Personal Brand

Society Business and Career
21

In addition to LinkedIn, I've tried Plaxo... but abandoned it - really didn't find too much value-add... although I admit for not having taken too much interest in it either.

Naymz and Xing don't seem to offer anything too unique.

VisualCV looks quite promising... will have to explore this one a little more!

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Re: Personal Brand

Umar just to note one thing though, there is discussion feature in groups now.
I must say I am getting increasingly annoyed with the MLM types and other pushy sales guys mucking up discussions. ANother thing that I am getting rather sick off is that when ppl are posting for openings, residents of a certain place are jumping at it, while they dont even have relevent experience and have no clue about limitations on H1 stuff.

also for groups, I am member of a number, but I dont display them all on my profile, the members of the groups can see I am in their group but if i dont share that grpup with you, it will not be visible to you.

Bad day go away
Bad day go away
23

Re: Personal Brand

so..here is a question, what is the best and simplest way to get published? that is a huge thing, if you get published in industry magazines etc. academia is a diff setting but for corporate world its a diff situation.

and then aside from writing as a rep of your organization, how do you write independently, how do you go about makign a case for you to be published. build contacts etc.

I have a few articles published on strategy and stuff but they were work related.

furthermoe, how do you go about writing independently as a subject matter ecpert, without linking what you write to your company. companies have diff policies I suppose. but if i want to write lets say on health mgmt, and I work for a health system, how would I write and not get in hot water with my employer, and note my background but not have that reflect on my e ployer because my views and opinions can be seen in many diff ways by diff ppl.

This is one thign I am trying to figure out and its confusing as hell, and its impirtant to me because I want to write independently as well, but teh complexities are a little confusing.

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Re: Personal Brand

^ good question - although I haven't published lately in a practitioner capacity, up until a few years ago, I was publishing fairly regularly with trade magazines and consumer journals.

In terms of getting started, in my case, the writing opportunities came through a couple of conferences that I had presented at. Again, these were practitioner conferences primarily geared towards an industry audience.

Also, in two cases, I was involved as a volunteer SME with two organizations and they asked me to collaborate on a couple of articles for their audience.

I'd say that starting with memberships and active participation in practitioner associations would be a good starting point, as well as actively seeking speaking opportunities at industry conferences. This will probably lead to more formal opportunities for writing.

Also, in the current context, one can't ignore the significance of maintaining a blog with your own key insights and maintaining trackbacks and blog rolls with similar minded experts or others in the same area of interest. I've personally been lagging behind in this area myself so I don't have any first hand experience to relate but I would think that this can potentially open doors too... but in any case, it will complement the other two options mentioned above.

I can't think of other alternatives... like I said, it's been a while since I was involved in a purely practitioner oriented publication, although I've been collaborating consistently with practitioners who publish in academic venues.

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Re: Personal Brand

lucid

blogging has its own issues, because if i have a blog that notes where I work, and I am writing about industry or future or strategy and all a couple fo things can happen

1) my views can be at odds with my company..
2) my views could betray company strategy
3) my views could be offbase and raise some red flags for customers who may read them.

thats the exact issue I have with publishing, I mean teh articles that I have written or been featured in were all blessed by the company, actually in one case I went ahead and did it deciding to ask for forgiveness later since the deadline was too close.

You have been to my blog, yeah dont list it here :D and I have not updated it in ages for that very reason.

so to me the question has 2 parts

1) how do I get connected with writers more so even fi I am not writing they are askign me for a quote
2) how do I do that on my own without draggign companyinto it, cuz then some head honchi may want to eb quoted instead or what I say may get me in hot water because its personal view but it may be ttributed to teh company, u know how the legal group is like :D

26

Re: Personal Brand

^ I understand completely… at least in one prior instance, something I presented in a speaking engagement about a client I worked with had put me at odds with my employer… and this was despite the fact that I had anonymized the identity of the client firm. It isn’t too difficult to decipher who you’re talking about with even just a few defining attributes… so unless you’re publishing a success story, chances are that the subject concern will have some objections.

My only recommendation would be that in addition to anonymizing the information, still get permission in advance from the organization. Also, in some cases, you might have better luck if you collaborate with someone else from within the organization that you’re reporting about. This can sometimes act as perceptual alleviation of some of their superficial concerns. I recently did a “Lessons Learned” style conference paper with a practitioner. Since the report wasn’t painting a rosy picture of the program that we were writing about, I doubt that I’d have been able to publish it alone.

I don’t know how much this applies to your case since you’re actually working for the organization that you’ll probably want to refer to in your commentary.

Rooh lene kabhi farishte na aate
27

Re: Personal Brand

another topic, so how does one write their brand promise?

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Re: Personal Brand

b r a n d i n g could also be done, by u n b r a n d i n g
no?

i.e., by disabling the rat race of brands.
by just being.

& embracing the simpler non made up faces of objects, places and people.

anything that is shaping our lives, can be at least tried as an unbranded something, to see, what deficit model might predict or indicate, if
b r a n d i n g was so essential, then in its absence, whet gets missed, so on & so forth.

it's to me about reliability and validity of the created and maintained, brand. if the reliability and validity is not the core basis for the b r a n d i n g , it wont be able to stay and have an impact.

the on line and off line methods of creating signature logo or icons, of associating uniqueness to a name, all is fine, so long as its true value matches the glamour of its appearance and it holds that what it portrays onto its viewers.

29

Re: Personal Brand

untrue, what is your image, your reputation, even in the workd of academia..you are known by your research, your views, your capabilities, your strengths.

no one is saying that you present yourself as something you are not, but what is the best way to present yourself, how do you stand out among your peers, in the organization, in the industry..

to be a personal brand is not about gimmicks, or logos, but about an organized, attractive and user friendly i.e. understandable aura, description of yourself. You have to manage it so people are not confused aboyt what exactly it is that you offer or bring to the table.

30

Dush… I think you’re missing the point here… when we talk about personal b r a n d I n g, we’ve sort of already established that there’s substance to go with the promotion. The substance is what your strengths and competencies are. Someone who’s worked with you before will know your worth… but how do you promote your worth to the rest of the world? To others who don’t know you yet. In today’s world of hyper competition, strategic soothsaying is an indispensable tactic where you creatively combine your talents, strengths, capabilities , and competencies to open up new opportunities and serve new markets (employers, partners, collaborators, contracts).

Why should a girl change her surname after marriage?
31

X2 – good question again. Personally, I haven’t gotten around to crafting my own brand statement / promise just yet… although I’ve read several examples online and read the suggestions in Montoya’s book about this.

One other interesting piece on this aspect is what Jim Collins (in his book “Good to Great”) calls the hedge-hog concept. It’s pretty similar to the idea of using your distinctive core competency towards sustainable competitive advantage. Jim calls the brand promise hedge-hog lies at the intersection of three items:

  • Something you do better than others
  • Something you’re passionate about
  • Something organizations will value.

Pretty simple ideas, but I’ve read some bad examples of executive brand-ing statements, so I’m not sure if people actually get this right. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t gotten around to my own statement yet… I’m afraid I’ll write something that might sound illusory. In the end, you need to ask yourself that whether the people reading the statement would be able to tell what I would do for them if they were to hire me… and whether they can tell how I would get those results for them.

32

Re: Personal Brand

interesting to see this idea is upraising in several walks of life. however, the picture of personal branD is still very intangible to except for few professions.

personal b**ng or i better change it with "personal signature" or just "a signature" since the very word b**ng is more like marketing your skills rather than providing a platform for showcasing your "mini me" or highlight good part of u.

i do agree with this statement "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." (The Brand Called You)

but then it is more like fitting yourself in the clothes rather than buying the one of your size. though, you will take some time to adjust into those clothes as gonna work out and also the level of comfortibity will be changed.

....and soon or later you will be one of them, or like one of them....BUT where are you then?

therefore, to me this personal b*****ng theory doesn't exist in a workforce environment.

ps. brands are not being presented in raw. it requires |absolute defintion|

33

No, if you are losing your essence then you are trying to be something that you are not and even if you are able to sell you as that, eventually it will catch up with you, and if the people around you dont wisen up to it, you will be miserable yourself.

to me it is presenting a cohesive view of what you bring to the table. why you. I mean if we look at products and BMW says ultimate driving machine..well thats a good tag..teh comany has branded itself as a performance oriented luxury brand..if they did not have goods to back it up, they wont go anywhere, and you dont have to have the same brand to succeed, saturn would be a joke if it tried the same, but it has a diff approach that works for it.

so you are still who you are but you are able to present yourself better. and its not just about presenting yourself better, its about understanding yourself. I dont meet too many people who can describe what they do, or what their strengths are easily, rambking on about this and that maybe because they have not really thought about it.

so it is as much as understanding what you bring to the table as then it is to be able to project that.

its also, how you present yourself ..from how you dress, to how you deal with people.