There is no greater gift your personal brand can receive than a recommendation, referral, or testimonial. I’m currently reading a great book by John Jantsch called The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself. Although clearly a business book and not a personal branding book, so many of its principles can be applied to both. So how do you acquire said coveted referrals?
Talk with, not at
Engage and listen, don’t just push out information. It’s really that simple. Social networking sites in particular allow you to do this relatively easily. Before you know it, referrals will be coming your way.
Educate your audience
As Jantsch says, “Referrals are helpful only if they’re given to the right people.” So, educate your audience about whom they should be spreading the good word to about you.
Don’t be boring
When you build your personal brand, make sure it accurately represents you – but keep in mind that nobody talks about boring brands. Have a great story to tell, and make sure others know that story. Create “buzz” around your brand by being quoted frequently in the traditional media and by blogs.
In what other ways do you actively try to obtain recommendations, referrals, and testimonials?
Author:
Heather R. Huhman is a career expert and founder & president of Come Recommended, a career and workplace education and consulting firm specializing in young professionals. She is also the author of#ENTRYLEVELtweet: Taking Your Career from Classroom to Cubicle (2010), national entry-level careers columnist for Examiner.com and blogs about career advice at HeatherHuhman.com.
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Great article and very informative. I just started blogging and found these 3 tips extremely helpful.
[...] 3 Ways to Acquire Referrals for Your Personal Brand (personalbrandingblog.com) [...]
Heather: As an executive talent agent and HR professional, you and I perceived this book’s content from a similar perspective.. If, indeed, each of us is a “corporate you, ” then we are like companies in that we have to cultivate support /referrals that will drive additional business.
In fact, taking this a step further, I started to think about the role that recommendations and referrals play in careers and making it possible to learn about potential job leads, project initiatives,, etc necessary for career progress. Networking is the best job search method and we are dependent on our connections to refer us to lead/ideas and their creators and introduce us to individuals in order to gain access to new challenges.
Debra,
I could probably write a wealth of posts on what I learned from this book (having now finished it). And I couldn’t agree with you more. Perhaps we should team up and do a webinar!
Heather
By making your brand worthy in your market area in terms of quality,productivity and cost, I think referrals will pour in.
We love John’s book. We’re also big believers in educating your audience. Earning referrals is simultaneously one of the most validating things for a business person as well as one of the most difficult things to do successfully. Good post.