Mel Carson Archive

In early January, I was invited onto The Career Cue, a podcast focused on career growth, to talk about methods for amplifying your brand with host, Danna Redmond.

We touched on several different topics but started off with something broad—How to differentiate yourself to stand out from other people.

From there, I had a chance to touch on my personal experiences that lead me to the realization of just how important personal branding truly is.

After sharing my story, I talked about my take on why personal branding is important for the average person trying to get his or her next promotion or job, how to brand yourself within a corporate environment, the ins and outs of becoming discoverable, shareable, and memorable, and much, much more.

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As more and more people are coming to Delightful for insight and help with how to build a personal branding strategy and tell their professional stories, we decided to embark on a series of blog posts that gives readers a sense of what they need to think about when putting together a strategy to help build their personal brands and make them more Discoverable, Sharable and Memorable.

This post has been revised and updated based on the feedback we have had from our book on Amazon that has been getting rave reviews:

Introduction to Personal Branding: Ten Steps Towards a New Professional You

We’ve renamed the series: How to Build a Personal Branding Strategy.

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With the Introduction to Personal Branding Kindle eBook out for just over a year racking up five-star reviews on Amazon, we decided (inspired by our friend Karl Sakas’ pocket guide for agency leaders) to work with the fine people at CreateSpace and publish a paperback version of the book.

We’re very lucky to have our friend Jason Miller, who heads up Global Content Marketing for LinkedIn, write a few kind words about the book.

This is what he said:

“In today’s incredibly competitive landscape you need to stand out; you need to differentiate yourself from the masses, and personal branding is the answer. But what exactly is a personal brand and where does one even begin to proactively manage how the world sees them?

Enter the modern playbook for taking control of your personal brand, based on real world experience, not some philosophical approach. I wish that I had Mel Carson’s guide when I had to re-invent myself several years ago as it would have saved me from a tremendous amount of trial and error.”

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Given all the great feedback we’ve had about our personal branding workshops and training over the past year, we’ve decided to up the ante and do as many as we can in our hometown of Seattle during 2020.

The next Seattle Personal Branding Workshop we’ll be giving is at WeWork Seattle.

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When I started my career at Microsoft over a decade ago, my colleague at the time, Carolyn Miller, suggested I read a book about blogging called “Naked Conversations” by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.

I can safely say that book changed my life.

My initial role at Microsoft was as a Pan-European Search Specialist helping to launch Microsoft adCenter (now Bing Ads) but after a while, I was tapped up for a community role to help advertisers “help themselves” by creating and disseminating useful content on blogs and forums.

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Beginning in January Team Delightful will be plus one.

Ashley Seffernick will be joining us with a focus on growing and expanding our Personal Branding services.

With her 11+ years at Microsoft in Learning and Development and Sales Readiness, Ashley brings a wealth of experience and insight when it comes to helping people grow personally and professionally.

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The next video in our Delightful Conversations series sees me catch up with Scott Monty shortly after his keynote speech at Pubcon last month.

Scott is now CEO and Co-Managing Partner of Brain+Trust Partners and made his name in digital as Global Head of Social Media at The Ford Motor Company.

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Earlier this month I had the immense pleasure of not just introducing Scott Stratten on stage at Pubcon in front of 2000 people, but also interviewing him afterward for one of our Delightful Conversations.

Scott is President of UnMarketing, bestselling author of four books and all-round hilarious and good guy who certainly knows how to be authentic with his personal brand and marketing.

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Next week I’ll be joining an illustrious panel to discuss the US election and I have been asked to talk specifically about how digital and social media is affecting the potential outcome.

I wrote about it a bit more in this article: BABC Pre-Election Breakfast Discussion in Seattle on my personal blog but thought our Delightful followers would like to know in case you’re in Seattle next week!

Register here: Pre-Election Breakfast BABC

Hope to see you there!

Mel

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Update > We just published a new book on Amazon to help our clients and readers:

Introduction to Personal Branding: 10 Steps Toward a New Professional You

Take a peek and please let us know what you think!

Onto the article >>>

An effective personal branding strategy provides professionals the platform, opportunity and edge to establish credibility, inspire, and succeed in their niche. While that’s summed up nicely in a sentence, it takes planning and consistent action to execute and build an accomplished personal brand.

While there are plenty of insights and best practices, there’s nothing like some good personal branding examples to put it all in perspective. After all, what does a best personal brand really look like? Does the perfect personal brand exist? Maybe, maybe not. But after some thorough research, here are 8 stellar examples of individuals we believe understand what it means to be discoverable, shareable, and memorable!

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