Hola!
For the past few months, I've been eating, sleeping, and breathing Google and Social Media. I wanted to figure out the quickest, cheapest and easiest way for you to "own your name" online. I've got it: check out the Online Personal Branding Checklist (at the bottom of this email).
For those who are following my video series, scroll down to Google Is The New Resume, my latest video upload. It's about making a great first impression online. You'll see a concrete case study of the evolution of a home page (mine!) from terrible to successful.
Prefer the personal, hands-on, live approach? Below are my upcoming workshops & offerings. This month's events are awesome.
Enjoy!!
Michelle Villalobos
(vee - ya - low - bos)
never-boring, always-engaging workshops and seminars on sales &
marketing self-improvement, especially for women & entrepreneurs.
www.MichelleVillalobos.com
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Upcoming Workshops & More
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WORKSHOPS
You: The Online Brand, August 26th, 2009, Novecento Coral Gables
Lucky you. You're among a small subgroup of my network who's invited to participate in this intimate, private, invite-only Social Media Workshop. Sign up here.
The Headshot Workshop, August 28th, 2009.
If you are really serious about creating a compelling, cohesive and personal-brand-oriented online presence, you need a great professional portrait... not to mention a full day with yours truly ;)
See the results for yourself. Sign up here.
Women-only Workshops & Seminars - Been waiting to sign up for How to Communicate More Powerfully Without Being a Bi&%$ or I'm Not Crazy, It's Just My Personality Type? It's almost time. Just click here and we'll send you the invites as soon as they're ready.
& MORE
Want to work with me personally? Thinking about sponsoring a workshop? Want me to speak for your organization? Here are my updated services and prices for August 2009.
Contact Jessica Lurie: jessica@mivistainc.com or (888) 608-9455. Here we are (below) at the Headshot Workshop in June. Love it!
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Making A Great Online First Impression: Your Online Branding Checklist
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The Online Personal Branding Checklist
I. Define Your Brand II. Own Your NameI. DEFINE your brand. Do it as narrowly as possible. Consider these questions:- What do you want to be top of mind for?
- How do you want people to PERCEIVE you? Consider your TARGET market.
- What WORDS (keyworks) would you like associated with your name every time it appears? Choose words that describe what you do, what industry you do it for and how you do it differently than others. For example: Michelle Villalobs, sales, marketing, social media, workshops
II. OWN Your NAME. Note! You don't have to do them all!! Take it slow. Do one at a time... [If this is overwhelming, you might want to consider one of my live beginner workshops instead.]1. Have a presence, a profile, in one major spot that accurately and fully reflects your brand. Best place: your own website or blog. If you don't have either, another good choice (for now as a placeholder) is LinkedIn. Why LinkedIn? Because it gets crawled by Google. A lot.2. Create fully fleshed out profiles on LinkedIn, Plaxo and Google Profile (at least). Describe yourself using those key words that are associated with your narrow industry or field. Make the profiles public.3. Buy your URL. Redirect it to LinkedIn if you don't have a personal website. 4. Stake out profiles with your real name on Social Media Sites (at least: Facebook, LinkedIn; Twitter). Even if you don't plan to use them, don't let anyone else get them.5. Be HUMAN! Show your face. People want to do business with people, not with brands, or logos, or companies. Start with a great picture of yourself. One that is aligned with your brand and your niche. Here are some examples (from our recent Headshot Workshop - next one is August 28th, 2009):5. Set up Google Alerts for your name. This way you'll know when Google comes across your name in any new materials, like newspaper stories or online reviews. [If you're on Twitter, go ahead and set up some Twitter Alerts too using TweetBeep]. As you get addicted to alerts, you might want to add alerts for your brand, your industry keywords & your competitors.6. Become a "Voice of Your Industry." Think of ONE way that you can you deliver value to your target on a regular basis, and in what format? A 1-minute YouTube How-To? A blog? Inspirational quotes? Twitter? Only pick what you know your audience/target market/potential clients want. (FYI: we DON'T want to know about what you had for breakfast, whether you're stuck in traffic, or if your kids are driving you crazy.)7. Build your email list. How? Offer free stuff. Get their email address in order to give it to them. 8. Advanced: If you're feeling pretty good about this, try incorporating social bookmarking into your repertoire. Check out Digg, Delicious or StumpleUpon. Why? So you can stay on top of
good industry-specific info that you might want to share with your
network. If you're feeling overwhelmed, skip this step!
9. Be active, consistent and PATIENT. How long do you REALLY think it should take? Triple that.***The biggest mistakes I see?- Spam/promotion focused approach - DELIVER VALUE, the rest follows...
- Not listening
- Not having a solid idea of what you want your brand to be and say to the world
- Overuse/abuse
- Fail to measure benchmark. You need to know what's working and do more of it
- Getting stuck in what you want to say, instead of what people want to hear
Want more? Have questions? Suggestions? Additions to the above? Post them on my blog. I'll answer ANY and ALL questions posted there (please don't email questions).
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Making A Great Online First Impression: Your Google Results & Your Home Page
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A new clip on how to make a great online first impression... Includes a case study of my own website's evolution from awful to successful. Enjoy! 
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