My friend, Dan Schawbel, has published his first book. And I say first because my guess is that there will be many more because he’s only 26 years old! Somehow he has found the insight that has taken me 40 years to find which included raising a family.
Dan truly walks the talk of personal branding. He crossed my path in July of 2007 by commenting on my post on branding on DigiScrapInfo.com. This blog didn’t exist back then. He added some ideas & we started a conversation. Two years later finds us having mutually mentored each other & celebrating each other’s successes.
Me 2.0 appears to be intended for those just beginning their careers. But it really is a roadmap for anyone interested in building an online brand no matter their age. I did it at the age of 40. This book is also for all of you that are interested in working in social media & community jobs.
Reading the book made me smile because there are so many parallels to community building. Dan, have you been reading my blog? He has a section on identifying & working with evangelists too! :) He provides four steps to establishing your brand and building community around it. It’s the same concepts that are used to build community around any brand. Dan does a great job of covering all the various components including social networking and the reasons to be at certain ones.
Dan relates many of his own experiences, including the one related to identity theft. As a result that section provides many good ideas on how to prevent identity theft & what to do if it happens to you. I also really liked the section on setting up a blog along with a check list of necessary items. Finally, his ideas on a press kit are very good & I need to review my presence on this blog and add the things I realized that I’m missing.
There are a number of very helpful charts in Me 2.0. I’m sharing this one because it underlines how interwoven his book is with the concepts of community. Read thru this & ask yourself if this reminds you of traits of a community manager? I had never considered myself entrepreneurial, but others have commented on it.
According to this chart I am. Along with this chart Dan lists the traits associated with it:
Someone that has:
- vision
- creativity – unconventional marketing
- strategic
- tenacity
- passion
- problem solving skills
- highly competitive
See what I mean? It has community manager written all over it!
Thank you Dan for providing us with a book that should be in every public library. It will serve as a great resource for those pondering what direction they should take. The book drives home the point that I continually make here that everyone has the ability to create their own way & be successful. It’s just a matter of establishing short term & long term goals & striving to accomplish them in a consistent way.
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