Intrigued, I registered. I noticed that you get a repscore (reputation score) of points awarded for entering information (bio, links to your sites, tags), so I completed the profile section, entered my website, blog and LinkedIn URLs and filled out the tags section. It was amazingly easy and quick to do – the Naymz interface is excellent.

At the time I didn’t realise the significance of the repscore and I thought no more about it until I received an email inviting me to trial the upgrade for a month (allows you to track visitors and monitor your reputation). On Friday I invited my contacts from LinkedIn to join my network (a really simple process as you can just import all your contacts from LinkedIn and then send them invitations. A few clicks and it’s done). I noticed that this increased my repscore quite a bit.

Yesterday I received an email from Naymz informing me that my repscore entitled me to a free premium placement on Google.

Now this is where it gets totally incredible. I did some ego-surfing on Google. The results blew my mind.

• sue brettell – most of the first 50, with a sponsored link!
• “sue brettell” designer – 42 listings, all me
• sue personal branding – 4th of 1.9 million
• personal branding designer – 2nd of 58 million (huh?)
• personal brand strategist – 4th of 860
• Reach strategist designer – 1st!

Woo hoo!!  OK, I’ve got a relatively unusual name. There are  a couple of other Sue Brettells in the UK, one’s a school head and the other’s an archaeologist. But even without using my name in a search, the results are incredible. Obviously my ranking isn’t entirely due to Naymz, but it’s given me a huge boost.

I’m very grateful to Rob, who’s blog is well worth a visit. Naymz is a terrific tool for enhancing online identity and visibility – surely an absolute must for anyone building their personal brand.

Now if somebody clever can tell me how to put the Naymz button in my sidebar – for some reason I haven’t been able to get any badges to appear – I’d be very grateful.

While I was taking the Reach Personal Brand Strategist certification course, I wrote a tip sheet – The Ten C’s of Personal Branding. “Brilliant”, I thought, until William Arruda tactfully pointed out …ahem …he’d already written the ten C’s some time ago. Sheesh!

Take any topic under the sun and as sure as sunburn follows over-exposure, someone somewhere has already written about it.

Occasionally, by chance, you stumble on a subject which hasn’t been covered for your target audience. Last year I searched the internet for tips on preparing for a photo shoot for some headshots. Most of the information I found was aimed at actors, for whom a headshot is a vital part of their CV, but there was only brief advice for anyone else. I gathered material and started an article aimed at professionals wanting to improve their online identities, but never completed it …yes, I know that was stupid. Recently, while I was editing the photos for the Brand You World website, I realised it was a subject that urgently needed addressing …in fact I’ve become quite passionate about it. Good headshots DO make a difference. So I decided to complete my article.

Then I discovered that the wonderful Krishna De had already written an excellent piece on the subject, which took the wind out of my sails. She encouraged me to finish mine anyway because, as she pointed out, we each had something valuable to contribute, coming from our different perspectives. OK, there are overlaps, but that just reinforces the message we’re both putting across. Does it matter? No, because we’re both passionate about helping people to leverage their personal brands and we do it in very different ways.

Getting back to my original point, how do you find a fresh perspective?

The advice given to aspiring novelists, to write “what you know about” is equally true for business authors and bloggers. Having defined your niche and the particular combination of experience, expertise and brand attributes that differentiate you from your peers, you will have something fresh to contribute. If you use your own words and let your passion and personality shine through your writing, you will be bringing a fresh perspective to even the most popular subjects.

If you want to find something new to write about, the best way is to regularly research on the internet. Try different combinations of key words to Google topics which will show up where there’s a gap. Something you see may spark an idea that nobody else has thought of. Good luck!

Whether you’re new to personal branding or a seasoned campaigner, you can’t afford to miss the most exciting development since Tom Peters first spawned the idea in his 1997 article “The Brand Called You”.

This ground-breaking global telesummit, celebrating ten years of personal branding, is an incredible opportunity for you to increase your knowledge of how branding can help you build your career or business. You can hear the leading experts on personal branding for a full day, in one place and attendance is FREE.

What’s the catch? There isn’t one. All it will cost is your time and phone call. And if you can’t make it on the day, it won’t even cost that, because after the event, you can access podcasts of every program and panel on the website, absolutely free.

Click here to download a PDF which you can send to friends and colleagues to spread the word: Brand You World.

You can’t afford to miss this unique event. Registration is simple on the website: personalbrandingsummit.com

This event is being organised by a global planning team of Personal Brand Strategists with a passion for branding. They and the speakers are all gifting their time. I am honoured to be a member of the team and have designed the event branding.

Spread the word!

The name

Never underestimate the importance of choosing a good name, whether it’s for your business or for your blog. You’re going to be investing a lot in it one way or another so you need to be sure it’s right. Take your time and play around with ideas.

It MUST come first. Don’t attempt to set up a website or create a logo until you know what the name is, and have researched available domain names. Might seem obvious to most people but you’d be surprised how many start the wrong way round. More on name-choosing and domains another time.

Youtique

It all started ages ago. I was researching domain names and came up with this one, available in all domains – well it was then. Thrilled, I purchased the two main ones – .com and .co.uk I’ve since had three enquiries if I’d like to sell the .com, so I absolutely know my instincts were right about this name!

The word is a combination:

• YOU – ties in with personal branding
• UNIQUE – one of a kind: what personal branding is all about
• BOUTIQUE - a business that serves a sophisticated or specialised clientele

Tagline: The Personal Branding Emporium

Well I had to get personal branding in there …but Emporium? …’Fraid this is me having allusions of grandeur!

Emporium: a business establishment that specialises in products or services on a large scale; a market. Origin: from Greek emporion from emporos ‘merchant’, based on a stem meaning ‘to journey’. We’re all on a journey – developing your personal brand is an on-going thing.

The blog platform & theme

Eventually I want to fully customise my blog, but as yet I don’t have the time and skills to code it myself. As a starting point, WordPress.com isn’t quite as flexible as Typepad, but it’s free. In due course, I’ll upgrade to WordPress.org.

Theme

I’ve chosen Neat! because I like the arrangement of columns, the choice of text fonts and the colours are pretty close to my brand colours. Not all the themes have customisable headers, that’s an absolute must

Colours

Purple is my main brand colour. I’m renowned in my circles for wearing purple (not to excess!) and acquiring purple accessories – purse, diary, ink, umbrella, clipboard, files …even my reading glasses. Secondary colours are turquoise and sapphire.

The Neat! template is predominantly blue with turquoise headings and it wasn’t difficult to introduce purple to the header without it looking too contrived.

Design

I’ve been trawling the internet to get a feel for trends, as well as keeping my eyes on magazines and TV adverts. You can’t have missed that flowery squirly decoration is very much in vogue and I like it, as long as it isn’t too retro. Of course it will date but I fully intend to keep my blog design fresh by replacing the header every so often. As long as the essence of the brand is visually constant I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

Because there was a little flower motif in the theme, I chose a flower design from the wonderful image bank iStock which had a similar feel.

Fonts: finding the right fonts is a huge part of the design process

Youtique
I wanted something that expressed the essence of my brand: contemporary, innovative, forward-looking, unusual. I also had in mind that I wanted it to have a reflection. I’m a Mac girl and I love the current trend for reflections that Apple do so well. However, with most fonts, the Q has a tail which would have upset the look of the reflection – it would have seemed to be balanced on the tail. I was also very particular about the shape of the Y. I trawled font sites looking for a font that would work and when I found this one, called Space Age, I knew it was the one. I’ve checked carefully and it is free. My thanks to the author Justin Callaghan.

Tagline
This font is Chennai, a gorgeous contemporary font which I purchased from the excellent MyFonts.

Text
The default fonts for this template are sans-serif and suit me fine for the time being – another reason for choosing the Neat template.

Note: it is always advisable to use web-safe fonts for text and headings in web pages. The reason is that these are fonts that everyone has on their computer. If you use an unusual font, it will revert to the default in a visitor’s browser and may not look the way you intend. If you want an unusual font for a particular purpose – like a logo – convert it to a graphic in a drawing or painting program such as Photoshop, then it will appear exactly the way you want it to.

Your comments on the Youtique design are very welcome!