There is no amount of money, level of achievement, award or victory is worth giving up on my commitments and visions. – Kenny Harper

Goals for Key Theory.

• To help honest, good natured people succeed.
  I aim to do business with companies and organizations that have great values and provide a good service. I will leverage my success to help inspire, motivate and educate people looking to grow.
• To provide the best service for my clients.
  It will be my goal work towards developing the best service for my clients that is driven by passion, care and integrity.
• To provide inspiration and growth to those who seek it.
  I share my knowledge, insights and advice at as many opportunities that I can.

How I plan to do this.

• I will continue to educate myself in every opportunity.
  Since I’ve made this commitment I’ve made efforts to continue to learn through various means via networking, reading, doing and being taught.
• I will develop a team with the same core values passions and efforts.
  Although it may take time, trial and error, it will be my goals to create a team that has the same drive, goals and visions as I do.
• I will live above the line.
  By taking ownership, responsibility and accountability for my actions I will achieve my vision to create a stellar marketing company and help others to grow.

I look forward to the journey ahead and am thankful for every opportunity that has presented itself, everybody who has supported and believed in me and every blessing that I have in my life.

Thank you for your support.

To use tags effectively, try these steps.

1. Make sure you’ve defined your categories, limiting the number of main categories is a good idea.
   For an example, if you were writing about recipes you may use “Lunches”, “Dinners” and “Desserts” as some possible categories.
2. Go through your categories and think of minor sub-categories or topics that may relate and note for using as a possible tag.
   So to continue with our recipe example. Under the “Lunches” category you may come up with “Sandwiches”, “Beef”, “Chicken”, “Soups”. These words could be used under both “Lunches” and “Dinners” so they would serve great as tags.
3. Aim to define your tags proactively, ahead of time, to avoid diluting their impact or having redundancies.
   If you aren’t careful and create a whole bunch of new tags with every article, the following could happen:
   A. You will have too many tags and it will be hard to manage.
   B. You will have a lot tags that don’t have any related articles and therefore serve little purpose.
   C. You could have redundant or similar tags such as “Soup”, “Soups” and “soup recipes” each serve the same purpose but would end up creating three lists of posts rather than one concise list.
   
4. Tag articles that are related in nature to your tags.
   That’s really the whole point to tags; to help further categorize your posts. So if you had a great “Chicken Noodle” recipe, you might tag it with “Chicken”, “Soups”, “Quick Recipes” etc…

A Common Misconception With Tags:

A lot of people think that tags are like keywords and one should put all the keywords that you want to rank well in search engines as your tags. This is not quite the case. You should use tags to categorize your articles, however, while creating the tags you should keep in mind your keywords and use them appropriately, and that can help optimize your site for search engines.

If you need help planning or growing your blog efforts, contact me I can help you plan out your goals and work with you to incorporate the techniques and strategies to help make your blog successful.

How to not Use Tags:

I purposely tagged this article with every tag that I had in my blog when I created this post. Please don’t do this. This provides little help to users who want to read related content. Then why did I do it? Because I did want to have this article pop up when a user clicked on any of my blog’s tags. However this is an example of what not to do… unless there is a purpose.

Marylin Feldstein, of Career Choices Unlimited, put on the presentation which was a refresher course on branding and focusing on one’s self image. I can personally relate to the topic, in fact it’s exactly what I am currently working on in 2010. In the past several years I focused so much on my clients and their projects that I ended up putting my own personal brand on the back-burner. That’s one reason my Key Theory website has been in a continuing stage of evolution. I have developed award-winning projects for others, but my own site does not reflect that… doh! But it’s never too late to start re-defining or re-branding yourself.

Your brand = your image + how people perceive you +  your essence

If you want Marylin’s branding tips you’ll have to track her down. Below are my thoughts.

My top 10 tips for defining your personal brand.

1. Determine what makes you special. If you possess unique skills or characteristics use them to your advantage.
2. Be yourself. If you’re a little edgy, that’s OK; there is a market for just about all kinds of personalities.
3. Network. Social media is great but nothing is like meeting someone in person. If you build a rapport, it will get you noticed.
4. Research. See what others have done that has worked, and see what others have done that has failed.
5. Develop goals towards re-branding yourself, set objectives and try to schedule a time-line. There is no rush, but you’ve got to keep on it.
6. Get feedback from multiple sources. Typically friends aren’t always the best to ask as they aren’t always able to be objective.
7. Get professional help. If you aren’t a marketing pro, perhaps you should consult with one before creating an identity, logo or branded messaging.
8. Don’t be overly critical. Although your brand is extremely important, you don’t need to focus on achieving perfection as it doesn’t really exist.
9. Know your audience and who you’re trying to sell yourself to; you can’t please all parties. If you have fans, you’ll also have haters.
10. Continue to grow & re-evaluate where you are and push towards refining yourself to where you want to go. Defining your own brand can take some time and isn’t usually hit right the very first time. Ah hem….

While you’re here, if you’re not already a Fan of Key Theory on Facebook, take a quick sec and check us out. http://facebook.com/keytheory

Natalie Halpern & Tom Brenneman at the JAMA meeting.

How to Create and Manage Your Personal Brand

• Jacksonville, Florida
• Thursday, January 28, 2010
• 7:30am – 9:00am
• Fairfield Inn & Suites, Jacksonville Butler Blvd
• Breakfast via Panera Bread
• Click here to register (http://jamajan2010.eventbrite.com)

The Jacksonville Chapter of the American Marketing Association focuses on bringing value to our members and visitors through creative new approaches to traditional programs and meetings.

Eat, Learn and Network

Marilyn Feldstein, certified professional coach, CEO of Career Choices, Unlimited will be sharing tips on how to create and manage your personal brand.

Even if you are aware of branding sometimes it’s good to get a recharge and networking with others interested in doing the same can help your efforts.