Susan Chritton

Personal branding is a marketing strategy focused on your most important product: you. Developing a personal brand requires figuring out who you really are (your skills, values, passions, and personality), who you want to serve (your target market or audience), and how you differ from the competition (your unique niche).

Personal branding done well requires an implemented strategy to guide your success. It keeps your career fresh and exciting at a time when many others, during the middle years of their career, are happily hanging out in routine. Setting a strategy to continue to grow in your career and continually evolve your personal brand takes courage and vision.

The ACE method is a great tool for using your personal brand in job searches and identifying potential employers and customers. Here are the steps it entails: Assess all your career and personal assets: Personal brand Motivated skills (the skills you are good at and enjoy using) Talents and aptitudes Passions and interests Personality type Work and life values Career and personal goals Education and training Licenses and certifications Work/business experience Industry knowledge Career and business network (relationships) Clarify what’s important: Your top three motivated skills/leadership competencies Your top three passions and interests Your top three personal brand attributes Your unique promise of value (see Chapter 7) Evaluate the best fit for what’s important to you: Your preferred career target (job function) or business target — your dream job or dream client Your preferred work environment: which sectors, industries, companies?

Personal branding is about deciding to take an active role in the direction of your life. You benefit from creating a personal brand because it allows you to self-manage your life and stop depending on others to do it for you. Your personal brand helps you make the most of what you’ve got to offer. Permission to be yourself The personal branding process assures you that it’s okay to be yourself.

Personal branding is about making connections, and the logo you choose should connect with your audience. A logo creates awareness. It can be a symbol, text, a graphic, or a combination of these things. (Keep in mind that people recognize images more often than they remember text.)It symbolizes your brand and provides an image that gives you a memorable identity.

Being known as an expert provides credibility to your personal brand. Expertise establishes why people will initially want to engage with you and why they will think of you, and your brand, to solve their problems. Examine your many characteristics in order to uncover your unique promise of value. That promise identifies what you want to be known for and the behavior you authentically demonstrate to achieve your goals.

LinkedIn is the most popular business social media site on the web, and you want to ensure that your LinkedIn presence represents you and the personal brand that you've developed in the most positive way. You make a first impression online in much the same way as you do in person. The ultimate goal is for your LinkedIn profile to provide answers about you and your personal brand that visitors typically look for when visiting any website: Who are you?

Storytelling illustrates events through words, images, and sounds and can help you build your personal brand. A story has a basic structure: a beginning, middle, and end. The best stories pull you in from the beginning, keep your interest in the middle, and leave you with a satisfying ending, wanting for more.

If the list of people you know seems too sparse to support your personal branding goals, your next step is to consider how to meet more people. Simple, right? Well, for some people, it’s simple. For others, meeting new people may require a serious effort. Which category do you fall in? The following quiz, provided courtesy of William Arruda, founder of Reach Personal Branding, can help you figure out how skilled you are at going beyond your comfort zone in the effort to meet new people.