Reinvent Your Personal Brand

Reinventing yourself is a popular phrase for older people, but it’s just as relevant for young people. What and who you are is pretty constant through most of your career. The big change points occur when you get out of school and when you get too old to do what you’ve done for your entire career.

Implicit in reinvention is your personal brand, because you’re changing one personal brand for another. That’s why sites like brand-yourself.com are so important. Just as you evolved from a kid to a college student, you now have to evolve your identity to something appropriate for a working adult.

This won’t make a difference to your friends – they already know you, but since it is your “face” to the rest of the world, you need to give this transition careful thought. And as you undertake this transition, you should always be thinking about what the other person is seeing, and how they are reacting. All good marketing is based on that, and personal branding is really nothing more than marketing yourself.

Creation of a Personal Branding Statement

There are a slew of techniques you can use to raise your public awareness. I’ve written about this on my blog a few times, with an overview here. But before you start registering at personal branding (or reputation management) sites, you need to think about who you are and how you want to be known.

Most people define themselves by their job title, but that’s not such a good idea. Saying you’re a programmer or a product manager immediately makes you a commodity. Figuring out exactly what to say in your personal branding statement is probably the hardest thing you’ll do in your personal branding efforts, but it is also the most important. (And don’t worry, you can change this as you refine your approach. I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to be when I grow up.)

This tag line is called your “Professional ‘headline’” on LinkedIn. Think of it as terse form of your elevator pitch. Here’s mine (for right how): “I help people get found on the Internet.” When I’m networking, I can walk up to somebody and say quickly, completely and accurately: “Hi, I’m Walter Feigenson, and I help people get found on the Internet.” It’s another version of “Barry-the-bucket” from my last post.

While you’re thinking about this personal branding statement, you need to keep in mind:

• It has to be short! You have literally seconds to make an impression on anybody you’re meeting in person or electronically.
• Make it short enough to fit on your business card.
• Make sure it’s accurate, and completely understandable immediately. Try it on your friends – make sure it works. If anybody has to ask you what you mean, you need to keep working on your branding statement.

This is the same thing we do for positioning a product in the marketplace, so I’ll give you the same advice I give marketeers… Your tag line, personal branding statement, professional headline can’t be what you want to be, it has to be what you are. If you claim to be a rocket scientist, and you convince somebody you are, it’ll show up pretty quickly if you’re really a wannabe rocket scientist. When you’ve got a tag line candidate, and it doesn’t match who/what you are, you have two choices: 1) change your tag line, or 2) become what you claim you are.

So get working on this tag line/personal branding statement. Try it out for a while. See if it resonates with other people. Make sure you’re comfortable with it.

In my next post, I’ll start talking about some of the things you need to do once you’ve established your “personal brand” in your own mind.

For additional resources concerning personal branding statements check out the following articles

• Top 6 Posts to Craft Your Personal Branding Statement
• How to Brand Yourself
• Everything You Need to Start Building Your Personal Brand Right Now

© 2009 Walter Feigenson

Author: Walt Feigenson

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Try Our New Tools

We’ve developed two new hands-on tools to make it easy for you to establish a web presence that makes you more hireable:

The Brand Health Dashboard

The Brand Health Dashboard guides you through the process of building a clean and professional image across the web. It helps you track, manage and grade the digital breadcrumbs you leave online. The Dashboard also grades the strength of your web presence based on our Brand Strength Algorithm and the grades of other users.

The Dashboard includes:

• The Recommendation Engine is like your personal career coach. Based on your area of expertise and career goals, it provides actionable next steps to achieve a web presence worthy of remark.

• The Dashboard grades your web presence by breaking it into measurable components: visibility, credibility and niche involvement.

• Every item about you online affects employers’ perceptions of you. Keep track of these digital breadcrumbs about you in one central location to make sure your web presence is as clean and professional as possible.

The Dashboard guides you through the process of strengthening your web presence by:

• Breaking down each component of your web presence into quantifiable, improvable factors
• Suggesting next steps to take in all areas of your web presence based on your area of expertise and career goals
• Helping to track digital breadcrumbs about you, so you can stay on top of what exists about you online

This screenshot of the Dashboard gives an overview of the current strength of your personal brand online:

The Dashboard breaks down your personal brand online into three main components: Visibility, Credibility, and Niche Involvement. Each of these components is made up multiple items. For example, your Visibility is calculated based on your social networking profiles, your directory listings, and your social bookmarks.

Here’s a screenshot of the Visibility section of the Brand Health Dashboard:

The Online Identity Builder

The Online Identity Builder lets you establish your own site to give a better picture of yourself to employers and compliment your resume. Perception is reality on the web. To stand out, you need to have a say in how you’re perceived.

Here’s a screenshot of the Site Settings page:

Put your URL on your resume and have a say in what employers find out about you. Depending on how common your name is, your site might even make its way up to the first or second page of Google results on its own. A personal professional website paints a much more compelling picture of you as a job applicant, more effectively demonstrating to employers why they should choose you over the next applicant. You get your own domain name (URL) to fully brand your personal website as your own.

You’d be crazy not to try our tools for free. You have nothing to lose by checking them out. And you have everything to lose by ignoring them – like the next job you apply for. Really though – go on, give our free tools a try! Reading blog posts alone isn’t always enough to transform you from a “Net Nobody” into a job applicant with a web presence worthy of remark.

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“Do I really want to go through the same door to work every day for 41 years like my Dad did?” This question, asked by Tom Peters, marked the birth of personal brand management as a career development concept. Personal brand management means a) thinking of yourself as a brand that people have perceptions of, and b) taking action to control how people feel about you (who haven’t met you yet), attracting better career opportunities.

If you’ve never the heard of the concept of “Brand You” before, think of employers as shoppers walking through a giant supermarket, where job applicants line the shelves to be chosen. Pick me, pick me! they cry. How do employers decide which applicants to buy? Aisles and aisles of undifferentiated candidates make their decision difficult.

In order to stand out, personal brand management means thinking of yourself as CEO and marketer of Brand You, then differentiating yourself to stand out from the competition.

Multiple personal brand management methods can help you define and promote Brand You. Today we’ll take a look at two of the most established personal brand management methodologies: William Arruda’s 1-2-3 Success! Reach Personal Branding Process, and Dan Schawbel’s Me 2.0 Personal Branding Process.

Let’s now take a look at William Arruda’s and Dan Schawbel’s personal brand management methods, both of which have gained acceptance in the career development world. (Brief descriptions of both systems are copied directly from their original authors to guarantee the authenticity of their methods).

Let’s start with our first personal brand management method, William Arruda’s Reach Personal Branding Process. William Arruda, dubbed the Personal Branding Guru by Entrepreneur magazine, created the 1-2-3 Success! system, and also established the first personal branding certification program. Through his program, you can become a certified personal branding consultant – pretty cool. His work and speaking engagements have inspired thousands and his book Career Distinction breaks down the personal branding process in detail. We highly recommend his book to help you stand out in the job market.

William Arruda’s Reach Personal Branding Process

Phase 1: Extract

Unearth your unique promise of value.

“Give your brand context. Before you can clearly describe your personal brand, you need to look at the big picture: your vision, and purpose. Your vision is external. It is the essence of what you see possible for the world. Your purpose is internal. It is the role you play in supporting that vision. Additionally, your personal brand needs to be tied to your goals.

You uncover your authentic brand by identifying:

• Your vision and purpose
• Your unique strengths and differentiation
• What others think about you
• Your values and passions
• The competitive landscape
• Your target audience”

Read about the Extract phase on Reach’s website >

My thoughts: Arruda’s “Extract” phase is by far the most thorough and effective way to uncover your personal brand that I’ve come across. People often mistakenly skip this step, and head straight to the steps that answer: “How do I promote myself?” They often wrongly assume that they are 100% clear about their vision, values, strengths, passions, audience, etc. Career Distinction does an excellent and thorough job of guiding you through the soul-searching process required to lay a genuine and rock-solid foundation for your personal brand.

Phase 2: Express

Build your personal brand communications plan.

“Identify the ideal combination of communications tools to reach that audience effectively, while ensuring that you’re standing out among the numerous others who are offering seemingly similar services. List your brand attributes, create a brand statement and even your personal brand tagline.

Develop a strategy for making your brand visible to those who need to know about you so that you can achieve your goals:

• Document your target audience demographics and psychographics
• Evaluate all potential communications tools
• Identify the subset of tools that will reach your audience and support your goals
• Manage the all-important three C’s of personal branding
• Build your personal brand communications wheel
• Identify key content themes
• Craft your Personal Brand Statement (PBS)
• Prioritize communications activities to provide maximum impact
• Establish a communications plan with goals and milestones
• Develop a plan to link your brand to all that you do

The output from the Express Phase is your comprehensive personal Brand Communications Plan.”

Read about the Express phase on Reach’s website >

My Thoughts: Arruda’s emphasis on establishing milestones makes the “Express” phase very powerful. For example, crafting your personal brand statement is useless if you don’t have a communication plan to spread it. Also, Arruda hits on something that many personal branding authors miss: documenting your target audience’s demograhpics and psychographics. Without a deep understanding of your audience, there’s no way to compellingway express your brand to them.

Phase 3: Exude

Manage your brand environment.

“Align your brand environment—that is, everything that surrounds you—with your personal brand. Your brand environment is made up of your:

• Office/Work Environment
• Home
• Image and Personal Style
• Leisure Activities
• Volunteer Efforts
• Professional Organizations/Associations
• Professional Network

Evaluate your progress by using metrics such as formal or informal feedback from peers. Also, remain relevant to your target audience by evolving with the times.”

Read about the Exude phase on Reach’s website >

My Thoughts: The premise of the “Exude” phase is this: since your brand is 100% authentically you, every aspect of your life should back it up. Arruda’s inclusion of leisure and volunteer activities in your brand environment is difficult for many people to master. In a perfect world, these will automatically align with your personal brand. Remember, your personal brand is YOU through and through, not just your professional self.

The next Personal Brand Management Method we’ll cover is Dan Schawbel’s Me 2.0 personal branding process. Dan has been described as a “personal branding force of nature” and is one of the most popular bloggers in the world blogging about personal branding. He is also living, breathing proof that actively branding yourself will elevate you above your competition and lead to incredible opportunities that were previously inaccessible.

Dan Schawbel’s Me 2.0 Personal Branding Process

Step 1: Discover your brand

“Brand discovery is about figuring out what you want to do for the rest of your life, setting goals, writing down a mission, vision and personal brand statement (what you do and who you serve), as well as creating a development plan. The goal is to equalize this equation: Your self-impression = How people perceive you.”

Read about the Discover phase in Dan’s article about it >

My Thoughts: Like Arruda, Schawbel doesn’t suggest marketing yourself unless you have a deep understanding of what Brand You means to you and others. His “self-impression = others’ impressions” equation makes the concept of a brand easy to understand. The goal is to make your impression of yourself the same impression that the world has of you.

Step 2: Create your brand

“The sum of all the marketing material you should develop for your brand is called a Personal Branding Toolkit. This kit consists of the following elements that you can use to highlight your brand and allow people to easily view what you’re about: Business card, resume, cover letter, references, portfolio, website, blog, LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, Twitter profile, video resume, wardrobe and email address.

Put on your personal PR hat and start to promote your materials.”

Read about the Create phase in Dan’s article about it >

My Thoughts: In contrast to Arruda, Schawbel focuses more on practice than theory. He emphasizes concrete and actionable items, making this step easy to dive into. For the Gen-Y audience who have shorter attention spans, this might prove a more attractive method.

Step 3: Communicate your brand

“Evangelize: Although you are the chief marketing officer for the brand called you, what others say about your brand (especially if they are respected and well-known) is more impactful than what you say about yourself. This means that you should try and find people who will help promote you when you aren’t even in the same room.

Pitch media: Instead of spamming reporters, do some homework and figure out who covers what. Almost all newspapers and magazines have online versions and blogs now, which are easier to get into.

Search Engine Optimize (SEO): Ranking high for your expertise is extremely important. Reporters, conference organizers and customers are constantly using search engines to find expert sources, cool stories, speakers and solutions to their problems. If you’re at the top, they will contact you.

Attend events: Getting out into an area where people are already interested in what you have to say (an industry event), is where you can do some real networking. Remember that people don’t know about you until they hear about you from your mouth or from a 3rd party.

Speak at events: When attending events isn’t enough, speaking at events can satisfy your personal PR craving. It will be hard for you to speak without becoming known first though, which is why this falls after attending an event.

Create your own event: The only thing bigger than being a speaker is actually starting your own event or event series. When you do this, you are perceived as a leader and a go-to-person at the event.

Comment on blogs: Bloggers love comments. If you comment on every blog in your industry on a consistent basis, people will get to know you based on your avatar (go to gravatar.com) and your brand will flourish.

Write articles: Article writing is a great marketing tactic. Depending on your writing portfolio and the strength of your brand, you can write for magazines, online sources or blogs (like Mashable!). There are also online article directories that you can submit your work to, such as ezinearticles.com.”

Read about the Communicate phase in Dan’s article about it >

My Thoughts: Again, actionable items are the emphasis here. Schawbel’s experience with web tech like SEO and blogging, and his proactive approach to making yourself visible are emphasized in this stage.

Step 4: Maintain your brand

“Online ’spring cleaning’: As your brand grows, you must ensure that all the online assets that you have control of grow in the same respect. This means that you need to constantly update your LinkedIn profile so it contains your latest contacts, experience information, and summary. It also means that your physical resume has to be updated, in addition to your video resume and so on.

Careful listening: People are going to be talking about you in various places, such as Twitter, blogs, social networks and more. You need to keep track of what they are saying, so that you can respond accordingly. There are many tools out there to help you such as Twitter search, Google alerts, and more. By listening to your industry, you’re able to react and better position yourself, as the economy changes and your niche isn’t as relevant anymore.”

Read about the Maintain phase in Dan’s article about it >

My Thoughts: The fact that “Maintain” is a separate step after “Communicate” is important, because it implies that a continuous effort is required even after you’ve communicated your brand. Just like a business, you should be monitoring what people are saying about Brand You. Schawbel does a great job supplying knowledge and tools to stay in the know about your brand.

Conclusion

Both William Arruda and Dan Schawbel have created excellent personal brand management methodologies. One is not better than the other. However, they each put emphasis on different aspects.

Arruda does a standout job covering the first stages of the personal branding process: extract/uncover/discover your brand. Buy his book Career Distinction if you’re looking to do some soul-searching and laying the foundation for a genuine Brand You.

Schawbel focuses more on actionable items after you’ve uncovered Brand You. What do you do once you’re ready to start promoting yourself? Schawbel (who walks the talk) and has proven that following his advice will help you stand out in your field.

Have you tried Arruda’s or Schawbel’s method? Do you know someone who has? Join the conversation and leave your thoughts below.

Learn More About the Personal Branding Gurus

William Arruda

William Arruda is the head of Reach Communications and the co-author of Career Distinction.

Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel is the blogger behind Personal Branding Blog and author of Me 2.0.

Author: Pete Kistler

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About a year ago, when I re-entered the job market, a friend said he Googled my name and all the results were 10 years old. He gave me some ideas about how to change that, and thus began my personal branding journey.

I have to confess, though, that every time I hear the term “personal branding,” I get a little nauseous. That’s pretty much the same reaction I had earlier in my career when recent college grads started talking at nauseum about branding this and branding that. It’s probably genetic; I also get prissy when somebody talks about prioritizing things.

Hey, do you really think this is something new? As we used to say in New York, fuggedaboutit.

How about this, you five-dollar word mongers: in author Rhys Bowen’s fanciful town of Llanfair in North Wales, people are known by their first name and their profession. So there’s Evans-the-Meat (butcher), Evans-the-Law (the constable), Barry-the-Bucket (excavator), Evans-the-Post (letter carrier), and more.

Looks like these old-fashioned Welsh country folk knew about personal branding before Web 2.0 was born.

I talk a lot about personal branding, and I teach it. In fact, I even bought the brandingme.com domain (which points to my old website until I can think of something clever to put there). And I use my picture frequently not because I think I’m good looking, but because I want people to associate my mug with what I say and write. That’s my personal brand.

It’s natural for a prospective partner to want to know something about their new partner, whether the other person is your boss, a job candidate, or a consultant – it doesn’t really matter. That’s why people look you up on Google before offering you a job or trying to sell you something.

We once referred to this as your reputation. Now it’s called your personal brand.

Web 2.0 has brought back the notion of community for many of us. At one time, everyone in a community knew everyone else. Where I grew up, I knew everyone that lived on my street, and I’d been in almost every house. Today, that’s uncommon.

Five years ago, when you applied for a job, it was hard for a hiring manager or an HR person to learn much about you. Resumes were relatively more important then, because they were the only screening mechanism companies had – except for networking, which has always been important.

Today, for most of us – at least in technology-rich areas like the San Francisco Bay Area – that’s no longer true. If you have the right keywords on your resume, you may make the first (usually) electronic cut. But before you get called for an interview, somebody is going to look you up on Google, or perhaps go even deeper.

That’s why managing your reputation is important, and that’s why somebody had to rename it personal branding, so we could get your attention.

Whatever you call it, this is real, and it affects you. You can be a victim, or you can thrive – the choice is yours.

Stay tuned for some simple – and some not-so-simple – ways you can change your Google rank. I call it Personal Search Engine Optimization. You can do many of the same things the big corporations do, often at no expense.

© 2009 Walter Feigenson

Walter Feigenson has spent his career in Marketing and Sales, starting with the earliest microcomputer software products. He ran marketing for WordStar, SuperCalc, MultiMate, and dBASE before he moved to the Internet’s first commercial content site, the ClariNet newspaper, in 1995. Following that, he jumped to the wireless world with Kivera, an early location-based services provider financed partly by AAA of Southern California and Sun Microsystems. Most recently, he ran a company that provides websites and Internet marketing services for over 2,000 financial professionals. For the past few months, Walter has been speaking on the subject of personal branding. You can see more about him at http://www.linkedin.com/in/wfeigenson, and http://feigenson.us. Or check out his blog at http://feigenson.us/blog.

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