After reading my last blog post – Wait, you haven’t read it yet? Go ahead and get caught up and meet us back here! – you’re probably, hopefully, maybe thinking about personal branding and image management more than you were just a few short weeks ago. And you might also be wondering why it all matters so much and why it’s so important.

As personal branding and image management consultant and expert Diana Jennings points out, “In order to succeed in business and in life, you need others to present opportunities and open doors for you.” Yes, succeeding in life and in business is pretty important, I’d say.

When you have a strong personal brand and image, that’s when people want to open those aforementioned doors for you. According to Diana, a strong personal brand positively affects credibility when the quality of your work and knowledge is consistent with your representation of who you truly are and what you’re truly about in this world. This consistency in all manner of communications – including everything from the way you dress to the comments you leave on a blog and the information conveyed in your email signature to the network you associate with – is what instills confidence in others that you are capable of walking your particular walk, instead of just talking the talk, ultimately increasing the number of opportunities that are presented to you.

Personal branding and image management isn’t just for powerhouse executives of giant corporations, politicians or fancy people anymore. It’s for professionals at all career levels, intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs who aspire to a level of success higher than the one they have already attained – which is pretty much all of us, right?

The overwhelming majority of successful people are good communicators. They’re able to tell a good story and convey a strong message through their speaking and writing, but their non-verbal communication needs to reinforce what they’re saying or putting on paper in order to be truly believable.

Imagine you’re standing in an aisle of your friendly neighborhood grocery store and you’re trying to decide on a product in a category in which you don’t have a go-to brand and all of the products seem pretty much the same. You’ve narrowed it down to two options – one with visually-appealing packaging and one with packaging that looks like it took design cues from a grade schooler – when you realize that you’re running late for a meeting, you need to pick up the kids, you left the stove on, or any of life’s other little urgencies. So, you make an impulse decision and rush for the registers, nicely packaged product in hand.

According to Diana Jennings, founder of a personal branding and image management consulting company called Brand You Image, we make a lot of the same snap decisions when it comes to people and who we want to hire, who we want to work with and who we’re going to trust. To revisit our supermarket analogy, when we perceive two people’s qualifications or experience to be the same, we often rely on their image to help us decide which one we should select for the task at hand.

And that’s why Diana stresses the importance of her dual disciplines, image and personal branding, and the careful management of each. Your personal brand is your current reputation and the perception that others have about you, while image is the visual representation of that brand.

Embarking on a journey to discover your personal brand is an contemplative adventure that involves jotting down and otherwise documenting your short- and long-term goals, values, passions and the mental images and daydreams you have of your future, as well as the vision you have for our world and the purpose or role you will play in making that vision a reality. That vision is your supreme goal; it’s what keeps your eyes focused on the horizon instead of on the ground in front of you. “All of this information is then used to strategically develop a plan to maximize the communication of strengths,” says Diana, “especially to decision makers who can best help the individual move forward in his or her career or business.”

Since we’re visual people living in a visual world, you can’t just stop at telling your brand’s beautiful inner tale; you have to make sure that it tells the same story on the outside too. And that’s where image management comes in. Image management is the process of identifying the visual characteristics of your personal brand attributes that will leave a positive and differentiating impression on others. Managing one’s image is a form of non-verbal communication that includes clothing, grooming, body language, manners, mannerisms and personal surroundings to help establish and reinforce authentic credibility as a professional. Basically, it’s how you tell the world that you’re the stunning package they want to run to the register with instead of the dented white can with “PROFESSIONAL” in generic black lettering that they want to leave on the shelf.

In case you missed it, Sunday night marked the 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. Did you watch? No? Neither did I. 
 

Instead, I followed along online catching updates from my friends on Facebook and Twitter. In fact, I learned who the winners were before the GRAMMYs aired on the West Coast and It seemed many others did, too. There is an article on the Los Angeles Times website devoted to how angry West Coast social media users were. 
 

Although I'm not much of a fan of award shows, I find it interesting how much you can learn about them and other major events by searching online -- before they hit the news. As I'm sure you've heard by now, singer Whitney Houston passed away and it caught on in social media before any major news sources reported it. According to my friend Ted Nguyen's website, someone on Twitter reported Whitney's death 27 minutes before the Associated Press shared their breaking news story. Am I surprised? No.

Since Sunday night's GRAMMY show, there have been a total of 3,028,979 mentions of the GRAMMYs. The GRAMMY site issued up a "Tweet-Worthy" page of celebrities sharing their thoughts on the award show. While the GRAMMYs made every effort to report the most flattering updates online, I couldn't help but notice the unfavorable remarks on Facebook and Twitter. 

So, I bet your wondering how this relates to your social brand. While your brand may not receive 3,028,979 mentions within a few hours, people are most definitely talking about you and your brand online. I'm sure you have a blog, you tweet, and are active on Facebook. You also jump on LinkedIn every now and then, right? Though you may not hit your targeted number of "likes" or comments on your blog -- people are watching. If you have a retail store or restaurant, your customers are checking in via Foursquare and Yelp leaving comments about their experience -- both positive and negative. Do you respond to them? You need to.

Are you monitoring your social brand? It's a must, not an option.

Here are a few fundamental ways to stay on top of mentions of your social brand.

We really love being able to share weekly blogs with you, especially when it comes to helping companies build up their brand identity, with logos and also online with websites and social media profiles. Every now and then we'd like to share our own company updates with you.

Today, I (Tanya), would like to share that  one of our articles, focused on branding, was published in Professional Woman's Multicultural Magazine. I am thrilled at the opportunity to have my work published in a magazine that genuinely cares about helping their readers grow in business.

I  had the pleasure of speaking at The Institute for Women Entrepreneurs of Orange County last night with colleagues Kelly Weppler and Stephanie Pottick. The subject matter was how to Market, Brand and Protect your business. Is 2012 the year you will focus on strengthening your brand? Yes? Great! Read on.

I'll share below some golden nuggets from our presentation beginning with Kelly and her strategies on marketing a business.

1. Strategy Before Tactics - Without tactics, it is the slowest route to victory.
2. Identify your Ideal Client - Do they value you? Do they refer you? Are they profitable?
3. Define Your Core Difference - Identify and communicate this. Stand out from the competition.
4. What People Really Buy - Your unique service/product. Your unique process. Your unique guarantee. A solution to a problem.

As we moved on, the next segment was finding out how to build a memorable brand. This is where Design Action Studios, jumped in and helped our audience shape their brand image. Please feel free to watch the YouTube video below as I walk you through each point or read on for a quick run down.

1. Branding is What People Think About Your Company
2. It's about Storytelling - Take the opportunity to educate and interact with your audience. Build that emotional connection. This is a reflection on your brand's values and goals.
3. Have a Brand Game Plan - Put your vision into your brand. Your vision and purpose must be clear, because without it there is no association between what you say and what you do.
4. Colors Matter - What emotions do you want to evoke from your audience?
5. It's Important to Deliver Your Brand Story Online - You build brand awareness. You are able to use the two-way communication channel to connect and educate your audience.
6. Determine Which Social Channel is Best for Your Brand - LinkedIn? YouTube? Podcasts? Once you know your target audience, it will be easier to select the best social media network for you.