Week #18: Points of Interest - Museums and entertainment

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Culture or amusement – you decide

Museums are popular tourist attractions. They collect, maintain and exhibit items for people to see. There are many kinds of museums. Some museums show scientific or historic items. Others are art galleries, zoos or flower gardens. There are different museums for music and sports. There are even virtual museums that have exhibits created with computers.

When visiting museum remember that the exhibits are designed for looking. Touching is prohibited because of the time and money that is spent on them. There are a few museums that have interactive programs. In these museums touching is encouraged. Most cities have many more choices.

If you like cultural events, visit a theater to see a live show such as a play or a concert. If you prefer recreational activities, many cities have fantastic amusement parks, zoos, water parks and sporting events. Go to a major sporting event, such as a baseball or football game. They are very exciting.

Other fun choices include getting a car for a private tour or planning an excursion.

Whatever you choose, there are companies that will plan things to suit your tastes. This may involve activities like hot-air balloon rides, sky-diving or mountain climbing.

You can book your vacation around special events. Festivals, such as Mardi Gras, Oktoberfest or Carnival, offer great time for everyone.

If you like peace and quiet, book your vacation outside the peak season to avoid the crowds.

No matter what you like, there’s something for everyone.

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Week #17: Points of Interest - City Tours

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City Tours - The Best Way to See the City

Booking a city tour is a great way to save time and avoid stress. The tour will take you to and teach you about popular attractions. Additionally, it will allow you to be stress-free because someone chauffeurs you. The concierge at your hotel will give you specific information about a city tour. You should ask about the cost, the route, the starting time, the point of departure and a length. You should also ask about transportation and reservations.

Double-decker buses are commonly used for city tours. These offer passengers good views of the city. The bus driver may be your tour guide, or there may be a separate guide on the bus. The guide will explain what there is to know about each attraction. Keep in mind that you won’t stop at every attraction that the guide discusses, because there isn’t enough time.

Each city tour has a pre-arranged route. You will likely see cultural attractions, such as museums and art galleries, places of entertainment like parks or exhibits and other famous areas or landmarks. On the tour lunch may be included. On many tours you will be dropped off near restaurant and given some free time to eat, shop and do sightseeing on your own. Most tours will also make stops at local markets for you to buy local handicrafts and souvenirs.

Depending on the size of the city, there may be more than one company giving tours. Choose the tour that has a brochure you like. Also make sure that your guide speaks your language, or that there is a translation service. If you can’t understand your guide, you will have a bad day.

Dialogue 1

- Hey, look at these tour brochures!
- I want to see local culture like hand-made art.
- Me too! And famous landmarks.
- Tours Aras seems to focus on attractions like the zoo.
- No, thanks! Adventure Tours is a half day tour that goes to local attractions and shops at local handicrafts.
- Perfect!
- I agree.
- Let’s ask the concierge more about it.

Dialogue 2

- Hello. Does this hotel have a city tour for guests?
- Yes, it does!
- Good. When does it start and how long does it last?
- It starts at 8.30 a.m. and it’s a full-day tour.
- What is the tour route?
- Here’s our brochure.
- Wow! Your tour stops at all of the places that I wanted to see. How much is it?
- It’s 25 dollars and 75 cents for guests and 33 dollars for the general public.
- I’d like to go.
- Great!

Video

Links

• Cusco Travel Guide | The Ancient Inca Capital of Peru

Week #16: Review and retrospective

 

What went well

• I feel motivated with English because I'm learning things that really matter to me. It is a good approach to avoid boredom. Selecting topics related to my life helps a lot. 
• I feel more comfortable with English. This is important because before, I didn't have the confidence to speak English. 

What could be improved

• After several months of studying English, I think I can develop my own system for learning English and establish a clear routine for every day. 
• 
  

Video Review

Analizar idea

Suelo decir a mis alumnos que el esqueleto del inglés está compuesto sólo por cinco huesos principales, es decir, tiempos verbales:

1) Simple Present

2) Present Continuous

3) Past Tense

4) Past Continuous

5)Present Perfect

¿Y el futuro? Pues, no es tan usado. En vez del futuro podemos usar el "Present Continuous" y especialmente la construcción "Going to" (Voy a + verbo en infinitivo) para hablar de un futuro inmediato y planificado.

Estas cinco estructuras se deben rellenar con "carne". ¿Y cuál es la carne? Ni más ni menos que el vocabulario. Fundamental, porque sin vocabulario no se puede hablar. "Vocabulario" incluye también los verbos (imprescindibles). Dominar estas estructuras no es fácil. Por ello me irritan un poco esos cursos que prometen aprender inglés sin dificultad. Aprender un segundo idioma requiere mucha práctica, dedicación, estudio, esfuerzo, etc. No hay atajos, señores.

¿Cómo aprenderemos vocabulario? La respuesta para mi está clara: hablando. Si no tienes dinero para contratar un profesor particular, busca un intercambio.

Fuente: https://elblogdelingles.blogspot.com/2006/04/lesson-13-repaso-general.html

Week #5: Get a New Headshot – Your New Image Starts with an Image

One of the most overlooked (literally) tactics that will help build you a compelling personal brand is to get a new headshot.

As the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” so what thousand words (or handful) is your current LinkedIn profile picture or Twitter avatar saying about you?

According to some academic research, we can assimilate the information from an image 60,000 times quicker than the written word. That’s why cat pictures and food photos get so much traction on Facebook. And let’s not get started on the glories to be found on Pinterest and Instagram!

We love photos because they’re easier to understand and quicker to fuel an emotion. Your job as guardian of your personal brand is to make sure your photo/headshot/avatar solicits a positive reaction, as it’s often going to be the first thing people look at when viewing your social media profiles or reading your bio in a conference brochure.

Let’s Look at the Facts

Images are crucial to the way we view the world. But when we drill further, we find that LinkedIn claims that social profiles on the site that have a headshot photo get 14 times more views. That’s because when people are searching for you—or someone with your skillset—they are unlikely to click on a profile if it doesn’t have a photo associated with it.

Having no photo obviously says something about you - Maybe you're a bit lazy, you haven’t put much thought into your profile, you’re not really interested in creating the right impression, or you're technically inept and can’t figure out how to upload it.

That’s fine! (Well… it’s not, really…)

On the other hand, what does having the WRONG kind of photo say about you?

Here are some of the photos I’ve seen on LinkedIn  - using these as examples as LinkedIn is more for professional use - I'm not calling out individuals, but this is what I've seen photos of people doing recently: 

• Playing golf.
• Watching sparklers burning on a cheesecake in a restaurant.
• Hanging off the side of a mountain upside-down.
• Cuddling a dog.
• Cycling in full helmet and sunglasses beaming by the Golden Gate Bridge.
• Eating a donut.
• Drinking beer or cocktails.
• Smoking.
• Showing off a tattoo!

Tips for Likeable Profile Images Backed by Research

In a fantastic study carried out by PhotoFeeler, where 800 profile photos were rated based on 60,000 ratings of “perceived competence, likability and influence,” these were the recommendations:

• Don’t wear sunglasses or block your eyes. Wearing a pair of shades makes you less likable, whereas having hair in your face will bring down your competence and influence levels.
• Squinting (or ‘squinching’ as they call it in their study results) apparently makes us seem more confident and comfortable. Wide eyes make us look terrified.
• SMILE!!! Looking happy and approachable was “by far the most impactful” characteristic.
• What you are wearing is a major factor too. Formal (suit and tie or business casual but not jeans and t-shirt) makes us look more competent and influential.
• Don’t get too artistic. Cropped to head and shoulders (not zoomed in) and simply edited (not Instagram-filtered) are the best approaches.

Invest in Your Personal Brand’s Storefront

Many professionals need a new headshot. Something clean, professional and shows you care about the impression you make about yourself and the company you work for.

So let’s scrap the cropped vacation photos, in a bar, at a wedding, at a black tie event, with your friend/wife/boyfriend’s hand on your shoulder and invest in some nice photos of you that do your personal brand justice.

Getting professional headshots doesn’t cost the earth. I got my shots done through a charity here in Seattle – Youth In Focus – and they cost $250.

What’s $250 if it means you close more sales, get a new job with a 20% pay raise, get picked up by a national news show as an expert in your field, or simply look more trustworthy to someone you’re about to meet in a professional capacity?

Your profile picture is your storefront. Do you want people to come in and find out more about you? Or are you happy for people to simply walk past without getting a real understanding of what you have to offer?

Week #4: Analyze Your Competitors as You Build Your Personal Brand

 One of the biggest gaps I see companies unable to fill is the real-time understanding of what their competition is up to. During my years in digital marketing, I’ll be the first to admit to being so down in the weeds executing on the tactical plan that I didn’t have the wherewithal to notice what the competitive set was working on.

Having learned that lesson, one of the first things we do now is conduct a competitive analysis to see who’s out there, what they are doing well and where the opportunities are to differentiate and stand out.

Competitive analysis is as important for you and your personal brand as it is for the company you work for.

Understanding what other people in your niche are doing, saying and how successful they are is crucial to personal branding success. Here are a few things you can do to figure out who they are, their impact, and what you can do to wrestle attention away from them onto you.

Use LinkedIn to Research Your Industry

LinkedIn should be your first port of call. We use it to look for people with similar roles at similar businesses and see how well they are utilizing the platform. How well a person is using LinkedIn tells you a lot about how serious they are about their personal brand.

• Are they publishing content?
• How active are they on the platform, liking and commenting on other people’s posts and updates?
• How robust is their profile? Have they filled out all the experience fields?
• Do they have a summary and, if so, how does it position them within your industry?

LinkedIn is a goldmine of competitive information to help understand who has what experience in your niche and how well they are engaging with their connections.

Your LinkedIn presence should be a living profile that you update on a weekly (even daily) basis because, in our experience, the number one blocker to anyone having a tip-top personal brand is time.

Make time to understand your competition on LinkedIn and make time to be engaging on a regular basis.

Mine Twitter for Like Minds

Use tools like Followerwonk, an influencer discovery tool like Traackr, or a fantastic content sharing analysis tool like BuzzSumo to figure out who’s influential in your field and study their footprint.

• How many followers do they have?
• What are they sharing?
• What’s their social ratio (how much of what they share is personal versus professional)?
• What’s their reach?
• What content seems to resonate best with their followers?

Are they following as many people as are following them (always a good measure of authenticity in our opinion)?

Twitter is a great way to understand how others in your industry exude their personal brand in real-time. You can pick up tips from power users on what content you should be sharing and, more importantly, how agile and engaging you can be if you want to compete.

Stay Current on Where They Speak

An indicator of influence in any industry is being invited to speak at conferences and events. Scour the speaker pages of conferences to see who’s speaking on subjects close to your area of expertise. Do a search for their name and the conference on Google or Bing to see if any journalist or blogger covered their session and read what was written about them.

Try and understand from their speech topics and extracts what their “angle” is and think of a way to differentiate or complement what they’re focusing on if it’s similar to your expertise. You don’t want to give a conference organizer any reason to reject your speaking pitch, so make sure you know the lay of the land before you pitch a topic.

Remember: Quality Trumps Quantity, Always

While the beauty of digital and social media is the huge swathes of data it gives us, it’s also important to measure quality and not get stuck on quantity. Combining a gut feel for the quality of the digital footprint your competitor may have with the amount of followers, engagement, content produced or shared, is far better than focusing on numbers alone.

Your number one goal by making your personal brand discoverable, shareable and memorable is to instill trust in anyone you engage with or are discovered by.

To quote Stephen R. Covey, author of the fantastic book The Speed of Trust:

“Trust is equal parts character and competence… You can look at any leadership failure, and it’s always a failure of one or the other.”

Being competent enough to know what your competition is doing with their personal brand will help you set your character apart from theirs and limit the possibility of failure.

Week #3: Embrace and Expound Your Experience

I have a story.

You have a story.

We ALL have a story.

Our personal brand is all about what kind of experience people have with us online and in-person, and that experience has a past. We need to embrace it.

During a personal branding workshop I delivered recently, we talked about our professional histories. What was our educational experience? How did we get into our niche? What were our professional passions? What did we find hard? Where did we want to be in three years’ time from a career perspective?

In just five minutes talking about themselves (not an easy or comfortable thing for many to do), the participants had started to cultivate a story about their career that had structure — a beginning, middle and desired end.

When it comes to articulating your experience, it’s important to set out your professional skills in a compelling way. Many people have an issue with writing down what, of all the experience they have in their career to date, is actually interesting or matters.

It all matters.

While embracing your experience and crafting a story you can succinctly articulate at a networking event or job interview is a goal, getting that information down in writing on your website or social platforms like LinkedIn is critical, as well.

Share Your Unique Value Propositions

When you're writing down your experience under present and past roles within your profile, include as much detail as you can. This means not just your job role, but expounding that experience with responsibilities, successes, awards, client names (if not confidential), and what value you brought to the role.

Detail, detail, detail.

It’s crucial to think about how people might be searching for you or your expertise. You don’t have to write an essay, but share enough for people reading your profile or looking for your skillset to have a much more robust understanding of your past than a thin, buzzword-riddled, two-sentence rush job.

As I was talking through each of the fields on LinkedIn during the workshop, I had to stop people furiously editing their profile in real-time. I suggested they take time away from the workplace and jot experience down in a Word document before committing it to be published.

These things take time!

Hiding your light underneath a bushel does you no favors. Share the highlights (and lowlights) from your past professional experience. Your target audience is looking for you, but you're not providing them sufficient detail to figure out if you're the right person to answer their need.

If you're a procrastinator like me, take one job role at a time and write everything down you can remember. Then return to edit it down to salient points that help tell your story. This isn’t something you can do in an hour or even a day.

You have a great story.

Start telling it more completely!

Week #2: Establish Your Professional Purpose

Before you can tackle the creation of your perfect personal brand, it’s important to understand who you are, what makes you tick and why you do what it is you do.

Simon Sinek’s How Great Leaders Inspire Action TED Talk has been seen over 22 million times in large part because of his simple mantra: start with why. It’s a powerful but often overlooked first step towards success in any area of life.

Nearly all of us have to work to pay the bills, pay off university loans, save into our pension funds, shrink the mortgage, go out on occasion, take vacations and hopefully have a bit of fun while we’re not working.

If we know we have to work what might be a 40, 60, or even 80-hour week, there has to be more to what we’re doing than just earning money. What helps us get out of bed in the morning? What helps us be better at what we do? What is it that separates a job from a career? What helps us live, strive and survive?

We need more than a paycheck.

We need a professional purpose.

Without purpose, there can be no planning, and we limit the possibility of channeling our future in the direction we desire.

How I Discovered My Professional Purpose

My story started back in school, when I realized I had a talent for acting, singing and writing. School plays, music festivals and talent shows all saw me pouring my heart and soul into something I knew I was good at. Drama at university was an obvious next step; the bright lights of London theatre, TV, and film beckoned after three years of honing my craft.

I then spent six years selling teddy bears at Harrods and failing miserably at getting real acting jobs. I decided, at the age of 29, that I needed a new career. The Internet was pretty new, so I did a course in HTML and managed to conjure up an editor role at the search engine directory LookSmart. My job involved writing 55 website reviews every day – short, punchy descriptions of what users might find if they clicked on a link. Soon after, I was promoted to traffic manager helping our European sales people get display ads live across the LookSmart network.

LookSmart folded in 2003 and I spent some time at a digital agency. Soon, Microsoft came calling and I spent the next (and best) seven years of my career evolving into an evangelism role. This meant more writing, speaking, video creation and other ways to communicate to an audience looking to be informed and inspired.

It was during those years I discovered what truly made me tick. My desire to act and write had little to do with being famous or earning loads and loads of money. What I really enjoyed – what got me out of bed – was the love of communicating, inspiring and educating people and businesses to do their very best work.

I wanted people to have a great experience.

I wanted to help people.

I wanted others to be successful.

And so my professional purpose was born:

To inspire and educate people and their businesses to be successful by applying digital marketing strategies that focus on Social Media, Digital PR and Personal Branding.

That’s it.

Past Signposts Define Your Future Path

During my time helping executives and professionals with their personal brands, I’ve talked to some who aspired to be architects, but now build successful businesses. I’ve met some who felt working with children was their calling, but they’ve turned out to be exceptional people managers or HR directors. And there are others who, while they were young, wanted to be engineers because they loved tinkering with things, but have now found successful careers as journalists, uncovering problems and making sense of the world for us through their detective work.

In order to establish your professional purpose, you need to look back at your early education and career and trace back the steps to where you are now.

Then consider these questions:

• Why is it you do what you do?
• Why do you get out of bed in the morning?
• What thrills you about your current job role or career?
• Why don’t you do something else?
• What does a great day look like?
• What is it you don’t enjoy about your job and why?

Answer those questions (and a few more of your own that you may uncover during the process) and you’ll be well on your way to identifying and articulating your professional purpose.

Knowing why you do what you do and being able to succinctly articulate it is as crucial for your internal wellbeing and growth, as it is an external badge.

Start with why, and when you figure it out, I promise you, the answer will be far more satisfying than any paycheck.

Week #1: Introduction

In July 2012, I was laid off from my role as Digital Marketing Evangelist at Microsoft. As the company streamlined its operations, a group of us learned our roles were eliminated. Microsoft was very good about it, of course, and offered to help us find other jobs within the company and externally. I felt positive about landing somewhere fresh and new after seven years in that position. 

When I got back to my desk to contemplate my future, I wrote a blog post about the news to let people know that I was fine and was open to job offers. 

The post went viral. 

Over the next couple of days, major news publications mentioned my story and linked to the post.  Ten thousand people viewed it and the phone began ringing off the hook with companies wanting to interview me.

What struck me most were the comments of support from people I had never even met. It turns out I’d built quite a brand in the digital marketing industry in the course of those seven years.  While I knew many of those who followed me and would connect and engage with them online and at conferences, there were many, many more people who had come in contact with my writing, videos and presentations but stayed silent until that point. 

That’s when the penny dropped and my company, Delightful Communications was born out of my commitment to helping others consciously build their personal brand. Three years later, we’ve helped hundreds of people across the world make their wisdom and expertise discoverable, sharable and memorable. This eBook is a compilation of blog posts I have written over the last year and is intended to help thousands more gain an understanding of the fundamentals of personal branding, with actionable tips to get the professional ball rolling in the direction you want it to go!

In taking action on the ten steps in this eBook, you’ll begin establishing a personal brand that’s approachable, endearing AND enduring. The next seven thousand words have been designed to offer an introduction to the art of personal branding, rather than overwhelming with massive amounts of actions and to-do lists. These tips are meant to inspire, with simple activities to help you see immediate results as you embark on your quest to stand out in your industry. 

If you have any questions at all, feel free to reach out to me via my website, and connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter. And please consider leaving a review on Amazon/Kindle so we understand the impact this book has had on your professional life and career.

Week 15 Restaurants - Ordering

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Choices, Choices…

Restaurant menus offer a lot of choices. Ordering can be hard. When you get to a restaurant, you’ll be greeted by the host or hostess. In fine dining establishments this individual is called the maitre d'. He or she will confirm your reservation and ask about your party size.

Next, you’ll be asked to choose a table in a smoking or non-smoking section. Finally, you’ll be taken to your table. You’ll be given water first. Then you’ll be introduced to your server. Your server will give you the menu, explain any specials and ask about beverages. Depending on the level of elegance the menus can range from notes on a chalkboard to decorative beautifully designed items.

When your beverages arrive, your server will take your order. You’ll be asked if you want an appetizer. These commonly arrive at your table before your meal. Secondly, you’ll choose an entrée. Some restaurants offer other choices for the meal: rice, baked potatoes, salad, vegetables and dessert. If you order a meat entrée of beef, you’ll be asked how you’d like it cut. Your choices are rare, medium-rare, medium, medium-well and well-done. Restaurant chefs tend to resist preparing a steak well-done, so you may be urged to choose something else. Explain problems to the server immediately. Most upscale restaurants believe the customer is always right.

When you’re finished, your server will give you the bill. It’s customary in many countries to leave a gratuity. This can range from 15 to 20 percent of the bill to not tipping at all. Remember: this custom varies between countries.

Dialogue 1

- Welcome to Uptown Grove. My name is Joseph and I’ll be your host. Do you have a reservation?
- Yes. For Joan Andrews.
- Would you like smoking or non-smoking?
- Non-smoking, please.
- How about a window table?
- Actually, we would rather sit in the corner.
- That is reserved. How about here?
- Great!
- Sarah, your server, will be here soon.

Dialogue 2

- Hello! I’ll be your server. What beverages would you like?
- I’ll have a beer and my wife will have orange juice.
- Great! I’ll be back soon… OK, here’re your drinks. Would you like any appetizers?
- Sure. We’d like to have the stuffed mushrooms and the Greek Salad.
- And your entrée?
- I’d like the Pasta primavera, and my husband will have the steak.
- How would you like the beef prepared?
- Medium-rare.
- Excellent! Your appetizers should be out shortly.

Video

Notes: https://notepad.pw/KQZoyKtQLC8qmIXKU2wz

Links:

• Ordering at a Restaurant