Chapter 19

Ten Signs that Your Personal Brand Needs Attention

In This Chapter

Reviewing ways personal branding overcomes success obstacles

Making personal branding a personal priority

There’s a reason personal branding is a priority of the most successful people you know, whether they operate as freelancers, independent consultants, small business owners, corporate executives, employees in well-branded businesses or organizations, or leaders of every stripe. Those who achieve their goals and ascend to the top of their fields benefit from highly regarded reputations — personal brands — that pave the way for their success.

Personal branding is how you manage your reputation and interactions to develop positive impressions in the minds of those you want to influence. Through personal branding, you positively affect how people react to you, how they fit you into their hierarchy of interests and needs, and how they view you as an asset, a leader, a star in your field.

Tick through the ten points in this chapter to determine whether your personal brand is in need of attention. Then make Chapter 4 your guide to follow.

You’re Not Making Your Personal Goals

If you’re not getting the promotions, interviews, publicity, customers, or opportunities you want, chances are your personal brand is part of the problem. The image others hold, or what they discover when they inquire about you or search for you online, may be blocking the positive responses you seek.

Personal branding is how you manage your reputation and interactions to develop positive images in the minds of those you want to influence. It does so in two ways:

• Personal branding creates an internal force: Through the personal branding process you figure out what you’re best at and how you want to be perceived by others. You set personal goals and the roadmap you’ll follow to reach them. You lock in on how to present yourself. As a result, you gain self-confidence about your strengths, your goals, your target audience, and the unique personality, expertise, and message you want to consistently cultivate and convey.
• Personal branding creates an external force: Through personal branding, you help others form good first and lasting impressions about who you are and what you stand for, your expertise, your unique benefits and value, and what they can count on you to do best. You help them gain trust in your attributes and abilities every time they encounter you or any information about you, especially online, where those you want to influence often form their first impressions.

You Think Personal Branding Sounds Self-Absorbed

Intentionally or not, you have a personal brand. It’s whatever people believe about who you are and what you stand for based on what they’ve personally experienced, what they’ve heard from others, or what they’ve seen online.

If you think the term personal branding sounds somehow self-centered, call it reputation management instead. Either way, it’s essential to your success.

Through personal branding, you positively affect the beliefs about you that arise in the minds of others when they encounter you or your name. You help them understand the value you deliver. You help them see, how you fit into their hierarchy of interests and needs. You enhance how they view you as an asset, a leader, and a star in your field. As a result, you improve how they react when they encounter you or your name and as they decide whether or not to involve you in their lives.

You Can’t Say What You’re Best At

Personal branding begins with knowledge about what you want people to believe about you and what, in fact, they currently believe. To get started, take these steps:

• List five words you’d like associated with your image.
• Look through recent compliments, testimonials, endorsements, and recommendations for words others use when describing your strengths.
• Ask people you know and work with to name the first five words that come to mind when they think of you.

When you’ve decided what you want to be known for, and after you’ve determined what, in fact, you’re currently known for, the process of personal branding helps you close the gap and align the images held by others with the images you want them to have and hold.

Search Results for Your Name Are Few and Far Between

These facts are from Chapter 4 and worth repeating in this roundup of personal branding motivations:

• Google handles more than a billion name searches daily.
• Nine of 10 job recruiters use social networks to find candidates, and three of four check search results and social-media profiles.
• Nearly everyone now gathers information online or through word-of-mouth when pursuing personal or business relationships.

When people enter your name into a search box, the results influence their opinions about who you are, what you stand for, and how outstanding you are in your field. Check yourself out:

• Do you own the all-important first search result for your name?
• Do you dominate the first page of results, with links to positive content all the way down the page?

If the results for your name search are few, outdated, or embarrassing, get busy establishing online presence that helps those you want to influence see and believe that you’re a valuable force of influence in your field. Turn to Chapters 10 and 11 for advice to follow.

Links to Your Name Are Dated, or Worse

This malady may be the single biggest kick-in-the-seat-of-the-pants for those in need of personal brand repair. Online self-sleuthing is often called ego surfing, and few can live comfortably with results that reflect poorly on who they are and how they want to be perceived.

If you don’t like how you look online, consider this advice:

• Lack of online presence: If a search for your name leads to no, few, or deeply buried results, make online presence a top personal branding goal. Start by launching a personal blog or website and creating profiles on major social-media networks, including Google+ and LinkedIn profiles, as both appear prominently in search results. See Chapter 10 for advice.
• Outdated, irrelevant, or embarrassing online presence: If results for your name search don’t support your desired brand image, make development of links to current, favorable content part of your personal branding program. By achieving positive mentions on high-traffic, reputable sites you can push unfavorable links onto second, third, or subsequent screens, where they’re less likely to be seen.

To make the most of your efforts, make all links findable by using one version of your name everywhere, from your business cards to your personal introductions, to your domain name and social-media profiles.

You Freeze Up When It’s Time to Introduce Yourself

If you draw a blank when you have a chance to introduce yourself, you’re missing out on the only chance you’ll have to make a great first impression. Personal branding helps you land on the words to use. Cover these points:

• What you do and for whom, using keywords or terms people are likely to use when searching for people like you
• A sense of the kind of information and expertise people can count on receiving from you
• A sense of your personality
• A thought-provoking, interesting, likeable indication of why you’re credible, trustworthy, and worth associating with, along with interesting facts about what you’re into and what you’ve done that’s cool and brag-worthy — without actually bragging

As you introduce yourself, remember that in today’s attention-deprived world you get only seconds to make others want to learn more. To be ready for any situation, prepare your personal introduction in several forms:

• A 30-second introduction you can use face-to-face, whether in business meetings, networking events, or chance encounters with those who can be instrumental to your personal or business-building goals
• A 160-character, 20-word introduction you can use to win interest and convey who you are on social-media pages and other online sites
• 50-, 100-, and 500-word versions of your introduction you can rapidly select from to share when people ask for your biographical information

Your Connection Invitations Get Ignored

If your job applications are routinely bypassed, your social-media invitations get no response, your phone calls don’t get returned, or your pitches always come in behind those of the winning contender, your personal brand may well be part of the problem.

People respond positively to those they believe will have a positive impact on their own lives and goals. Give thought to these questions:

• What do people think when they meet you or see or hear your name?
• What do they learn if they ask around or search for your name online?
• What do they see if they look at your social-media pages?
• What impression do they get from their first contact with you, whether that contact comes through an email message, a letter, a phone call, a résumé, a personal encounter, or some other form of introduction?

Turn to Chapter 3 as you take a candid look at your brand image and what may be blocking the responses you’re seeking from others.

You Aren’t Sure Which to Promote: Your Personal or Your Business Brand

Most people present two brands at once: their personal brand and the brand of their own or their employer’s business. As you present both brands, maintain balance between the two so that each reinforces without eclipsing the other.

The following questions will help you decide if you need to pay special attention to boosting the visibility and strength of either your personal or your business brand:

• Assessing your personal brand: If you sold your business or left your current job tomorrow, is your personal brand strong enough to move with you into new opportunities? Have you developed a reputation based on your personal abilities and the distinct value you consistently deliver, or is your reputation built primarily on your current employer and business title and therefore not easily transportable to future opportunities? If your personal brand isn’t well-defined and transportable, it needs work.
• Assessing your business brand: If you own your own business or hold a key position in your employer’s business, is the business brand you represent strong enough to survive without the power of your personal brand behind it, should you decide to leave the business? If your personal brand is so strong that people know and trust you more than your business, your business brand needs attention.

Flip to Chapter 4 as you work to keep your personal and business brands in balance and as you plan ways to cross-promote the two.

You Need but Don’t Know How to Ask for Referrals and Recommendations

Good words from respected and trustworthy sources can be key to success in reaching your personal branding goals. Instead of just waiting for praise, reach out and request recommendations, following these steps:

• Tell why you’re reaching out and the reason you’re asking for a recommendation. For example, “I’m preparing to announce my new book and would like my website and promotional material to include kudos from respected authors like you who are familiar with my work.” This gives your request context, allows you to share a compliment, and conveys that the request is carefully targeted.
• Tell what kind of recommendation you’re hoping to receive. For example, “Would you help by writing a couple of sentences that mention my expertise and your experience working with me? I’m including a few recent comments as examples that might make my request easier to fulfill.” This saves the request recipient time and guides development of a recommendation that suits your needs.
• State your timeline. For example, “I’m hoping to receive your comment by the end of next week, along with the website you’d like me to link to your name.” This makes your request clear and mutually beneficial.

You Want More Awareness, Credibility, and Recognition in Your Field

Personal goals are the best reason of all to kick your personal branding efforts into high gear. Follow the steps in Chapter 4 and use the advice throughout this book as you get specific about what you want to accomplish, how you want to be known, and the strategy you’ll follow to differentiate yourself, develop awareness, win credibility and trust, and gain the reputation and influence that affects your success in every aspect of your life.