The kids are out of school, ready to spend their summer taking a break, resting up and getting ready to start their school year refreshed in the fall. So you should do the same thing and set a goal each month during the summer so that you can return to work or your small business refreshed.
Here’s a simple Summer Branding Challenge to help you do it.
1. Spend July taking stock of where you are and figuring what you want your brand to mean going forward. We’re officially at the halfway point of the year. What have you done since January? Have you made good on your New Year’s resolutions? Have you been networking in the way that you set out to in January? Are you using Twitter faithfully or did you fall off the social media bandwagon? How’s your LinkedIn profile doing? Did you have some major projects that need to be added to your profile?
Dust that list of New Year’s resolutions off and give yourself a progress report. Your goals should be fluid and allow for circumstance, the ebb and flow of your life, unexpected changes in your schedule, etc. Figure out where you are with your 2013 goals. Some goals may not be as important to you anymore and may need to be replaced or removed from your list all together. If you’ve achieved some of those goals, reward yourself for your progress and write down how you felt about that achievement. Don’t beat yourself for getting off track though, just create a plan for how to attack the goals that you haven’t achieved yet.
2. Spend August setting yourself up to get where you want to be. Once you’ve prioritized your goal list, get going! Go ahead and update the Linkedin profile with new case studies describing projects where you excelled. Assess your other use of social media and if your New Year’s goals were too ambitious, scale back but get moving. Identify an extra project at work where you can do some extra work and increase your visibility. Send out lunch or coffee invitations to three people you’ve been wanting to meet, work with or do business with. Identify a few conferences and networking events you want to attend in the fall, get registered and put those on your calendar. Or better yet, send out your speaker sheet so you can speak at those events to raise your profile.
3. Over Labor Day Weekend, go inward with a good book on careers, social media, leadership or branding. A few of my all-time favorites for getting refocused and re-energized are:
1. Keith Ferrazzi – Never Eat Alone
2. Danielle LaPorte – The FireStarter Sessions
3. Reid Hoffman – The Startup of You
4. John C. Maxwell – The Five Levels of Leadership
5. Grant Cardone – The 10X Rue
6. Stephen Covey – 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
After Labor Day, the kids go to school, you go to work with a refreshed and refocused brand!
Ready to take it to the next level this summer? Join me for ACTIVATE YOUR BRAND – a four week online summer course designed to recharge your brand. Details can be found on my new website.