How to Forge Your Personal Brand
It's all about YOU.
Good news!
It is all about you when it comes to personal branding.
How you present YOU is more important to success than your legal services. And the most effective way to package YOU is to create a compelling PERSONAL BRAND.
What exactly is a Personal Brand?
A personal brand is the word or phrase we want others to think of when they think of us:
- General Colin Powell: Integrity
- Trial Lawyer Richard Haynes: Racehorse
- Actor Tom Hanks: The Nicest Guy in the World
- First Lady Laura Bush: Classy Lady
Three Components of a Personal Brand:
#1 Your Personal Identity
Your personal brand is based on your character, not what you do for a living.
You may want your brand to relate to your physicality, i.e. Shaq, The Diesel; or maybe you want to highlight your brains and intellect, i.e. Albert Einstein, The Absent-minded Genius; or play up some aspect of your personality, i.e. political pundit Ann Coulter, Antagonist.
Whatever part of your character you decide to promote, there is one golden rule: Never try to be something you are not!
#2 Stimulates Meaningful Emotional Response
The idea is to evoke strong, positive emotions in the hearts of your target audience.
Ask yourself: How do you want to make others feel? Happy? Motivated? Inspired?
- Tiger Woods: Inspires us to be our best.
- John Madden: Makes us laugh and feel good.
- Winston Churchill: Strong leader who stood up to bullies.
#3 Values and Qualities for Which You Stand
Your personal brand is your promise to people about what they can expect from you.
Start thinking about what the promise is you want to deliver to your target audience.
Expertise? Perseverance? Trust? Make your promise SINGULAR.
The best brands are simple, straightforward, and unambiguous, i.e. John Kennedy: Style, or Margaret Thatcher: Iron Lady.
Pick one thing and be known for that one thing better than anyone else. Your objective is to become the epitome of the value or quality you choose.
So ask yourself these questions:
- If your picture were to appear in the dictionary as the definition of a quality, what would you want that quality to be? Tenacious... Aggressive... Charismatic?
- What aspect of your persona is relevant to your target audience?
- What is the one thing that differentiates you from your competitors?
Adapted from: Tim O'Brien, The Power of Personal Branding: Creating Celebrity Status with Your Target Audience
Entries(RSS)