What is personal branding?
Business Tips via Mixergy, home of the ambitious upstart!
Andrew Warner brings us this fantastic interview with Sasha Strauss. Sasha teaches a graduate course on branding at USC, and consults innovation companies and individuals on how to position themselves.
In this entertaining interview, Sasha explains personal branding and describes the steps to create your own.
What is personal branding?
To begin with, personal branding is nothing new. Two thousand years after her death, we are still dazzled with Cleopatra’s story. She changed history by captivating the most powerful men of her time with her spellbinding beauty and personality. So we are told.
Cleopatra, Pharaoh of Egypt.
A recently found Roman coin depicting lovers Mark Antony on one face and Cleopatra on the other suggest that she was far from good looking. The last Pharaoh had a shallow forehead, pointed chin, thin lips and a witch-like nose (more).
If not her beauty, what was it that subjugated Julius Caesar and later on Mark Antony? Although, we will probably never know, we must recognize that she must have provided a mesmerizing experience to those she chose to entrance.
At the core, personal branding is about developing great relationships that provide a meaningful experience to all those involved.
So, the real question is how do we achieve a great personal brand?
In this context, in a more strategic way, we can say that personal branding is the concerted effort to position ourselves in an authentic way with a unique promise of value.
The following is a handy checklist of tasks to help you develop a strong personal brand. It’s in no way a step by step process. There’s plenty of cross feeding into each other.
- Find your authentic and unique position
- Find your relevant and differentiated offer
- Decide on your promise of value
- Find your audience
- Define your touch point engagement
Your own branding starts with a deep diving process within yourself to find what exhilarates you. Authenticity is about doing what you like. It also provides the necessary fuel to energize your promise. In this stage you must also uncover your unique strengths and experiences.
You must also seek information and compare yourself to your competitors, or those that occupy a similar position, to determine the relevant offer that differentiates you. To have a differentiated offer, not bumping with others, is rocket fuel, according to Sasha.
Next, define the promise to your audience and commit yourself to deliver a certain value to them. Your commitment or dedication to the promise is vital. Your audience’s experience with you is the most memorable element of your brand.
You must determine who your main audience groups are. Then, submit to them your proposition and ask them to give you their feedback on your ideas about reaching them.
Establish the potential touch points where you engage your audience. With all the above knowledge, implement the best answer for each touch point.
Why is personal branding so important now?
We’ve always cared about how people see us. We worry about our personal hygiene, our clothes, our deodorant, our eyeglasses… our car.
So, why should you dig deeper to further your personal branding now?
Nowadays, your personal brand is more relevant than ever because your online presence reaches thousands, if not millions. It’s at a finger tips distance of a simple Google search.
Anybody that employs you will Google your name. Your facebook, blog, twitter, and linkedin presence will be scrutinized. If you have a minute presence, you will signal that you are not familiar with today’s communication tools, missing out on the potential to reach those untold clients.
Why risk leaving to chance what is out there about you, when you can tailor your presence or control your brand? It could very well be someone interested in your services.
On the other hand, huge online crowds can either make you or brake you. The potential benefits arising from an unlimited audience are, well… unlimited.
Gary Vaynerchuk is a good example. His dad had a $3.5 million wine store in New Jersey. In 1997, he decided to produce online wine content. Later on, he morphed his blog postings into YouTube videos. Nowadays, he has a loyal daily following of 90 thousand and his dad’s store sells $60 million and grows at a 24% or better yearly.
I wanted to end this post with Gary’s presentation because he touches the fundamental issue of caring. If we stop to think about it, caring is the basic element to grow any relationship. Our friends are our friends because we care about each other.
