Personal Branding

The Keys to Creating and Marketing your Image

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Your goal is not to make an image. Its to make a statement! ~Tom Asacker

Personal branding is basically how you market yourself or your image to the public.
According to Dan Schawbel, a Personal Branding Gen-Y Expert, the real definition of personal branding refers to the process by which entrepreneurs and companies differentiate themselves from the crowd by identifying their own unique value proposition, either professional or personal, and leveraging it across different platforms with a consistent message and image to achieve a specific goal. Dr. Hubert Rampersad, in his written paper called, Authentic Personal Branding, says that personal branding is more than just marketing or promoting yourself, It reflects your true character and should be built on values, strengths, uniqueness, and genius. His Personal Branding Equation is a formula for

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There are 3 elements of personal branding

Value Proposition Refers to a marketing statement that tells your prospective customers why they should buy a product or service from you. Answers the question: What do you stand for? Differentiation Refers to a marketing strategy of how to make your product or service more attractive and appealing to the customers by contrasting its unique qualities with the competitors products. Answers the question: What makes you stand out? Marketability

Brand Elements
Value Proposition Differentiation Marketability

Refers to the ability of an investor to find an active secondary market in which the product or service can be resold or offered. Answers the question: What makes you compelling?

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The single biggest mistake of businesses wanting to brand themselves is that they fail to invest time in learning about what exactly is in their best interests.
The keys to success are to discover what your passion is and to be compensated based on that passion. In order to discover your passion, you need a lot of time, some luck, and knowledge with the consistent changing environment. You have to think and do some research online to figure out what is happening out there. This is when brand discovery comes in. Brand Discovery Brand discovery is the most vital step in creating and revitalizing your brand. It is all about finding out what you want to do for the rest of your life by setting up short and long term goals, writing down a mission, vision and personal brand statement (what you do and who you serve), as well as creating a development plan. How others perceive you is part of your brand, especially those specific attributes that pertain to you. An internal reality check will also help you to discover your brand. Make sure that the voice, opinions and beliefs of your companys internal team must also be examined and should be aligned with the voice of the customer. Your brand should match your companys mission. Rita Allen, President of ACPI NE (Association of Career Professionals International New England), discovered 3 Ps of marketing technique in order to successfully create your brand and effectively market yourself: 1. Preparation conduct your due diligence; define and identify your brand 2. Packaging create your portfolio; create and build your brand 3. Presentation deliver your message; articulate and enhance your brand One simple equation to help you know if youve discovered your brand is:

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Social media networks provide new ways to interact and engage closely to your clients and prospective customers.

Brands are built through image. Good image is what social media brings to you and your company. Your basic interactions with the rest of the world on the internet through status updates, likes, following, and channels are a great way to establish your brand and image. Facebook Facebook is a home of a global audience of approximately 812,155,800 people. This number has been increasing over the years. Creating a Facebook profile for your business establishes your identity. This is a great way to develop relationships with fellow users, position your business, and attract prospective customers. Your profile allows you to interact with people closely. Make sure your profile picture is the most attractive and pleasing picture you have because hundreds of people with little time to spare will decide whether or not to browse and add your profile based on your picture. But since your profile image displays your unique business identity, the best image for your profile picture is your company logo.

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The rise of social technologies has made dramatic changes in personal branding. Branding is not only more personal, but also within the reach
Twitter Twitter is a social networking site that can be used to connect with relevant and influential people and also to start generating traffic to your website. The key in marketing on Twitter is to seek and follow more people so that more people can seek and follow you. As you start to acquire more and more followers, you can begin to deliver value with links to yours and other relevant blogs and articles, photos and videos that appeal to your Note: Try not to follow too much more people than are following you. For example, if you have 100 followers but you are following 500 or more people, it looks pretty bad to potential followers in that you are not sharing or doing anything of value to gain followers or that you are a potential spam tweeter. audience and advertise your company products and services with specific brand messaging. The key here is to tweet, re-tweet, reply to messages and follow.

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The heart and soul of blogging is the individual and/or the group of individuals opining on the fly and responding post-haste to one and all. ~Michael Conniff

Blogs have become so popular, not only as diaries and personal journals of writers, journalists, academics, and professionals, but also as a place for product reviews and thought leadership for businesses worldwide. Based on Alexa rankings, Blogspot is ranked #8 worldwide while Quantcast estimates that Blogspot has 58,389,332 views per month. Thus, making original content articles about some updates and packages offered by your business can drive huge traffic to your site; people will get to know you and your products and services offered.

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YouTube YouTube is another great way to upload, tag, and share your marketing videos worldwide. Based on the three-month Alexa traffic rankings, YouTube ranks #3 in the world while Quantcast estimates 159,975,920 viewers per month, which is higher than Facebook having 149,488,208 views per month only. Creating a YouTube channel provides enormous possibilities for building your unique personal brand. Being consistent and active on YouTube will position you as an expert in your industry. Video is extremely powerful and effective to communicate to a mass audience. Email Marketing The signature within the e-mails you send every day is a crucial marketing tool in establishing your personal brand. You can download and use free add-ons such as Wise Stamp in creating your personal signature. Those sites are not only user-friendly but also offer a wide range of options they provide you such as adding a picture, phone number, job titles and links to your sites, profiles on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, all in your desired colors, size and font. You can likewise create multiple signatures for different purposes. The data you entered should be consistent and correct because it adds up to your professional image.

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Creative Content Development

Always keep fresh content on your wall posts on a regular basis. Give your followers and customers a reason to come back to your page frequently. Updating your profile does not need a significant amount of additional effort. You may just integrate all your social media outlets in order to maximize results with just a little extra effort. Quality content to express your unique brand is a critical process in social media branding. Creating quality content through the act of filtering, editorializing and contextualizing content in a world where information overload is a reality of daily life is what social media for branding is all about. Your personality is your greatest asset. By devoting time to find and share what you consider the best information in your area of expertise, you provide a valuable service to your social networks and radiate your brand in a positive light.

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Sources

http://books.google.com.ph/books?id=jCaw0e3Xr6MC&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=differentiation+m eans+personal+branding&source=bl&ots=0UJPE7kPL2&sig=gV8OWcyd6eFsJnqxmKb1d8RJxs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WF5lTrjH4WOiAftxfQ5&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=differentiation%20means%20personal%20br anding&f=false http://personalbrandingwiki.pbworks.com/w/page/16005465/FrontPage http://www.brandchannel.com/papers_review.asp?sp_id=1360 http://www.business2community.com/branding/the-new-personal-branding-online-successformula-0135166 http://www.kinesisinc.com/branding/how-to-write-a-powerful-value-proposition/ http://mashable.com/2009/02/05/personal-branding-101/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-tools/the-top-tens/tenways-to-build-up-your-personal-brand/article2342035/ http://michaelhyatt.com/build-your-personal-brand-with-these-5-simple-tools.html

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