Blow Your Own Horn!: Personal Branding for Business Professionals

By Rae A. Stonehouse

There’s an old saying that goes “the squeaky wheel… gets the grease.”

The saying may have been true at one point in time but now…

The business world is a busy and crowded place. How can a business professional standout from the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Live For Excellence Productions
• Release date: Mar 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781777156503

Rae A. Stonehouse

Rae A. Stonehouse is a Canadian born author & speaker. His professional career as a Registered Nurse working predominantly in psychiatry/mental health, has spanned four decades. Rae has embraced the principal of CANI (Constant and Never-ending Improvement) as promoted by thought leaders such as Tony Robbins and brings that philosophy to each of his publications and presentations. Rae has dedicated the latter segment of his journey through life to overcoming his personal inhibitions. As a 20+ year member of Toastmasters International he has systematically built his self-confidence and communicating ability. He is passionate about sharing his lessons with his readers and listeners. His publications thus far are of the self-help, self-improvement genre and systematically offer valuable sage advice on a specific topic. His writing style can be described as being conversational. As an author Rae strives to have a one-to-one conversation with each of his readers, very much like having your own personal self-development coach. Rae is known for having a wry sense of humour that features in his publications. To learn more about Rae A. Stonehouse, visit the Wonderful World of Rae Stonehouse at http://raestonehouse.com.

Book preview

Blow Your Own Horn!

Blow Your Own Horn!

Personal Branding for Business Professionals

Rae A. Stonehouse

Live For Excellence Productions

Copyright © 2020 by Rae A. Stonehouse

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

E-book - ISBN: 978-1-7771565-0-3

Print - ISBN: 978-1-7771565-1-0

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Contents

Introduction

I. Personal Branding & Marketing

Personal Branding

Personal Marketing

Who Are You?

What Do You Stand For?

Are You Linkedin?

Linkedin Strategies for Personal Branding & Marketing

Reach Out and Link Somebody

Linkedin Professional Profile Assessment

Linkedin: But Wait... there's more!

Blow Your Own Horn On-line

II. Networking for Business Success

Networking for Business Success

Pre-Networking Phase

Creating your Elevator Pitch

Developing Your USP

How High Does Your Elevator Go?

It's All About You

Your Voice Mail Message

Live Face-to-Face Networking Phase

Business Card Care, Custody & Etiquette

Dress For Success

Whole Lotta Shaking Going On

Wear a Name Tag

Post Networking Phase

It's Coffee Time!

An Alternative to Attending Large Networking Events

Characteristics of Successful Networkers

Types of Introductions

Assessing Your Networking Effectiveness

On-line Networking: Social Media Overview

III. Self-Promotion When Job Searching

Self-Promotion When Job Searching

Creating Winning Resumes

Creating Cover Letters

Your Network Web

The Initial Interview Phone Call

Dress For Success Revisited

Organizing Your Presentation

The Follow-up Job Interview Phone Call

Basic Interviewer Personality Types

IV. On-line Strategies for Personal Branding & Marketing

On-line Reputation Management

Cyberbullying Prevention Strategies

Miscellaneous Self-Marketing & Promotion Tactics

How to Network on Social Media Like a Pro: Intro

Facebook

Search Engine Optimization for Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Pinterest

YouTube

Blogs vs Newsletters

Quora.com

Reddit

Webinars

Summary & Conclusion

V. Networking Resource Files

Strategies to Get the Most out of your Business Networking/Referral Group

Name Dropping for Fun & Profit

Close Encounters of the Networking Kind

For a Good Time Call

Johnny Appleseed Knew What He Was Doing

So What's Your Story?

Too Shy to Network?

You Get Back What You Give

Become a Thought Leader

Be the Red Car

Power Networking Secret Revealed!

When you read LinkedIn profiles what information pops out at you - good or bad?

How do you describe yourself to others at a networking events when you have several different active careers?

Top 15 Networking No-No’s: Power Networking Tips & Techniques

VI. Personal Development Resource Files

How Big is Your Sandbox?

Top Ten Personal Empowerment Tips

VII. Job Searching Resources

Should I be honest on LinkedIn about being jobless or should I hide it?

How can you write on LinkedIn that you were the creator of a company's department?

About the Author

Also by Rae A. Stonehouse

Introduction

There's an old saying that goes the squeaky wheel... gets the grease.

The saying may have been true at one point in time but now...

The business world is a busy and crowded place. How can a business professional standout from the cacophony of others clambering for attention and recognition?

In this world of digital technology, a world where we are as close as 3° of separation to almost anybody in the world, many so-called technological gurus would have us believe we can easily create an on-line persona, a digital makeover if you will.

I would agree with the statement, to a certain extent. It seems daily we hear of fake restaurant or book reviews. We hear of identity theft where unscrupulous characters have stolen someone's ID for fraudulent purposes by creating false identities from what they are able to gather from public sources.

If it is so easy for someone to create these bogus on-line identities, how can we then trust any self-promotional material we view on-line?

I believe creating your on-line persona is important however, it is but one step at a self-promotional and marketing strategy.

This book offers a collection of strategies to build your on-line presence and gain recognition in your community.

Your goal may be to raise your prominence at work to apply for a job you have been eying. Perhaps, your goal is to run for political office, but it seems no one knows who you are. You may be like me, an authorpreneur wanting to promote my publications, myself as an author and my self-publishing business.

You can be brilliant in what you do. If you are a well kept secret, you are not helping yourself or your clients. As an author, you need to put your body of work out there. Articles, blogs and podcasts come into play. We talk about them later in the book.

By putting your ideas out there it does three things:

1) It really builds your credibility as a subject matter expert in that area.

2) It creates/reinforces your brand equity, your value in the marketplace.

3) It creates market gravity... some might call market pull.

If you aren't an author... well then perhaps you should be. We all have expertise that could be in demand by those who don't and are willing to pay you for your advice.

Self-promotion hasn't come easily to me.

As a shy introvert, I believed if I had done something praiseworthy the people in the position to deliver the praise would know and I shouldn't have to draw it to their attention.

As a registered nurse I recall working on a project with another nurse. I did most of the research and put the project report together. She did very little to participate however, upon completion, she took all the credit.

Back about 20 years or so ago I had an experience that awakened me to the value of self-promotion and the negative consequences of not doing so.

I was contemplating enrolling in a university program focused on leadership, training and organizational development. The program was designed for adult learners and was granting credit towards life and experiential lessons.

I had lots of experience to leverage and the skills to successfully complete the course. Where I fell short was in being able to provide testimonials as to my personal characteristics and my strengths and weaknesses.

I had my personal references lined up. That was easy, I had fellow workers and members of community organizations I was involved with, who provided me with testimonials.

The problem arose from not having a work-based manager or employer to provide a testimonial for me. As a worker, I tended to have as little as possible to do with my supervisors as I could. I did my job and did little over and above my duties. This meant I didn't have anybody to provide a supervisor–employee testimonial.

How could they?

They didn't know me. They didn't know what I was capable of, how could they possibly recommend me?

This was enlightening. It challenged my usual way of thinking. If I was to get ahead in the world, I needed to be able to learn how to leverage my relationships. When I say leverage, I don't necessarily mean to exploit them. I see value in developing mutually beneficial relationships which can lead to win–win results.

As I was contemplating this challenge of not having a supervisor's testimonial there was a change in our provincial government. I live in British Columbia, Canada. The new government significantly increased the cost of tuition for the program. It went from an affordable $8500 for a two-year program to over $22,000. This effectively closed the window of opportunity for me.

Fast forward a few years or so, actually more than a decade to be honest. I found myself as a director for a local society supporting entrepreneurs. At this point I had been a Toastmaster member for a decade or so and was used to organizing meetings and promoting Toastmaster's events. With my event organizing experience, I took on the role of VP Training & Development. My role was to organize our monthly town hall meetings where we showcased local entrepreneurial sage experts and allowed them to share their skills and experiences with fellow entrepreneurs.

In that capacity, I stretched the boundaries of what would normally be considered an event organizer. I developed the topics. I created the marketing promotion. I added the promotional copy to our website and then created and monitored the on-line event registration system.

If that wasn't enough, I recruited our panelists and worked with them to develop promotional material about themselves, which I added to our website for event promotion. I then developed the discussion questions that would be asked to the panelists as I was also the moderator for the panel discussion.

I organized some 30 of these town halls over a period of 2 years. At the same time I was developing websites which involved considerable promotional copywriting.

Writing promotional copy for these events and to promote the speakers for those events, raised my promotional skills significantly.

I learned it's far easier to promote someone else, that is their strengths, their skills, their experiences than it was to promote myself.

As I think back to my journey of self-promotion it may have started with delivering Toastmasters speeches. Part of delivering an effective speech is providing an introduction for your introducer to introduce you to your audience. Your introduction should grab your audience's attention, so they are eager to hear what you have to say.

Your introduction should also set up your credibility so it answers the question that most of the audience members are asking themselves why should I listen to this speaker?

In developing your introduction, you are providing the introducer the promotional copy you have crafted. Instead of 'blowing your own horn', which would've happened if it were you introducing yourself, it becomes more powerful if somebody else is saying these kind words about you. Sure, you wrote them in the first place, but having somebody else say the words makes it more effective in setting you up as somebody worth listening to.

Fast-forward a few more years and I created and operated an on-line community business events calendar. In that capacity, I researched and curated all local business events. I posted these business-related events to my on-line calendar and added promotional copy where needed. I had created some 2000 or more local on-line event listings.

In addition, I created and sent out a weekly newsletter letting people know about the upcoming local business events and promoting events I was interested in or involved with.

At the time of writing this chapter and book, I have written and self-published a dozen or so books in the self-help genre. As an authorpreneur it's necessary to self-promote my books, my self-publishing business and myself as an author. It gets easier the more I do it.

Blow Your Own Horn: Personal Branding for Business Professionals has been a side project for me while I have been working on creating and publishing my other self-help books. As I was writing those books it frequently occurred to me the content I was writing applied to not only the content of that particular book but also applied to the concept of self-promoting.

As we work our way through this book, I have utilized content from my other books to illustrate the point I want to make.

Many business professionals are quite comfortable at networking and self-promotion. Many of us aren't and may find it more painful than pleasurable. I've written this book from the perspective of having been a once shy introvert who has learned to become less shy and how to self-promote effectively on my journey through life.

If I can do it... you can do it too.

This book is for business professionals who want to raise their visibility in a crowded workplace or a personal interest venture.

Some will tell you blowing your own horn is bragging. I forward an argument against that belief in an upcoming chapter.

Others will tell you promoting yourself requires you to be phony or to be someone you really aren't.

If we are to move forward and benefit from our accomplishments, we need to self-promote.

Kurt Vonnegut, with his dry wit, knew better. We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be, he wrote in Mother Night (1961).

Perhaps Vonnegut hit the proverbial nail in the head... we are pretending...

Fake it until you make it is an old saying that readily comes to mind. While you are faking it, you are developing skills that will eventually allow you to make it... without faking it.

If you want people to toot your horn, you have to provide them with the info you want them to promote. This is not a passive activity. You need to take the initiative to train your trumpeters so their message is favorable. Of equal importance, is tooting other people's horns. Fair is fair.

As in other books I have written I use what I call the onion method of writing. We'll take a close look at one layer at a time until we have a good understanding of our subject. Each content topic is stand-alone and it isn't necessary to complete the previous one before working on the steps of another.

I've divided this book up into parts to look at personal branding and marketing from different perspectives.

Firstly, we look at personal branding and marketing.

Secondly, we look at self-promotion utilizing Linkedin as a tool.

Then we look at effective networking techniques for self-promotion.

The Networking Section is followed by self-promotion strategies related to job searching.

After the Self-Promotion When Job Searching Section we look at on-line reputation management and additional social media venues that could be helpful to you in developing your personal brand.

We close our exploration of self-promotional strategies with Resource files to add to our understanding of the topic.

At the end of many of the chapters you will find a list of Action Items for you to complete that will help you move forward in developing your self-promotional skills.

---

Developing any new skill requires a change of your mindset.

Here is a poem I found years ago that I like to refer to often.

---

If you always think

The way you have always thought

You will always feel

The way you have always felt

And

If you always feel

The way you have always felt

You will always do

What you have always done

And

If you always do

What you have always done

You will always get

What you have always gotten

If there is no change

There is no change

Author Unknown

In our next chapter we explore the concept of personal branding, what it really means, why we should do it and what often prevents us from doing it.

Part I

Personal Branding & Marketing

Personal Branding

In this Chapter we explore the concept of personal branding, what it really means, why we should do it and what often prevents us from doing it.

If you Google your name, what comes up?

If the answer is nothing, you probably haven't spent much time developing your personal brand.

So, what is personal branding?

According to Wikipedia, personal branding is the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands.

It's probably a good idea to determine what a brand is before moving on.

Once again from Wikipedia...

A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes one seller's product from those of others.

Brands are used in business, marketing and advertising.

A brand is any name, design, style, words or symbols used singularly or in combination that distinguishes one product from another in the eyes of the customer.

Branding is a set of marketing and communication methods that help to distinguish a company from competitors and create a lasting impression in the minds of customers.

The key components that form a brand's toolbox include a brand's identity, brand communication (such as by logos and trademarks), brand awareness, brand loyalty and various brand management strategies.

We are all familiar with commercial branding and are likely bombarded with it every day. Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola and Nike readily come to mind.

These are well-established brands.

---

Now back to the idea of personal branding...

While previous self-help management techniques were about self-improvement, the personal-branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging.

The term is thought to have been first used and discussed in a 1997 article by Tom Peters.

Personal branding is essentially the ongoing process of establishing a prescribed image or impression in the mind of others about an individual, group, or organization.

Personal branding often involves the application of one's name to various products.

Athletes and celebrities come to mind.

If that is your situation, well good for you!

I would expect that you have staff to look after you.

For the rest of us mere mortals, let's drill down a little.

Developing a personal brand takes work, and it's not going to happen overnight. But once you do it, the benefits are endless.

In this next section we explore personal branding, what it really means, why we should do it and what often prevents us from doing it.

Why Should We Create a Personal Brand?

It Helps You Stand out from the Crowd:

A personal brand is a great way to demonstrate your skills and knowledge about a particular subject or field.

Building a brand is your chance to show your audience what you know and why you know it, and it will help set you apart from others who might be vying for the same opportunities but who haven't taken the time to build their own personal brand.

It Leads to Opportunities:

A strong personal brand can lead to a multitude of opportunities, including:

Job interviews

Internships

Speaking engagements

Networking opportunities

Promotions

Partnerships

A personal brand is the building blocks that will lead to success for your future. It can help you reach any number of goals, both personal and professional, and it can also lead to many opportunities for advancement in your career.

It Inspires Trust in Your Audience:

Many people, especially those of the millennial generation, don't trust larger businesses that utilize traditional advertising.

That's why there's such a big push nowadays to shop small, and why influencer advertising is so successful.

People are much more likely to buy from, and listen to, someone who looks, talks, and acts like them as opposed to a large corporation.

So if you build your brand like a business, but still maintain a personal front, you're guaranteed to inspire trust amongst your audience.

Someone Is Always Going to Be Screening You On-line:

Whether you're applying for college, for an entry-level job, or for your future career, someone is going to be Googling your name.

Some employers will expect you to have an on-line presence, whereas others just want to ensure you don't have a poor reputation on-line.

Developing a personal brand is a great way to show potential employers that you've worked hard to build a positive reputation on-line.

Source: Search Engine Journal https://www.searchenginejournal.com/what-is-personal-branding-why-important/327367/#close

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So why don't we self-promote?

---

There are numerous reasons many of us don't like to talk about ourselves to others.

Perhaps we were taught at a young age from our mothers that it is wrong to promote yourself?

It is bragging and nobody likes braggarts!

That may be a generalization and it really isn't fair to pick on mothers, considering all the good they do for us.

However, while many people likely don't like braggarts, it doesn't necessarily follow that talking about yourself in a favorable light... is bragging.

Are you starting to wonder about the picture illustrated above? His name is Walt Whitman, and he was an American Cowboy poet, essayist and journalist, way back in the mid to later 1800s.

I'm fond of his quote about personal branding.

He probably didn't relate it any way to personal branding but here it goes...

If you done it... it ain't bragging!

I think Walt hit the proverbial nail on the head. If you have done something and you talk about it, then it isn't bragging.

That sounds like self-promotion to me.

Can you think of any other reasons we don't self-promote?

It could be a simple matter of we really don't know how to promote ourselves.

I'm hoping this book resolves the problem for you if you identify with that reason.

Another simple reason may be we don't have time to self-promote.

Throughout this book I provide strategies you will be able to follow and start self-promoting.

Like any other skill development, it takes time and practice to become good at it.

As your skill in self-promotion increases and your self-confidence as well, you should find it easier to self-promote.

Then there is a simple reason that most of us have likely experienced at one time or another.

It can be embarrassing at first when you create promotional copy, featuring yourself in a good light.

We will introduce on-line promotion and reputation management in a few chapters.

One of the features of social media platforms is a requirement to create a Bio or a Profile.

While these can be a great opportunity for self-promotion, the first few times can be challenging.

Do you write your promotional copy in the first person as I did this, this and this...?

Or do you write it in the 3 rd person, Rae Stonehouse, renowned best-selling author is known for...?

Okay, so I'm not a best selling-author yet, but I have a head start on promoting it.

---

A few years back when I was researching content for my e-book Power Networking for Shy People: Tips & Techniques for Moving from Shy to Sly, I discovered a book by William Bridges... Creating You & Company: Learn to think like the CEO of your own company.

Bridges encourages you to market yourself as if you are the company.

He takes the corporate idea of branding and challenges us to apply it to ourselves.

I say Blow your own horn!

If you don't, who will?

Reading his book helped provide clarity and peace of mind for me.

Rather than feeling like a person with multiple personalities as I will describe later on in the book, it was more like having multiple personas. They are all me, each from a different perspective.

I have worked in mental health for many years and have met a few multiple personalities.

They are good people.

Bridge's book helped me to redefine myself in a new way. "Hello, I'm Rae Stonehouse. I am