October 29, 2008
Posted by Ryan Graves
Building the most important Brand : YOU
There was a great post on the Viral Thinking blog today called, ‘Creating Your Personal Brand‘. This started as a comment on that post and I wanted to continue the thought here…
<comment> Personal branding is SO important. Even for businesses that aren’t just run by one individual, its important for that companies individuals to use personal branding!
Personal branding is essentially two things: CREDIBILITY and the ability to COMMUNICATE that credibility. As mentioned in this post, it is totally legit to “claim” to be an expert in the process of becoming one. If you are passionate about your area and diligent to become a true expert your are more valuable than the claimed expert who is not continually learning. Plus, if you’re in a position where you are continuing to learn you relate better with “normal people”, thus making yourself even more of a value and a stronger personal brand! </comment>
Along with the credibility and communication factors, another critically important aspect of powerful personal branding is AUTHENTICITY. With all the credibility and communication skills in the world, if you are not authentic to your community, you’re done. If they don’t think they are interacting with a true person you will immediately lose all credibility you worked so hard to gain. So to my point about claiming to be an expert, you need to be honest about the fact that you are in the learning process. Don’t claim to a PHD if you are in school, claim to be a PHD student…the powerful credibility is still there and your honesty will undoubtedly gain you more trust and credibility.
Lastly, possibly the most important factor of building a powerful, strong, and valuable personal brand is SWEAT. If you’re not sweating in your effort to build your knowledge base, build your expertise and in turn, building your personal brand, you’re not doing enough! You have to be out there constantly interacting with your community (this means one on one with individuals). Comment on blogs! Talk about your topic! Help people for free! If you are focusing on these four main points you will be on your way to building a valuable personal brand.
- Credibility
- Communication
- Authenticity
- SWEAT
So, if you are working on your personal brand I’d love to hear about how you are doing it. I’d love to hear about some of your successes or struggles in the process. Please share.
