Personal Brands Need Only Apply
Last week, I attended the Boston Social Media Breakfast with a bunch of really smart marketing, PR and technology folks. The topic was around how hiring in the 2.0 world has changed the game for job-seekers and job-fillers. There were pretty much three common themes across the speakers:
1 - You are your brand
2 - You publish your brand every time you tweet, update, upload and post
3 - You are pretty much expected to be active in a variety of social media sites and communities to establish and promote your brand
Hmm. Sounds a little different than the good ‘ol days of polishing your resume, putting on some spiffy threads and beefing up your knowledge of the company’s website. My good friend, Aaron Strout, recently wrote a great post on how he is changing up the hiring process at his company. This got me thinking. If hiring companies are going to start judging candidates more on who they are and how they’re connected, what makes someone rise to the top of the heap?
I guess it’s easy if you are Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble or Chris Brogan. These guys are social media rockstars and it’s tough to find a blog that doesn’t link to them. But what if you’re not the Scobelizer - let’s face it, many of us immerse ourselves in the social media sites du jour but does that really make us a household name in the blogosphere? Not so much. So, then what. In comes the idea of creating a personal brand. So, what does it mean to create a brand of, well, you? Drumming up your personal brand seems to be a relatively straightforward five-step process so here goes.
1) Start by asking yourself: What do you want someone to think when they hear your name? What do you want someone to associate you with? A brand is about creating an emotional response - how will you create that for the people ‘consuming’ you?
2) Then, think about the things that set you apart. What are your areas of expertise? What are you passionate about? What do you want your friends/colleagues to associate you with?
3) Once you’ve got your ideas written down, start to group them into categories. What categories rise to the surface? Which categories can help you stand out?
4) Decide if you want to associate your brand with a unique name, tagline, icon or story. What words define you? Is there a picture or icon that is meaningful to who you are? What does your brand look like? You’ll see my opinion on this in a minute.
5) Create visibility for your brand by walking the walk. Where do you want your brand to take you? Immerse yourself in those communities and tools and connect yourself with a bunch of different people who have created brands for themselves and walked the walk.
And, voila, you have a personal brand ready to take on the world. That’s the easy part. Quite frankly, with a little time and effort, anyone could carefully craft their own positioning statement.
Here’s where things get interesting. So, as the person-for-hire, you want to create a great brand that helps you cut through the clutter and reach the top of the pile-o-resumes or land that next consulting gig. But, as the employer or client, I ask “Where’s the beef?” I like some sizzle but I’m paying for the steak. Many of the personal brands I’ve seen out there seem to focus more on creating some sort of celebrity-status versus representing what the person can actually do. It’s one thing to have a brand that looks and sounds good and yet another thing to create a brand that delivers on its promise. Would you hire Paris Hilton as your new marketing manager? Okay, stay with me here. Sure, she looks good but try asking her to create a marketing plan or run campaign analytics - um, not so much. My opinion on the catchy Twitter names and personal taglines is that they are certainly memorable but they feel like they are trying too hard to make me believe something. My advice is to be authentic. Don’t waste your time coming up with something hip and catchy. People can see through it and at the end of the day people want to understand you. Not your avatar, or your Twitter name or your tagline. They want to connect with the one-of-a-kind you and know what kind of person you are - both personally and professionally.
So, how are you going to bring the real you forward through your personal brand? Anyone out there with a brand they’ve created and are willing to share with other folks? I’d love to hear your take.
Tags: 2.0, authentic, brand, social media
May 8th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I like your 5 step approach, and there’s a hidden wrinkle that I’d like to expose. The problem is that we, as humans, are unable to be truly objective about ourselves. So we aren’t able to tell “what sets us apart” without the input of others. In fact many of us will deny or shrug off our core genius when it’s pointed out by others; a boss delivering a performance review or a friend offering a compliment. We just don’t get how THAT is seen as so outstanding.
I have been a personal brand strategist for 10 years and the process I have developed that delivers the clearest, most valid and authentic response involves self reporting and input from others, balanced off by the results of multiple personality profiles. When you look at input from all three channels, and find the common threads - that’s the rock solid foundation you need to build a strong, compelling and “salable” personal brand.
Of course, it is possible to create a brand based on who and what you WANT to be – that’s how corporate branding is done. A product brand is built on the specific strengths, attitudes and values that have been chosen to appeal to the people who will buy it. But there’s a very real DANGER in doing that in personal branding, as it won’t be long before “you” show up, and the people or opportunities that your made-up brand has attracted will disappear when that happens. At best, you’ll be seen as confusing, at worst, as a phony.
Martha Stewart went through this – originally as she was the “perfect” homemaker or Domestic Diva. And despite the fact that what she represented was often more intimidating and exhausting than inspiring, (who could compare with Perfect Martha?) millions ofwomen bought into her brand because they wanted to emulate her domestic flare. Then a Martha we had never met before showed up and created a stock trading scandal that cost her investors tens of millions. The stock price tied to the Martha Stewart brand has never recovered.
So in addition to building a strong, compelling and “salable” personal brand - make sure it’s real, as it’s far easier to “be yourself” than continually have to strive to be someone else.