Building a personal brand is much like building the brand of any company. One must use a strategic process to think through who the person really is and what value they deliver, as well as in clear delineation of the target market of the personal attributes, talent, and embodiment. That sounds very corporate and complex, as if it would require a boardroom full of strategists to initiate. The truth is, building your own personal brand is not difficult. It just requires some clear thought, definition of your wants and needs, and reflection upon past experience.Why Build a Personal Brand?
Personal branding is key to heightened success for any manager or executive, and is extremely helpful in the career growth of others at any level of occupation. While executives and leaders are expected to have a clear brand, for lower-level workers and general applicants for jobs a personal brand will provide a major work advantage. Knowing and being able to clearly communicate who you are and what you want from a given situation as well as what you bring to the table impresses upon any audience a clearer understanding and general memory of you. Otherwise, you are simply one person being compared point-by-point and talent-by-talent to one or many other people. Through a personal brand you step ahead of pointed comparison and memorably stand out from the crowd. It also helps you define your own goals, providing the momentum to more efficiently and better reach them.
Development of Your Brand
To initiate your brand definition, approach the matter as any marketing department would approach development of a brand strategy for a product or service. After all, you are your most important product, correct? Invest in that product by creating the sales tools to make it – you – shine.
First, isolate yourself from distraction with your resume or portfolio of experience and any biographical notes or publications you have about yourself. These documents will help you through any writer’s block or stumblings associated with trying to define yourself through your brand. Once settled, go through the following steps, writing a clear response to each:
1. Craft your own vision and mission statement. If necessary, look up a corporate mission statement as a reference to what should be included and how these statements tend to flow. Specify what you want and how you want to provide it. For a resume or executive personal plan, this clarifies the type of job you want and what you bring to the table.
2. Conduct a SWOT Analysis about yourself. In marketing terms, “SWOT” means “Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.” Strengths are aspects of your experience, talents, capabilities and attributes that are beneficial as they apply to your vision and mission statement. Be honest about your weaknesses and even ask others – such as employers, coworkers, family, and friends – to be objective about your weakness. Opportunities are scenarios or specific situations in which you can grow and reach goals associated with your vision and mission, such as job opportunities. Threats are your competition, situations which may prohibit your growth or achievement of goals, and other such scenarios. List your attributes under each of the four SWOT headings for later reference.
3. Define and clarify your personal brand – who you are and what you want to achieve – based upon the two steps, above. Craft a statement of just one or a few sentences that completely encapsulates your personality, experience, talents, attributes, goals and objectives and contains the key aspects of both your vision/mission statement and your SWOT. You may start with a full paragraph and gradually fine tune it to one or two sentences. This may require working on your brand statement, then walking away from it for awhile to return and rework later with a fresh perspective. If you need a point of reference on how to succinctly pull together your brand from your defined points, look up consumer brand products by name on the Internet and check out their brand definitions. Consider yourself as the product and create what you would tell a buyer interested in “purchasing” you.
Once you have your personal brand defined, written, and fine-tuned, get to know that statement by heart. By learning your brand definition, you will have a quick “elevator pitch” to provide to anyone who asks, “Who are you and what do you want?” This personal brand clarity in your own mind will also become ingrained to the point that achieving some of the specified goals will become almost second nature. You will better know yourself, have a clearer life path, and represent yourself more confidently and memorably amongst a world of competitors.
