Are you providing a great answer to those three questions?

In the last post we spoke about how you want your story to resonate with your reader. The goal of your story should be to connect on both a emotional and logical level.

That’s why these three questions are critical. Your reader is not asking these questions out loud but he or she is internalizing them.

The three questions your story must answer to resonate with your audience is:

• What is this story telling me?
• Why should I care?
• How does his story make me feel?

(I also included a bonus question below)

What is this story telling me?

Your story should tell an underlying theme. This theme should convey what the reader or prospect will get when working with you or using your service.

Let’s say you have a financial services business. Can you relay in your story of how you have learned to make secure and wise decisions to protect your money, or other aspects of your life. Do this without saying I protect your money….

When growing up I had a paper route (does that happen anymore?)… and after my first month I put all my money in the bank. The next month I did the same. After 3 months I had more cash then I ever had… then I got my first statement. On the statement was a line called interest earned. I still remember the amount today… I remember thinking if I earn this much with only 3 months of income what if I had 10 times that!

It could be a level of service. You can relate how you had a bad experience and this was the catalyst for you entering your field.

Deep below the surface people are asking themselves what your story is telling them.

How is this story making me feel?

This is often overlooked. You must create a level of emotional feeling in your story.

Have you ever been stuck in traffic? The other day I was stuck in traffic. It was stop and go and stop and go. I just thought of all the other things I could be doing. Have you been in that situation stuck in traffic? It was then and there that I decided to make a change.

Always focus on relating to your client or prospect.

If you have properly identified your market then you should now what your market wants, it’s needs. When you focus on this in your story you want to be the one who provides solutions to these needs and wants.

The reader, your prospect has to feel that you are the one to solve their problem or issue.

Why should I care?

Why should the reader care? What does your story convey about you or your service?

Who cares that you went river rafting and fell off the boat over a waterfall. Sure that probably was a life defining moment for you but what does it mean for me?

So if your sell life insurance what if you said….

I went to Colorado on a rafting experience. about 3 miles in our boat suddenly flipped and there I was heading down some rapids. I remember my head banging against a rock and suddenly I was grasping for air. Now this is going to sound crazy but do you know the one thing that came to mind just before I went to the stronger rapids… is my family taken care of. There I was clinging to life and the one thought I had in my mind is my family going to be alright.

Use the example of the story above that would then tie in emotional and logical hooks that your market needs or wants to feel.

Bonus Question: What do I need to do now?

The bonus question. What do I need to do now? This is simple… just tell your reader what to do, if that only worked.

The best way to do this is not in a pushy way but inject your personality and tie it in with the story.

You want your story to create a call to action in your readers mind. So build your story that it is leading to this call to action in a subtle way.

If you are at all struggling with creating a unique bond and personal brand to your audience keep these questions in mind.

Make it relevant, stay focused and every step of the way in your brand story ask yourself these 4 questions.

Are you ready for a game changer to your personal brand? Above and to the right, enter your email address to get our latest report… the Personal Branding Game Changer.

This one thing is to concentrate all your efforts on niche branding.

Niche Branding

Today, niche brand building plays a great role in the success of almost any small or large business, both offline or online.

Brands are the most important (yet intangible) asset of any company. Without a brand, buyers and audiences will usually ignore your business and offer, in favor of known brands which will deliver proven, reliable results.

Though narrow branding may at first seem counter-intuitive, it does not veer away from brand identity. Rather, it embraces the positive qualities of the brand, sharing them in more detail with customers.

As global markets tighten, niche markets offer unlimited ability to dominate.

People in subgroups behave in similar ways. When we don’t know where to go, we’ll go where everyone else goes.

Your New Consumer

Today’s consumers are savvier, more informed and better connected than ever before. They share information, express their opinions and influence each others decisions in ways that traditional mass media can’t comprehend.

To succeed, brands must be adaptable and constructed around the lives of consumers. They can’t present themselves in a single, unswerving way. They need to focus on individual targets whose aspirations drive the promises, the attributes and even the visual language of the brand.

Narrow branding understands this. It starts with conventional segmentation, breaking down consumers by groups that share common lifestyles and interests. Then it completely re-imagines every aspect of the brand—the brand experience, product mix, usability, distribution, content and media—as though the entire brand was originally conceived and built for each consumer segment.

The Core Strategy

You should be aware, niche brand building will take a concerted, although contrarian effort in your company. You must focus your mind on the needs and wants of your markets, NOT necessarily the needs of your or your company.

Frame your Brand – While planning your brand, you must visualize some important things about your business. Some of them are:

• Who is your target client, prospect, or customer?
• How will you be introduced and approach these people?
• What is their biggest pain or the problems they face?
• How do you intend or how do you solve their problems?
• What makes your offer better than your competitors?

Niche Branding Advice

While branding is about you–it’s really NOT about you. It’s about your niche and the people in it. It’s about the way your market; prospects and customers view and perceive you.

You have the ability to define, influence and maybe even partially control this perception to some extent.

To do this, all you have to do is put yourself on their shoes for awhile and think just like your average prospect, client or customer.

Once in this mindset ask yourself what type of service or product you would like to solve that one pain or problem that you would face. Does your product or service fill this need?

By doing this, you will quickly understand what matters to your customers most and adjust your message, offer and brand accordingly.

Relationships Are the Key to Niche Branding

Once you have answered the above questions and defined that your service or product is what your target niche market wants it’s time to take action.

Never forget to build a personal relationship with your customers. By doing this your target market will be more open to you about their wants and needs. This can be tremendous help for you in building your niche brand.

The main purpose of niche brand building is to create a lasting impression on your target market.

Building a brand while focusing on your niche does take some time. Given effort and focus it will settle in and be recognized.

When this happens is when you will start to see the residual effects of all your effort.

http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2009/11/social-media-not-the-answer-for-weak-brands.html

How to Be Found

Another great insight comes from Brian Halligan on How to Be Found.

Brian Halligan is the founder and CEO of HubSpot, an Internet marketing software company that helps small and medium-sized businesses get found on the Internet and converts website visitors into leads and customers. He is also the author of Inbound Marketing: Get Found In Google, Blogs, and Social Media.

1. Be remarkable. A few years ago you needed to spend tons of funds on PR and advertising to spread the word about your your brand. Today the friction that marketing must overcome is very low for amazing and remarkable ideas  that can spread on their own. Unremarkable ideas remain unfound no matter how much PR and advertising you do. So make sure you have a unique, remarkable services or product and  it will spread like wildfire on the Internet if it’s truly different.
2. Create content. Once you have your remarkable product or service, start creating lots of content about it—including blog articles, videos, podcasts, and tweets. Remarkable content about your remarkable product gets hyperlinked from other websites. Those links send you traffic, and they also tell Google that you should be higher in the rankings.
3. Optimize content. Before publishing your content, you need to “optimize” it for Google and for the people on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc who will spread it. For Google, you should include some of your “keywords” in the title of your content piece so it will be easier for Google to find it. For readers, you should make your titles as irresistible as possible. A good model for this is this blog that uses titles like “The Art of Schmoozing,” “MBA In A Page,” and “The Top 10 Lies of Venture Capitalists.”
4. Promote content. Once you have a remarkable piece of content that is optimized, start spreading it. Post it on your blog, email it to your newsletter subscribers, tweet it, update your Facebook fan page and LinkedIn profile with it. If the content is remarkable, others will spread it for you. As that content spreads, you will have more people follow you or subscribe to you, so that the next piece of content you publish will have a wider audience in the future.
5. Measure results. You need to measure your results for each channel. For example, you should compare your results for Google organic branded search, Google organic non-branded search, Google paid, blog, email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn group, and tradeshow campaigns to each other. For each campaign, you need to track visitors, leads, opportunities, and customers over time. Then double down on the campaigns that are working and kill the ones that aren’t.

I find going into things with this mindset helps more often than it harms the effort.

So when I sit down with someone to help them build an effective strategy to market their talents, skills, or services I see trends. What I find interesting is that the questions that follow are all online based. Although effective personal brand building is much more than an online presence most people are really concerned about this these days.

The number one question or I should say concern I hear is…

I don’t know how or believe I can make content

I hear this from a broad range of people in all industries. I’m shocked to find out that people don’t realize the amount of content they are creating with just doing what they do each and every day.

Some industries are rife with moments, content snippets, and items that you can turn into content nuggets. The key for you is you must tune into these moments and see how they can relate and be of use to you.

Thinking about creating content should not scare you in any way. Now more than ever there are creative ways to create but also deliver content.

So for instance many people simply don’t believe they can write.

My answer to this is… Okay, I get that but let me ask you if you have 7 – 10 minutes a day?

Great, spend 3 minutes doing an outline of something you know about that can add value. Make it a great outline and make sure you write down the key points.

Next, all you do is dial a phone number, leave a voice message speaking about this topic covering your key points. This get’s transcribed, sent back to you and suddenly you have a blog post. Usually with some minor editing you have your content.

This is just one of many ways to creatively create content.

Content creation isn’t as hard as most people make it out to be, you just have to think out of the box and come up with a style that works for you.

I don’t know how to drive traffic online

Okay, I get that, now what I’m going to write here and what I tell people I work with are two things.

First people I work with I say… well I know how to drive traffic, you know me, so in-turn, you now know how to drive traffic.

For those of you that don’t currently work with You Brand what I would tell you is first focus on the value and content you can provide.

Driving traffic as with any form of advertising or awareness takes effort. Sure having some know how helps but in the end if this is the main reason why you haven’t got off your seat and took it to that next level then you are doing yourself a disservice.

Great content will find traffic. So if you are dedicated you will strive to create great content and in the process learn one of the critical pieces to driving traffic.

Those Other People

I’ve heard this a lot… This wouldn’t work in my industry/my business or the Internet/social media is for those other people.

Okay I haven’t met those other people yet but if they exist not sure if I’d want to anyways. Look if you think of feel the internet and the strategies to market yourself is for other people you are right.

You ‘re right when those other people are getting validation, jobs, and more income because of a skill set that you have the ability to learn that you don’t want to learn.

While those other people are investing time and resources in learning, adapting, and adjusting this new technology into their business you are deciding to go old school. I get it, but I’m not sure I would recommend that as a path to success in the future.

Now is the Time to Start

Internet marketing and social media marketing is really not the difficult task it may seem. At it’s core it comes down to people. If you can interact with people you can interact online.

Sure knowing the tools, the how, and the why helps but if you understand the basics of effective communication you can master what you need to know online.

In fact, if you can interact with people ‘in real life’ chances are you will be more effective than someone who can only interact online. I’ve met these people, while genius behind the screen in person they lack basic etiquette.

So don’t look back, jump in and get going.

That really is the concept of niche branding; building a relationship with a subset of people who love what you do, sell, or provide.

A good example of this is to look at the growth of cable TV channels. A few years ago there wasn’t the Golf channel, NFL, or even a whole channel dedicated to gardening.

As the world moves on and technology (especially the delivery of content) becomes cheaper I expect to see niche programing and niche branding to intensify.

Picking Out Your Niche

Picking out a niche is important if you want to be successful in marketing today. But if you are planning to make use of your own product or service as a foundation of your success in the venture, then you might want to consider niche brand building and all the details that comes with it if you ever want to reach your goal.

Coming up with a name for your niche can be tricky. Some may consider it to be easy to come up with a brand name for their product or service; but in truth, you have to come up with one that is attractive to your target market and not just to your own. Here are some details to consider to be successful at it.

1. Consider The Consumer’s Views When Naming Your Product

We can safely say that you already have a specific market in mind for you niche. If you are selling dog accessories then your target market are dog lovers or people who got of their own. Gear your brand name towards the need of your consumers; try to think the same way they do and ask yourself how attractive the name is to them.

2. Come Up With A System of Marketing to Your Niche

Coming up with an attractive name for you niche is one thing, but telling the world about it is a separate concern. Proper implementation of Internet Marketing strategies is necessaries to propagate the name of your niche to the online market.

You can start with your website – building rapport with your visitors by giving them full access to quality information about your niche. You can start by telling them everything there is to know about your niche – benefits, how it works, how useful it is to their daily life, and so on.

Now that you have a page devoted solely to your niche, you can start by spreading the word about it to the rest of the online public.

Spread articles around in various sites that tell your target market all about your product or service. You can even subscribe to social networking site to gather interested contacts to become a part of your customer database. You can set up a mailing list if you want to spread the word.

Another idea is to team up with affiliate marketers or sales agents to help market your niche. The more people you have on the field, the more consumers will be exposed to your venture.

3. Build Customer Relationship

Your customers are your life so it is best if you build a close relationship with them if you want them to remain loyal to your business. Implement strategies that will help improve your service with them – open up a channel of communication to address their concerns.

Communicate on social networks like twitter and facebook. Actively monitor these networks and conversations online. When you see a conversation or a thread about you or what you do engage the conversation in a meaningful way.

The Niche Brand Focus

To have success in any niche comes down to focus and interaction. Interaction with your target audience and your customers. Spend a little time talking with people who will use your product or service.

I do this all the time, many times I will just take a meeting to learn more about a particular industry or a specific type of person. When doing this it is important to not only listen but to give value back as well.

How would you approach the three concepts above in your niche?

Traits of leadership communications reflect:

There are three pillars of leadership communication that all messaging for brand building must have, those are significance, values, and consistency.

Significance

Craft your communication to contain messages about big issues that reflect present and future of your market. These must be relevant to your markets concerns and desires. Go to the heart of your market, figure out what your prospects or clients find most significant.

There are four great questions to ask yourself when crafting your communications for significance.

1. Who you are and why they should care
2. What you have and why it matter to them and why is relevant to them
3. What are you offering me
4. Why their life will be meaningless without your or your product (okay not meaningless but you get the point)

Values

Your messaging must reflect the vision, mission, and culture of the market. Each market has it’s own vision. Each market has it’s own buzzwords and subculture. You must be heavily invested in this subculture and understand how your prospects and customers view their daily mission and vision of life. Your messages must exemplify their stated values and behaviors.

Your messaging should always affirm your markets vision and culture. An effective communication plan will drive towards transformational movement of ideas, concepts, and betterment of both your market place but other leaders within your space.

Consistency

Your market is looking for consistency. The ability to stay the course, on track and maintaining a solid vision forward demonstrates leadership confidence and control.

You must be consistent. Your messages must occur with regularity and frequency. When brand building one of the keys to success is communicating with your market on a regular basis.

You must be consistent in your messaging and positioning.  Effective positioning is relaying the same message in concise and very consistent manner.

A leader who is consistent is not chasing the latest fad of the market. Your target market will not know what to expect from you if you are chasing whatever you can make money on, because it speaks of insecurity and desperation.

Three Questions to Ask

When crafting your personal branding marketing plan and creating your messaging and positioning remember these three pillars.

• Is this significant to my market or prospect?
• Does this exemplify my markets or prospects values and expectations?
• Am I being consistent to my messaging, positioning, and what my market expects?

This foundation must be in place for your personal brand to be an effective and dominant brand.

What qualities are essential for anyone seeking to be a brand leader?

Vision

You must have vision and a literal clairvoyance to your market. You must see the trends before the trends.

Your vision must inspire others in your field. Your vision has to be clear and concise.

Others must be able to identify with your vision.

Your market must identify you with your vision.

This vision cannot be in a vacuum, it cannot stand on it’s own, it must face up to scrutiny.

Your vision does not have to be complex. Art Williams Just Do It is a great example although a little dated.

Communication

A great leader can communicate in a clear and concise manner. Your market will only follow when you have communicated your intentions clearly.

You must be able to clearly communication your vision. This is such a critical point that even people with sub par abilities as leaders who can communicate often times far exceed others with less skills.

A great leader is always looking for the best way to communicate.

With social media and the current landscape of communication it has never been easier to get your message out.

The number one challenge you will face when communicating in the world today is consistency.

You must make sure you are consistent, in your message, in your vision, in your brand awareness, in every item, blurb, and interaction you have.

So communicate in a clear, concise, and consistent manner.

Ambition and Motivation

Personal branding creates characters. People love characters with ambition. People love to follow people that are motivated by ambition.

Your ambition must motivate those around you. You either have ambition or you don’t. If you don’t immediately start developing what motivates you. Turn this motivation into immediate ambition.

Ambition gets a bad rap mainly because most people identify ambition with conceit. Yes it can be a problem when an ambitious person has an excessive appreciation of their own worth. Ambition in it’s truest form is the desire to achieve a given end.

You must have this inside you. In addition you must inspire ambition in others around you.

Take Action

Pick up any leadership book and at least one chapter will be devoted to leading by example.

Imagine you are sitting in a movie theater and the screen goes blank. It comes back but the sound stops and the movie continues to play. This goes on for about a half a minute… What do you do?

Do you get up and go tell a theater employee there is an issue, or do you stay in your seat and watch and wait as assuming some will fix it?

If you have experienced this or something similar has happened to you notice that maybe at most 2 – 3 people get up. You will hear complaints, whispers, and moans but how many people actually get up and do something about it?

In fact if you look around and listen you will hear things like, oh that guy is going, that girls is getting up… or see on people faces that they are relieved ‘someone is taking care of it’.

This simple experience will illustrate to you that taking action is not an inherit trait everybody posses.

As a leader you must take action.

Inspires

A leader inspires his market for greater achievements.

This is a common trait among leaders throughout history. This is even more apparent during wartime. When you think of the great leaders of war, Alexander the Great, Churchill, FDR, Ceaser, they all had the ability to inspire.

Often times they were able to achieve tremendous victories while greatly outnumbered. The victories were accomplished by their ability on leadership but also by the sheer fact that they could inspire their troops to fight harder and more focused than their opponent.

You must inspire, if you can inspire your market the payoff will be more than you can imagine.

Something else you will notice when you inspire, the other leaders in your market will begin to take notice. Not only are your prospects looking to be inspired but the leaders in your space want to be inspired as well.

These are just a start…

In no way is this meant to be a full accounting of all the traits you need to possess to be a leader. But consciously spending time asking yourself the following questions will go a long way.

• Am I providing vision for my market place?
• Am I communicating my vision, my values, my inspiration in a concise and accurate manner?
• Am I ambitious and do I cause other to have motivation and ambition?
• Do I take action? (especially on my vision and inspiration)
• Do I inspire those around me and my target market?

Ask yourself these questions often as they are like a laser pointer to the foundation of an effective personal brand.

I’ve also included some great follow ups that go into more detail on specific points I made here.

Three Keys to becoming a leader covers courage, interpersonal skills, and ethical behaviors it is a good overview.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3495/is_n11_v42/ai_20161850/

How to Be a Leader in Your Field is also a great overview article to help you get on the right track.

Also, please share any specific examples of leadership that inspire you.

Simply start with building your personal story.

Your story of how you got to where you are in your life, your profession, or the place you hold in this world.

I recently modified a post create your personal brand touchstone for the real estate based social network ActiveRain.com. This is a private post so if you are not a member of of Active Rain you wont be able to see the thread.

Our consulting with real estate agent personal branding gave me insight about how many real estate professionals view the process of defining their individual brand.

I received some great comments from real estate professionals who view the task of building an original brand difficult.

Comments such as…

My question is.. how do we find something that we do that is different from everyone else when there are just so many of us in the business?

or

Branding and defining the unique touchstone in Real Estate is the toughest thing in the world. It’s hard to imagine over a million of UNIQUE actively licensed Real estate professionals What a confusing picture for our consumers!

So how do you differentiate yourself and create a unique image amongst a sea of competitors?

One of the quickest ways to do this is create a story of who you are, how you got there, and where you are going.

You don’t think people will care or they don’t want to know this?

A recent interview by Andrew Warner with Bertrand Cesvet about Conversational Capital contained a discussion about myths. I highly suggest you listen to this interview… in it Bertrand goes through myths and showcasing your story. He says that people (your prospects and clients) actually do want to know your story. They want to know how you got where you are, why, when, and where you are going.

While his insights are great and I fully agree there is one other benefit to showcasing your story. Not only do people want to know your story but it immediately helps you flesh out and build your personal brand. Since there is no one with your same story, path, or background  this instantly becomes a unique selling proposition.

Goal of story

Your goal of your story is to create a sense of relationship with your prospect or client. They have to feel like they know you. You want them to be your friend. You must be likable, presentable, and they must feel like they understand where you are coming from and where you are going.

Your story must also create a concise story line.

Start with a situation and a problem to be resolved. Every good story has a problem that needs to be resolved.

Look at the oldest stories of history. There is almost always a hero. Everybody loves a hero. You, the main character, you are the hero.

Don’t think you can be a hero in your industry?

A local baker…

I went to the big grocery chain to buy a cake. It was tasted terrible, plus they spelled my daughters name wrong for her 10th birthday. Her brothers teased her for days. Kids will be kids. I always baked and decided the next birthday to bake the cakes myself. Everybody loved it and in fact…

Real estate agent…

I was a stay at home mom. My husband and I were buying our first house… it was the worst experience i could ever imagine… this experience drove me to change the industry. I didn’t want anybody else go through what I went through.

These snippets of stories give tremendous insight about you. They are unique. The stories engage your prospects or clients on an emotional level. This forms a connection and a bond.

Stories are amazing. Often times your client will remember these stories each and every time they utilize your service or product.

Your story must…

Begin with an arresting first paragraph or lead, enough to grab the readers and make them curious to know what happens next.

The themes and setting must be immediately recognizable.

You story must represent your beliefs and values. Highlight aspects of your story that reinforce what you are about. Think of the underlying messages in fairy-tales or children stories, very often they have deeper meaning and messaging.

You want a similar type of theme throughout your story.

If you’re an attorney you want a theme that highlights your attention to detail, your sound advice and trust. Also how you have saved people from disastrous results.

Don’t Lie and Be Authentic

The story must be true. That does not mean it has to be presented in a boring way. Stories allow you to convey messages and metaphors. Use this to your advantage.

If in your industry it is sought after to be as unmovable as a mountain, say something like…

I simply got sick and tired of my friends and family telling me that I was as unmovable as a mountain and that I should… So I looked into it. You know what I found… they were right… but don’t tell them that.

Inject personality into your story. Your personality. Be careful that you stay true to who you are and you don’t go over the top just for the sake of being creative.

What To Do Now

It’s time to craft you personal brand story. On your first go around don’t spend too much time figuring out the perfect words or the even the right way to say things. Just get it down in writing.

Once you have this skeleton then you can then start improving the copy.

Unfortunately your story wont quite be complete until in you read my next post where I will share with you the 3 questions your personal brand story MUST answer for the reader, your prospect or potential client.

Subscribe to our feed to be notified when this next post is released.

http://blog.spinstrategy.com/2009/09/building-your-personal-brand.html

Very good and insightful article and I just wanted to expand on it a little bit.

Define your Objective – Before you do anything, sit down and determine what you are trying to accomplish.

You should always start here, your objective on who you are, what your touchstone is, and who your target market is. Define your best customer or prospect and get into their wants and needs.

Discover your Current Brand – Next you need to understand what brand you have today.

This is important. Already people know your value and work with you for a certain reason. Often times when you ask people to describe this for you you will be surprised at the answer. If your an sell insurance, very often people don’t work with you because you sell insurance. There is another value or service you provide.

Define your Messaging – Once you know what your current brand is (e.g., mid-level marketing manager) and what you want it to be (e.g., social media expert), then you can begin to define your messaging.

You must also keep in mind that your messaging must be authentic. It must also speak directly to the heart of your target market. Keep in mind that your prospect or customer doesn’t typically want what you are selling they want the result of what you are selling.

Choose your Tools – There are an overwhelming number of tools at your disposal to begin to brand yourself.

One thing to keep in mind when choosing tools is to ask yourself if this is where you target market can be found? Does your customer or prospect interact in this network or with this tool? With a little bit of effort you can find the right places that get right to the heart of the market you are targeting.

I would highly recommend every tool listed in the post as a must for anybody looking to start building a personal brand.

Implement your Plan – Now that you have defined your objective, messaging and tools, it is time to implement.

Implementation isn’t an official ribbon cutting exercise. Get started now. In fact your plan will change often in the first few phases. It will change even more as you build your foundation and start to engage and interact.

If you got here and you haven’t read the post I reference above do so as it gives you great tips on getting started right now.
http://blog.spinstrategy.com/2009/09/building-your-personal-brand.html

There is one thing you can do to catapult your brand building to the next level.

This one essential key is to define and illuminate your personal brand touchstone.

Your touchstone should evoke images that make a direct contact with your audience. A touchstone is what you are known for, the core of your genuineness or value.

Examples of Touchstones

The woman in the picture in the white dress, who is she? I would guess almost anybody on the street can recognize her as Marlyn Monroe. I would even go farther and say you could describe the picture and people would still realize who you were talking about.

Many would point to  BMW as luxury, or the ultimate driving experience.

Apple with innovation and usability and design.

Take the FedEx touchstone, “an unrelenting commitment to deliver”, if you have a package that absolutely has to be there tomorrow who are you going to use?

I’ve done some consulting for large corporate clients like US Bank and Wells Fargo and it was a requirement that  the systems were IBM “enterprise level” systems. I could have argued all I wanted that there were other more stable and useful applications and servers out there. Every time the conversation came up on changing to less well know names it always came back to “we want to be with the leader in the corporate solutions”. This perception came with IBM’s strategy of marketing on a strategic level to corporate leaders. This strategy and focus has worked well for them.

Keys to Your Brand Touchstone

One of the quickest ways to jump start your personal brand is to identify your highest value touchstone. What is the one thing that you can be known for that you excel at?

Next you want to put yourself in your audience shoes and ask the question…

If I had to do X I would go to or work with Y?

If I absolutely had to get a package to New York tomorrow I would use FedEx.

You need to evoke the same autonomic response. This response is so ingrained into your audience that this occurs involuntarily or in a automatic way.

Your prospect thinks of X and YOU comes to mind.

Once you define your core touchstone you next step is to hone in on this. You showcase this constantly, you literally emphasize this over every thing else.

Focus on your niche.

Also realize that you don’t have to be known by your touchstone to the whole world. This is important to understand.

Don’t think you will be missing out on opportunities focusing on a niche. Being sought after in your niche is a much easier task than the world as a whole. Without focusing on your niche it might be nearly impossible to be known.

Get this one concept down and you are immediately ahead of the pack. Focus your efforts on being notable to this key set of people. When you do this it becomes that much easier because all you have to do is find out how to reach this audience. This is much more attainable goal than taking on the world.

For example, Aaron Wall and Rand Fishkin are associated with SEO, John Chow and Shoemoney have their popular blogs, Michael Arrington is all things tech, and Guy Kawasaki is a venture capitalist / social media geek. Would these guys have been able to be known in the same light if they didn’t focus on one smaller niche? Most likely not. Instead of being a an octopus with 8 legs, be a scorpion with one deadly tail.This is the path to getting traction and solidifying your touchstone in the industry.

An older but excellent post tell your personal story is one of keys you should follow. If you have something unique about how you got to the position you’re in, don’t be afraid to share it. People love to relate to others and they’ll remember you for who you really are.

Final Keys to Your Brand Touchstone

Your touchstone must be something you are capable of sustaining. It must also be something that you constantly and almost religiously over deliver. This is the key to gaining fans and giving it that continual push.

If you are continually over-delivering, especially with a niche focus your growth with your personal brand will be exponential.

You touchstone must also be something that is easily recognizable and easy to explain. Clear, concise, and recognizable is what you are going for.

Sit down now and define your touchstone. Then outline your plan for showcasing and publicizing your personal brand touchstone.

This one step done in a authentic and intentional manner will propel your brand to the forefront of your niche.

–If you have any examples of effective touchstones please leave a comment below.