Tip Number 1

Amplify Your Voice.

Have you ever sent out a press release on Business Wire or another wire service to have your brand rise above the crowd?  I sent out four last year.  This isn’t about me – it’s about Google.  My electronically optimized press releases have populated Google for years.  I market myself like I market my clients. Have you invested your own money in your personal marketing recently?

Tip Number 2.

Your URL is Your Phone Number

Register your own name on GoDaddy or other domain services. When I speak to students I tell them that their personal domain will be their lifelong phone number.  Twenty percent of people no longer have a land line.  Everybody should have their own website to help their SEO.

Tip Number 3.

Your Business Card Probably Sucks

Many people who are in transition have cards that they have obtained for free from the internet which isn’t a good idea.  I have blogged on this before.  Ordering free cards from the Internet isn’t going to make you distinctive.

Tip Number 4.

Mentor Up and Down & Side to Side

I am blessed that am surrounded by youth.  My blog was proofread by Mandeep Banga who is student studying PR at Cal State Fullerton. Hopefully I mentor her.  But I also mentor people in my peer group and older who aren’t well versed in some skills and vice versa.  My social media skills came from being taught by some of the social media leaders of The OC.  Mentoring isn’t done from top to bottom anymore.  It’s done from up and down and side to side.

Tip Number 5

Blog A Lot

Blogging has been around for a long time and is not new news.  I went to a Harvard USC conference in the OC last May and I heard Tony Hsieh from Zappos speak.  He said “don’t follow the money, follow your voice and the money will come.” I thought that was kind of an easy thing for a person to say who sold his first company for a couple hundred million but, it was a different perspective.  More like a contemporary version of Robert Frost’s Poem that I heard in my youth.  “There are two roads in the yellow wood and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Since that time, I have tried to blog once a week and my blog posts have been near the top when people search “Hank Blank.” It has also given me lots of content to re purpose on social media.  Most of all, it has connected me to new people and their stories as well as, develop new relationships.

Tip Number 6

Connect the Dots

My first CD was titled “Hank Blank’s Guide to Connecting the Dots.”  You can be at an event and if you have a lot of connection points, you can spend the evening connecting other people who have similar touch points.  I have often dragged people across the room that are Armenians in Orange County or French Canadians and made these connections.  This is a total play-it-forward strategy.  Connect everybody you have a dedicated meeting with, to at least two people.

Tip Number 7

The Correct Networking Strategy Isn’t About Depth, or Breadth. It’s About Diversity.

People often ask me what the right strategy in networking is.  Is it a lot of contacts or a few that you connect with really well?  Your networking has a life-cycle just like any brand.  If you are a new networking brand you need lots of connections.  If you are a mature networking brand you should harvest your network.  What you should have in any stage of your networking life cycle is a diverse network.  It’s not the thousands of contacts in my phone that reward me, it’s the fact that they range from age 20 to 91 and they are a virtual mosaic of diversity.

You can download Hank’s Networking CD’s by visiting his site at https://www.hankblank.com

You can connect with Hank on Linkedin

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter @hankblank

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/hankblank

Watch his video on YouTube on How to Rise Above the Crowd.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkO7efleWX4