Photo Credits: pshutterbug
Personal branding expert Dan Schawbel asked his Twitter followers for their definition of Personal Branding. Here is my take, in 140 characters or less:
The art of articulating and communicating your skills, personality and values so that others seek you to help them solve a problem.
While these are very few words, each of them is there for a reason, so let’s dissect the phrase and understand what each word means in the context of personal branding:
- Personal Branding is an art: it takes practice, creativity and patience to do it right. There is really no checklist or sure recipe for success, and building your brand is a long term, ongoing process.
- Personal Branding involves your skills, personality and values: while skills are important, it’s not only what you know that counts. After all, business requires you to interact with people, so personality is also important. However, there’s a third, crucial element: your values. Without being true to your values you will never achieve a strong personal brand. You need passion, and for that you have to do something you believe in.
- You must be able to articulate and communicate what your brand is all about: you may have a potentially strong brand, but if you’re not able to define it and share it in a simple way that resonates with your audience, your brand will never reach its true potential.
- A strong personal brand makes others seek you instead of you seeking them. A sound personal branding strategy will help you build your reputation and your network so that interesting opportunities come to you.
- For a personal branding strategy to be successful, you must be able to solve a problem. You must provide real value and exceed your customers’ expectations.
So there you have it, my take on what personal branding means in a few simple words.
What is your definition of personal branding?
I specialize in helping senior executives and those who aspire to be business leaders manage their careers!
Mario, thanks for the shout out and for joining in on my little poll/game.
@Martin – really bad decision to promote yourself in your comment without adding value to Mario’s blog post. It makes you look really bad!
Mario, personal branding is more of a process and the personal brand is the individual who has to constantly sell itself and be judged based on what is observable.
Great job,
Dan
Mario,
I really like your definition. The only thing that I would potentially challenge is that a personal brand needs to be able to solve a business problem. I would argue that athletes, rockstars, and even regular everyday people can build their personal brands that do not necessarily facilitate the end-goal of solving a business problem.
There’s a homeless guy in Austin named Leslie who cross-dresses, wears thongs, rides his bike around the town and receives tons of write-in votes for Mayor every year. He has a very distinct personal brand, and while he does impact the community, I don’t know that he’s helping solve all that many business problems.
In any event, this was a solid post that demonstrated a great grasp of personal branding, and for the most part I really liked both definition itself and the breakdown.
Thanks for sharing!
Ryan:
Good observation. I was thinking more in the context of a solopreneur or independent professional, who are in the business of “solving a problem” for their customers.
At the same time, it is also true that from the point of view of the customer, let’s say, a dentist’s patient, a root canal is not a business problem. To make the definition all-encompassing I have removed the word “business” from my definition.
Thank you for adding value to this post with that excellent reply.
Skills, personality and values are all really important and I am glad you mentioned them. Those are the core of who we are and if you dont have that, how can you have a brand. In researching this particular topic I have found a useful website, personavita.com you may want to take a look and see what you think.
Hey Mario,
I am on a personal journey to crystallize my own brand. I’ve been stymied by not knowing what I want to be when I grow up (I’m 52:-). Ok, stymied is weak, I’ve agonized over it.
But I have been writing online since 1997 and I have followed a personal creed to not swear, value other’s opinions and never put someone down in public. Although it was not designed by any other intent than to practice my own values, I know that I do have a brand cause people have told me so.
It’ll all come together once I get a better since of direction. I have unshakable faith that it will.
Thank you for the opportunity to get this off my chest brother!
Great summation, Mario!
Thank you. It can be hard to define at times.
I’ll credit you when I quote it next.
The part about ‘solving a problem’ is broad enought to include the intangible benefits of brand association that are often sought by people. For example, when associating with a celebrity brand just to be seen a ‘cool’, or having the same values or skills.
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my site: Susanna
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