6 Steps to Building Your Professional Brand
- 1. 6 Steps to Building Your Personal Brand From Suzette Conway at Spirit SpotCopyright 2013 Spirit Spot™
- 2. Agenda Some Truths About Branding A Process for Building Your Brand The Components of Your Brand
- 3. Some Truths About Branding
- 4. Some Truths About Branding Branding is about reputation and awareness Branding should be done consciously, don’t be a victim of accidental branding Branding isn’t something you do quickly, it happens over time Branding isn’t something you do once, it is continuous and should evolve, just like you do
- 5. Some Truths About Branding Brands must have a target audience and be relevant to that audience Brands should stand out and be memorable Branding is easier when it is authentic
- 6. Why Should You Care? Social media requires branding. People will Google you. Whether you interact online or off people build an image of who you are over time You get to be in control of all of those impressions.
- 7. A Process for Building Your Brand
- 8. A Process for Building Your Brand 1. Define your professional goals 2. Clarify your values, interests, and passions 3. List the strengths, talents, skills that support your brand STOP:Get feedback and then proceed 4. Analyze your potential customers (employers, clients) 5. Analyze your competition 6. Create the components of your brand
- 9. A Process for Building Your Brand Define your professional goals Near Term, 1, 2, and 5 years Skills enhancement and Education Target role/job Lifestyle – telecommute, location independent life, flexible schedule, semi-retirement Hunker down in one spot for 15 years or a new adventure/job every 3 years? Innovative, exciting culture with many unknowns (startup) or lots of structure and predictability?
- 10. A Process for Building Your Brand Clarify your values, interests, and passions What do you want to spend your time on at work or in learning mode? What are your Intrinsic Values? What are your Extrinsic Values? What are your Lifestyle Values?
- 11. A Process for Building Your Brand Intrinsic Values Intangible rewards that motivate and satisfy you at work on a daily basis. It’s what makes you WANT to go to work each day. Variety and change at work Being an expert Help others, Help society Experience adventure/excitement Take risks/have physical challenges Feel respected for your work Compete with others Have lots of public contact Influence others Engage in precision work Gain a sense of achievement Opportunities to express your creativity Work for a good cause
- 12. A Process for Building Your Brand Extrinsic Values The tangible rewards or conditions at work, including the physical setting, job titles, benefits and earnings/earning potential. Have control/power/authority Travel often Be rewarded monetarily Be an entrepreneur Work as a team Work in a fast-paced environment Have regular or flexible work hours Be wealthy Have prestige or social status Have intellectual status Have recognition through awards/honors/bonuses Wear a uniform Work in an aesthetically pleasing environment
- 13. A Process for Building Your Brand Lifestyle Values Personal values associated with how and where you want to live, spend your leisure time, and how you feel about money. Save money Vacation many times a year Access to educational/cultural opportunities Live close to sports/recreational facilities Be active in your community Entertain at home Be involved in politics Live simply Spend time with family Live in a big city, small town, or overseas Have time for spirituality/personal growth Be a homeowner Have fun in your life and at work
- 14. A Process for Building Your Brand List strengths, talents, skills that support your brand Adjectives to describe you & your professional behavior Talents you’re always recognized for, things you do better than others Specific professional skills – project management, documentation, budgeting… Choose the top five, the ones you do best and enjoy doing the most STOP and Get feedback from those that know you best… family, friends, and close peers. Objectively compare your lists with theirs. Do they match? Are there significant differences?
- 15. A Process for Building Your Brand Analyze your potential customers (employers, clients) What do you know about their industry, products, and customers? What do you know about their needs and wants? What do your customers look for, what’s relevant to them? How does it map to what you offer? Who are their top people and what are their brands like? How do they position themselves?
- 16. A Process for Building Your Brand Analyze Your Competition How are others in your field with your skills positioning themselves? How are they different from you? How do you offer more value? How do you stand out? What do I need to do to become better than my competition?
- 17. Creating the Components of Your Brand
- 18. Creating the Components of Your Brand Identify the primary "product” you have to offer others (service, resource, special ability, etc.) Weave the items on all your lists into a statement of your specialty. What are you particularly gifted at delivering Write a paragraph emphasizing your specialty and your five key talents, weaving in your most important values, passions and skills.
- 19. Creating the Components of Your Brand Define your unique value proposition What is it YOU offer that is valuable to your target audience? How do your talents and skills align with your audience’s needs?
- 20. Creating the Components of Your Brand Decide how you will you position yourself and what positions do you want to avoid Are you a local baker or a global baking service? Do you specialize in recovering troubled projects with laser focus or excel at managing lots of projects simultaneously?
- 21. Creating the Components of Your Brand Create a tag line to your brand This summarizes your value proposition. It’s your verbal business card. This is not a mission statement, it’s a short simple, memorable statement describing who you are and what you offer. My Tag line Energetic content and education director skilled at creating programs from scratch.
- 22. Creating the Components of Your Brand Create a tag line to your brand Create 3 lists of words Emotional Words Descriptive Modifiers Your function
- 23. Creating the Components of Your Brand Create a tag line to your brand Emotional words that describe your personality and impact. It can be as simple as “fun” Questions to Consider How do I make people feel? How do people benefit by working with me? What words do others use to describe me? Mine: Energetic
- 24. Creating the Components of Your Brand Create a tag line to your brand Add a descriptive modifier to clarify the emotional word and identify who or what the product is for Disney’s is “family” As an individual, yours might be an industry (“healthcare” or “education”), or it might be a skill (“creative” or “strategic”)
- 25. Creating the Components of Your Brand Create a tag line to your brand Questions to Consider What field or industry am I in (or do I want to be in)? What are the words I would use to describe my work? Who is my target audience? Nike’s is “authentic athletic performance,” “authentic” is the emotional appeal, while “athletic” tells you what the brand is for.
- 26. Creating the Components of Your Brand Create a tag line to your brand What is your Function? It might be something that directly relates to your career: writing, website design, or CAD operation It might be something broad, like Disney’s “entertainment” Questions to Consider: What service do I have to offer people? What do I do that makes me stand out from everyone else?
- 27. Creating the Components of Your Brand Create a tag line to your brand Mold the words into a short sentence or phrase, 10 words or less Should communicate clearly who you are Should be simple and memorable Should feel inspiring to you Examples: “dependable, strategic planner” “a creative professional connector.” “motivating others to do their best.”
- 28. Creating the Components of Your Brand Test again Test your value proposition, positioning statement, and tag line. Run it by friends, colleagues, members of your professional association, members at LPJC, recruiters, HR reps… note their reaction. Look for gaps in your perception of your brand and the way other’s perceive your brand. Adjust as needed
- 29. Creating the Components of Your Brand Create a professional presence online When someone finds information about you online, it tells them to who you are and what you can do. Employers considering you for a job WILL Google you. What will they find? You must have an online presence So how do you create an online presence?
- 30. Creating the Components of Your Brand Create a professional presence online Create a website or blog as a primary landing spot Build profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Industry Association Websites Write Articles & blogs, post on all your social networks and your website Speak and teach Add instructions for how to hire you to speak or teach Show your schedule (recent and upcoming events) Create Videos and post online (vimeo, YouTube, your website or blog, social networks)
- 31. Creating the Components of Your Brand Create a professional presence online Create presentations and post on SlideShare Blog and guest blog Write or contribute to newsletters for professional associations, Be visible in professional associations and other organizations – Volunteer, Present, Tweet their news & events
- 32. Creating the Components of Your Brand Create a professional presence online Remember, this takes a while. No one expects you to have a full blown brand in 30 days. Start small and build on it by looking for opportunities to reuse things. Write an article then summarize it as a blog post and link to the full article at the end. Put the blog link in your twitter feed or start a discussion around it on a LinkedIn group… or answer a LI question and include the link to your blog for more details. Share it with a similar blog and suggest you each guest post for one another.
- 33. Creating the Components of Your Brand SAMPLE BRAND Google “Suzette Conway”. You won’t find pictures of my summer vacation. What you will find, other than a few personal items (meet up profile and pinterest profiles): My profile on Google, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, SheWrites, Mediabistro… My own website (suzetteconway.com) Twitter account aggregators (wefollow, twtrland, …) References to my involvement in ASTD References to my work presenting and speaking
- 34. Creating the Components of Your Brand SAMPLE BRAND Comments I’ve made on public blogs Blog posts and articles I’ve written My SlideShare presentations Mentions of me by people I’ve interviewed Listings in professional directories and in public record aggregators The press release announcing my current role Even if you don’t get into the top 10 rankings for your name, try for the top results to include all “good” content and none of the things you don’t want grandma to see
- 35. Summary Consciously Develop your brand. Make sure that when employers/clients look for you they find you and that what they find is what you want them to find. Remain visible and passionate about your work and your brand.
- 36. QUESTIONS? FIND ME… ON LINKEDIN: HTTP://WWW.LINKEDIN.COM/IN/SUZETTECONWAY ON TWITTER @SUZETTECONWAY Be More in SENCQ with LinkedInCopyright 2012 Spirit Spot™
Editor's Notes
- #5: Reputation/Awareness:People need to know who you are, what you stand for professionally, and what you offer, how to find you, etc… If a recruiter is looking for you they must be able to find you and clearly and quickly identify your professional experience and area of focus.Consciously: You should plan your brand and execute the plan. It doesn’t have to be something you schedule out daily activities for… but put some thought into how you want to represent yourself, what you can do to build awareness…. And do something (tweet, blog, speak, write an article, sit on a board… something). Also, pay attention to what others say about you, what shows up when Googling your name in quotes. Quickly: Brands are about trust – people need to know you are who you say you are and that takes time. If you say you are an expert in project management, they should be able to find articles, blog posts, conference presentations, job history, recommendations, portfolio samples, … that prove that. Those things take time to build. Ongoing: Branding isn’t something you do once, you do it continuously and it should evolve, just like you do. Creating and building your unique brand is an organic and ongoing process. As you write articles link to them, as you blog tell people about it, as you gain new skills, take more classes…. Update LinkedIn and your resume…..Consider yourself and your career a work in progress, and your brandwill change as your career and goals do.
- #6: Audience: Your audience is critical. If you are trying to connect with recruiters, colleagues, and online groups in the banking industry you may use more conservative or formal language, traditional resume styles, and such. But if you are reaching out to a hip IT startup where people sit on yoga balls instead of chairs, then you will likely communicate and represent yourself differently. If you don’t know your audience, their culture, their needs, and interests… you can’t effectively highlight how you align with all that. Memorable: This is about awareness again. If you blend in people will look past you and everyone who looks like you. You need to capture their attention.Authentic: Be true to who you are. It is hard to fake an entire work experience, outlook, set of interests and hobbies, etc. Be yourself but in professional mode.
- #7: Social media requires branding: With the rise of social media, you have not only the ability, but the need to manage your own reputation, both online and in real life. When people interact with you they will Google you. Whether you’re job hunting, in school, currently employed, starting a business…. It is critical to think like a business leader. When a business leader looks to hire a contractor, freelancer, consultant, or full time employee…when they consider board members, making connections, and offering promotions… they WILL Google you. Truth: When you interact with people, online and off, they’ll build up an image of who you are over time.You get to be in control of all of those impressions. Why leave your professional reputation to chance, when you can be your own PR pro and manage your image proactively?How Many of you feel you’ve started building a brand for yourself?Great! So for some of you this may be a refresher or it may help you expand your efforts.
- #9: Shape your brand and message to support these elements…...
- #10: Why do you think these considerations matter?
- #12: Why do you think these considerations matter?
- #13: Why do you think these considerations matter?
- #14: Why do you think these considerations matter?
- #15: What are some of the general strengths and personality traits that have gotten you to this current level in your career? Are you good at multi-tasking? Do you have an extraordinary ability to persuade others? Are you known for your outstanding leadership style with subordinates?Are you strong at product management, project management, financial budgeting, negotiating contracts? How do you handle crisis? Are you the coolest cucumber in town? Do you excel at high level planning.How are your follow through skills? Are you great at assembling productive teams and ensuring timely completion? Your best skills may directly relate to things you love to do. Similarly, you’ll often discover weaknesses that correspond with tasks you dislike performing.THE GOAL:Identifying the things that make you stronger than the competition. Then use that to promote your brand effectively. Before you begin a full blown branding effort get very clear on what attributes and drivers you possess. GET FEEDBACK: If your resume says you are a top underwater basket weaver and your colleague is all “um… I’ve seen your baskets… you might want to reconsider that…”….. Then you might want to reconsider that.
- #16: Analyze your potential customers (employers, clients). This is your audience. Identifying and understanding your audience is critical to developing a brand that connects with that audience.If you are trying to connect with recruiters, colleagues, and online groups in the banking industry you may use more conservative or formal language, \\traditional resume styles, and such. But if you are reaching out to a hip IT startup where people sit on yoga balls instead of chairs, then you will likely communicate differently and represent yourself differently. If you don’t know your audience, their culture, their needs, and interests… you can’t effectively highlight how you align with all that.
- #17: Search or people with your skills on LinkedIn or other communities. Google industry leaders.Read profiles, bios, resumes, and interpret their brandsYou should evaluate and understand your personal competition. Your personal brand should mirror or exceed the talent of your perceived competition.
- #22: A coach who consults by phone helping high earners move even further up the corporate ladder – might have a tag line of "Coaching executives further up the ladder of success”. A senior business analyst negotiating the conflicting priorities of developers and customers and market demands might use the tag line “Effective problem solver who thrives at the intersection of creativity, technical requirements, and customer satisfaction.”