Make It Great! with Phil Gerbyshak

A little over 2 years ago, I was invited by Dave Lorenzo to join him at Book Expo America in Washington DC to promote his book Career Intensity. Being an adventurous guy, I agreed to go, and then realized I had never stayed in DC before, and couldn't really afford to get my own hotel for 3 days.

 

Being the nice guy that he is, Dave also invited someone whose blog I had read but who I didn't know that well, some guy named Ron McDaniel, CEO of Buzzoodle, and author of the Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing blog. Ron and I emailed each other a few times, and I asked Ron if he'd be willing to share a room with me in DC to save us both a few bucks, and being the frugal guy he is, Ron agreed, and so began what has become an amazing friendship. Ron is one of the nicest guys I know (sorry to blow your cover) and is amazingly helpful to everyone he touches.

 

His book Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing: 57 Word of Mouth Marketing Challenges for the Entire Workforce is an outstanding starting point for anyone looking to build their brand by word of mouth, and offers helpful tips you can do in just a few minutes.

 

While Ron started out doing CRM software with a company called Outstanda, I think he's really hit his groove with his latest endeavor: a Virtual Buzz Assistant community, built to help small and medium sized businesses create more buzz and thus make more money for their company. If you're too busy to generate your own word of mouth, I encourage you to hire a buzz assistant to help you out.

 

Ron McDaniel is one of the most genuinely helpful people I know. While no doubt he will make millions of dollars off of the Virtual Buzz Assistant community he is building, he will also help millions of people. Even if you don't need to build buzz for your company or yourself...who am I kidding! EVERYONE needs to build buzz for their company or themselves, or soon you will be extinct. What I meant to say was, if you don't have time to build your own buzz, get yourself a Virtual Buzz Assistant and get some help today!

If you haven’t played with Wordle yet, take a few minutes and check it out. It’s a visual way to see the words you write about, think about, and blog about.

This is Mike Sansone’s Wordle cloud. I’m working on mine, and will share it very soon.

A few things I’m going to do with this cool tool:

What else could you do with Wordle?

If you do a Wordle with your blog, please leave a link below so we can all take a look at it.

Flickr photo credit from Mike Sansone

I wanted to give you advance warning so you can tell all your friends: Seth Godin and I will be doing a podcast on January 15th, and we'll be discussing his new book Meatball Sundae. I'm also hoping to get the transcript up from our podcast shortly after our conversation, so please stay tuned for that.

What will we be discussing? Meatballs and Sundaes, of course. And a whole lot about marketing, story telling, and how to avoid creating a meatball sundae.

I've read all of Seth's books, and enjoyed them all. I reviewed his book All Marketers are Liars, and strongly recommend his books if you're looking to be more remarkable. If you want to be average, stay away from Seth!

Bookmark Make It Great! today, and come back every day, or at least come back the morning of January 15th so you can listen and learn from the master marketer, Seth Godin.

Or if you prefer, go pick up a Seth Godin action figure, yours for only $9.

Rules, brands, authenticity, customer service, and moving outside our comfort zone. Unconnected? Not really. Read on, and see if you can make the connection. Tell me what it is in the comments section when you're done.

Leading us off this week's 5 for Friday is Craig Harper, who shares 25 Rules for Life. It's well worth a read and the rules are definitely worth following.

"We've all got rules that we live by. Consciously or not. Some of them empower us and propel us towards happiness, significance and fulfilment, and others paralyse us and restrict us to a reality that we don't really want or enjoy. I always get asked about my beliefs, standards and values; the 'life rules' which I do my best to live by. I say "do my best", because I fail to live up to them on a semi-regular basis. Like you, I'm a work in progress."

Ron "Buzzoodle" McDaniel encourages us to Explore Personal Brands

"Consider this a tour of personal brands - and if you want to post this article on your blog and add some other examples, you have my permission. The only thing I ask is not to add someone JUST because they have their picture on a blog. They have to really be working on branding themselves."

NOTE: Ron included my brand among the tour. Thanks!

Andy Sernovitz reminds us about Authenticity in Blogs, and I would argue that you can replace Blogging with Life in his quote.

No teaser, just check out Authenticity in Blogs.

Becky Carroll and Customers Rock! is giving away a free ebook; Customers Rock Tips

"Topics include:

* Taking care of existing customers
* Customer or client?
* Tips for listening to customers
* Stories and the personal touch
* Measuring customer relationships"

David B. Bohl takes us home with Moving Outside Your Comfort Zone

"Moving outside of your comfort zone is, by definition, uncomfortable. But it’s also the only way to grow. You’re not going to get stronger in, for instance, developing new relationships if you only spend time with people you’re already close to.

Yes, it’s hard to get out of your comfort zone, but I have three steps for moving out of our comfort zones and growing."

NOTE: I recently found out David is from Milwaukee, so look for some collaboration on our front soon!

What are YOU reading this week? Share your favorites in the comments so we can all enjoy a GREAT weekend!

This week's 5 for Friday brings articles on branding, freelancing, tools, and the pitfalls of positive thinking.

Enjoy!

Pamela Slim gives us some great branding advice for the multi-talented

She also mentions an amazing article she wrote for the NY Times blog that you MUST READ

Next up, Seth Godin shares about The Caricature of your Brand
Leo Baubata shares Why Giving Away Your Services For Free Will Get You Business
Next is 7 Must-Have Sales Tools (You don't have to be in sales to use them)
Taking us home, is Nneka who shares with us the 5 Pitfalls of Positive Thinking
5 great posts for this fantastic Friday! I hope you enjoy them.

PS: Rosa Say posted a wonderful post that you can use to Learn to Build Your Personal Brand. She used me as her example, and I am humbled by her words. I learned a lot from the article, and I think you can too.

If you'd like to learn more about the awesome Employee Evanglism Workshops I'm doing in January in Las Vegas, check out this Buzz Marketing Personal Brand interview I recently. Ron Buzzoodle McDaniel asked some great questions of me like:

So check out the Buzz Marketing Personal Brand interview or register today to join Ron and I at the Employee Evanglism Workshops in Las Vegas January 23rd and 24th. Need more reasons to join us? How about 10 Excuses to Come to Vegas in January?

The recordings for the Personal Branding Summit are now available. You can view and download them all in MP3 format at this Personal Branding Summit article. No registration is required, no cost to listen in, and just a ton of great information about how you can create a better personal brand. You could also directly download mine by right clicking and saving target as (for Windows folks) and I don't know how for Mac folks or folks who read this via e-mail in Feedblitz or Feedburner, right here. Probably click and stream and save, or just click through to the Personal Branding Summit and get hours of GREAT information.

I've downloaded all the sessions, and I'm looking forward to learning over the Thanksgiving holiday.

On the topic of personal branding...

Whether you're an employee or an entrepreneur, personal branding is one of the most powerful things you can do to stand out and Make It Great! If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't do personal branding seminars or talk about it as much as I do, offline and online.

I also believe that  Employee Evangelism is one of the most important, and inexpensive, ways your company can become more successful.

And I'm delighted to share with you an ability to combine these two important topics in a seminar I'm doing with the fine folks from Buzzoodle, called the Employee Evangelism Conference, scheduled January 24th and 25th, 2008 at the Hampton Inn Tropicana in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada.  Yes, Las Vegas in January will break my heart, living in Wisconsin and all :)

I'll be teaching the power of personal branding as an extension of the business brand. While I believe this one session would be enough help your organization make more money through employee evangelism,  that's not all you'll learn about during the Employee Evangelism Conference.

Leslie Carruthers will be sharing the why and how of getting more traffic and better targeted traffic on the Internet.

Anita Campbell will be demonstrating the importance and ease of using media in your buzz efforts.

Ron McDaniel will be sharing an in depth session on how to enhance buzz and word of mouth via better employee evangelism.

And, as a special friend of Phil discount, if you sign up now through the end of November, and you use the promotional code of phil200, you get $200 off the cost of the conference.

Want to learn more? Read the Employee Evangelism Conference brochure, available as a nice full color PDF you can print out and share with your boss. Or just go sign up for the Employee Evangelism Conference now.

Don't forget, phil200 saves you $200, whether you sign up in November for the lowest price or the day before the event. Seats are limited to only 35 however, and we only have 31 slots left after just 10 days of advertising this awesome event.

This year marks the 10th year of Tom Peters breakthrough discussion around YOU, the brand. Tom talked about the shift from you, being a faceless company worker, to YOU, the brand, the important person who has special and unique gifts to share with the world.

You have an opportunity to stand out and stand up and be counted.

Great idea Phil, but you're probably wondering, "How will, how can, I do that?"

You could start by reading the article that started it all, by Tom Peters, in Fast Company, circa 1997. Click here to read the article.

Another way would be to join me, and a bunch of other great experts like Guy Kawasaki (author of the fantastic book Art of the Start to name 1 of his works, and one of the all-time greatest brand evangelists), Dick Bolles (author of the hugely popular What Color is Your Parachute?) and fellow SOBCon speaker Andy Sernovitz, author of the awesome book Word of Mouth Marketing, all day on November 8th for a complimentary teleseminar called the Brand You World. It won't cost you a thing, except the investment of your time, and it'll definitely be worth it.

My session is at 6 PM ET, 5 PM Central, and I'll be sharing Identity You: Creating a 5 x 5 Personal Branding Strategy, to really get into the meat of how you can create a great brand strategy for your life and your work.

I hope you can join me at the personal branding summit. If you can't join me live, (it's a dial-in show, just sign up at the Personal Branding Summit website and you'll get the information), then later, you can listen to the recorded calls.

I also just found out that the amazing Jason "Jibber Jobber" Alba will be interviewing me for the summit! It's going to be AMAZING! Tell all your friends and family, share this on your blog, in your newsletter, and however you can. After all, if we don't make the most of our personal brand, who will?

Laura Allen is the co-founder of 15 Second Pitch. She is one of the smartest people I've ever been in contact with (we collaborated on the now defunct Great Big Small Business Show), and I've learned a lot from Laura.

Recently she was on ABC News and you can watch the video and learn from Laura. Watch as Laura shares the 4 steps to create a 15 second pitch. When you're done, head over to 15 Second Pitch and create your own 15 second pitch!

Congrats Laura on a job well done!

I've been doing a lot of speaking and a lot of traveling and collecting a lot of really boring business cards. Plain white ones that I put people's information into my contact database, never to be looked at again. Most of the time, sorry to say, I throw away the card shortly after I scan it into my contacts.

So how can we change this? How can we make GREAT business cards? Here's 5 things I've seen that make me keep business cards a little longer.

1. Fun, interesting colors. Do you want to see a yellow card or a white card? I choose yellow because it stands out and it's a very snappy color! So maybe yellow isn't your color, but pick a color that conveys who you are and who you want to be.
2. Interesting and relevant information. This means your fax number is likely irrelevant, and what your benefit to the person you're giving the card to is very relevant.
3. Make a unique impression. Color is one thing that makes people stand up and take notice. So does a picture. And a snappy logo. And rounded corners.
4. Use both sides of the card with important information. Or leave the backside blank and tell me something interesting about you that I want to write down and learn more about.

One Bonus tip: Last, and most importantly, when you're giving out your business card...

5. Give me a reason to remember YOU! When I'm meeting with someone, and I make a real connection with the other person, I'm more apt to not only keep the business card, but also share it with others that might be able to help you. Why should I remember your name or what you do? Try to make a connection with me as quickly as you can, so we can share what we're both passionate about as much as possible to deepen that connection. Deeply connected people are people who you can help, and who can help you, and the more I connect with you, the more I will talk about you and the more I will share your information with my friends.

My favorite business cards (in no particular order):

Photo credit to Don Andre

I don't normally watch video clips on people's blogs. For some reason, this title sucked me in: An Idiots Guide to Branding.

Caution: Naughty words. Don't watch if you can't take a little bit of foul language to get to the excellent points made.

If you're reading this via RSS, click the link and watch it over at OKDork.com. Otherwise, watch the video here.

Very interesting thought on branding. Paraphrasing, ZeFrank says that a brand is an "emotional aftertaste" that sticks around long after the experience is gone. I think that's a great way to think about branding.

So watch the video. Think about your brand.

Is your brand...

Trust me. Watch the video. You'll figure it out.