Brand new Brand YOU
"Personal branding reflected in the zeitgeist. Watching the pros in entertainment, politics, business. And now you. What makes YOU different?"

Ask yourself 4 main questions. These questions were posed at a seminar given by one of America’s greatest personal branders, Joe Calloway.

Rate yourself from one to 10, with 10 being the best, for each of these questions:

1. How good are you?

2. How good are you compared to your competition?
Before you put down a number, answer this: How often do you win when you go up against them? Now rate yourself. The competition isn’t just the enemy; the competition is a report card.

3. How good does the market think you are?
What is their impression of you as a person? Do they even know you exist? What has your impact been on your market? What is the big picture of you in your industry? How are you positioned? Before they can think you’re good, you have to have done something good. Now rate yourself.

4. How good do your customers think you are?
Here is your true measurement. Here is your reputation. Here is your fate. Here, in a word, is your “brand.” It is your personal brand. Now rate yourself.
Add up your ratings, divide by 4 and you’ll have better idea of where you really are as opposed to where you think you are.
What is the reason for the gap between your number and 10 in each of the four questions? If you figure that out, you will soar on every level. Your past will tell you exactly where you are today and why. Most of the time, a journey of self-discovery is the only way. Once you realize the gap, buckle down and start improving your numbers. Start with a plan–even if you just scribble some notes on a notebook, it will clarify your thoughts and solidify your actions.

Your personal brand is the most important and valuable asset you have. The reason for a poor, weak, or unknown brand is that people blame someone or something instead of taking responsibility for actions and outcomes.
Joe Calloway’s expertise is in personal branding. His book, “Becoming a Category of One,” will tell you how you can separate yourself from all the others who do what you do, become positioned in your marketplace and excel against your competition.

Reasons To Believe

In order for your benefit claims to be credible, you must give people reasons to believe what you say will be true. There are several ways to do this, and the more you use, the better.

The first way to support your benefit is the “common sense” approach. This is where you describe why your service performs using simple, plain words that are easy to understand and relate to.

The second way to justify your benefit is using the “actual experience” method. This is where you let people try your service to see if it does what you say.

The third way to validate your benefit is through “credentialization.” This is where you explain how your service came to be developed, or how it is designed, created or produced.

The fourth way to corroborate your benefit is via testimonials. When used correctly, testimonials can be a powerful tool in supporting your benefit. Try to get testimonials that are specific about the results your service delivered.

The fifth and most powerful form of reassurance that your benefit will be delivered is a strong guarantee.

Whatever you say that supports your benefit, make sure it’s relevant! Better to have too much support than not enough. Don’t let success go to your head! Keep using your support statements and find new reasons why people should trust you!

Defining Your Key Benefits

Now that you’ve narrowed your niche, it’s time to define the key benefits of what you offer as they relate to your target market.

Benefits are the results people get from using your service. Benefits can be positive results, or the removal of a negative condition.

Defining your key benefits in terms of removing one or more negative conditions can be much more powerful than stating them in terms of delivering positive results in the future.

The reason for this is, when a negative condition exists somewhere, its effect is in the here and now. It’s causing pain, discomfort, negative cash flow, damage of some kind, or other ongoing consequences that are real, or perceived to be real in the present.

Therefore, curing an existing negative condition has more emotional value than the promise of delivering some yet-to-be-realized benefit in the future.

And, as you probably heard before, people buy based mostly on emotion, and support or justify their purchase with logic.

So if at all possible, think of the benefits of what you do in terms of how they reduce or eliminate a negative condition first. Then, think of the purely positive results your service provides.

A very productive exercise you can do is to ask your current and past clients why they bought from you. Then compare what they said with what you think. Often this can be quite revealing because what you think is important may not be what they think is important. Wouldn’t that be nice to know?

Now that we have have some Personal branding ideas lets start figuring out what we are going to do when we have built our brand template.

Personal Branding Principle #1: Defining Your Target Market

The first personal branding principle is identifying a precise target market, and determining if there’s a real demand among them for what you want.

This step can be eye opening for many people. Why? Because many people are deluding themselves by believing that there’s actually a strong and viable market for that they sell, or want to sell.

All too often people get an idea about a service. Then, they race ahead to develop that service without ever fully testing the potential demand for that service.

The people who are making the most money for the least effort have discovered how to position their services to niche markets. In other words, they have taken a core service and packaged it for one or more niche markets.

The amazing secret of niche marketing is that often you don’t have to actually change your service itself, you just have to change the way you market it.

Take some time to analyze your target market. Is it too broad? Can you break it up into smaller niches and reposition your marketing materials and offers for those groups?

Starting or focusing on a niche will also allow you to hone in on the specific problems and concerns your market has. It will allow you to formulate highly-relevant and more effective solutions for those problems. Consequently, your clients should get better, more meaningful results. This presents the opportunity to get more testimonials that tout specific results. The more specific the results, the more powerful the testimonial.

If you want to grow your brand, you’ve got to come to terms with power — your own. The key lesson: power is not a dirty word!

In fact, power for the most part is a badly misunderstood term and a badly misused capability. I’m talking about a different kind of power than we usually refer to. It’s not ladder power, as in who’s best at climbing over the adjacent bods. It’s not who’s-got-the-biggest-office-by-six-square-inches power or who’s-got-the-fanciest-title power.

It’s influence power.

It’s being known for making the most significant contribution in your particular area. It’s reputational power. If you were a scholar, you’d measure it by the number of times your publications get cited by other people. If you were a consultant, you’d measure it by the number of CEOs who’ve got your business card in their Rolodexes. (And better yet, the number who know your beeper number by heart.)

Getting and using power — intelligently, responsibly, and yes, powerfully — are essential skills for growing your brand. One of the things that attracts us to certain brands is the power they project. As a consumer, you want to associate with brands whose powerful presence creates a halo effect that rubs off on you.

It’s the same in the workplace. There are power trips that are worth taking — and that you can take without appearing to be a self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing megalomaniacal jerk. You can do it in small, slow, and subtle ways. Is your team having a hard time organizing productive meetings? Volunteer to write the agenda for the next meeting. You’re contributing to the team, and you get to decide what’s on and off the agenda. When it’s time to write a post-project report, does everyone on your team head for the door? Beg for the chance to write the report — because the hand that holds the pen (or taps the keyboard) gets to write or at least shape the organization’s history.

Most important, remember that power is largely a matter of perception. If you want people to see you as a powerful brand, act like a credible leader. When you’re thinking like brand You, you don’t need org-chart authority to be a leader. The fact is you are a leader. You’re leading You!

One key to growing your power is to recognize the simple fact that we now live in a project world. Almost all work today is organized into bite-sized packets called projects. A project-based world is ideal for growing your brand: projects exist around deliverables, they create measurables, and they leave you with braggables. If you’re not spending at least 70% of your time working on projects, creating projects, or organizing your (apparently mundane) tasks into projects, you are sadly living in the past. Today you have to think, breathe, act, and work in projects.

Project World makes it easier for you to assess — and advertise — the strength of brand You. Once again, think like the giants do. Imagine yourself a brand manager at Procter & Gamble: When you look at your brand’s assets, what can you add to boost your power and felt presence? Would you be better off with a simple line extension — taking on a project that adds incrementally to your existing base of skills and accomplishments? Or would you be better off with a whole new product line? Is it time to move overseas for a couple of years, venturing outside your comfort zone (even taking a lateral move — damn the ladders), tackling something new and completely different?

Whatever you decide, you should look at your brand’s power as an exercise in new-look résumé; management — an exercise that you start by doing away once and for all with the word “résumé.” You don’t have an old-fashioned résumé anymore! You’ve got a marketing brochure for brand You. Instead of a static list of titles held and positions occupied, your marketing brochure brings to life the skills you’ve mastered, the projects you’ve delivered, the braggables you can take credit for. And like any good marketing brochure, yours needs constant updating to reflect the growth — breadth and depth — of brand You.

(This was an excerpt taken from Fast Company August/September 1997 | Page 83 By: Tom Peters. It shows that personal branding is just as important almost 10 years ago as it is today)

Well if you want to set yourself aside from a crowd just by a glance and be remembered, there is no better way than a tattoo. If there were a set of tattoos pictured you could probably guess the owner of it. Anthony Kiedis and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers Both have a series of incredible tattoos. If you didn’t know they were rock stars you would recognize them from their tatts. Billy Idol has a famous tattoo on his left arm of the old woman. Movie stars like Angelina Jolie and music stars like 50 Cent all have distinctive tattoos that would separate them and make them memorable even their talents didn’t.

Now when you are starting out building your fame and brand, is a tattoo for you? Well, whose attention do you want to attract? The posh 5th Avenue jet set or the screaming masses of teeny boppers with parent’s money to spend. The target audience would be your main focus for a tattoo. Now you could just be a fan of ink and want a tattoo for personal satisfaction. But if the tattoo is going to be part of your game plan, think it through.

The most visible location would be best of course. Your arms or back are the prime body real estate locations for your tattoo. Legs can be saved for your personal tattoos because the act of getting inked can be addictive. If you get one tattoo you will more than likely get another or several. Ask anyone who has a tattoo you can see and they will usually have several that you don’t. The tattoo is going to be part of your personality so choose a tattoo that fits you and will stand out. If you want to portray a tough image then a unicorn inside a heart is NOT the way to go. This is going to be a permanent part of you forever so make it a good one.

If tattooing is not going to configure in the selling of yourself to your target audience then getting inked isn’t the best course of action. On the other hand having a tattoo in a setting where they are not commonly accepted would be a perfect way to get noticed.
You are giving a presentation to a group of top executives and when you raise your arm to point at a chart the bottom half of your arm tribal tattoo is exposed by the sleeve of your suit. In this instance you might garner attention and get noticed for something besides the boredom of the meeting. Getting noticed is what personal branding is all about.

You have a great body and you have appeared on Sports Illustrated. You are married to Seal. Your name is recognizable instatly. You’ve nailed your personal brand solid.

A Blog site is using your name in an advertisement without compensation. Do you react. Of course you do!!!

You have worked hard to build your brand countless hours of self promotion and public appearances. Grueling schedules and constant travel. If you have worked hard on your brand should you not be compensated for its use. It is good to protect your personal brand.

But I think in this instance Gunther Klum is a bit overboard. I know the soundoff on this is way late but to raise a stink over a passing use of the name Heidi Klum is overkill. To have your name mentioned in a blog is just good for business the way I see it. It is like free web advertising and Google indexing without doing any work. But Gunther’s “protection” has shed a bit of a shadow on a name that should bring instant excitement to those who hear it. Now he has turned his daughter’s name into almost joke status with his threatening letters to Wereblogger. Also he has helped Wereblogger ride a personal brand coat-tail into the limelight.

So a small lesson can be learned here. Protect your personal brand but not when it will take it a few steps backwards.

Also, if you want your blog to jump in hits and visitis. Use a supermodels name the wrong way for a little while…….

When you see brandaface next it will be under the new URL www.katemoss.brandaface.com !!!!

Let’s talk shop . When a coroporate entity creates a brand they use a standard called the “feature-benefit” model. This means for every feature they offer in their product or service, it yields an indentifiable and distinguishable benefit for their customer or client.

So what is the “feature-benefit model” that the brand called You offers? Do you deliver your work on time, every time? Do you anticipate and solve problems before they become crises? Your client saves money and headaches just by having you on the team. Do you always complete your projects within the allotted budget? I can’t name a single client of a professional services firm who doesn’t go ballistic at cost overruns.

Your next step is to cast aside all the usual descriptors that employees and workers depend on to locate themselves in the company structure. Forget your job title. Ask yourself: What do I do that adds remarkable, measurable, distinguished, distinctive value? Forget your job description. Ask yourself: What do I do that I am most proud of? Most of all, forget about the standard rungs of progression you’ve climbed in your career up to now. Burn the corporate “ladder” and ask yourself: What have I accomplished that I can unabashedly brag about? If you’re going to be a brand, you’ve got to become relentlessly focused on what you do that adds value, that you’re proud of, and most important, that you can shamelessly take credit for.

When you’ve done that, sit down and ask yourself one more question to define your brand: What do I want to be famous for? That’s right — famous for! A personal brand doesnt work without recognition. Fame and reconition almost always go hand in hand.

Whats so special about YOU??? That is a major question if you decide you want to brand yourself. It is like comparing shoes. Nike makes a better shoe than a 10 dollar pair of sneakers. A better product deserves a brand. So what is special about YOU that deserves to be recognized.
The first step to persoanl branding is visability.

Make a List

What makes you special? What skills do you possess that will get you noticed in the workplace or in the public eye?

After you have your list, Look it over and see what things you could improve on.

There’s no limit to the ways you can go about enhancing your personal profile. Try moonlighting! Sign up for an extra project inside your organization, just to introduce yourself to new colleagues and showcase your skills — or work on new ones. Or, if you can carve out the time, take on a freelance project that gets you in touch with a totally new group of people. If you can get them singing your praises, they’ll help spread the word about what a remarkable contributor you are.

If those ideas don’t appeal, try teaching a class at a community college, in an adult education program, or in your own company. You get credit for being an expert, you increase your standing as a professional, and you increase the likelihood that people will come back to you with more requests and more opportunities to stand out from the crowd.

If you’re a better writer than you are a teacher, try contributing a column or an opinion piece to your local newspaper. And when I say local, I mean local. You don’t have to make the op-ed page of the New York Times to make the grade. Community newspapers, professional newsletters, even inhouse company publications have white space they need to fill. Once you get started, you’ve got a track record — and clips that you can use to snatch more chances.

And if you’re a better talker than you are teacher or writer, try to get yourself on a panel discussion at a conference or sign up to make a presentation at a workshop. Visibility has a funny way of multiplying; the hardest part is getting started. But a couple of good panel presentations can earn you a chance to give a “little” solo speech — and from there it’s just a few jumps to a major address at your industry’s annual convention.

Pick up a new language. Nothing impresses people more than being able to speak in languages other than your native tongue. If you are fluent in several languages you can bridge culture gaps in your personal brand and open up a whole new marketplace for yourself.

All of these are great ways to get the word out there about YOU. Build on YOU and expand YOU and YOU will get noticed!!!