Peter Sterlacci | Believe. Become. Be Your Brand
Personal branding for on-the-move professionals in global companies in Japan
Social media is awesome for personal branding because we can brand ourselves for FREE! Think about it. Until social media came along branding was reserved only for companies with big marketing budgets or celebrities with fat wallets.
But is it really FREE? [Read more...]
Vlogathon Day 13: September 13th – Donna Serdula
Donna Serdula LOVES LinkedIn and she has established herself as one of the leading experts in optimizing LinkedIn profiles for career success. Her book LinkedIn Makeover: Professional Secrets to a POWERFUL LinkedIn Profile is an amazing resource of tips and strategies for creating a LinkedIn presence that stands out and gets noticed. I recently interviewed Donna as one of my ‘mechanics’ of personal branding so I was thrilled when she also said she wanted to be part of my 30-day Personal Branding Vlogathon. In her video below, Donna asks a critical question: Is your LinkedIn profile supporting or hurting your personal brand? She follows this with 5 tips to ensure your LinkedIn presence is supporting your personal brand. These tips are like GOLD so use them and you will start to see immediate results. Visit Donna’s site and get your copy of her book. It is worth it!
Enjoy Donna’s video and let us know what you think by commenting below. [Read more...]
I am so pleased to finally interview Donna Serdula. While there are many specialists and experts out there on how to use LinkedIn, Donna truly is the foremost expert in LinkedIn profile optimization. She founded LinkedIn-Makeover.com where she helps individuals from around the world brand themselves successfully using LinkedIn. Her book LinkedIn Makeover: Professional Secrets to a POWERFUL LinkedIn Profile is incredibly useful and extremely practical. I have applied many of her tips to my own profile and have been absolutely pleased with how my revised profile has led to new connections and business.
In this interview Donna shares why she ‘loves’ LinkedIn, how she got started, and her top 3 tips for a more powerful LinkedIn profile. You don’t want to miss this one! Enjoy her interview and stay tuned for the 2nd edition of her LinkedIn Makeover book being released this October.
We all know the saying that a picture says a thousand words. Video takes those words one step further and makes them real and memorable. In the world of Web 2.0 people want information in bite-sized chunks. Video is a perfect medium for establishing your visual identity on the web and
delivering your personal brand in a clear and concise way.
Only a couple years ago using video was going beyond what was expected in personal branding. Today it has become the norm. Consider this fact. In July 2011, ComScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, reported that 180 million Internet users in the US alone watched online video content. This averages almost 19 hours per viewer in a single month! For 2012, personal branding guru William Arruda says that video continues to be a major trend in branding through DIY (do it yourself) and professional platforms. [Read more...]
30x30x30 Blogathon Post #24: June 24th – Neal Schaffer
Neal Schaffer is our featured expert for Day 24 of the Blogathon. I am so pleased to have Neal’s contribution as I regard him as a ‘zen master’ of social media. His blog is ranked in AdAge top 100 and he is considered by Forbes as a top 30 Social Media Power Influencer. His books on maximizing LinkedIn are incredibly useful and a must have for your reading collection. More importantly, at least in my mind, Neal and I share a common love and passion for Japan and Japanese culture. In today’s post he even connects his experience in Japan to his own personal branding approach.
Enjoy Neal’s post and see his special offer below! [Read more...]
30x30x30 Blogathon Post #17: June 17th – Jorgen Sundberg
Day 17 of the Personal Branding Blogathon brings you one my favorite ‘personal branders in exile‘ – Jorgen Sundberg – born in Sweden, imported to London! Jorgen is one of the first personal branding peeps who started following me when I began my personal branding movement in Japan last year. We both actively use Twitter as a key tool to build our online brand communities and connect with thought leaders. Jorgen is a social media guru across most platforms, but he clearly spells out why Twitter is the best tool for building our personal brands.
Enjoy Jorgen’s post and tweet about it! [Read more...]
Imagine giving a presentation about yourself using only 20 slides that run non-stop at 20 seconds each? Once the presentation starts, you have 6 minutes and 40 seconds to get your point across. You cannot stop, you cannot pause, you cannot turn back. You are at the mercy of the PechaKucha Style of presenting!
PechaKucha is an excellent way to present your personal brand. Originally devised in Tokyo in 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public, it has turned into a worldwide phenomenon with ‘PechaKucha Nights’ happening in over 500 cities around the world. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of “chit chat”, it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It’s a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.
I recently presented at a PechaKucha Night in Nishinomiya, Japan on personal branding. Enjoy the video of my actual talk to see PechaKucha in action.
Have you experienced PechaKucha? Do you think you can brand yourself in 20 x 20? Let me know what you think.
Spring has finally arrived in Japan and with it comes cherry blossoms. With the explosion of pink blossoms we all know that the winter weather has finally passed. Japanese are drawn to these trees and are compelled to sit under them to enjoy the blossoms 
while they last. Unfortunately, the extraordinary pink color is short-lived as the blossoms disappear after a week or so. The cherry blossom tree becomes ordinary, indistinguishable from any other tree.
The cherry blossom reminds me of our personal brands. Our personal brand is what makes us extraordinary. It separates us from all others who offer something similar. Like a cherry blossom our personal brand allows us to stand out and attract people to our promise of value. But unlike the cherry blossom we do not want our personal brands to be short-lived. Strong brands deliver on their authenticity all of the time. If our brand is present for just 1 week and then disappears, we become ordinary and interchangeable. We become a commodity.
How can our personal brands blossom and stay in full bloom? Watch this video to learn 5 quick tips to ensure your brand does not disappear.
LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with a current membership of over 135 million. Close to 60% of these members are located outside the US. The latest data shows that professionals are signing up to join at a rate that is faster than two members per second! Clearly LinkedIn has become an essential tool for professionals all over the world to network, share business expertise, find jobs, advance professional knowledge, and build personal brands.
Recently, LinkedIn has set up shop in Japan with offices in Tokyo and the inclusion of the Japanese language on its site from October 2011. For Japan, LinkedIn’s proposition is to focus on local professionals and students keen to build their true identities and personal branding for their careers as well as the ability to connect with a global network.
I had the pleasure of Jorgen Sundberg interviewing me about personal branding, cultural differences in Japan and the US, how to use social media and LinkedIn for Japanese, what the common branding pitfalls are, and my best 3 tips to personal branding.
Jorgen Sundberg is a Social Media trainer and consultant specializing in LinkedIn, online branding and recruitment. He is the founder and director of Link Humans, a Social Media consultancy based in London and Paris. Jorgen is a prolific blogger, he started The Undercover Recruiter blog in 2009 and it’s now the most popular career and recruitment blog in the UK with 75,000 readers per month. He also runs three cool meetups in London – the main one being Social Media London.
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Peter Sterlacci
ピーター ステラチー