How to Build Your Personal Brand
Get brainy about branding.
If you spend your fair share of workaday hours avoiding the marketing department, or the phrase “getting lots of buzz” makes your eyes roll, we see you. And therefore we understand the urge to flee all this talk about personal brand. But cut through the jazzy acronyms and there’s more “there” there. Mr. Jeff Bezos calls branding nothing more than “what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” Like him or not, he knows a thing or two about the subject. And we’ve put together some more demystifying resources so you can take a deeper dive into the brand pool.
Reacquaint yourself—with you.
Marketing strategist and b-school prof Dorie Clark must have somehow divined our pandemic moment with her 2013 book Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future. Whether you recently made a move within your organization (or would like to), are contemplating a jump to another field or simply want to reintroduce yourself in a post-COVID way, this tome’s for you. Its practical advice is interspersed with interviews and stories that drive the point home.
Look to the accountants (no, really).
Sure, we know PWC as an accounting powerhouse—so never did we ever think that they would have one of the best (and free at that) personal branding workbooks. This is no complicated spreadsheet, but rather an easy and intuitive set of exercises that will easily get you on your way to uncovering your X (and whY) factors.
Mind your Ps.
We truly fanned out over this wise post from our Into Them subject Adrion Porter. In it, he walks you through the 5 Ps (you’ll allow us a little bit of catchy alliteration, right?) that make up your brand DNA—your purpose, your positioning, your promise, your personality and your presence. He expertly simplifies these concepts so they can be defined by you, for you.
Pick your lucky seven.
We love this Forbes Article, “7 Things You Can Do to Build An Awesome Personal Brand in 2021” and despite crossing into 2022, we think the ideas still hold up. We particularly like the distinction between creator, curator and connector, which serves as a useful guide particularly when thinking about getting the most out of posting on LinkedIn.
Find the missing link.
Getting the feeling that we really, really encourage LinkedIn proficiency? Well, one more time with feeling, Sandra Long’s how-to, LinkedIn for Personal Branding: The Ultimate Guide, will make our casual suggestion (hint, hint) an actionable reality. Usually, books like this are tricky given the pace of technological change, but with a 2021 update, we feel good about its relevance. At the very least, it will help you pick the low-hanging fruit.
