Developing your Personal Brand

Having a good professional reputation is an obvious key to success, but many people don’t take the time to nurture it. Or they don’t know how. I find it helpful to think about a reputation as a personal brand. Developing your own unique brand is considered not a luxury anymore, but an essential for future employability and success.

The basis which guides the development of a brand, also applies to individuals as well as to products and organizations. To get you started on your journey of ongoing individual brand development, contemplate these three concepts:

Dependability

A good brand is consistent. With a good brand, there are never any unpleasant surprises. You can count on a brand to help you quickly sort through an unlimited list of options to identify “a sure thing.” In the early days of IT, there was a sales adage: “Nobody ever got in trouble for purchasing IBM.” It alluded to the fact that IBM was not always the “best” or “most innovative” or “most anything” for that matter, but it was a dependable brand.

When applied to you, the question becomes: What can others – your customers, employer, and colleagues — depend on you for? What kind of “sure thing” are you exactly?

Whatever you decide distinguishes you in the marketplace of talent, make sure consistency is the bedrock of your brand.

Novelty

What makes you different? It’s not enough to be as dependable as everyone or anyone else. Brands always have substantive identifiable differences — perceptually or in the mind of the marketplace.

Being a generalist isn’t a bad thing, but being a generalist without any discernible specialized skills, abilities, or talents isn’t a great thing, either.

What makes you different (or better)? While weird may work for celebrities, it is seldom a desirable attribute for the world of commerce. For a difference to be valuable to the brand, it must be valuable to the customer.

Attitude

This is the most nebulous part of a brand. It is more than a combination of novelty and dependability, rather brand’s predisposition to the world. It is about the vibe a brand puts out. It’s about the demeanor and flavor and orientation.

Attitude is how the brand — “you, inc.” or “organization, inc.” — presents itself to the world. All brands have a boldness about them. Even if a brand is quiet, dependable, and safe, those attributes are expressed to the marketplace boldly and definitively.

What is your attitude? Have you considered it and identified it? Is the attitude of your brand something that draws others to it, or puts them off?

DNA(Dependability, Novelty, Attitude)

As a first step toward marketing yourself better, figure out the DNA of your brand. Once you’ve written it, identify the medium through which you intend to build it. One of the dependable channel is write a blog, or start a YouTube channel. So, what we’re saying here is that use your blog/channel to ‘sell yourself’ instead of selling a product or ad space. Here are a few things to ponder upon:

• Build trust – People want to know & be in some sort of trusting relationship with those that they buy products or services from. This is particularly true for a personal service like Marketing consulting. One way to make a deeper connection with potential clients is to show something of who you are. Be open about your agenda and about what you do and don’t know. Talk both about your successes and failures. This doesn’t mean blogging about your personal life, but giving a human touch to what you write/share with readers/viewers by injecting humor, a photo or two of yourself and showing your personality. If all you do is use a blog for ’spin’ you’ll present yourself as too good to be true.
• Use story – Readers/viewers respond well to story in blog/video. Stories of your own experience, stories of other clients (with permission as case studies) etc. Using relevant stories can help build credibility in your niche.
• Establish expertise – by earning it. Share what you know, by showing how you apply it by translating your knowledge into something constructive and useful. Be a thought leader in your niche, by breaking some new ground and show people that you’re capable of original thought.
• Be generous – some consultants use their blogs to talk very abstractly about their field of expertise but don’t give their readers much in the way of practical and applicable content. Try giving away quite a bit of information and be generous with what you share. If you help someone for free, in future If they need something they’ll quite often be willing to pay you for it. That also doesn’t mean, giving everything away for free but having few specific types of in depth and well researched content that you can charge for, while giving free reports, ideas and tips on regular basis.
• Establish relationships in your niche – while building relationships on your own blog with potential clients can be very effective – when another blogger recommends you it can be even more powerful. Get to know other bloggers/video creators in your niche and they’ll add to your credibility with their links and mention on their blogs.
• Be consistent – while there’s no problem with changing, growing and developing in your ideas over time you do need to present some consistent messages over time. If you’re constantly changing what you’re writing/talking about and focusing on, readers may find it hard to connect with you and build a ‘relationship’ over time. With every post, you’ve the opportunity to add to or take away from your reputation and brand.

Interested in learning more about the Google Assistant  and Smart Home? Subscribe to WAV newsletter via Email.