What do you need for Content Marketing

Written by Kevin Cain - 1 Comment
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 Content marketing isn’t rocket science, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy either. Like anything, it takes continuous trial and error and making a fair number of mistakes along the way before you start getting things right. The good news is that there’s value in analyzing those missteps — regardless of whether they’re your own or someone else’s — because it can help you avoid them yourself.

What follows is a collection of content marketing lessons that I’ve either learned the hard way through the mistakes I’ve made, or lessons I’ve gleaned from others after hearing about the challenges they’ve faced. Hopefully reiterating those lessons here, along with some sound advice, helps to save you some time and frustration.

Lesson #1: You need at least one dedicated resource.

A lot of companies, particularly small ones, think that they can tack content marketing on to their existing marketing team’s responsibilities without adding any headcount. In theory it’s a good idea, but in practice it just doesn’t work. That’s because not only does the approach have the potential to distract your existing team from its other responsibilities, it also makes it virtually impossible to give your content program the attention it needs to drive meaningful results.

So, if you are serious about content marketing, invest in the right people to build your program. A good place to start might be a managing editor, who can help set your strategy and then manage the internal and external resources necessary to execute it. Here are some of the qualities he or she should have:

Lesson #2: You need a strategy.

It’s easy enough to do a bunch of activities — write a few blog posts, send out a couple of tweets — and call it content marketing. You might even get some results doing so. But to get the most out of your content marketing program and actually build your brand, engage your prospects and customers, and drive sales, you need more than activity. You need a strategy.

That means taking the time to:

• Understand your audience, what they care about, what their pain points are, what motivates them to make a purchase, and what the buyer journey they’re on looks like. Compiling your findings into buyer personas will help crystalize your understanding of your audience and make it much easier to tailor your content to them.

• Develop clear conversion goals so that you know exactly what actions you want people to take as a result of consuming your content. Remember, there always needs to be a next step for your audience. Maybe it’s visiting a particular page on your website, downloading a white paper, or contacting a salesperson. Think about what conversion goals are appropriate given where your audience is in the buyer journey.

• Decide what types of content to create, what that content should be about, and how to deliver it at each stage of your buyer’s journey.

Once you’ve done all of this, map the information into a content matrix like the one below, which should serve as the backbone of your content strategy.

Lesson # 3: Content marketing is about more than just content creation.

It may sound like a rookie mistake, but who among us hasn’t devoted time and energy to creating a great piece of content only to realize after it was done that we didn’t have a solid plan for what to do with it? That’s why it’s a good idea to start thinking about how you are going to use your content while you’re still in the process of producing it. One idea that I’ve found works well is to come up with a matrix of all of the possible content distribution tactics you can use, and to then tier those tactics based on the type of content.

For example, you might publish a simple piece of content like a blog post to your website, share it socially, and include it in your weekly newsletter. You might do all of those things for a bigger piece of content like an eBook too, but also host a webinar about it, post a corresponding presentation to SlideShare, or try to engage with particular industry influencers.

By documenting what your options are and what your typical content distribution strategy would look like for different types of content, you can always ensure that you’ve got a good plan in place to amplify your content.

Lesson #4: Rely on data, not your gut, to make decisions.

For some reason, metrics seem to be the bane of many content marketers’ existence. Perhaps that’s because we naturally tend to be more creative than analytic. But here’s the thing: Unlike your gut, metrics generally don’t steer you in the wrong direction and they certainly don’t lie. Instead, they give you a clear indication of how your content marketing program is performing.

Personally, on more than occasion I’ve created a piece of content and felt confident it would be a hit, only to see it flop. Conversely, I’ve written things that I felt weren’t as strong as they could be that actually performed quite well. Rather than assume what your audience is going to like, it’s much better to know what they like based on data. By analyzing what performs well and what doesn’t, and trying to figure out why based on the data, you can glean important insights that will help you to adjust both your content and your strategy going forward.

Lesson #5: The best way to learn is to do.

It’s easy to get so caught up in planning, formulating processes, developing a strategy, and trying to get everything just right, that months go by without creating and distributing any actual content. Since most of us don’t have the luxury of time, that can be problematic. Yes, all of those things are important and are worth your time and energy, but they can’t be created based on theory. They need to be developed based on actual practice.

Don’t fall into the analysis paralysis trap. Instead, start creating some content straight away and testing it in the market. Learn from that experience and evolve your strategy and processes as you do. Not only will you have something tangible to point to when you talk about your content marketing program, you will also have some opportunities to gain actual insights about what you’ve done and to adjust accordingly.

Marketing Lessons From Lady Gaga

You may love Lady Gaga. You may hate her. But no matter what, it's hard not to respect what she's done as an artist. With 23 million albums sold, five Grammy Awards, and Forbes’ distinction as one of the world’s most powerful celebrities, at age 27, Lady Gaga is one of the most well-known pop artists in the world. Known as much for her voice as for her over-the-top wardrobe, few people recognize Lady Gaga for her business acumen.

And yet, Gaga has cultivated legions of loyal fans worldwide—fans who are eager to buy her music, concert tickets, and products. Her social networking prowess is off the charts with 36 million Twitter followers and 57 million “likes” on Facebook. Not only has she created a brand but she has built a fanatical group of consumers, known as her “Little Monsters,” who will follow her for decades to come.

Jackie Huba is author of the new book Monster Loyalty; How Lady Gaga Turns Followers Into Fanatics. I asked Jackie what we can all learn from Lady Gaga about marketing in leading our own teams, companies, organizations and communities. Here are five brand marketing lessons from Huba - and Gaga - for building loyalty in any organization:

1) Focus on Your One Percenters

Lady Gaga spends much of her effort on just one percent of her audience- the highly engaged superfans who drive word of mouth. Despite her tens of millions of followers in social media, she focuses more on the die-hard fans that make up a small but valuable part of the fan base. It’s these fans who will truly evangelize for her and bring new fans into the fold.

Who are your one percenters- your most passionate customers and fans, who are williing to go the extra mile to sing your praises to their friends and community?

2) Lead with Values Gaga differs from many of her contemporaries by standing up for issues that she cares about and for sharing her values. She champions those in society who feel marginalized and bullied for being different - and that has drawn many people to her. Customers feel a deep emotional connection to you when they can identity with your values or causes that you care about.

Leading with values is not easy - and may lead to some people, who disagree with your values, not wanting to do business with you. But when done with integrity and commitment, some customers will also go out of the way to reward you with their loyalty.

3) Build Community Gaga knows that connecting One Percenters to each other strengthens their bonds not only with each other, but with her and her brand. So she built her own social network for the die-hard fans called LittleMonsters.com. Fans set up profiles, post fan art and photos, message each other, and find links to concert dates. They even get their own LittleMonsters.com e-mail address, linking their online identity to Gaga. The pop star is on the site weekly, posting special messages to fans, “liking” and commenting on their fan art, and participating in chat discussions.

Now, you many not have a strong enough brand to merit its' own social network, but surely you can cultivate community online amongst your most loyal customers, employees, friends and partners.

4) Give Fans a Name Creating a name for your One Percenters, like Lady Gaga's Little Monsters, assigns them an identity. With that identity comes a set of recognizable behavioral or personal characteristics that everyone with that name shares. In essence, a name gives your fans something further to join, to be part of, and to feel connected to. The simple act of referring to themselves by the name gives customers a strong sense of belonging.

Maker's Mark has the Maker's Ambassadors. Fiskars scissors has the Fiskateers. I'm proud to be a member of Just Salad's exclusive VIP Pink-Bowlers. What can you name your community of your most loyal customers?

5) Give Them Something to Talk About

Lady Gaga is the queen of word-of-mouth marketing. She understands that you must continually give your One Percenters - and everyone - things to comment about so that they have reasons to talk to others about you. From popping out of an “egg” at the Grammys to lighting her piano on fire, to the famous meat dress, one thing nobody can dispute is that Gaga gets people talking.

You don't need to wear a meat dress to get people talking. But you should think about what you can say and do to get your customers and fans talking about you in a positive way. Whether it's a VIP club, surprising and delighting customers, a color that really stands out, or something else entirely, in general, the more you give people to talk about, the better.

Lady Gaga has set the standard for brand marketing through engendering loyalty, standing for strong values, building community, and word of mouth marketing. The good news is, you don't need to be a pop star, or even wear outlandish outfits, to reap the rewards of the lessons Gaga teaches us.

Simple Steps to Content Marketing Success

I was catching up with a business colleague the other day and I couldn’t remember what the exact time was. She had sent me a message, but was it on Whatsapp, Facebook, a text or an email? Eventually I did find that short conversation online and it was on Facebook!

That is the challenge today.

We have so many options, not only with how we communicate but market our brand and products. Content marketing is no different.

Some people will ask a friend’s advice on what to buy while others will start with a Google search. When they find you they may prefer a video to text or even want to listen to a podcast.

As they say it’s complicated.

The content marketing cycle

At the end of the day the sales and engagement funnel is not a 20 step scientific formula. None of us follow a straight path to purchase, its a circuitous and winding journey that is more an adventure then a clinical scientific process. But there are some key steps.

The content creation and promotion process starts with understanding your customer, creating a list of topics to produce and then creating the content. Here is one visual description of the cyclical process from the Lera Blog.

There are many ways to describe this from more detailed and complicated diagrams to simple and high level.

No matter how you visualize the process it is continuous and needs to be a constant cycle of content creation, marketing (paid or earned) and measurement. It’s about finding what content works and what doesn’t.

Never assume what content will be a winner

It means doing the basics right by understanding the customer as best you can and then creating content topics around that. Next is  to”start” publishing. You will be surprised very often with what goes viral and gets shared the most and what doesn’t.

This is where the customer engagement begins, ends and continues. Creating and constant testing! But you need to start… to learn what content resonates.

The customer content engagement journey

The customer’s content engagement journey is part science, part creativity and some intuition. It’s moving them from not knowing who you are (or even exist) to raving fans or “advocates’ who will love what you do and will share your content with a passion.

But before your customer engages with you they have to know who you are . That is the discovery phase or as the diagram below from Social Fresh calls it “awareness”.

So where does it begin? How do you find your customer or how do they find you? It doesn’t need to be complicated.

Here are 4 simple steps to content marketing success.

Step 1: Finding the customer (or do they find you?)

Often in the past the only tactics to finding your customer was with “outbound marketing”.

For many businesses acquiring a customer was cold calling, letterbox drops and fax broadcasts. For the consumer focused business or B2C brands it was mass media including TV, radio and print.

Today the customer finds you.

This is called inbound marketing and content marketing is part of that process.

The tactics for customer discovery

How many ways can you be discovered? Here are a few tactics at the discovery phase that you may need to be “found”.

1. Search: Turning up on page one of Google is not something that happens on day one. So this needs attention from day one launch of your blog or website. But it has to be done. It’s called an SEO process and it is driven in part by content and social discovery.
2. Social: Turning up a Twitter stream or a Facebook share and news feed is another way of being discovered. As you can imagine this will only happen if your content is good and you have fans and followers sharing your content.
3. Paid. This includes Facebook ads and Google AdWords.
4. Email:  They won’t discover you on email unless a friend shares your content by forwarding the email.
5. Word of mouth: This is powerful way to be discovered because someone thought you were good enough to be recommended or mentioned.

So you have been discovered and now the engagement adventure begins.

Step 2: Engaging the customer

So they have found you! You have turned up in a search engine whether you have paid for it or earned it.

What next?

This is where the compelling contagious content kicks in.

Content that engages

In essence you have four media category choices for creating engaging content; text, images, video and audio. Then there are the flavours:

These include: Blog posts, white papers, ebooks, photos, photoshopped images, infographics, YouTube videos, short form videos on Vine and also podcasts.

So what engages “your” customer? That is something that only hitting the start button will discover. You will need to create, publish and measure to find out.

Social media is one of the best places to experiment and fail fast often and cheaply.

From average to great

How good is your content?

• If it’s average, they “may” read it. It’s skimmed and scanned
• If its good it could be shared once.
• If it is compelling, then it’s shared many times on multiple social networks.
• If its memorable, resourceful and useful then it is included in someones’ blog post and they may even “hyperlink” to your site.
• If its beyond memorable and is insightful and thought leading… then it’s mentioned at a dinner party. You can’t measure that.

The power of content to engage viewers, readers and customers is where the magic happens. It even happens on Twitter!

Engagement in search

They found you on Google but now comes the harder part. Can you move them from viewing to “clicking”?

So on the “search engine result page” or “SERP”, Google produces only three elements; the headline, description and the link . But there are two tactics that you can control and requires some attention and optimization.

1. Great headline: This is limited to only 74 characters. Make sure it is compelling and not cut off!
2. Tempting meta description: This has a 156 character limit and needs to tempt them to click

Engagement on social

On social it often means you have needed to create something visual to get that first glance.

Some visual tactics

1. Publish an image or infographic on your social media channels that may take them to  longer form content such as a blog post or video.
2. Embed a video on Twitter, Google+ or Facebook.

Engagement on your website and blog

Appealing customer engagement on your website and blog means many things but some key elements include:

1. Headline
2. Opening sentence and paragraph
3. Structure, including sub-titles and bullet points.

It must be mentioned. Walls of unbroken text are often the death of content engagement.

So viewing and reading and engaging them are essential but the next step is to keep coming back so they don’t forget you.

Step 3. Calls to action

The social web provides easy ways to follow people on multiple social networks. Social media is often the light engagement. If they subscribe to your email then it’s getting a little more serious. That is saying “you can keep in touch with me”.

This means you need to move beyond just free content engagement to “calls to action”.

Tactics for calls to action include email and social:

Some email “call to action” tactics :

1. Subscribe
2. Download

They look like this:

Some social “call to action” tactics

1. Follow
2. Connect
3. Share
4. Retweet

They look like this:

Step 4: Convert to customers

The ultimate goal for content marketing is to turn those followers and subscribers into buyers. This happens with the continuous commitment to content creation and sharing that builds trust and credibility. It means always bubbling to the top. It’s also about not being forgotten.

Fans and advocates may not always become customers and may just enjoy your content. But they will be brand ambassadors that will continue you to share your content. This is when the crowd sourced content marketing becomes a very large amplifier of your brand.

Don’t underestimate this. It can be 99% of your content creation.

Keyword Research for Social Media :The Experts' Guide

The foundation of search marketing is built on keywords. Search marketers know that conducting continuous keyword research and keyword analysis is critical to achieving success with organic and paid search advertising. But conducting and implementing keyword research is also highly effective for social media marketing. Whether your target audience is sharing content on YouTube or Flickr, or they’re Tweeting on Twitter, your social media marketing efforts should start with determining which keywords your audience is using.

To be more specific, conducting keyword research for social media enables you to discover the needs and wants of social communities by:

• Tracking popular and trending topics
• Determining search/query frequency
• Gauging market interest for products or services
• Identifying demand for keywords
• Better understanding user intent
• Discovering relevant points of engagement

By researching and identifying social media keywords, you gain a much clearer picture of how to construct and communicate your message effectively. Applying this level of keyword insight to all your social media optimization efforts (from optimized video, to image tagging, to social bookmarking, to targeted Tweets) gives you the maximum “pull” and value out of your social media marketing efforts.

Social Misconception: Isn't All Keyword Research The Same?

Many believe that keyword research is a one-size-fits-all process. They assume that the same keyword data they apply to their pay-per-click advertising or search engine optimization efforts will be just as effective for their social media marketing strategy. This couldn't be further from the truth. There are some major differences between search and social, which include:

• Query variances: The most popular queries in Google aren't the most popular queries in YouTube. Take, for example, the query "YouTube," which is very popular in Google though not popular at all on YouTube, where Arts and Entertainment (such as music) queries dominate user searches.
• Behavioral differences across platforms: Not only do query types and user behavior differ between Google and social media sites, but there are dramatic differences from one social platform to another. The behavior exhibited by users on the photo sharing site Flickr are often dramatically differently than micro-bloggers on Twitter.
• Query vs Conversation: Social engagement is more than just punching a query into a search engine. Searchers are looking for an answer to a question or an unmet need, while social media users want to engage in conversation, share ideas and interact with one another. So thinking just in terms of query strings is limited and can lead to completely misunderstanding user intent and expectations.

Given that user behavior differs between search and social and from one platform to another, we see the importance of performing keyword research specific to social media and refining your research across platforms. With that, let’s take a look at four of the most popular social networking websites and different methods for performing keyword research for each one.

• Keyword Research for YouTube
• Keyword Research for Twitter
• Keyword Research for Facebook
• Keyword Research for Flickr

Keyword Research For YouTube

Videos are one of the hottest and fastest growing ways to connect with your potential customers online. There are dozens of video sharing websites, but YouTube is the largest video discovery destination. YouTube continues to dominate the search space as the second largest search engine in the U.S. behind Google. For marketers, the goal of researching keywords for YouTube online video marketing is to determine:

• How users are searching
• Which queries are being performed more than others
• How to get your content found

There are two methods for conducting keyword research specific to video marketing in YouTube which are:

• YouTube Suggest
• YouTube Keyword Tool

YouTube Suggest is a video marketing keyword suggestion tool with an enhanced search function that works like the Google suggest feature. YouTube Suggest uses a predictive text model to display popular query suggestions in the YouTube search query box, which is ordered by relative search volume.

YouTube also has created their own YouTube Keyword Tool that marketers can use for video keyword research. The user interface is the same as the Google Keyword Tool, with the objective of mining and discovering the most popular video queries on YouTube. 

By using YouTube Suggest and the YouTube Keyword Tool, marketers will gain insight into keyword query popularity and frequency on YouTube. Thesekeyword suggestions can then be integrated into your video keyword optimization efforts in the title of the video, the tags, the video description and any links you build to reinforce semantic relevance. The goal of this optimization for YouTube is to gain greater visibility and exposure for your video content by targeting a large audience with relevant keywords.

Keyword Research For Twitter

Twitter has emerged as a force in the social networking space. Marketers who ignore Twitter do so at their own peril. The amount of content created by Twitter users on an a minute-by-minute basis makes Twitter a powerful tool to aid marketers in performing keyword research for social media. Elements like hashtags are a quick way to qualify the topic of a message and make it easy to discover trending topics, related Tweets and phrases relevant to your marketing efforts. And given Google's recent move to integrate Tweets into real-time, blended search results, marketers who leverage Twitter for keyword research effectively will gain even more visibility for their websites.

There is an endless assortment of web applications and listening tools that can help marketers conduct keyword research for Twitter by tracking popular hashtags, trending Twitter topics and eaves dropping on conversations. Here are some of my favorite sources for Twitter keyword research.

• Hashtags.org - Provides graphs on Twitter #hashtags and hashtag use; find the most popular and newest hashtags
• Twitter Search - Track the hottest trends on Twitter and click on a stream to pull up a feed of the public conversation

• Trendistic - See the top trending keywords in Twitter
• TwitScoop - Search and follow what's buzzing on twitter in real-time
• TweetVolume - Enter your keywords and see how often they appear on Twitter
• TweetScan - Incorporate Twitter search and historical search to access more than 220 million Tweets
• TweetGrid - Create a real-time Twitter Search dashboard
• TweetBeep - Save target keywords, receive email alerts you tweets containing your keywords

As Twitter continues to grow in popularity and relevance, marketers need to pay careful attention to trends and data to find out what people are talking about, what questions they're asking and to figure out where your brand and business fits into the conversation.

Keyword Research For Facebook

Targeting potential customers on Facebook is not as easy as with social networking sites like Twitter. Marketers can't access the profiles of potential customers unless you get permission, but you can promote your business on fan pages, group pages  and with paid advertising. Facebook used to offer a tool to perform keyword research and monitor "buzz words," called Facebook Lexicon. But they've removed the Facebook Lexicon feature and are rumored to be creating marketing analytics tools for page owners.

In the meantime, the social networking giant has upgraded their internal search functionality, which allows for advanced keyword research for Facebook. Before this upgrade, you could only monitor the posts of people you were immediately connected with. But now you're able to view the messages, links and notes of everyone who uses Facebook to see which keywords people are using.

Start your research by running a query for a target keyword in the internal search bar. Then, click on the option "Posts by Everyone." 

Much like Google's real time search feature, Facebook search updates automatically in real time, offering a fresh and constant stream of new keyword ideas and opportunities. Use this Facebook keyword research data for targeted relationship building. Reach out and connect with potential customers, but make sure you give them a reason to want to connect with you.

Keyword Research For Flickr

Images from the popular social photo sharing site Flickr show up in the blended results in Google for a variety of search queries. In addition, about 10 percent of Google’s visitors use the image search function, according to a study by Alexa.com. So knowing which keywords searchers use for image discovery and having your website images display prominently and frequently in both the Flickr and Google search results gives you the opportunity to grab more clicks and drive more traffic to your website.

One of my favorite methods to conduct keyword research for Flickr is through Google Insights for Search.

Here, I've conducted searches on two popular, trending terms ("American Idol" and "Tiger Woods") and filtered to show only image search activity. You can also drill down to get even more granular and filter by location, date and category. Using Google Insights for Search to perform keyword analysis for images gives you insights into popular and trending image searches and greater visibility into the marketplace.

Another nice application for gauging popularity and frequency of search terms on Flickr is Flickr Trends, which looks at how many photos have been tagged with a particular keyword over a specified time period. It also presents the relative popularity of one keyword versus another to show you what's thriving and what's diving.

Using Flickr Trends to perform keyword research for Flickr is an ideal way to compare the usage of similar keywords side by side. So say I was uploading photos of my hypothetical cold and flu treatment products to Flickr. Given the results from Flickr Trends, I would choose to optimize and tag my images for "H1N1" rather than "Swine Flu" because of the upward trend for H1N1 searches on Flickr. In addition to optimized tags, be sure to include keywords on your Flickr photo page in relevant titles and image descriptions to ensure maximum visibility.

Deadliest Personal Branding Mistakes

It's hard to talk about yourself. When someone asks "What do you do?" you could blurt out your job title, like this:

PERSON: What do you do?

YOU: I'm a Network Security Analyst Level III.

PERSON: Hmmm. Awesome. (Eyes glaze over; looks frantically around room for a reason to bail on the conversation.)

Unless you're a lion tamer, a jello wrestler or an astronaut, your job title is likely to be the least exciting thing about you.

You could describe your job, instead:

SOMEONE What do you do?

YOU: I work for a company called Angry Chocolates. I work in IT. I keep the network safe from hackers and other threats, like credit-card-stealing bad guys.

SOMEONE: Cool! Like Mission Impossible?

YOU: Exactly like that.

You can tell a story about your job when you're talking face-to-face or over the phone. But how do you do it in a resume or LinkedIn profile?

Here are the five personal branding mistakes we see most often, the ones that suck the juice and power out of your awesome story and make you sound like every other robot weenie in the weenie bin.

You're no weenie! You're a cool, funny and awesome person with a great story to tell. Get rid of these five branding problems, and let your human story out!

Deadly Personal Branding Mistake Number One: CORPORATE ZOMBIES UNITE

The first mistake is to write your LinkedIn profile and resume in the language called Corporatespeak Zombie Language.

You've seen it before, I'm sure: "Results-oriented professional with a bottom-line orientation." That doesn't sound like a real person. It sounds like a cardboard cut-out person with a fake smile and a bad suit.

You don't have to write that garbage in your resume and LinkedIn profile, and I hope that after you've read this column you never do it again. You can talk about yourself in writing the same way you would in person.

"I got into HR because I like to help people succeed at work. I specialize in Comp and Benefits, where I build pay and benefits plans for everyone from shop workers to the executive team."

Deadly Personal Branding Mistake Number Two: TROPHY WORSHIP

You're going to list your certifications and credentials in your profile or on your resume, of course. You've earned them. Don't make them the centerpiece of your brand, like this:

"With a Harvard MBA and advanced certification in Jedi Mind Control, I bring a diverse set of blah blah blah..."

Your degrees and certifications are important, but they don't define you. When you make your alma mater the biggest part of your brand, you're saying "I need Harvard's brand to represent me, because my own brand isn't sturdy enough." That's awful.

Harvard is a great school, and believe me, they don't want you to make your Harvard degree the focus of your personal brand any more than I do. They want to turn out graduates who go on to do much more wonderful things than simply to get a diploma.

When you say "Look who's already approved of me -- this school, this brand-name employer and this professional association!" you're saying "I am nothing by myself. Other people have to make me okay by bestowing titles and credentials on me."

Personal branding is about YOU, not the trophies on your wall.

Deadly Personal Branding Mistake Number Three: TASKS AND DUTIES

Since it's hard to know exactly what to say about ourselves, we tend to talk a lot about tasks and duties. We want to know about more important things: why did you perform those tasks? How did you make your mark on each organization you've worked for?

You can replace "I was responsible for the quarterly Sales by Region report," a boring statement that will put any normal reader to sleep, with the human observation "When I noticed our VPs weren't reading the three quarterly sales reports I created, I designed a new Sales Dashboard that put the most useful metrics on a one-page weekly summary, saving at least $100K in staff time in the process."

As readers, we want to see you in action and to know that you understood what you came to each job to do. Give us what we want!

Deadly Personal Branding Mistake Number Four: SELF-PRAISE

Your personal branding goal is to let us see past your titles and degrees to understand the person behind the resume. That's why one of the worst things you can do is to trumpet your own fabulousness with phrases like "Seasoned, savvy and strategic Marketing Director..."

Don't praise yourself in your branding, in writing or in speech. Let your story speak for you. People who praise themselves are afraid that if they don't tell you they're wonderful, you won't figure it out on your own. Self-praise is the mark of a business newbie or a person who has so little self-esteem he has to brag about himself to perfect strangers.

Replace a deadly self-praising phrase like "Skilled at leading strategic initiatives" (a fail on the self-praising and zombie-speak counts) with a mini-story about a time when you actually led an important project:

"I led the Finance team through Angry Chocolates' acquisition of Suckulent Suckers, a $8M specialty lollipop manufacturer, in 2010."

Anyone who's in the business of hiring or recommending folks for 'strategic initiative'--type Finance roles will get the whole story, right there.

Deadly Personal Branding Mistake Number Five: ABSTRACTION HELL

The last Deadly Personal Branding Mistake on our list is the branding choice that uses hundreds or thousands of words in a LinkedIn profile or a resume to say nothing.

You've seen branding like this before:

"I solve complex problems at a high level working with multiple stakeholders."

We have no idea what you've done or what you're capable of when we read a boring, abstract sentence like that.

We want the guts of the story. Don't sit back and characterize your work - tell us the details and let us decide whether the problems you solve are complex or not. Give us the story. Make it real!

"My favorite project so far at Accenture has been the re-design of a wastewater treatment plant's safety and security processes. We started with 1960s training materials and rewrote everything from the ground up, listening to and checking in with the team members at every step. The new-employee safety training time dropped from six months to four weeks and the number of safety incidents went from 40-50/month to zero."

Boom, baby!

We want the goods. We don't want your analysis of your talents at a sky-high level of abstraction. We don't want a list of boring tasks or self-congratulatory adjectives.

We want to meet a living, breathing human on the page and decide whether we're meant to take the conversation a step further. Isn't that what everyone wants - to get rid of the fog and the clutter and meet one another on a human plane?

THANKS for 200,000 Follows on LinkedIn! Our CEO Liz Ryan has been writing for LinkedIn for one year this month. Thanks for spreading the word about the Human Workplace movement to reinvent work for people!

Our new 12-week virtual coaching groups launch on Saturday, June 28. Here's the lineup of courses.

Here's the Human-Voiced Resume MEGA Pack of materials that comes with your registration in any 12-week virtual coaching group starting 6/28/14! There's $340 of powerful job-search, branding and career instruction in the MEGA Pack. So for your course registration of $299 (our Quick Start Edition courses cost $149, and Reinvention Roadmap course costs $329) you get your 12-week virtual coaching group registration PLUS the $340 MEGA Pack of materials listed below!