say this in written form.

• Carla (neophyte) is a former pharmaceutical sales rep who was laid off after eight years with her company. She is interested in working for a nonprofit, either as a program director or a fund-raising specialist.

We’re actually torn here, because she could use two different stories.

I’m a sales professional who creates relationships between customers and organizations; in fact, I’ve got more than 200 doctors in my contact list.

and

I’m a former pharmaceutical salesperson making the leap to the nonprofit world.

The second bio is more of a conversational introduction, something to use when meeting someone in person. The first one is better suited to the written form, especially on a résumé or on LinkedIn (see Chapter 4, “LinkedIn: Networking on Steroids”).

By highlighting that she is a sales pro who specializes in creating relationships between customers and organizations, she’s not discounting her last job, but she’s not overtly saying she was in pharmaceuticals. She’s pointing out the similarities between what she used to do and what she wants to do. The most important part is that she is a relationship builder—organizations want relationship builders.

What’s missing? The second bio doesn’t say as much about what Carla wants to do. She can easily add “as a fundraiser or program director,” and that will fix it. But this is generally short enough to get started.

• Darrin (free agent) is an IT professional who leaves his job every two or three years in pursuit of more money. He is a free agent because he’ll stay at roughly the same level of job, but he can make more money if he moves to bigger companies.

Darrin is going to create his one-sentence story with as much validation as possible to win him the largest projects. He needs to talk extensively about his accomplishments while touching lightly on his profession.

I’m an IT professional who has worked for six of the top corporations in the city.

Darrin’s biography is less about his profession than it is about his accomplishments.

It is also key to think of the word “trust” when selling yourself as a professional. When people trust your opinion, you are bordering on the ability to become a thought leader to the person who is reading (or hearing) your bio.

What’s missing? Darrin needs to be prepared to talk about what he’s looking for and what kind of IT work he has done. Darrin also needs a verbal bio, and “I’m in IT” is not going to cut it. That’s fine when he’s meeting his wife’s friends at a party who will end up asking for help with their email, but it doesn’t tell a potential employer a single thing. Something more specific, like, “I’m a network security specialist” is more appropriate to tell someone who’s in his same field.

Telling Your Complete Brand Story

Your personal brand story will give you your start in formulating your personal brand story. This is the storyteller’s promise to the reader, where you give the reader what “they were” expecting. You have to flesh out the story, but in other locations. All of your content—your blog posts, status updates, photos, and videos should build your story like a puzzle.

The following points are more than just a checklist. Your content should fall within one of these groups—these “chapters” or “buckets”—as you live out your personal brand. By putting the right content into the right chapters, you’ll tell your story to your readers. And as you put more and more content into each chapter, as you fill the buckets, even latecomers can follow along.

Use the following points as the chapters to help you write your personal brand story. Do this not only as a brand-building exercise, but as a way to create your ongoing story over the months and years.

• The beginning: This is where you define yourself. Where did you come from? How did you get here? Where are you going? Write out the answers to each of these questions concisely in a couple of sentences. This is just the definition of who you are and who you want to be as a brand. People want to know your story; you just have to write it. You should end up with two sentences for each question.

• How did I help? What situation did you help with? This could be a serious situation that you fixed or any problem you solve on a daily basis. It’s up to you to define the problem. Basically, people want to read a story with a problem that needs to be solved. Novelists, playwrights, and screenwriters write about conflict and plot—this is it. Solve the problem by the end of your biography, and you have a real story.

• Your emotional context: Engage with people on an emotional level and tell stories that tap into their emotions, rather than relying on statistics and facts. This will help people connect with you. For instance, what significant event took place to make you choose your career path? Use this to let people see you as unique and real. It’s not about how 20 percent of people do the thing that results in some other thing; it’s about how your high school English teacher said you had real skill as a writer, so you should think about pursuing it.

• Be consistent: Build your story by being consistent in the types of stories you tell and the theme around them. All good stories have a rising theme or a story arc. Define your niche (your theme), and build around it. Don’t jump all over the place in what you do or talk about; if you’re living and writing about your dream of running your first marathon, don’t switch gears by writing about your dream of becoming a performance artist. When you’re consistent, your story will stick, and your message will reach your intended audience.

• Remember you: Don’t get too caught up in the words and lose sight of why you’re doing this to begin with. Remember those moments in your life that shaped the person you’ve become. Tell people those moments and get them fired up about your brand. It’ll motivate you and make others understand why you’re so great.

• Keep the steam going by firing up others: You’ve gotten people interested… or at least gotten their attention. Don’t lose steam. Build your story by building up others. The same people who are fired up about you should be the ones you brag about. Shout out to them on Twitter, engage them in conversations, and boast about their accomplishments louder than they do. You want your audience to be loyal, so be good to them first.

• Connect on their level: Make your story relatable. Remember, you’re not writing science fiction. You’re dealing with real life and real situations. Put yourself in others’ shoes, and cater to your audience. You defined your audience and know what they want. Give it to them.

• Keep them interested: At this point, people know who you are, what you’re about, and what you do. Now is the time to make sure they know you’re good at it. Share your success stories to reinforce your abilities, and continually invest time in finding new stories. You’re only as good as others say you are. Invest in them so that in turn they invest in you. Build your story around an audience that needs you.

• Edit your work: Where are you confused? Where are you confusing others? You can define and redefine your brand if it makes sense. Look back through your story to fix any holes you may have.

After you finish writing a couple of sentences for each point, you will have a basic understanding of what you want to accomplish and how you are defined as a person. You will end up with a short bio to help describe, define, and relate to individuals in the professional world.

The Law of Anecdotal Value

Peter Sagal, the host of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” a comedy quiz show on public radio, once said that he was told by a professor to “Choose the experiences in life that offer the most anecdotal value—that is, look for the opportunities that have the most likelihood of producing a cool story.” He said he has tried to live by this directive, which he calls “The Law of Anecdotal Value.”

As the hosts of the Moth storytelling podcast say, “live a story-worthy life.”

This is an important piece of advice, and one we thought worth offering here because it encourages us to actually do stuff that’s interesting and worth repeating to others.

Remember, the whole basis for your personal brand is to build an interesting personal story, to actually do things worth telling other people about. It means getting out of the office and doing things. It means going out for drinks, coffee, or dinner once in a while, instead of going straight home. It means going to festivals or taking mini vacations with friends. It means going to conferences and spending time meeting new people. It even means reading books. And best of all, it means not watching television every night.

We have yet to hear an interesting story that starts with, “One night, while I was watching TV…”

We want to encourage you to do things that add value to your own life. Throughout the rest of this book, we’re going to tell you to share interesting things that are of value to the people in your network. But we don’t want you to spend all your time amassing other people’s interesting information. We want you to be a source of interesting information and stories yourself.

Living an anecdotal life—a “story-worthy” life—usually means being passionate about things you enjoy doing, or want to achieve, and then working and thinking about how to get it done. We talked about passion in Chapter 1, but it’s worth mentioning again: You will not be following the Law of Anecdotal Value if you just sit around and watch TV night after night or sit in your cubicle day after day without dreaming of, and working toward, your next big thing.

Plenty of people live their lives without passion and without doing anything. They don’t have anything to inspire them, and they don’t try anything new. Some people eat the same food, go to the same restaurants, and drive the same route to the same job they’ve had for 20 years because it’s easier to do that than to work a little harder to accomplish something a little better.

These people don’t want More. They are happy with Good Enough. Good Enough is easy because it doesn’t require any work. But the problem with Good Enough is that it sucks the life and motivation right out of you. Once you have achieved it, there’s never a reason to reach for More.

If you want to follow the Law of Anecdotal Value, it means you won’t accept the status quo and do only what you need to do to earn the next paycheck. It means you’ll actually do something that takes some time and effort. This book is filled with case studies and testimonials from people who have worked to do more in life, and as a result, have dozens of stories to tell; we’ve chosen a few of our favorite social media professionals and asked them to share their stories with us.

Surround Yourself with Passionate People

If you want to lead that story-worthy life and have interesting stories to share, surround yourself with people who have a passion for something in their lives. It doesn’t have to be the same passion as yours. You want to surround yourself with people who love what they do as much as you love what you do, if not more.

Whether it’s someone who loves her work or loves her hobby, find a way to spend time with that person—she’ll sweep you up in her energy, and you’ll add her fuel to your own fire. Her energy will be contagious—as yours will be to her—and you can feed off each other’s ideas and passions.

As you spend more time with these people, and learn from them, you’ll learn new stories to tell, discover new ways to tell them, and best of all, you’ll create your own stories. Next, you have to share them with other people to get them to stick.

Sharing Memories and Stories

You can tell your story by using a lot of different tools and technologies. We’ll cover them in Chapters 3 (“Blogging: Telling Your Story”) and 7 (“Say Cheese: Sharing Photos and Videos”), but first we want tell you why it’s important.

Think about your family’s best stories. What are the stories that get told and retold during family gatherings? What are those stories that are passed down from generation to generation, father to son, mother to daughter? These are the stories that family legends are made of.

There is no reason you can’t have stories like that or that they need to stay only with you. One of the cool things social media lets us do is to share those stories with each other.

Both of us have heard stories from friends and colleagues like Jason Falls, a notable social media practitioner and Erik’s co-author on another book (you can read his case study in Chapter 15, “Personal Branding: Using What You’ve Learned to Land Your Dream Job.”) that we repeat to our own audiences. These stories have become memorable, and occasionally legendary, in their retelling because they’re interesting things that actually happened to these people.

But here’s the important thing: You have to tell these stories. You have to be willing to share those stories with people—whether it’s writing it up as a blog post, posting it on Facebook, or letting your videos and pictures tell the story for you and putting them online for others to see and share. Stories help people understand and connect with you better; certainly better than lists of data points and proclamations.

If you’re not comfortable sharing parts of your life, don’t share them. No one said you had to tell everything you were doing, show photos of every aspect of your life, or reveal every personal detail you’d rather keep private.

“There are just some things I don’t want people to know about,” we often hear from social media resisters.

Fine, don’t share those things. If you don’t want people to know where you live, don’t put your house on Swarm. If you don’t want people to know you’re on vacation, don’t post photos to Facebook while you’re out. (In fact, that’s a very important safety tip! Never tell people you’re on vacation. Only post photos and updates when you get back.)

Share the parts of your life that you feel comfortable sharing and keep the rest of the stuff private. Rather than relying on the ever-changing, always-complex Facebook privacy settings to keep your stuff hidden, just don’t put it up in the first place. If you live in a small town or a suburb, don’t put that on Twitter. Instead, put the nearest big city in your Twitter bio.

Just remember that to build relationships with people and get them to know and like you, you need to reveal some parts of yourself to make yourself seem more human. That’s how sharing memories, knowledge, and visual content through social media will help you build your personal brand.

Ten Do’s and Don’ts of Telling Your Story

Everyone should follow certain rules when embarking on their personal brand journey. Read, reread, and read again the points made in this section of the chapter. They will help guide you through the situations you will face while building your personal brand.

1. Don’t Post Pictures that Would Shock Your Mother

Every social networking site lets you post pictures. Whether you’re on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, you can post pictures of yourself to help tell your story. Don’t be stupid when it comes to your picture posting and professional storytelling.

It’s safe to say that an employer doesn’t want to see you doing a keg stand or flashing the band at a concert (especially a symphony orchestra). Post pictures that strengthen your story and completely avoid pictures that you would be ashamed to show your mom. The general rule of thumb is to imagine your mom, your boss, and your biggest client are in a car together, driving by a billboard with your photo. If you would be embarrassed for them to see it, don’t post it.

2. Don’t View Your Personal Brand Story as a Sales Pitch

Plenty of people dislike getting sales calls during dinner. Or ever. The same is true of your personal brand. Don’t create your story as a sales pitch. If you treat your personal brand as a conversation rather than a sales pitch, your readers will trust you. If the whole point of your brand is just to sell, sell, sell, you’re a breathing advertisement. And we all know how people feel about advertisements.

3. Don’t Post Something You’ll Regret

Imagine a situation in which an employee posts something extremely negative about a client, a business partner, or even a whole city she’s visiting, and it’s seen and shared by hundreds of people online.

We know people who have posted a nasty or negative comment at a time when, frankly, they should not have been posting anything after having spent months trying to cultivate an image of being a respected professional.

The people used Twitter or Facebook to share their comments and meant them as a joke. They then realized the error of their ways and deleted the offending posts. However, it was too late because people had taken screen shots or even retweeted and shared them with hundreds and thousands of other people. The fallout in those cases has been staggering.

For example, in May 2017, Denver Post sports writer Terry Frei tweeted that he “was very uncomfortable that a Japanese driver—” Takuma Sato”—(won) the Indianapolis 500 over Memorial Day weekend.”

The backlash was immediate and enormous. Frei apologized a few hours later, giving his reasons why he made the statement, but he was released by the Denver Post the following day.³

What would you do if an employee embarrassed you and your company with a misguided tweet? What if it was a potential customer or vendor? Or even a job candidate? Would you fire the person? Probably. Would you do business with them? Doubt it. Would you ever hire them? Absolutely not.

The old World War II phrase “Loose lips sink ships” fits here. Everything on the Internet is saved, whether it’s Google’s cached pages or by Archive.org (a site that saves web pages as they’re created; Erik has found stuff he wrote back in 1996). Remember that everything is being read, and everyone is listening to what is being posted. You’re not invisible.

4. Don’t Ask for Things First; Ask for Things Second

Your role in building your personal brand is twofold. To help other people, and then to help yourself. When we help others, we all succeed, not the other way around. When Erik offers to help Kyle with a project, Kyle is more likely to help Erik when he needs it. But if Erik asks for help first, Kyle may be busy at the time and can’t help out. And later, if Kyle needs help, Erik will remember that, and he’ll be “busy” as well.

Click here to view code image

@kyleplacy: Is that why you couldn't help me set up that blog
            site last week? You're so selfish.
@edeckers:  How hard is it to help people move? I spent 12 hours
            loading and unloading that damn truck.
@kyleplacy: I was at my sister's wedding!
@edeckers:  My back still hurts!

The important lesson is to give before you ask. By doing so, you’ll build up goodwill, and people will be more willing to help you. (We’ll talk more about this idea in Chapter 9.)

5. Don’t Get Distracted

It’s easy to get distracted when you work on your personal branding. There is so much to do, so much to say, and so much to accomplish that it can be hard sometimes to focus on a specific task. It’s easy to get distracted by all the things you “ought” to be doing and tools you “ought” to try. But being active does not mean being effective.

Remember that focus is key when it comes to telling your story. If you lose focus and slip, brush yourself off, drop the thing that distracted you, and refocus your efforts. By refocusing your efforts, you can more easily meet your goal.

Click here to view code image

@edeckers:  Squirrel!
@kyleplacy: RT @edeckers:  Squirrel!

6. Don’t Underestimate the Power of Your Network

Your current network should mean everything to you. These are people who know about opportunities, deals, and projects that you may never hear about otherwise. They are the people who can connect you with individuals who could change your career, your company, and your life.

Rather than trying to figure things out on your own, ask your network for help. If you want to be connected, you have to let your network do its thing. However, remember to not badger your network into helping you all the time. Ask for help when it is needed, and then be sure to be effusive and public with your thanks.

7. Do Invest in Yourself

Invest in yourself by always staying informed about what’s going on in your industry. Read blogs from your industry and allied industries, attend seminars, read books, and listen to podcasts.

You want to be ahead of the game compared to your peers. Read and talk to people to improve your knowledge. Investing in yourself is one of the most important aspects of your personal development and growth.

8. Do Invest in Other People

When you invest in other people, they invest in you. This could be as simple as sending an email or Twitter message for someone. When you give, you will receive. When you help others grow and find new opportunities, they’ll return the favor. If you ignore them, they’ll ignore you when you need their help. (We’ll discuss this extensively in Chapter 9.)

9. Do Be Visible and Active

It’s just as important to stay visible in the world of social media as it is to invest in yourself. In fact, staying visible and involved is a form of self-investment.

You can be visible by sharing information on a daily basis and staying in front of the influencers, clients, and network connections that matter. By being visible, you maintain awareness of your personal brand.

10. Do Take Some Time for Yourself

Read this last one carefully: You will most certainly be overwhelmed with the amount of information you receive, content being processed, content being shared, and stories being developed. You need to take some time for yourself. This means turning off everything you’re doing and spending time with family or friends. If you don’t, you’ll get caught in the never-ending process of personal branding and be completely void of your own winning personality after a couple of years of grinding yourself into the dust. And we like you just the way you are.

1. www.chrisbrogan.com/presentation-and-storytellers-promises/

2. http://businessofstory.com/services/workshops/

3. http://www.complex.com/sports/2017/05/sportswriter-fired-racially-insensitive-tweet-takuma-sato-indy-500-win