I am a lover of biographies for in them you find the nuggets that made the people who have gone ahead of you and in them are lessons to learn when you are trying to either build a brand or an empire. Biographies open our eyes and give us insight to what we usually called ‘over night’ success. Biographies help us to see that no enduring success has ever been built on a one night stand. Lives of successful people are like sandwiches: great at the finishing, beautiful at the bottom but full of many details in between. Today, Dan schawbel’s book ME 2.0 is celebrated but when I read the detailed account of how the book was initially rejected by about seventy publishers, I understood perfectly that that book is a product of an author who will not give up despite rejections.

Recently I became fascinated by Arnold Albert Gore’s life. Remember Albert Gore? He is popularly known as Al Gore and he was two- term vice President of the powerful nation on the earth-United States of America. I was thrilled to see a brand that knew fame, honour, power, popularity but which disallowed temporary setback to signal the death/destroy his brand. In 2000, Al Gore lost the Presidential election everyone thought he would win to G.W Bush.

Everyone thought the power of incumbency would work to his advantage but at last the election went the other way. But for Al Gore, a temporary setback could not be allowed to stop a great brand that dumped temporary failure to pursue a bigger vision he found in global warming.

Al Gore repositioned as a leading voice in this regard. He used all his contacts, tools, friends, influence as well as online communication tools to start a crusade which he took to TED conference, used perfectly all his offline relationships to help project a voice(about global warming) in both secular and religious circles. Through his multi various activities, Al Gore pumped his energy into creating awareness and became a leading energy that sparks the light about the influence of global warming on human existence. The submit of Al Gore’ efforts was his ability to organize Live Earth, a seven-continent twenty four hour concert which eventually got him global recognition as Nobel prize winner.

Al Gore’s brand taught us a great lesson in persistence, repositioning, vibrancy and a great come back. Al Gore was a known brand back then in 2000 and many would have thought that was enough. But Al Gore demonstrated a strong lesson for those of us who are not global brands yet but are grappling with seemingly insignificant failure which is now allowed to deter us from moving ahead to achieve better deal.

 Al Gore’s brand taught us to be resilience, focused as well as sociable. He could not achieve that all alone without the support of others. He blended well with both Republicans and Democrats. If Al Gore’s brand had burnt bridges because he felt Americans did not vote him into office as their number one citizen in 2000(by allowing root of bitterness to spring up in him), he would have become a total failure with no great history we are reading today.

If Dan Schawbels of this world allowed seventy rejections to dump the vision of passionately pursing a publishing cause that made the book one of the bestselling books in Amazon today, can we have anything to refer to today? My appeal, let your brand rise from ashes of failure, insignificance to stardom and prominence by giving it all it takes. There are no guarantees that the road will easy but there is an assured hope that your brand has greater chances of success if you will gather the ruminants. Let me hear from you.

 Promo

For those who live in Nigeria, we are organizing a day networking and knowledge sharing session on August 10, 2010 with the theme: Corporate Branding 2.0. Because internet has reshaped how branding is done and the level at which rumour, myths travel online, brands need to engage Branding 2.0 now. It will be great if you can attend. For participation details, please send mail to info@michaelsageng.com or call 07029778785

We live in the age of information, connection and conversation. Any brand that will be successful today must understand generosity to thrive. To make impact you must go all out to help both established and upcoming brands. I am beginning to understand that you must be ready to give without a demand for returns immediately when you are pioneering a cause. I have made a commitment to help, affect as many people that need my professional advice. Each day I get called from students who are interested in brand community building, social media and how it relates to Public relations, marketing etc.

As tight as my schedules are, I have learnt to create time for them, took them one- on -one session and load them with enough materials they will need to stand alone. Sometimes that appears a mere waste of time but recently I was doing a study on social and cultural capital and this gave me a new perspective. While trying to help, I discovered my brand is becoming visible to future managers who will hold position of authority in the industry. As we know visibility and reputation affect the decision making process and at the end of the day they influence behaviours.

It is a privilege to have knowledge to share. I read recently also that ‘When an individual has a lot of people in his/her life who are willing to support him and his ideas, people who want to hear what he has to say and who are interested in talking to him and talking about him, such  an individual has an incredible gift that is called social capital’

Social capital also refers to both network of relationships, you have and have access to. French sociologist Pieitrre Bourdieu also defined social capital as ‘the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognitions’. Funding this account so that you can draw on it later means that you are making connection, building bridges, reaching out to people with aim of giving, staying in touch always with either your strong or weak ties.

Weak ties are those you meet in occasions, online but there is no such bond but you are willing to stretch yourself to those that matter. Technology, social software and networking sites can help us to do this well. You do not need to visit or having to call them every day. But we may need to acknowledge that it is not how many we have that count but how you make use of them.

As good as social capital is, it has limitations. So what takes your brand from here is cultural capital. Cultural capital rests on depth of influence. A great connection or network without strong influence will not help much. Cultural capital encompasses person’s knowledge, experience, connection to the extent, amount of influence a brand has in a society or tribe.

What this meant is that with all the social connection, if the brand has no expertise, experience, knowledge among other great features, it may not wield influence that will guarantee enough capital that it will need to exchange for other tangible or intangible values. The import of the above is while trying to build connection, network among other ingredients that will help build brand’s social capital, the depth of the value of such capital can be affected when the brand lacks expertise, experience and knowledge that will add up to brand’s depth of influence on the social network that produces the cultural capital.

In closing, every brand needs to start from somewhere. Start building your social capital while you are still building your cultural capital. If you have to wait until all the features of Cultural capital are in place before building social capital it may be late. Research has shown that Social capital plus Cultural capital will always guarantee heavy financial capital. Someone actually concluded that Social capital and Cultural capital are greater than financial capital. Whether that is true I cannot draw conclusion here. But what do you think?

It is no longer news that the success of any brand rests solidly on the depth of relationship it has with all its stakeholders. No brand can be successful running a solo raise now. Every brand needs committed community members who are not only interested in working hard with the brand but who can work hard on the brand’s interest on their own freewill. As we now there is no community that thrives well on individualistic spirit and self serving leaders.

Today I just want to share a brief of what i took away from a personal research on the topic. Some of these thoughts are taken from Juliet Powell’s book and I do recommend it to anyone who is interested in building a strong community that is highly beneficial.

Find where they are: there is no strong community without proper understanding of the culture and environment they live. I expect my friend to know where I live. That shows the individual cares. So the first step in building engaged tribe is to know where they live. You may need also to study the community they live and find out what is important to the community members.

Understand the audience strength:  a brand needs to understand the community audience strength. The mistakes most brand make is to focus energy only on the influential. But like Ducan watts says ‘most social change is driven not by influential, but by easily influenced individuals influencing others easily influenced individuals’. The point is everyone is important even though we may have priority.

Understand their habits and motivation: To influence anyone, you must first care about the person. So be sure you study what motivates them and what their concerns are.

Cater for their natural Interest: now that you know what motivates them, care like no other persons for their interest. Share links, give them referrals. Continuously give helping hands. Answer their question. Help them to understand your brand too.

Reward social influencers: in helping out, it is natural law that some of the community member will begin to think they owe you and they will be willing to help spread the buzz about you. Along the line you will noticed some dedicated community members who will go extra miles in making sure your brand excels.

In conclusion, we must note that having engaged community or tribe is work but the ROI is unquantifiable. An engaged community is extremely powerful tool that can provide self-perpetuating support and guidance system for you and your business.

At a recent World social media mob flash held in Lagos Nigeria where we have the gathering of social media enthusiasts, professionals and those who intend to use social media, the audience was generally talking about best use of social media in Nigeria by corporate organizations in our environment.
People suggested GTBank Plc should be rated as one the best uses of online community in Nigeria. As moderators of the session, we asked that audience should give reasons for their suggestions and can we all looked at the brand’s online initiative, presence and activities together in the face of best practise internationally. Given the fact that Community is supposed to be an agglomeration of people with common interest, who have common language and where everyone has a say. Also, the community members of today do not want organization to talk at them but to talk with them. They desire dialogue, conversation and feedbacks. Strong community does not rest solely on the game of number; it is the extent, depth of interaction and engagement
This view has been supported by Lani Rosales when he wrote ‘there is no value in ‘friend collecting/likes’ but there is a massive value in building your network…If the end goal is to put money(through the relationship you are building) in your pocket(or build relationship as the case may be), stop friend collect, build network’. Brand community is not about the community creator; it is all about engaged network that speaks the truth and promotes the brand.
There is no online community that will become celebrated when it is only the brand that is speaking and does not allow feedback. No solid relationship has been built on Monologue. When a brand does not give room for feedback, it will lose enough credibility it is supposed to get. To gain word of mouth, clients or community member must be allowed to ask question, express their opinions. As we know word of mouth is a cultural accelerator but the brand must set up the architecture to engage audience.
To create a worldwide rave about a brand online in which people help to tell your story, you must be ready to lose control. We are in the age of information democratization and not monologue or broadcasting. If there are virtual strings attached (feedbacks on the ‘wall’ of GTBank Facebook page is deactivated), people will not engage you or choose to speak to you or for you about your offerings.
When a brand sets up online engagement mechanism with a mission to listen, get opinion of the community, it will always lead to a higher social intelligence and better leadership for the brand. Juliet Powell says’ while traditional leadership understanding of leadership structures stressed the need for power and stern guidance (as we see GTBank seems to be doing with its community now) new structure of leadership (which GTBank community is aiming to achieve) is based on empathy, two-way communication…to be an effective leader, you need a team (community members/stakeholders) that supports you and is willing to work hard not only on your behalf, but on their own as well for you’.
Given the above, how many of the close to sixty thousand ‘friends’ of GTBank on its Facebook page are singing, propagating GTBank Orange rules yet?. GTBank now has easy access to gather enough feedback it will spend money on yet it has muffed the voices of its community by removing facility/applications that will make it get feedback through the setting it is operating now. In a Nielsen’s report on ‘Why Banks should listen in Social media’, it clearly states that when banks listen, it gives the feeling of stability, solidity, partnership, empathy and understanding.
For its Twitter page, it is well designed with care and we must give kudos for this. But what is the value of a beautiful house whose family members has to listen to the father’s instruction only, while feedbacks are not given attention as fast as the information the father has to push out. We have monitored/followed conversation on that page and we discovered questions are not answered immediately. Speed is important in today’s fast speed online world. A customer that is not answered on time may post a comment that will catch fire within few hours. The bloggers’s post that started ‘DellHell’ got 760 comments among many examples we can cite.
My conclusion on this session is that strong community requires honesty, credibility, openness, willingness to accept feedback irrespective of what they have to say. There is no fear in love (which brand community wants to promote). When dialogue is allowed, it will give the brand the true performance rating of its services to the cherished community. It gives brands opportunity to know how to correct wrong impression, information at the disposal of the clients, community members etc. A great community is not a place to ‘self-promote’, it is an avenue for dialogue, support, engagement, understanding and sharing that will allow members to defend one another. I just hope someone is listening. In all, we ended the analysis on the fact that we should commend the GTBank team for pioneering an online brand community. Our plea is that what is worth doing is worth doing well.

My interest in social media dates back to year 2005. I was at a seminar on personal Branding and the facilitator asked whether if we Google our names anything will show up. None of us has Internet access in the room so that became an assignment for all. I got home and tried as much as possible to locate a cyber cafe where I could do my assignment. I Googled my name and nothing came in my favour. I became embarrassed as I Googled the name of my facilitator who seems younger than I in age and yet he had positive review. He owned the first ten mentions about his name.

I made a determination to do something about that. In the process of time, I have lost major positive review that would have shown up after my name just because I was not consistent with spelling of my name in every online activity. Today I understand better and I am learning the how to get it right. But the essence of this article is to find out from some of my colleagues how strong is our influence or tribe we are building? Or do we even have a mindset of building anything at all. There is this clash of whether quality supersedes quantity. What obtains today is the level of influence you wield will determine what comes to you when you need a job, a recommendation, a referral among many other key success factors.

I am currently reading a book by Julliet Powell  ’33 Million People in The Room’. There is a quote inside the book by Guy Laliberte about how to run a business( which I think is also applicable to personal brand) which says ‘Do business as if you were playing a game, have fun, know the rules and when it is time, make your own’. The import of this is huge. It is good to be an online observer, consumer, and ‘commenter’ but if you do not set up, nurture and build powerful tribe of your own, you will lose out and can never wield much influence.

To corroborate this, this mentioned book also gave the report about a research tagged ‘Reed law and the centre of Influence’. The result showed that ‘effectiveness of large network (and social networks in particular) can scale exponentially with the size and social importance of the network. In other words, Reed law suggest every new person on a network doubles its value’.

This book also cited a research study by UCLA and Boardex looked at the impact of being in the centre of network affects financial success of an individual or corporate organization. It goes ahead to say companies are influenced by their social connections and the position they wield inside the connection will determine their fortunes. This also goes for individuals too. It is also stated that if an individual who is highly connected and occupies the ‘centre of universe’ as top executive in a company is removed or dies, things may not be the same again for that company/ business.

The import of the above is that in the next five, ten years, what is your level of influence or whether you are the centre of the universe in your tribe will determine what your allocations will be. Especially here in my environments. I do know this is already happening in highly developed economy. Talking the talk without locating a tribe you can be part of, where you can learn, have fun and test run your ability to start one will affect your personal brand. Part of the report on the centre of universe that really touched me is that a man at the centre of the universe (power broker, influencer) without enough competencies may be hard to remove or sacked. While we are developing skills and competencies, ability to know how to wield influence, create tribe will go a long way to help us sustain positive perception.

A word of caution here though is that while trying to create a tribe, some will overdo it by destroying already established community of others. This strategy will not help much as others are watching your moves. All you need do is build more friendship walls, learn from established tribe, be patient and start out your own tribe by being willing to give, share your knowledge without ulterior motive to highjack established tribe/platform.

In conclusion, is your brand ‘Google-able’? Where is your tribe online? Are you at the centre of the tribe’s universe? Do you know how the Reed law can work for you? If I will not be termed selfish, become active member of Brand Gavel Community, guest post if you are passionate about what we are discussing here, step up the discussion by leaving comments and expressing your honest opinion etc. One day we will organize an offline networking session; will anyone know your face or remember your name as a community member? Take position now.

I know I have this urge to stay with my laptop for 24hours a day as long as there is power and internet on it. I am daily working hard to leave the laptop alone to cater for many important issues of life like family. I try hard to shut down the laptop at home because I always want to be at the cutting edge of information in my niche. I do not want to be out of touch with breaking news in the industry.  Interestingly life does not work that way or else one can break down eventually. When I am not doing anything I try to watch movie but not every movie interests me. I dislike thriller or ‘gun-shooting movie’ with passion. So yesterday a friend recommends I watch ‘I think I love my wife’. A film produced by Chris Rock and featured Chris Rock, Kerry Washington, Gina Torres etc.

The story line is about an urban dweller corporate couple that has been married for seven years. They are happy couple going places with good job, a comfortable elite family with two kids. There seems to be no love lost until the seventh year when the couple became engrossed in their work and kids without creating time for each other to nurture the relationship. The husband became bored about the relationship starved with sex. Unfortunately it was at this season that Chris the husband met a former girlfriend (Nicky) who is not married yet and would not mind an occasional fling with him. The former girl is a skilful player in the game and armed with depth of how seduction works. She kept calling, dressing provocatively, asking for hang out or launch together with him.

Chris was able to keep his head for a while but the emotional turmoil at home did not help much as he succumbed to pressure except that he was able to maintain or keep the outside relationship from leading to extra marital sex. But the outside affairs at a point begin affect his performance on his job and worsen the relationship with his wife.

Toward the  end, Chris(the husband) seems to be regaining his senses but pressure of ‘other women outside who seem to dress powerfully to entice’ often troubles him as oppose to his wife that desires him to take care of the kids while she is busy on the computer. The last straw that almost broke the Carmel’s back came when the ex-girlfriend (Nicky) asked Chris to give her a bye -bye visit as she is now engaged and will be leaving town to settle with her new man. Chris obliged this request and went to visit her in the hotel. This last scene portrayed a challenge that comes with saying goodbye to what you would have naturally done if not for determination to stay pure and go and work on existing relationship.

The branding lesson here include

Do not let success make you forget what makes you tick: most times success comes it responsibilities. As industry leaders, you need to keep up with the tempo but never forget that keeping with the Jones may affect continuous oiling of the basics that get you there.

Create time for brand audit: never forget that brand auditing with help you to know what you are doing right or wrong. Never assume the fact that the fact that your ceiling fan is still rolling when the power is off is an indication that the Fan can work without power.

Watch Brand association: irrespective of what happens, do not go back to old associations that will damage your present level of success. Those relationships you delete based on principles and corporate culture should not be restored. It will harm your brand more

 The grass is not greener in other side: never judge your present position with external influences. All you may be looking at is just aesthetics. You are not that familiar as an outside observer to the situation like those who are inside.

Create time to celebrate  success: your brand needs to create time to have fun, celebrate your success. Everything should not be based on Naira and kobo, Pound sterling, Dollar. Do not take yourself, your brand for grant.

Always stage a comeback: in case you or your brand has fallen to the temptation. It is not offer, you can still recreate, re-invent that brand. This may be hard but it is possible. In conclusion i do believe that Tiger Wood brand can still stage a powerful comeback as he has learnt the lesson. For others, it is good to learn from experiences of others. Do not wait until you become the case study. What do you think? Use the comment section.

I wake up with possibilities each day. I am passionate about making entrepreneurs and brands succeed in their efforts despite the economy. Money is not available to do everything we want to do. If I am correct there has never been anytime when money goes round to do all that human desire to accomplish. The peculiarity of now is that budget has become tighter than before for most brands. The banking reform in our country is not helping matter presently. Banks are no longer granting loans as before. Many brands now improvise on what they have. For many brands today, most jobs that were   contracted out before are now being handled by internal audience. These have all affected flow of cash to big agencies that used to handle those jobs.

The reason above is telling on small scale as well as medium scale brands. The only option to reach clients now with zero or little cost is through engagement marketing. Engagement marketing offers a great platform to brands because it involves dialogue and sustained relationship building. When this is properly done the buyers help you drive the brand in a way that your brand’s huge budget can never have achieved. Engagement marketing helps brands to stay at the competitive edge of creating dialogue and solid relationship with potentials as well as actual.

According to a whitepaper by Silverpop, engagement marketing offers  new landscape of marketing channels on a one-one relationship( that is powered through the web) and allows, empowers clients to participate in a brand’s marketing messages. To excel in engagement marketing, the followings need to be in place

Brands must worth listening to: the attention span today is about nine seconds instead of sixty. So brands need to first work hard to get the attention of the prospect in today’s hyper active, internet based communications tools and trends. Too many things are clamouring for clients’ attention online. Each brand is competing for that customer’s attention. What will help your brand is the level of your brand’s credibility

Sound Strategy and tactics:  getting their attentions is not enough today. The joy and euphoria may lead to inertia that will make you forget the purpose of getting the attention in the first instance. So efforts must be made to engage them in taking a positive action that will lead to achievement of your brand’s goal. Opportunities to be known for their efforts, contributions to your brand’s success must be included in your strategies too. Otherwise they will feel used for a selfish brand’s ambition.

Place value on long-lasting relationship: never forget that relationship is the bedrock of every business today. Engagement marketing will be based on mutually beneficial relationships between those who help you promote your brands and the brand itself. Your internal audience must be trained to value your stakeholders’ effort so that they do not soil the relationship along the line. Consider customer life time value before you over react to simple misdeed. What do you think? Use the comment section.

I was thrilled recently after a discussion session with a think tank group that comprises of customers (Generation X, Y with a little of baby boomer), service providers, some other informed opinion leaders in the area of branding, marketing etc. Prior to this, I have stumbled on an article ‘Future of Retail’ on the net and was fascinated by the trend at which customer service as well as business relationship with clients are being conducted in other clime.

While we keep the argument that it is not possible and we may not get there soon because of the peculiarities of our environment I believe we must start learning how it is down so that as soon as the environment becomes conducive, we are already armed to go.

In above caucus/group discussion, we were basically chatting about today’s customer with regards to how to relate with them. While many brand owners are still sleeping, the group envisaged that most product producers and service providers are still thinking that customers have not changed. The Customer service word equation is gradually changing at a rate that if care is not taken, most will be left behind. The use of customer service with regards to customer is now synonymous with Content, consistency and community. The age of telephone based customer service is gradually being phased out.

Customer service is basically shifting online with the aid of new media tools. Where the goal post is shifting to  will be the focus of our discussion today. Brand owners must begin to develop their capacity to effectively feature in this realm in order to remain relevant.

 Content: Content creation skill, development and marketing are essential skills that brands must develop to spread their messages as well as to gain eyeballs that will turn browser into buyers and advocates.

Consistency: whatever your brand is doing to excite, ignite passion of your potential and actual clients needs constant fuelling and lubrication

Community: Community is now as vital. Just like the blood that pushes nutrient into the body, brand community must be built with the right skill. Are you incorporating these tools into your customer service idea.

Sometimes it is difficult to assess the impact of our actions until they have been taken. What I have come to understand is that we may not know what is beyond until we take a bold step to confront our fears and disarm them. I have also discovered that as a pioneer, one must be willing to take the risk, be willing to dare the consequences to attain a greater height. Willingness to beat a path to a desired destination is equated with being ready to sustain bruises if it comes to that.

Today social media education, enlightenment buzz is spreading. Many are fascinated by the appeal but they have never taken concerted effort to push anything. Our determination to sustain the tempo in Nigeria is based on the fact that if it is working elsewhere, it can work here. Even though there are lots of roadblocks that people in the western world do not have to think about.

Based on a popular request, I have decided to pen my thought , experience about the just concluded Social Media and business goal seminar organized by Michael sage consulting Lagos Nigeria( disclaimer: I work for Michael sage Consulting). Being the first of its kind that is targeted at corporate organization and how Social media can be used to boost credibility, awareness, engagement as well as profitability; we did have our fears about whether corporate people will even consider attending. We know many like ‘instant answer’ and that informed the reason they are embracing web advert over social media marketing. The reason for this is not farfetched. There is this erroneous impression that web adverts help them gain eyeballs and it is faster to reach target audience in social media platforms. This is another topic to be considered later in subsequent write ups.

We worked hard to expose the opportunities, benefits corporate organizations can get if they embrace it. We must acknowledge the huge support of Nigeria number one Marketing Magazine (Marketing Management-M2) for promoting the seminar for a month. We cannot but appreciate Mr. Akin Adeoya-Group Managing Director of Marketing Mix ideas and the Director of Marketing for M2- Lekan Babatunde for such a huge support.

The faculty was also carefully selected because we wanted people who are doing the stuff instead of people who are talking about the stuff. We therefore have Dayo Adefila from Agency, Azubuikwe Ishiekwene from print industry and another Public Relations and Brand strategy angle in person of Kingsley Obom Egbulem plus yours truly. We kicked off the programme with my opening shot titled: Business and Social media. This explains the background and why it is time to embrace social media especially in Nigeria business environment. The session explains further some of the challenges, misconceptions associated with social media application within business arena in the country. Kingsley Egbulem session focused on Social media and dynamics in changing communications and corporate affairs. Kingsley emphasised that Social Media is not just the future but it is now. He exposed the participants to trends and why corporate communication specialists should understand web based available communications tools.

Azubuikwe Ishiekwene, a frontline Journalist and chairman of CNN/African Multi-choice Panellist brought his experience to bear on finding a meeting point in the use of regular and social media tools to enhance business goals While Dayo Adefila began  his session on Social marketing: Global marketing and corporate affairs enterprise with a  social quick intro to social media. He drew several examples to how the increasing numbers of Nigeria population into the digital world is now offering untold opportunities to serious minded business corporations. Dayo Adefila did warn that social media is not a one night stand and that it will take patience to enjoy its full benefits. His second hilarious presentation on Social media ROI was really helpful to the participants. He also emphasised the fact that experts must produce strong ROI through effective targeting, strategic communications and real life measurement standards.

In all, participants who came from Agencies (Prima Garnet, Insight Communications), Academic community (School of Media Communications, Pan African University), professional services firm, Pharmaceuticals and consumer product manufacturing firms (Glaxosmithklime-GSk etc) as well as media buying/Public Relations agency left with a good knowledge and a promise to change their worlds with a new dimension of information that were shared. I must conclude that the social media fire is spreading in our country and we are proud to be pioneer. The enthusiasm is building up. We may not catch up with the western world so soon but we are on the right path to great discoveries and opportunities

Many have asked me why I always say that networking will be the rule of the game now. A guy actually said ‘if I have done my part do I need anyone to validate my effort?’ While I quite understand that we cannot substitute hard work for anything, it is also a known fact that there are several ‘hardworkers’ who have not gained any noted ground in their fields. Hardwork alone cannot guarantee success again. There are lots of other ingredients that come to play for individual to make headway.

When you programme your personal branding journey on a   ‘solo frequency’ it will suffer unnecessary hardship. Never forget the African adage that says ‘because snakes do not move in group make it easy for a man to kill them’. No matter how powerful your brand is, it will always be considered as fuzzy, proud and irrelevant when you go solo.

Integration will bring a lot of coverage to the brand when many are talking about it. Come to think about it what is the strength an individual can pull when every effort is concentrated on building a skyscraper by a single hand? How long will it take such an individual? But ensuring you incorporate others will help achieve the goal faster. But a point to note here is that individual must have something of value before it can gain wider acceptance. So what factors will ensure you get necessary attention and positive words of mouth.

Understand your territory: You want to get necessary attention and influence your community? The first step is to understand the terrain you want to operate. This begins with the ability to understand the language your niche speaks. Even if you speak great English but you operate within a French speaking environment, you will still be termed as an illiterate and no one will propagate your thoughts nor follow you

Network: Do not be far from your industry’s event or be afraid to meet up with top leaders in the industry. Do not be afraid to offer them any help your skill can push. Remember, everyone will appreciate helping hands. When you do that consistently, you will get noticed and be recommended for better positions.

Be involved in niche dialogue: being part of a good community and being visible is important. What there is a current issue; ensure you always express your view. Make an intelligent contribution instead of just being part of the conversation. That will enhance your profile.

Guard your tongue and your fingers: Always remember that as huge as a ship is, it is only a small rudder that controls it with the help of a captain. Never assume you know it all. Do not send wrong signals about your brand by using your tongue anyhow. If I must add, your fingers are important now in this age of internet. Watch what you write or post as it has likely influence on whether you will become solo or enjoy all the comradeship

Apology

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