You Have to Manage Your Online Reputation to Run a Successful Business

To the outside world, reputation managers seem to be capable of some form of magic. They employ all kinds of secret ninja techniques that make negative content disappear. However, what they do isn't voodoo at all; it's simply thinking outside the box. Here are six creative reputation management methods you can use as well.

1. Domain Name Variations

Buy variations of your domain name, such as yourname.net, .org, .me, .co, and so on. Also, buy misspellings of your domain name. A competitor can get ahold of these domain names and use them to sully your reputation or steal your traffic (visitors that mistake .net for .com, for example).

2. Negative Domain Name Variations

Although it's unlikely that someone would create a website to smear you, it's a good idea to secure the most obvious negative domain names that include your name.

3. Viral Content Your Audience Loves

Create good content that your audience will love. The best content draws emotional responses and goes viral. Give them inspirational quotes, funny pictures or videos, important warnings people need to hear, or valuable content that solves their problems. If someone attacks you, the strength of your content and the loyalty it brings will protect you. Don't produce content that elicits anger or offends people.

4. Paid Search Ads to Positive Pages

In a crisis situation, create landing pages that say good things about your company. Then, take out paid search ads that lead to these pages. Paid search ads bring a large amount of traffic fast. These pages can bump the negative sites out of the search engine results pages.

5. Enlist Your Customers' Help

Ask your customers for testimonials and positive reviews. This is something your business should be doing anyway. If they're happy with your products or services, customers will be glad to leave a message to future customers. This positive feedback helps to offset anything negative posted about you.

6. Enlist Your Affiliates' Help

You can also enlist the help of your affiliates. Provide them with the content they need to promote you. This makes it easier for them to set up sites and get you sales. You can give them incentives by running contests or offering bonuses for clicks and commissions.

Remember that the more valuable information and good-will you put out there, and the more support you have from your fans, the better protected you'll be from attacks against your reputation. People will overlook one negative review if there are plenty of authentic positive ones surrounding it. Stay true to your audience and listen to their feedback so that you can constantly improve your services and give them exactly what they want.

Tonika Outerbridge Image and Style Consultant

Photo is from Pinterest

How to Start Your Business

No matter what kind of home business you're starting, there are always some things that need to be set up beforehand. It's not a pleasant experience to get started and then discover later that there are some essentials that you need immediately but never set up. It also ends up turning into an extra unexpected expense that you could do without.

Office Space

You need a good place to work and the kitchen table isn't going to cut it. The best workspace is sealed away from your daily life. If you can, set up an office room. Make sure it's comfortable. It should be a place you want to spend hours of time.

You'll need a computer with reliable internet connection and a phone. There are providers online that can set you up with your own 800 number and other goodies like voicemail for the phone at reasonable rates. Also, stock up on all the basic software you'll need, depending on the business you’re planning.

Become an Entity

You'll need to become a legal entity. Decide whether you're company will be a sole proprietorship, an LLC or a corporation. The main difference is who has control. With a sole proprietorship, you're the owner and company in one. An LLC (limited liability company) separates the business from the owner. A corporation is run by a board of directors. If you want to make all of the decisions yourself, be a sole proprietorship. If you think you may someday sell the business or pass it on to someone else, choose to be an LLC or corporation. Do your research and get advice from a lawyer or tax accountant to help you determine which is best for you.

Pay and Get Paid

If you're going to be selling anything, you need to decide which payment methods you'll use. You'll need some type of merchant account. This is a third party that processes payments for you. It can be an online provider like PayPal, a credit card company, a bank, or another provider. If you accept credit cards, you need to be PCI compliant. PCI stands for 'Payment Card Industry' and it's a standard for handling credit card information.

Work out Your Budget

Calculate to the best of your ability your projected income and expenses. It's tough to know when you haven't started yet and don’t have a track record, so set goals and have a back-up plan. Try to realistically estimate expenses and always assume that you'll make less and spend more. The important thing is to be organized and write down every penny you spend or take in. After a month or so, you'll start to get a realistic picture of how you're doing.

Track Your Finances

You'll need a system for tracking your finances. Keep your business and personal accounts separate. Open a separate checking account for your business. Write down a memo of every transaction and what it was for. Software programs can help you do this. Create a filing system for your documents and keep everything in labeled folders. You should also have some way to check your finances at a glance, such as an Excel Spreadsheet for easy reference.

Finally, there's one important thing many new entrepreneurs don't consider – make sure you have a Plan B. You hear great stories about how people sacrificed everything to start their business and it succeeded. You don't often hear the stories about people who lost everything. Always know what you're going to do if it doesn't work out.

Whats Your Klout Score?

Do you think you have clout online? There's a California-based startup that can tell you whether you really do or don’t. Klout is a website that measures your level of online influence through a special, proprietary algorithm. It looks at variables such as your number of followers, the sharing of your content, your likes, and other activity to create a 'Klout score.'

This score varies from 1 to 100. If your score is one, you've never even heard of 'the Facebook' before. If your score is 100, you're Barack Obama!

Social Signals

Klout uses 400 signals from a number of different sites including Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Wikipedia, Blogger, Flickr, Instagram, YouTube, and WordPress. It's constantly adding more.

The way to boost your Klout score is to connect each of these accounts to your Klout account. In fact, if you have a Twitter account, you already have a Klout score whether you want it or not. It's automatic and you have to opt-out if you don't want one. However, your Twitter account must be completely public in order to contribute to your score.

Klout values engagement rather than sheer numbers. If you have a small following of active supporters who interact with your content, this is better for your score than thousands of followers who never do anything. A hundred retweets from a handful of tweets counts for more than 1,000 retweets from 100 tweets. It doesn't reward people that are just hyperactive on these sites, but rather influencers.

How to Increase Your Klout Score

Of course, the site's algorithms are mysterious, but there are some things you can do to raise your Klout score. One is to build online relationships with people. Rather than simply broadcasting content from your social media profiles, engage your audience. Interact with their content and they'll reciprocate. Use your content to ask questions or get discussions going.

Make your content as easy to share as possible. Tailor it to your specific audience. Content that's extremely niche-specific is better for your Klout score than content with broader appeal. Remember that a small core group of followers that loves your content is more important than appealing to large numbers of people.

It also helps to make friends with influencers in your field. If you interact with people who have high Klout scores, this will raise yours as well. Identify these people and interact with them. The tricky part is doing it in a way that doesn't appear that you have ulterior motives.

Finally, you can monitor your Klout score at any time on their website. Conduct some experiments with the sites mentioned above and see which make a noticeable difference.

Why Bother with Your Klout Score?

Is your Klout score really so important? Isn't it just another online metric among many? No pun intended, but Klout is starting to have a bit of clout. Companies are increasingly looking at Klout scores to assess potential candidates for jobs and joint ventures. A high score can also get you discounts and exclusive access to services from airport lounges to restaurant deals.

Tonika Outerbridge Image and Style Consultant

Photo is from Pinterest

Live Your Dream and Start Your Business

When the economy is tanking and the job market's shrinking, making money via the Internet starts to sound like a good idea to many people. With the Web, it's easier than ever to start a home-based business, but still many people fail. Why is this? It's because it takes a certain type of person with almost fanatical gumption and incredibly thick skin. To start a home business, this is what you need (or need to learn).

Get Ready to Fail

One of the fundamental mindsets you have to acquire to work at home is that failure is a blessing in disguise. When you fail, you learn. When you fail hard, you learn something truly valuable that no book can teach you. Once you start on your work-at-home journey, you're going to be 'learning' every day.

In order to keep from cracking under the pressure, you have to develop the ability to bounce back quickly. You need to take an objective look at your failures and figure out what went wrong. It can take a ridiculous amount of courage to get back on the horse and keep riding every day.

Driven by Your Passion

How badly do you want to succeed in your home-based business? You need to be passionate about achieving that success. One way to assess your passion is to ask yourself whether you'd be doing this without the pay (partly because there may be none, at first anyway!). Passion is what helps you get through the tough times, even if these difficult times last a year or more.

Crazy Positivity

One thing that all successful entrepreneurs have is a positive outlook that borders on stupidity. No matter how bad things might get, you need to keep negative thoughts at bay. It can easily poison everything you do. The key to a positive mindset is to accept that things will work out one way or another, no matter what happens. Fortunately, positivity is something you can practice and get better at over time.

Disciplined or Willing to Try

To start a home business, you need to either be disciplined or willing to impose a little discipline on yourself. You have to set goals, formulate plans, stay on task, and stick to schedules. Sometimes, you'll get up early; other times, you'll stay up at night forsaking sleep. You'll often force yourself to work when you don't want to and with no time clock or boss urging you on.

If you totally lack discipline in any form, don't worry. You can acquire it. Lots of people have. All you need is the willingness to do so. It eventually becomes a habit.

Doing Your Homework

When you run a home business, you may have to do everything yourself. That's why you need to do your homework and learn all about the laws that regulate whatever business you’re planning. For example, you have to incorporate yourself and manage finances. Get ready to delve into all of this. It takes lots of study, but every person with a home business does it.

How do you really know if you have what it takes? There's one sure-fire way to find out. Talk to somebody who has successfully run their own home business. Have a chat over coffee and pick their brains. Don't expect them to hand you the key or show you where you'll find the magic button. Just listen to their experiences and ask yourself, 'Can I do that?' 

The Importance of Privacy Settings For Social Networking

You have to be visible to build an online reputation. There's no way around it. However, in most online networks you can control exactly what information people can see about you. This is done through privacy settings.

Facebook

Facebook's privacy settings are extremely detailed but can be complicated. They also change often, which doesn't make it any easier. Under 'Privacy,' click on 'Profile', and then 'Basic.' Here you can set who sees which information. You can choose different groups, such as your close friends, friends of friends, anyone in your network, and so on. You can set this for your basic information, personal information, updates, tagged photos and videos, and contact information.

Settings can be changed for each individual photo or video. When people tag you in a photo or video, it automatically appears on your Timeline, but you can remove it or change the settings for it if you don't want everyone seeing that photo or video.

Also under 'Privacy,' you'll see 'Search.' Here you can change how users find you through searches, although most companies leave this open so that their profile is easy to find.

Twitter

Everything on Twitter is public by default. Your profile is so small that there's not much private information you could give away. Unlike Facebook, where you have to confirm friend requests, you have no control over who follows you on Twitter. However, you can set it so that follower requests must be confirmed. You can do this by going under 'Settings' and clicking the box that says 'Protect my updates.'

Most companies keep everything public on Twitter. It's not in their best interest to turn away would-be followers. Some celebrities use the privacy settings to create multiple feeds, one for fans and one for people they're closer to.

Instagram

Instagram is all about sharing photos and you have little control over who snaps you and shares. You can control your own photos' privacy by going under 'Profile' and then 'Settings,' and if you're using an Apple device, set 'Photos are Private' on the ON setting. If you're using an Android OS, click on 'photo privacy' for options. Doing this blocks your feed from everyone except for followers you approve.

LinkedIn

On LinkedIn, you can change both your profile's privacy settings and how your profile appears in searches. Go under 'My Account,' 'Account & Settings,' and then 'Public Profile' to adjust your profile settings. Under 'Settings' and 'View Preferences,' you can control how you come up in searches.

Your Privacy on Social Media

Don't rely completely on privacy settings. They're not foolproof. Many users have accidentally published private information about themselves on Facebook because they didn't understand how its privacy settings worked. Others have embarrassed themselves horribly by tweeting the wrong thing on Twitter. Use social media with the assumption that anything in your profile, updates or other content could be seen by anyone. If you really want to keep something private, don't post it at all.

Tonika Outerbridge Image and Style Consultant

Photo is from Pinterest

How to Be More Productive

An office or workplace is more than just a bunch of people. It's a support system for every individual that works there. Some people are good at some aspects of business and others have different skills. Nobody is good at everything. When you work for yourself, you need to look outside of your office-of-one to get the resources and support you need.

Good Information Websites

A good place to look for help and support is the Internet. Find information sites that provide real advice on running your type of business. Look for professionals in your industry from whom you can learn. Online forums and professionally-oriented social media sites, such as LinkedIn, offer a great way to connect with others in your field and get support from them. Question and answer websites can also be helpful. Whenever you get information online, make sure you know who it's from. You need to be able to tell good advice from bad.

Mastermind Groups

No, a mastermind group isn't an underground secret society, even though it sounds like it. Mastermind groups consist of like-minded entrepreneurs who help each other out. This was an idea from Napoleon Hill's book Think and Grow Rich. The idea behind it is that a group of minds together create a 'mastermind' that's bigger than any individual. Group members offer each other different perspectives, valuable feedback and inspiration when it's needed. You can find industry-specific mastermind groups online or in your community. If you don't find one, you can form your own.

Accountability Partners

Accountability partners keep you on track through a buddy system. They coach you and make you stick to your word. Accountability partners give you advice, but for the most part, they just listen. They provide a springboard for your ideas and support when you find yourself slipping. You'll also feel a bit guilty if you go back on your word. Accountability partners meet on a regular basis and discuss plans, and then follow up with each other to see how things went.

A Coach or Mentor

For anyone who works for themselves, it's a good idea to have a coach or mentor. This is someone more experienced than you with no vested interest in your results. They help you by sharing their long years of experience and they help you keep the big picture in sight. Your coach or mentor can tell you what your choices are and, like an accountability partner, help to keep you on track. It takes a bit of time and searching to find a good mentor, but it's well worth it.

Knowing When to Ask for Help

When you work for yourself, never be afraid to ask for help and never beat yourself up about it. Don't be stubborn and try to do everything yourself. Realistically assess your abilities to see where you're lacking and enlist help in those areas. Once you start working for yourself, you'll learn exactly what those areas are and when you need support.

Manage Your Online Reputation

Reputation management isn't something to be improvised. Every company from a major corporation to a solo entrepreneur working at home has to have a solid plan for managing its reputation. There are five steps to doing this effectively.

Step 1 – Brainstorm Possible Reputation Damage Scenarios

Sit down and make a huge list of all of the different things that can happen. Imagine everything from a small bump in the road to a major emergency. The most obvious problem would be a negative post somewhere complaining about your company's service. There may also be a situation where a customer doesn't understand your company's policies and the complaint comes from this misunderstanding.

Brainstorm each place where a comment could appear so that you can create a plan for dealing with each. Examples would be personal blogs, your blog comments, social media sites, online forums, review sites, etc.

Step 2 – Determine the Best Response

For each item on your list, decide what would be the best response. Consider it from the point of view of other customers who will be watching. For example, you might respond to a complaint on Facebook by engaging with the customer, asking them to clarify, empathizing with them, and then offering them a solution. To other users who are reading the thread, your company shows that it cares about customers and not just its own reputation.

Included in this plan should be a chain of command notification. When a problem is discovered, how will it be communicated to everyone in the company who needs to know?

Step 3 – Set up a Plan for Monitoring

You know what to look for. The next step is to decide how to monitor. One way to monitor all online content is through alert notification programs like Google Alerts. You may also routinely check Twitter using hashtags and Facebook by searching posts or using HyperAlerts.no. You might identify certain online forums, review sites, and other sites where you're likely to be mentioned for monitoring.

Step 4 – Delegate Monitoring

Put someone in your company in charge of monitoring. You may want to delegate to several staff members. For example, if a certain staff member handles your Facebook account, put them in charge of monitoring Facebook for comments. Make sure everyone is on the same page with all procedures for dealing with negative comments.

Step 5 – Create Positive Content

This step is often forgotten. In addition to doing damage control, reputation management is also about creating content that shows your company in a positive light. Seek testimonials and reviews from your customers and create fresh content on your website, social media sites, and blog. Positive content will off-set any negative content. This is an ongoing job, so make things like soliciting feedback from customers a regular part of your sales process.

Many companies and online professionals decide to outsource reputation management to a company that specializes in this field. These companies have experience and tools to manage a company's reputation comprehensively.

Tonika Outerbridge Image and Style Consultant

Image is from Pinterest

The 8 Most Damaging Online Reputation Mistakes You Can Make

Warren Buffet once said, 'It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.' In the high-speed information age of the Internet, we might amend that to say it takes five seconds to ruin it, or nanoseconds if we're talking about viral content.

Surprisingly, most companies' reputations aren't ruined by angry customers or cunning competitors. You're much more likely to make a gaffe yourself that costs you in terms of customer trust. Here are the most damaging online reputation killers to be avoided at all costs.

1. Social Media Under the Influence

Perhaps the worst mistakes are made when you decide to get on Facebook or Twitter after having a few too many drinks. Companies have to be careful about what they say in posts and tweets. Even if you're slightly tipsy, the filter that keeps you appropriate may fall by the wayside. There's nothing more embarrassing than waking up and discovering what you posted the night before.

2. Badmouthing a Client

Never badmouth a client or customer online. The whole point of your online presence is to attract clients and customers. When you say something nasty or inappropriate about one, this sends the message to prospects that you don't respect them. Even if your product is popular and valuable, you'll drive them away.

Actually, it's never a good idea to trash anyone online. This goes for colleagues, competitors, or any other people that annoy you. This rule even applies if a person has said something about you that you don’t like.

You should be building a reputation for being a friendly person that anyone can feel comfortable sharing information with.

3. Flat-out Lying

The urge to lie or bend the truth online is always there. It's easier to lie through a computer screen than in person. In fact, you may be stretching the truth without realizing it. But the best thing you can do for your reputation is to be honest and transparent. You should always assume that a lie will be discovered and you’ll be exposed to the inevitable damage to your reputation.

4. Embarrassing Photos and Videos

One embarrassing photo or video can completely ruin your online reputation. Think of all the celebrities that have suffered this fate. Be careful about what you're doing whenever cameras are present. You want your viral video to be one about how cool your products are, not how drunk you were at a party last weekend.

5. Ignoring Customer Complaints

Always respond to customers quickly and attentively. When a customer complains about your company, other potential customers are listening. If you're AWOL, they'll be wondering what's up. Instead of disappearing, engage the customer in conversation. You can turn the complaint into a customer service opportunity by showing that you care.

6. Getting Defensive

Again, if there's a complaint or someone says something nasty about you, don't get defensive. This looks bad, even if you're in the right and the other person is a complete jerk. When you're defensive, it shows that the person got under your skin and that there might be some truth to the attack. It also shows a lack of confidence on your part. Always handle complaints in a friendly, professional manner.

7. The Invisible Man/Woman

To build a good reputation online, you need to be consistent. Don't disappear for days or weeks on end. Make it part of your regular routine to be present and interact with your audience online.

8. Online Reputation on Autopilot

Actively monitor your reputation consistently and frequently. Don't only get concerned with it when there's a problem. Set up alerts so that you know when people are talking about you and respond quickly when they do.

All on the Same Page

If you have a staff of even one other employee or contractor, make sure they understand how serious online reputation is. Create a reputation policy so that everyone is on the same page and you can effectively avoid making any of these mistakes.

Do You Have What it Takes to Be Your Own Boss?

Working for yourself is a dream come true for most people. There's no boss and you can do it your own way. But the truth is that there is a boss, and it just might be the worst boss you've ever worked for – yourself! Are you going to be an organized and merciful manager or a total pain to be around? That's the question that determines whether your work-at-home career is a dream or a nightmare.

Are You Passionate?

The great determiner is passion. Are you passionate about what you're doing? Every good boss or company owner has passion and vision. Without these, you’re going to snap whenever the going gets tough. Your work-at-home career has to be truly your dream. That's the only way you're going to be able to keep pushing yourself.

Create a Personal Development Plan

Bosses manage people. They spend a large proportion of their time working on developing their employees so that the company can grow and reach its goals. You have to do this yourself when you work at home. Take a pen and paper and write down your purpose. Take time out of your busy schedule to periodically ask yourself whether you're happy with how things are going and where you need to improve. Set clear and measurable goals for your own development, with the end result being a better and more efficient you.

A Vision for Your Business

Another important job of the boss is to handle the company's overall plan. Even if you're just a freelancer working on the dining room table, you have to have a business plan. Some questions to ask yourself include:

l  What are you offering?

l  Who will it help?

l  How will it help them?

l  What is your promise to your customers or clients and how are you going to deliver it?

Unfortunately, developing a business plan also means creating a financial plan. This is difficult because most of us aren't good at financial planning, but it's essential that you learn this skill and learn it well.

A Realistic Assessment

Nobody can do everything. When you're your own boss, you have to realistically assess your abilities. Write down all the skills you need to run your business. How good are you at them? Which of them do you know how to do, and which ones do you lack? Should you hire somebody else to handle some of your tasks? Don't try to do everything if you’ll have to spend an unrealistic amount of time learning.

Review Your Progress

Create a plan for reviewing your progress. There are plenty of ways you can do this, but what's most important is simply to have a plan in place. For example, you can measure progress by how many tasks you get done each day. Set milestones where you check to see how your business is coming along and give yourself a performance check. This will show you areas that need improvement.

Give Yourself a Break

All good bosses are forgiving. Be firm and disciplined, but don't be too hard on yourself. Remember that you're only human and you need a day off sometimes. This is a very important part of sustaining a business for the long term.

Tonika

Image is from Pinterest

My Love of High Heel Shoes

There are very few things in a woman's arsenal as powerful as a pair of sexy high heels.The birth of the stiletto in the 1950's ushered in a whole new generation of sophisticated shoes. The craze quickly caught on and high heels eventually became, in my opinion, proof that God does indeed exist.

Whether its a pair of high heeled boots or a sexy sandal, you don't have to have a high heel fetish to appreciate a great pair of shoes.

Rarely is there such a treat that is so good for both sexes. Men appreciate women wearing a sexy pair of heels as much as women enjoy purchasing them. In the battle between the sexes, as far as the high heel is concerned, it is definitely a time of peace for some.

Most women have a secret love affair with shoes whether they admit it or not. A woman's relationship with the high heel shoe may be a bit underdeveloped, but believe me its still there. Inevitably, it is a girl thing. I will also go way out on a limb and contest that the higher the heel, the sexier. A four inch stiletto commands respect. I remember my first pair of Pradas it was love at first sight. I think every woman should indulge themselves to at least one pair of classic designer shoes.

Here's a fun fact.High heels are also reportedly good for your health because they eliminate slouching. I'm also pretty sure that the high heel is the direct cause of many an impromptu bedroom tryst, which I know for a fact is healthy.

There are no drawbacks here people. Men love high heels, women love high heels, and shoe manufacturers love men and women who love high heels.Happy shoe shopping.


Tonika Outerbridge



Image is from Pinterest

What Does a Personal Branding Expert Do?

What Does a personal brand expert Do?

Everyone has a voice via internet and in person. This means that your reputation is more important today than ever before. Since anyone can publish virtually anything about you, you need to proactively monitor and manage your reputation and your image. Many people hire a personal branding expert or image consultant to do this for them.

Why Hire an Expert?

There are several reasons that and individual will hire a personal branding expert to help them with building their personal brand. The main one is that an image consultant is skilled and experienced with creating a strategic plan to obtain the desired image. They're good communicators who understand how to listen to customers well. They also have an in-depth knowledge of how search engines, forums, social media sites, and other online communication channels work.

It takes time to manage your personal brand. It's not something you do once and then forget about. Many people hire someone to handle it for them in order to save time. This is especially true for people who lack the knowledge of how to create the perfect image for their profession.

Assessment and Monitoring

When you hire a personal branding expert, the first thing they'll do is an assessment of both your online and offline reputation. They'll do a series of searches for information about you and your company that affects how your customers see you. Research will be conducted through search engines, review sites, social media sites, blogs, online forums and anywhere else where your market is surfing, reading and talking.

Once an assessment is done, your personal branding expert will create a shopping plan based upon where you want your image to be and will make some recommendations about your hair and make up.

Proactive Reputation Control

Personal branding experts will also suggest ways you can improve your online reputation. This can be done by soliciting good reviews and comments from customers to rebrand your image. If there is plenty of positive content online about you, negative content will have little impact.

Taking Control of Reputation Management

Whether you hire an image consultant or choose to do it yourself, personal brand management is something that should be dealt with immediately, and preferably from the very start of your career. 

Tonika Outerbridge

Image and Style Consultant

Image is from Pinterest

Plan Your Personal Style Makeover for the Year

Goal setting is crucial to finding and improving your personal style. There is simply no other way to produce real lasting change. Look closely at anything you've achieved in your life and you'll discover that there was probably a thoroughly planned and well executed goal behind it. Here are the reasons why goal setting is so important.

Clarity

Goal setting gives you clarity about what you want your personal style to be. Be clear about the the type of style and look that interests you. Find pictures or visit department stores to determine your new image.Most of us have vague desires floating around in our heads. If you don't set down in concrete terms exactly what you want, you'll end up spinning your wheels and getting nothing done. You actually create your goals twice – once in your mind and once later in reality. The clearer the vision in your mind, the easier it is to formulate concrete steps that will get you there.

Responsibility

When you write down your personal style goal and start working toward it, you give yourself a sense of responsibility to see it through. You can easily understand that whether or not you attain your goal has little to do with outside influence and everything to do with your attitude and actions. You can no longer blame others for your failure to get what you want. You become solely accountable.

Action

If you write clear and specific personal style goals it will give you a concrete action plan. Wishing for a new personal image doesn't do this. Just like losing weight, planning to change your look takes an action plan. You know that you have to get started today and take small steps toward your eventual target. An important part of the goal setting process is breaking up your goals into smaller goals and a daily action plan that will get you there. Start creating a shopping list for the next season this will stop you from buying unnecessary items and it will force you to stick to your plan.

Motivation

Without a personal style goal, how do you stay on target, especially when things go wrong? Making daily progress toward your goal through your action plan gives you the motivation to keep going. You can see how far you've come and you know that it would be a shame to turn back. For many people, simply putting your goal into words and getting started is a great motivator. You can also keep a picture journal to see your progress.

Focus

Without laser-sharp focus, you’re unlikely to ever achieve a total makeover. Having a personal style goal and a shopping plan keeps you completely focused on what you need to do in order to make changes. It's much harder to be distracted or led astray by sale items or by impulse shopping. If you set goals, you know exactly where to put your energy to get things done.

One Goal at a Time

Personal goal setting is important but there's a right and wrong way to do it. Like any skill, it's something you need to learn and practice. Most people don't learn from their goal-setting mistakes and they continually struggle to attain the goals they desire. You're motivated and you've got lots of changes you want to make in your life or business, but slow down. Take it one goal at a time. Choose which is most important to you and focus on it. Let the others wait. Once you're in the groove with the first goal, you can think about adding something else. Most of us are too busy to tackle more than one and there's the risk of burning out. Take your time and have fun planning and shopping for the new you!

Tonika Outerbridge Image & Style Consultant

The Power of Personal Branding for the Job Hunter

Having a professional brand is not a new concept for job hunters. It’s the image you present to potential employers wherever you are. In a competitive job market, it’s essential to build your own professional brand so that you will stand out from the rest of the pack and build a consistent reputation. Your brand will also help people remember who you are so that when they are asked if they know someone good for a job, you’ll be more likely to come to mind.

What Determines Your Professional Brand?

There are four key elements that make up the image and brand you present to the public:

1. What you look like. This includes the clothes you wear, your features, your haircut, your cleanliness, and your makeup (if you wear any). No matter what anyone tells you, people do judge a book by its cover.
2. How you behave. Your behavior is demonstrated through things like your personality, the way you speak, any mannerisms you exhibit (such as twirling your hair), the way you smile (or not), the way you shake someone’s hand, and other actions and statements that demonstrate your values.
3. What you know. Your education gives some indication of what you know. But people will be primarily looking at the skills, knowledge and talent that you possess when assessing your professional brand.
4. How you are different. Your professional brand must include anything that demonstrates how you are different from others. Potential employers are always looking at how you would add value to their company.

Where Will People See Your Professional Brand?

You exhibit your professional brand everywhere, both online and offline, in everything you do. Online, you find your brand reflected in search engine results, social media, any blogs you write for, photos of yourself, or any articles you’ve written. Whether good or bad, your brand is also reflected wherever someone mentions your name.

Offline, you demonstrate your personal brand in any face to face encounters with people. For example, in networking lunches, business meetings, interviews or casual introductions people give you. Anywhere you are mentioned or shown in print, or any offline publications you've done will also help build your brand.

Tips for Building the Professional Brand You Want

Here are a few tips that will help you build and maintain the type of professional image and brand that you want potential employers to see:

• Plug your name into the major search engines and see what results come up. You’ll need to make an effort to move good stuff up the rankings and the not-so-good down the list where people are less likely to find them. You can do this by adding more content to the sites you want to appear. If possible, you can even delete some things, though it might take time to disappear.
• Keep your personal life private. Check the privacy filters on anything you wouldn’t want a prospective employer to see. Wherever possible, keep personal information offline, unless it is relevant or helps build the image you want.
• Practice your elevator speech. Think about what your main skills and knowledge are and how you add value for an employer. Put that into a short 1 minute blurb and practice saying it out loud. You often only get a minute to make an impression when networking, so you need to spark an interest as fast as possible without giving a sales pitch.
• Use the same professional photo. Wherever you need to upload or supply a photo of yourself, try to make it the same one. If necessary, get a professional one taken. Whatever you do, take down that photo on your Facebook profile of you and the gang partying on the beach.
• Be active on social media, or stay away. Social media and blogs are all about the interaction and social element. If you’re not going to be active on these sites, don’t be there at all and don’t have a profile there. While it’s important to show up online, it’s better to not be there than to seem apathetic by posting once or twice and then disappearing for weeks at a time.
• Educate yourself consistently. Stay up to date on what is going on in your industry and the world in general. Read the top blogs and publications in your industry, watch the news, read the latest hot business book, etc.
• Do your research. Whenever you are scheduled to have a networking meeting or interview, make sure you have done your research into the company in advance. Demonstrate your knowledge and interest.

Start building your personal brand by building a personal website that reflects your profession. It doesn't have to be elaborate. Use a template from http://shop.chicexecutives.com/ and fill in the blanks so that it reflects who you are in your industry.The internet has made it easier than ever to establish your own professional brand. However, it is just as easy to project a bad image of yourself as a good one. Work on building a consistent professional brand that is visible to potential employers both online and offline. It can help you stand out from the crowd and land that ideal job much faster.


Tonika Outerbridge/ Image & Style Consultant

Life is Great When You Outsource

For the independent entrepreneur, the demands on your time are often overwhelming from day 1. There are so many moving parts and things to do that there are never enough hours in the day. Even for the seasoned business person, it’s difficult to relinquish control of any part of their business. Still, every successful leader has come to the point where they have to outsource some of their business in order to take it to the next level. How do you decide which things to outsource when you're ready, especially if cash is tight?

Before you even start to look for outsourcers, go through the following process:

Step 1. Make a list of all the tasks you hate to do.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re good at it or not, if the task is something you truly dislike doing, then it’s a good candidate for outsourcing.

Step 2. Look at where you add value in your business.

Make a list of tasks where you don't actually add much value. Examples could be formatting documents so they look nice for publishing or loading posts onto your blog from guest authors. If you’re not very good at writing, that’s a great opportunity to outsource also.

Step 3: Identify one-time activities.

Are there any jobs in your business that just need to be done once, and then they’re complete? Those are great for outsourcing too. For example, setting up a new website and configuring it with plugins and themes is a one-time task that can be completed quickly by one person.

Step 4. Look at tasks that are easy to outsource first.

The one-off tasks are usually the easiest to outsource first and help you avoid making a commitment to a longer term investment. However, if there are mundane activities you are doing that are taking time away from the true value-added parts of your business, then outsourcing these can help you grow your business by leaps and bounds. If you already know that your business is profitable and could expand if you only had the time, then it may be worth outsourcing basic ongoing tasks.

Step 5. Make some decisions and start your search.

Organize your list of tasks to outsource into immediate, short term and longer term. What will you outsource right away vs. in a few months or a year? Once you've made a list of what you'd like to outsource, you'll be able to tell just what you need in terms of a real person. This often means hiring different people for different tasks since not everyone is good at everything. Get recommendations, search for people with good reputations on freelance sites, and make sure you always get samples of work. Finally, be sure to test someone before you commit a lot of money.

One of the most common statements by successful leaders is that they wish they’d outsourced sooner. However, it’s always easy to say something in hindsight. Take care to outsource wisely by making the most of your budget and testing your business model on a small scale first. Then, unless you want to drive yourself insane or only want a small income from your efforts, you will probably need to outsource some tasks. Two great sites to find virtual assistants on a budget are https://www.elance.com/ and http://getfriday.com/.


Tonika O.