Personal Brand

Society Business and Career
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This thread spawned from a discussion in my other thread regarding new
year career aspirations where X2 and I shared one of our new year
objectives… i.e. reviewing and working on our personal brand…

Here are excerpts from that thread:

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Re: Personal Brand

I went through an exercise in personal brand crafting last year while I was in the process of preparing my professional portfolio to apply for new jobs.

I brainstormed with several colleagues, reviewed and revamped my curriculum vitae several times, sought reviews and comments on my entire portfolio from my seniors, obtained work related and personal testimonials from past clients and colleagues etc. Additionally, to guide me through the process, I consulted several useful sources of information on the subject.

The end product was a tagline of sorts… along with a vision statement and a statement of work ethic. This, along with information about my past projects, consulting engagements, publications, qualifications etc. formed the basis of my personal brand (albeit a starting point)

Since then, I have had several inquiries regarding how I went about crafting the entire portfolio and incorporating a brand within it.

My favourite resource on the subject is the original book by Tom Peters:
The brand you 50: Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an ‘Employee’ into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion!

and his short article: The Brand Called You
(available here: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/10/brandyou.html)

However, while being indulged in the exercise of creating this “personal brand”, I wondered about the ethics around this marketization of the self. Not surprisingly, there is a debate about this aspect of “self packaging”. Afterall, what personal brand-ing really is – is how effectively you organize, present and label your set of skills, motivations, interests and achievements to achieve success in the workplace.

To anyone wanting to consult a critical commentary piece on this subject, I highly recommend the following journal article:

Marketization and the Recasting of the Professional Self: The Rhetoric and Ethics of Personal Brand-ing** which appears in *Management Communication Quarterly,Vol. 18, No. 3, February 2005 307-343.

2 Likes
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Re: Personal Brand

so the questions are

what is a personal brand
how do you define it
how do you promote it
how do you evaluate it i.e. is it the right brand.

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Re: Personal Brand

^ not sure if you got a chance to read the second post since we posted simultaneously... dunno if any of your questions were answered in there.

but good questions! - pretty much what everyone should think about when embarking on a personal brand initiative.

For now, I'm going to expand on these questions as I too wonder whether we can draw analogies to traditional brand-ing strategies and tactics from marketing.

Firstly,
With Personal Brands, Is there such a thing as Brand Equity? Can anyone other than yourself measure this? Can you use this to negotiate your worth (i.e. salaries, benefits, contracts etc.)?

Also,
Would potential employers/clients etc. engage in Brand Mapping for personal brands to the same extent as organizations/individuals do with traditional products? Have you seen / do you foresee this as a standard practice in hiring personnel?

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Re: Personal Brand

UT-

good points, I finished reading the Fastcompany article.

I think the key is that the same brand can mean diff things to diff ppl, and also, the brand has to fulfill brand promise.

otherwise if its all smoke and mirrors, eventually it will bite yer butt.

so the brand has to be realistic, aspirational maybe but not misleading

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Re: Personal Brand

I am a novice. I have some basic questions.

  1. How does personal b*****ng actually help u when at the same time u r narrowing ur consumers (companies which potentially hire u) by being a specialized/specific brand

  2. How personal ‘character’ makes a difference in b*****ng? and how can u asses/measure/use it?

  3. What is consumers (companies) point of view when they see u as a brand? how and on what criteria will they analyze personal brand?

:bravo:

Tell us the story of your bridal jora!
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Re: Personal Brand

Just thinking loud here....

I guess the most obvious questions regarding personal brand would be:

What are my goals? (Where am I now and where do I want to be? What are the immediate short term/long term goals?)

Whats considered hot?
Am I hot? Can I be hot? How do I be hot/desirable/Valuable to the employer?

What sets me apart from others? (What advantage do I have over others?
What makes me unique(In a positive way ofcourse)? Do I have a niche market?

Technically, there would be a lot of people out there who are better than I or at an equal level... What edge do I have? Soft skills?? experience? major projects? positive outcomes and achievements?

I guess its all about the presentation at the end of the day... how well can I twist and turn the facts and present them in a more attractive way without BSing...

From personal experience, if you are in consulting and are out on an assignment at a major client(or any client for that matter), you can do a nice 'self promotion/touch base with everyone' by sending out a monthly update type email around to your colleagues and bosses(assuming you are working for a consultancy), updating everyone about how well the gig is going, what type of challenges you are facing and how you are overcoming them, maybe make it look like its hardwork but ur dealing with it really well (without sounding cheap or stupid and too self promoting ofcourse)... you can point out some interesting ways the client operates... their change management processes/red tape... how it differs from other 'usual' clients, maybe a couple of funny incidents etc. keeps the bosses updated and you dont return to the office after a 6 month gig feeling like a stranger again because no one knows what you have been upto. All this can be done tactfully to give it the type of flavour you want to give it, based on your goals and how you want to be perceived. I guess this all is applicable to an intra company scenario where you are trying to separate yourself from others by looking more focussed and professional, or maybe making urself the main contender within the company in a niche area and not really as someone out in the market trying to impress potential employers.

Another thing I like to do is just write a brief report about he 'learnings' from a particular project/assignment after its completion and share it with colleagues/bosses... always attracts positive feedback.

Sorry about the spellings and bad structure, its midnight and I cant be bothered worrying about it.

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Re: Personal Brand

Excellent points Kaka... I think these partially answers X2's question regarding how to promote your personal brand. The way I look at it, you've touched upon two important constituents of a personal brand: 1) Business Protocol and 2) Verbal Communications. Both of these are indeed essential in creating a personal brand.

In addition to these, if you read my post above, there’s some obvious blatant self-promotion that needs to be done in a manner that highlights the three elements in personal brand:

  • Value Proposition: What do you stand for?
  • Differentiation: What makes you stand out? *]Marketability: What makes you compelling? Towards this, the individual needs to establish an inventory of core competencies, expertise, demonstrated abilities, recognitions, endorsements, and positive feedback.
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Re: Personal Brand

Umar, together can teh grouo here come up with a worksheet for personal b*****ng? over the next few weeks we can inventory what we need to, ahve others as sounding boards etc. I think that would be a fantastic exercise

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Re: Personal Brand

Pir ji, aik haath say type kar rahay hain?? :D

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Re: Personal Brand

try typing with two 2 year olds jumping on you.

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Re: Personal Brand

that's brand-ing, there you 're, Fraudia bhai. blessed w/ 2 two-yrs old is only you! :>
brand-ing has to do with integrity of character and the symbolic representation of the real thing - object or a person. i.e., how substantial is it and what are its connoted pluses which draw loyalty to the object or the person. trait and personality theories would identify brand-ing with certain central /core qualities of a person which are scalable across various life situations.
honesty, for instance, is a quality which ought not to be hidden when a fear is present, an honest person must make use of one’s established credibility by being honest always. thus brand-ing can’t be subject to exploitative and self serving compromises.

best,
Dushwari

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Re: Personal Brand

Sorry Jony – I missed your post… good questions though…

Re: 1. the way I see it… it’s really up to the individual to decide whether they’re going to develop their personal brand to be one that appeals to a broad or a narrow audience. It’s just like marketing – Product Uniqueness + Broad Target = Differentiation Strategy… whereas Product Uniqueness + Narrow Target = Focus Strategy.

Basically, what you need to keep in mind is that as a human capital asset, you’re imitable as well as mobile… so you need to find other ways to show your potential employer how you can be part of the equation to help them achieve and sustain an advantage over somebody who doesn’t have you on their payroll.

Re: 2. personal characteristics is certainly more of an intangible quality that needs to be translated somehow into a brand attribute. This can partly be done through testimonials and feedback from others who have worked with you or who you’ve worked for.

Again, to bring in a marketing parallel, this is the dilemma that all brands face with measuring and incorporating aspects of “goodwill”.

Re: 3. This sort of relates to my question Re: brand mapping and whether anyone has seen or thinks companies will ever evaluate personal brands in the same way as other product brands. I personally think it’s very much a possibility. In fact we do this implicitly every time we compare famous people – say celebrity A vs. celebrity B.
You think of two or three dimensions and position their personal brands on those dimensions. The path that human capital management is following, I think soon we’ll start seeing multi-dimensional scaling and cluster analysis type techniques to visually interpret and objectify personal brands as well.

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Re: Personal Brand

I think this drives home the point in a rather amusing manner:

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personal brand revisited

Lucic Chaotic had brought up this topic a while back. We were both busy then and did not do justice to the topic. I would request Lucid take some time, and I will do the same, and request all others who have resources, ideas or examples to come forward.

In this day and age, reputation and image is important, personal brand is becoming more important within your organization and industry.

so lets put onour thinking caps and share what we know.

for starters, I would recommend using linked in, but use it properly. Its not a popularity contest, build the network, and dont just have ppl on your network because you want to have 1000 ppl in it. its the strength of the network, the quality that matters more.

I was guilty of accepting invites from people who were in my previous company who I did not know personally, now that there are groups for companies, I have taken out ppl I dont know. Basically if I dont know you or ahve met you, you are not in my network.

secondly, use the answers to show your expertise or thinking process, but dont overdo it. There are people who have somethign everyday, their status, questions, answers, and again they seem to be focusing on quantity and not quality.

what else?

I know this is not personal b*****ng per say but just one tool helping in that area but I wanted to start with something.

maybe we can write our elevator pitches, personal value prop or b*****ng statement and see how others perceive it etc.

but I think this can be a great discussion

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Re: personal brand revisited

Here’s a link to the original thread for anyone who wants to catch up:

http://www.paklinks.com/gs/career-academics/273846-personal-brand.html

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Dude… it’s good you bring this up again. I’ve actually had several constructive conversations about this with my colleagues in the recent past and have a little more to offer in the form of a synthesis of our collective intelligence.

I think if we can talk about Personal B r a n d i n g in terms of the following suggested areas:

** Principles of Personal B r a n d i n g:**

These can include pretty much any tenets that you think can help conceptualize the notion of personal br a n d i n g Possibly, we can include theoretical and practical parallels that can be drawn between ideas that are well understood in the business world and are also relevant to personal br a n d i n g. On the outset, I can think of the following:

  • Competitive Advantage (Personal / Professional Competencies acting as basis for a Differentiator),
  • Product Life Cycle (The Product being You, the person), and
  • Reputation Management (You, the CEO of a company where you’re the only employee).

** Tools for Personal Br a n d i n g:**

  • Social Networks
  • Online Blogs
  • ??

** Personal Br a n d i n g Glossary:**

  • Ambient Intimacy
  • Return on Influence

*
Will keep adding to this thread as I think of more / get more time to add...*

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Re: personal brand revisited

I have been helping some of my friends who just had no idea about any resources available to them or even how to put together resumes, and these are professionals who have been in the industry for some time but had been at one company for a while.

I suggest that we start a sticky which is more of an inventory of tools, articles books, and ideas.

so just 4 posts in the sticky- one pot is tools, one is articles/books, one is for numbered ideas.

this thread can serve as a discussion thread, that serves as a resource. I also suggest that we merge this with the old one so the continuity stays, many ppl will not go back and read it.

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Re: Personal Brand

so here are some sites, again being on these sites is not end all be all of personal b*****ng, but these can serve as good tools.

let me know what you think, what people's experiences with these have been like

linkedin.com
plaxo.com
naymz.com
xing.com
visualcv.com

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Good points X2! I can’t stress these points enough. I've talked about a few of these issues before on GS but let's jot these suggestions to complete a list... I'll start with the two that you've already mentioned above and continue with my own...

1. Selective Invites & Stable Network
Being selective with your Invites is a good starting point. As you said, people shouldn’t expect to build a large network overnight. In my own case, it took me a good couple of years to get to about 40 contacts or so, but rest assured most of these are people that I can ask for advice, recommendations, endorsements etc. because I’ve worked with them directly at some point. I would recommend Trusted Referrals over Light Networking any day.

2. Active Participation in Q&A
Again, I have to agree with what you’ve already said – Q&A is a really useful informational and promotional tool, but like any good marketing program, people should devise their participation strategy to make the most of it. You should identify a few key areas that you want to participate in, and these should align with your core competencies that you want to promote. Actively participate in discussions in those areas – on a regular basis and have something valuable to offer. Remember that providing more answers isn’t as good as providing answers that get ranked as the best ones.

A few other points that I’d like to make:

3. Include a Smart Summary
I can’t emphasize how important it is to have a good profile summary. I’ve been contacted multiple times by people just based on this… the Summary almost always gets read. Think of this as your elevator pitch and you need to have a very carefully crafted statement to put your best foot forward. Also, don’t make it sound too self-serving and too corporate – it should be something snappy that delivers the message.

4. Join Relevant Groups
Groups allow you to associate yourself with hundreds or thousands of other “similar” people. Again, this should be done selectively, but you should do it. Unlike other online social groups though, there really isn’t any direct interaction within the group… no discussion forum, mailing list as such, but it will help you keep track of relevant community events and latest happenings. Also LinkedIn has those badges that get displayed in your profile… this is a good tool for visual b r a n d i n g of your associations with groups that are pertinent to the professional competencies you want to promote.

5. Be Careful with Reciprocal Recommendations
Nothing wrong with explicitly soliciting recommendations from a colleague who can endorse your work and professionalism. That being said, I’m not too fond of too many reciprocal recommendations – especially if they happen in nearly the same time. If I get network status updates in my email where I see that person A endorsed person B and vice versa, I may be a little wary of those recommendations. This is not to say that you shouldn’t reciprocate but time it a little better so that it isn’t too obvious for anyone who is watchful and wary of these.

This is it for now - will add more as I think of them