Decoding Tomorrow:
Futurism and Foresights Today

Are you relevant?

This is an audacious and perhaps obnoxious question. I am trying to be diplomatically controversial in asking it. 

Relevance is measured in new ways today. Whether you like it or not. Of course we'd hope that we're relevant and that we matter to our loved ones, but what about the wider world?

That relevance is largely determined by you and your ability to communicate your personal brand and your thought leadership.

If you work inside an organisation, your best way to achieve a pay rise, a jump up the ladder, or even an exclusive invite to the inner circle depends on your ability to pitch your relevance. 

If you run your own company, digital society demands that you stay up-to-date, that you market your products/services in a relevant way, and that you establish your thought leadership. 

This is not necessarily about being a self-obsessed extrovert. It's more about being an interested listener and flexibly communicating your solutions in a way that corresponds to your audience's concerns, aspirations and desires. 

Answer the following questions:

• What fears that my audiences have do I help them overcome?

• What frustrations that they hate do I help them alleviate?

• What secret desires that they harbour do I help them fulfil?

By doing this exercise you should collect a bunch of problems, important and emotional ones, that you are the go-to solution for. It is probably the case that friends, colleagues, and loved ones might even seek you out for assistance or insights on these.

While you may take these skills and attributes for granted, others do not. 

Your relevance is made up of your ability to communicate these attributes and skills in such a way that people understand the value and impact of them on themselves, their organisations, lives, and the wider community. 

This is personal leadership branding at its core. 

Today it is not only important to know who you are, what your area of expertise is, and to communicate how that is relevant to your audience, but also increasingly to get your ideas out in the digital world, to have them re-tweeted, shared and 'Liked' by people with networks. 

The more well-connected and digitally endorsed you are, the more important you are deemed to be as a brand, not just by future clients and employers, but also in your current roles.

It's therefore important to take stock of your personal leadership branding and see what your digital foot print is at the moment. How are you known in the following networks for example?

Rate yourself on a scale of 1/5 and up the numbers.

Are you happy with your outcome?

Then, do a personal leadership brand health check and check the actual numbers!

Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube etc all have sophisticated analytics tools that will show you how often people actually search and find you on the web, when your ideas are powerful enough to be shared, and of course when you are being discussed in public. 

If you'd like to know more about personal leadership branding and how you can use it, monitor it and boost your brand into the future.

Kudos and respect goes out to the guys at www.hubspot.com and www.thoughtleaders.com for inspiring some of these ideas.