Part 1 What is Personal Branding?
What is Personal Branding?
It’s not nearly as painful as it sounds. Personal branding has become the latest business tool to accelerate your career success. No longer the turf of celebrities and media personalities, personal branding is the new strategy in leveraging your professional profile and branding yourself as an authority in your chosen field.
Personal Branding is the Art of Self Packaging. You are a Product! And Your No. 1 Asset.
Personal branding is simply how we market ourselves. If we were a product, how would we market and promote ourselves? At Jump the Q® Inc. we call it the “Art of Self Packaging”.
As Personal Branding Strategists, the number of professionals seeking our services to develop a strategic personal brand and signature style has grown rapidly. Particularly as a result of CEO’s such as Donald Trump, Richard Branson, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and others becoming celebrities in their own right due to their powerful personal brands.
Gone are the days when seeking the services of a professional branding organization were strictly the territory of new product launches and media personalities in crisis requiring a quick re-badge.
Corporate A-listers are now taking professional development notes from celebrities such as Victoria Beckham and Paris Hilton. As individuals, they have created enormous brand equity through purposefully positioning themselves and as a result, have developed very valuable personal brands.
A celebrity is influential when they have a definable style. What is your definable style? What’s your signature brand style?
Your personal brand should reflect:
• your abilities
• unique attributes, and
• your potential
‘Becoming your own unique brand is essential in today’s market!’ — Rachel Quilty
If you have an excellent personal brand, reputation and references, then you will be hired first, promoted quicker and afforded more authority and respect. Personal branding also affords you more mobility within your industry, and interestingly, your prices and services are questioned less.
Recruiting firms have introduced personal branding initiatives to niche their well branded candidates as the ‘preferred’ candidate. You too can become the ‘only choice’ candidate within your marketplace with a memorable and desirable personal brand.
Richard Branson is one of the most recognized personal brands in the world. The purpose of personal branding is to differentiate you.
By working to your strengths and specializing, you amplify your credibility and improve your personal persuasiveness by increasing your perceived value.
To build a successful personal brand, it is essential at this stage to have a solid foundational knowledge of exactly:
• what is personal branding
• why personal branding is important, and
• what contributes to a successful personal brand
We will discuss the latter two topics in greater depth in subsequent articles.
What is a Brand ?
A brand is the character of a thing or person as perceived by the public. Brand is also defined as ‘to impress indelibly’. A brand is a kind or variety of something that is distinguished by one or more distinctive characteristics.
What is Personal Branding?
My definition is a little more comprehensive than other thought leaders, and I attribute this to the fact that I specialise in this area. I don’t wear hats in marketing and advertising but I claim an authority in the field of personal branding. A God given assignment if you will.
Therefore, my definition isn’t a glib comment or off the cuff quote; it is a well considered and executed explanation of personal branding.
Personal branding is the strategic and systematic process by which individuals determine, define, differentiate themselves from others or their competitors initially within a specific marketplace, industry or platform by their definable style, ability, message or values through a method of intentional positioning, building and leveraging of their unique purpose, attributes and expertise to be recognised as the authority or celebrity in their chosen field.
Brand Yourself! And Jump the Q! Your personal brand should reflect your abilities and potential. Rachel Quilty, Personal Brand Strategist, known as ‘the Authority’ on personal branding and author of must- have book ‘Brand Yourself’. Go to http://www.JumptheQ.com.au for FREE strategic branding tips. Rachel encourages Jump the Q clients to think strategically when developing a personal brand to get that job offer, gain that promotion or win that client.
Jump the Q assists you to strategically and systematically leverage your professional profile and build your personal brand to become the authority in your industry. Get your free personal branding tactics and tips at http://www.brandyourselfblueprint.com
We assist you to develop your Personal Brand Strategy by:
– Discovering your brand mission and purpose.
– Designing your signature persional brand style and voice.
– Developing your personal brand story.
– Deploy a personal Brand Yourself Action Plan.
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