Heather R
angelaknigge
Last night I went to the Lake County Prosperity Forum’s monthly evening event. It’s hard to believe is was early September, one year ago that 5 of us met at Carribou Coffee with the idea to start up our own networking group here in Lake County, so last night was an anniversary of sorts.
We’ve had dwindling attendance throughout the summer (not surprising), but had expected a decent turnout last night given our topic (more in a second), and lately there’s been a push by some folks to move the venue away from Saffron Indian Cuisine (which I LOVE). My only stipulation, as a board member, was NO PIZZA… boring. So we’ll move in November, and hopefully that will bring people back. We’ve got over 600 people registered on our groupsite, so why only 20 show up?…. That is the $6 Million question.
Last night’s featured speaker was Jason Jacobsohn, who is a “Master Connector…[and] and Advocate for the Entrepreneur” here in the Chicago / Milwaukee area. He blogs at Networking Insight, and writes articles for SOHO Magazine. He spoke to us about personal branding, and how to first figure out what our brand is and then about maintaining that brand. Here’s the excercise he had us work through to think of our own brand:
- What are my characteristics? (i.e. personality, appearance, interests, abilities, accomplishments)
- Who is my sphere of influence? (i.e., family, peers, community, company)
- What subject(s) am I passionate about?
- What are my current methods of communication? (i.e., blog, newsletter, speaker, articles, Website)
So back to the idea for this post — the nudge. These questions above led to some interesting comments & questions about blogging as a method of branding. If y’all didn’t notice, it’s been a while since my last post. I asked Jason how he keeps up with it, as I’ve been struggling with this since I returned to work. He said he finds a specific time of day every 2-3 days and just DOES it, even if it’s hard.
SO… my lightbulb went off — I’ve got a small window of time in the mornings to write before I eat my breakfast and head out to work — I can use this for creative time instead of checking in on Facebook every day. (Which just isn’t quite as fun since my cousin in Salt Lake City left earlier this summer anyway.)
I’m back!
P.S. If you are interested in learning more about branding, Jason recommended The Personal Branding Phenomenon. If you want to learn more about blogging, he suggested Naked Conversations.
