Thoughts on Personal Branding

[Zachary Barden]

Hey guys!

I'm interested in learning what your thoughts are on personal branding, or even branding in general.

I find it to be an absolute necessity for professionals as well as entrepreneurs - who you are and what people say about you, as much as we try to downplay this way of thinking, matters today more than ever before.

 

[Shimmy]

One class I'm in has a lecturer who has dedicated 70% of the course to personal branding. He has got us:
- Writing personal mission and value statements
- Creating a personal blog where we write articles targeted towards the industry/market we want jobs in
- Updating a Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ page (again, branded for the area we want jobs in
- Participating in the Google Online Marketing Challenge (some good ol' experience)
- Doing a few online certifications from Google and Hubspot

Now, I plan to create jobs, not go the traditional route, but I'm sure well-branded individuals who are looking for jobs will have a giant advantage when they graduate.

Please no hate regarding university Only 1 more year left.

 

[Marc]

First of all, let's see the definition google returns on "Personal Branding" :

1. Personal branding is the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands. While previous self-help management techniques were about self-improvement, the personal-branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging.

So, the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands. What is a brand then? Well, here is where there's a lot of controversy, but let's take this google search result : http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/brand.html

So a brand is an image that becomes associated with a level of credibility, quality, and satisfaction in the consumer's mind. With these definitions in mind, here's what my mind came up with the main areas of focus on personal branding :

Personal Image : How you look, how you speak, how you behave and other individuals' opinion of you.
Corporate Image : How your business looks, how your business "speaks", how well your business performs the marketed actions and other'd opinion on your business.

I consider these all relevant points, and making sure each one of them is essential in success, that's why freelance outsourcing is now at a peak. You will want designers to get you the best-possible website you can get as well as some great business cards, you will want some writers to come up with some top notch paragraphs presenting your field of work, etc.

Overall, I've merely defined what personal branding is and how it affects you/your business is all up to you and your niche ( i.e. we cannot expect the only supermarket in a small town in Africa to invest money into its design or marketing, since it does not need that ) but the general case scenario would be, in my opinion, to invest heavily at first into trusted outsourcers for the parts in your personal branding which you cannot fill as well as you'd want to, since it will pay off in the long run.