The Real Power of Personal Branding
Here’s the secret to personal branding in a nutshell: be consistent. Try your damnedest to be true to the things that make you who you are, and try your best to improve upon those gifts you have, and compensate for the ones you lack. If you learn nothing else from this post, snip everything off below these words and focus on the first part, because that’s really the nugget, and that’s really what needs your focus and attention. The rest is just support.
In Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online part 1, I showed you a small version of the answer to the question, “WHY have a personal brand?” In personal branding part 2, I shared a few tools you can use. In Connie Bensen’s personal branding bonus round, she shared with you a story about building community. Now, let’s finish it off by talking about what gets done with branding.
Brands Can Be Stories, and Thus, You are A Living Story
By saying this, I’m invoking a powerful promise, the the storyteller’s promise. Simply, tell the story you told your audience you’re going to tell. Think for a moment on this as it applies to you. I tell people daily that I’m here to help you understand how these tools develop community, improve your communications, and do a host of other things better than previous tools were doing them. I promise through my stories that you, too, can figure out how to build influence, develop relationships, and be more useful to your organization (be that a business, a nonprofit, or a circle of friends).
If I let you down, I’m not keeping the promise of my story. It’s pretty simple, really. And not so much touchy feely. I could say the same thing a different way, and a manager would write it on an annual review. Integrity is another word for this.
Improve On What You Have, Not Lament What You Lack
I sat in a woman’s office the other day, and she had a copy of StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath on her desk. I’d read the book as well. It’s a follow on to the popular Now, Discover Your Strengths. These books resonated with me because they gave a different set of advice than what we’re accustomed to learning. They taught me about moving forward with what I’m really good at, and finding ways to work around my weaknesses.
We’ve been taught since childhood that we have to be well-rounded, that we have to improve on our weaknesses, that we should strive to fix what’s broken. Not me. I’m done. I’m focusing on what I do best, and you know what? It’s impressive how that changes not only my perspective and abilities, but also the perspective of my colleagues. It turns out that they’re just as willing to accept the parts of my job that I’m not very good at accomplishing, and they either encourage me to get it done some other way, or when they can, they pitch in.
Why work hard to be what you’re not? Build and deliver power through those parts of you that are already your best gifts. I’ve heard this echoed through several other works. In fact, I could give a bibliography of about 30 books without breaking a sweat that will give you the same advice. Don’t ignore what you might need to do but aren’t so great at accomplishing. Instead, find the way that you’re going to handle those parts of your life, deal with it, and focus even harder on the parts you do well.
The Last and Biggest Secret
Confidence. One word. That’s it. If you can learn to nurture your confidence, you will accomplish FAR more than with any piece of software, nifty logo, or perfect slogan. You will do more through empowering your belief in yourself than through ANY other possible tool or method or strategy.
I believe that everyone can recover from a waning self-confidence. It’s not easy by any stretch, but if you learn (or get help to learn), you can uncover ways to strengthen your confidence, and that power will give you energy and ability and an ability to persist, even when things are not in your favor.
Confidence (not arrogance) is the secret sauce to everything you do with regards to personal branding.
Did You Think It Would Be Tricks and Strategies and Repeatable Methodologies?
There are plenty of ways you could approach this. You could develop the strategy of ubiquitous presence: “I’ll be everywhere, and thus people will get to know me.” You could build a strategy to provide “just in time service,” maybe through using the best listening tools, and having resources enough to provide answers and assistance.
But would any of that work without the parts I mentioned above?
What Would You Add to the Branding Story We’ve Told Together?
Do you have more to say? Would you share your personal branding experiences with us? How might you recommend someone take the four parts (including the bonus) of this series and apply them to their online presence efforts to build up a personal brand of value? What are the benefits of all this work? Have you thought of that one, yet?
Your conversation, as always, is greatly appreciated.
The Social Media 100 is a series of posts written about social media and social networking tools by Chris Brogan. If you’d like to receive every post, please subscribe for free to my blog. There’s also a free newsletter with completely different content, if you’d like to receive that as well. Thank you for your attention.
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Comments
Great article, Chris!
I’ve built my videography business around what you where talking about. When I shoot I don’t try to do things that only a studio and a million dollars can do. It’s a waste of time and you never fool anyone. I stick to what I do well and people think a crew of ten shot my videos when it was only two of us.
Well done!
Everything you said is spot on, and it took me a while to learn it on my own. I hope you can inspire others to learn it faster than I did :).
Great advice and refreshing to hear it. Focus on what you’re good at. Problem is so many people don’t figure this out, for a loooong time. What is that old adage, 99% is showing up? Which is the same message as be consistent.
Thanks Chris.
Liked it.. i wrote a more general article on the role of social media in business.. check my blog for that.. yours seems more practical application than mine. thinks for everything chris. its good to have people like you to look up to :)
Your post reminds me of a license plate idea I had a while back: BWHOUR= Be Who You Are. Wouldn’t you know, 3 weeks later I saw that plate on a minivan at the gym? Too funny. A year later my license plate reads: NOWHOUR. No, it’s not Now Hour and it’s not No Whour. It’s Know Who You Are. It’s just good solid advice.
Thanks for your posts Chris.
So true. Refining who you are can of course take time; coming to the realization you have come to of course takes time. The freedom to be you and to do what you are best at and envelope the rest into that (instead of keeping the rest at bay or outside yourself) is sweet once it’s recognized.
I’m passing this on to others. I don’t know if you know what you do, yet, in this venue! Great thinking, elucidating (is that a word? Just came to me - ) and always appreciated, Chris.
Hello Chris, I agree with the consistency comment! My business cards look like my website. My slide show looks like my newsletter which looks similar to my website, the trialsofbeingmike.com. I try to find one theme and make sure I run with it. You can grow but keep it relevant to the original theme. Those examples are just image. I feel that the message, your message or brand, has to echo the same everywhere. I’m still learning this end of things (Social media. I’m more of a video/music/multi-media person) but when it comes to music, I’ve always known that it is the most important thing in the world for people to have something to “grab on to.” I don’t mean physically, but emotionally! To me, that’s a brand. Does that make any sense?
I learned about you from Erica O’Grady’s teleseminar yesterday sponsored by blogcatalog.com on ustream.tv — and I’m glad I did. This is great advice — and I will probably use the idea (with full credit to you) as a starting point for a post on my blog for advice for teens and young people — http://www.flippingburgersandbeyond.blogspot.com
This reminds me of The Dip by Seth Godin, somewhere in there he says that being well rounded is silly and that success rewards the obsessed, and those who focus on what they are good at.
To add to Michael Carrasquillo’s comment, i think he touched on a brilliant insight. Consistency that carries both offline and online. So taking the time to create a signature look that you push out to all your client touch points ensures that your brand message is reinforced at every level. :)
I am at the beginning of my own personal branding story and these articles have helped me out a whole lot.
I’ve built the foundation of my online brand and hope to build a community of like minds to participate with.
Thanks for doing what you do best Chris!
Chris, I hope you’re not saying “be a one trick pony”, with some kind of undiluted personal brand that is so strong that people have a hard time seeing that there’s a human being (with imperfections and foibles and uncertainties) hiding under that.
Frankly, I find the whole branding exercise to be faintly odious, as if I were being ask to construct myself as a new line of dish detergent (”now with ajax cleaning power”). I’m afraid that you are leading down a path toward manufactured authenticity, of calculated improvisation, of making yourself be easily digested into 140 characters and translated into HTML. I’m sorry, personal identity is a lot more complex than that.
Great series of articles Chris! I like that you don’t stop at just ‘being yourself,’ and allude to ‘being your best self.’ Books like Now, Discovering Your Strengths resonate with me too. We all have a unique combination of signature themes that make us who we are, and the many degrees of combination is why no two people are exactly alike. The only thing I might add to your consistency and confidence is character - the 3Cs to help your personal brand be ‘built to last,’ so to speak. Thanks again!
@Edward-
One trick? No. But being consistent isn’t saying to be one thing for the rest of your life. Apple is consistently focused on innovative design and seamless integration. No matter the platform or product, that’s where they aim their firepower.
Jack Welch aimed his consistency along the lines of excellence and best-in-class. Lots of things were moving parts, but the goal was the same.
The trick is finding which part of your very core to stay pegged to, and let the rest revolve around that.
chris,
I got alot from your series on personal branding. The “why” is very important. In order to attract the right clients, customers and contacts, we need to define, why we do what we do and what we believe. It’s law of attraction. The people that have the same belief system will connect with you. Not because they think you are the best thing since sliced bread, but because their belief system matches up with yours and they do it, because it makes them feel good and that they are making a difference. That is how I find the ideal clients and contacts.
I have passed your information onto a networking group that I meet with every week and I believe they will find it valuable.
Ciao
Great series of posts, thanks Chris. I find the most difficult task is deciding the best social networks to focus on when it comes to branding your site.
Right now, I’m too spread out, so I’m evaluating which sites help me the most, plus which ones are fun………..:)
Thanks for the great info and direction, especially you, Connie.
Very interesting material here. One challenge I see is to keep the branding message consistent. Sometimes in social networks some of the conversations go off track and you can easily find yourself pulled into a pitfall that could damage the image you are working hard to build.
Chris,
the important points I got out of your article are: Concentrate on your strenghts and not your weaknesses, and: the importance of confidence. It sounds simple, but for me it is not, so I have to work on that. Blogging three times a week might be not enough, but to keep it up regularly is good for me; there are a lot of better and more professionally done photographs on the web; but mine are not bad (some people say, they are quite okay) and so on and so forth. Thanks for sharing this article!
Chris, I’ve been sitting here pondering your article and keep finding myself putting consistency and confidence together. When I think of the mediators who come to me wondering how I built my practice, I see a lot of inconsistency of message in their marketing…and thanks to your article, I suspect it’s due to lack of real confidence in (a) themselves, (b) what they’re offering, and (c) in being business owners.
Thanks for providing me with some new insight.
The confidence is a huge part of it, and well highlighted.
Here’s what I think is a big part of my secret to gaining the confidence, professionally, in-person and online, to be successful…
I’m a bit of a geek in my interests. Geeks generally aren’t considered to be confident people. But one of my niche interests is live-roleplaying. In which I started to roleplay characters who were…well…more confident than I was as a person.
Effectively I faked it until I made it. And I found that doing it in a fictional setting transfers perfectly well to a real life setting. If I can pretend to be confident and carry it off successfully, then there’s no reason why I shouldn’t just *be* confident in myself. :)
@Robin - that’s so clever. I did a bit of LARP and enjoyed it much more than my attempts at acting (I can’t remember lines to save myself). Clever premise. Improv would probably help the slightly-less-geeky do similar things.
Enjoyed this series very much.
We are all storytellers, which is perhaps what draws the lot of us to social media in the first place. Defining one’s own story is essential, not just in this space but in all aspects of life (business, relationships, family).
I too have learned to focus on my strengths. Perhaps that is why my business partner and I work so well. We balance out each other’s weaknesses. And we each have our own stories, which, when combined, creates our brand.
You should do more of these types of series, it’s an excellent format.
Nice work. Thanks. Couldn’t agree more about consistency. Second, third and fourth that one. Ultimately, branding is forced discipline. All brands are stories, and, most importantly, they are co-authored. You have to respect your co-author and always honor their independence and free will in participating throughout. Your brand story only really exists if your co-author chooses to rewrite their own personal brand story to include you in it. Fun stuff.
I agree Chris. It’s about being persistent, consistent and authentic.
Great focus and wisdom!
Thanks!
Chris,
I agree, move on from fixing ourselves!
Growing up with Asperger’s and dyslexia I desperately tried to do it the right way, but no amount of effort and determination could make it happen. After a couple of decades of not succeeding, I began to discover my strengths. Now I lead at whatever I do because I do it my unique way. I am getting good at asking for help at the many things I don’t do well. You are right, others want to contribute – my needs allow them a way to help.
“Why work hard to be what you’re not?”" Yes! I spoke about this in an Utter just the other day: http://mariadkins.com/?p=1664
@OwenMarcus - See that? You had the deck stacked a bit against you and still delivered. Excellent story, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Chris, You do an awesome job at capturing ideas for everyday life. Do what you are best at seems so simple and yet people always feel bad for what they are not. Thanks for your blogging work. Love reading it.
Chris,
It’s all about confidence. Consistency, knowledge, style, feeling good about yourself, etc. all gets easier when you have confidence and understand your passion (overused but valid). No matter what you do, if you aren’t confident about what you are and what you offer, it won’t work. Being authentic and comfortable in yourself is what makes your personal brand real. Owen found his strength and confidence. Robin figured out how to find her confidence. You and many others have it. Other folks I know have it but don’t realize it yet. They hopefully will discover their authentic person and realize the confidence they have when they do. Others will continue to look for it.
It’s all there to be had - you just have to have the confidence to find it.
Great series of posts, Chris.
[…] Brogan specifically talks about personal branding. My favorite part of his post is the following quote: “Confidence (not arrogance) is the […]
[…] Brogan has a great series of posts on developing your personal brand on his blog and as part of his Social Media 100 series (Chris’ Social Media 100 is a series of […]
Consistancy, sounds very Machiavellian. Better advice, be yourself, even if it means being inconsistant.
Great article, Chris. I have been very remiss at building my own personal brand over the years (despite knowing how valuable it is). Building your personal brand is a lot like saving money for the future; doing it right, even a little bit at a time, pays off handsomly due to effects of compounding interest (and involvement) over time.
I completely agree on both the value of focusing on your strengths and accepting your weaknesses while at the same time working hard to build both internal and external confidence in yourself. Truly knowing and accepting yourself is the first step to becoming a confident person.
[…] and knowledge - and ultimately your Personal Brand! (And this nice little post by Chris Brogan on “The Real Power of Personal Branding” goes a little further to explain why your Personal Brand is […]
Personal Brand is a label that some people love and some people hate, but the core message here of “be your best self” is the important part. I have always found that the secret of great leadership is to figure out who you really are and what you’re good at and then DO THAT. The most important factor in a successful brand whether personal or corporate is Consistency. They only way you can be consistent is to take some time do decide what you want to be known for and then behave that way on purpose. Focusing your personal brand on being “your best self” also lets you be consistent.
Chris, your ideas on your brand telling a story really resonated with me. I’ve been doing some train the trainer sessions for a communications company, and one of the things we stress is to make the content your own. How? Begin with a story that sets the theme for the day. Keep coming back to that theme and that story, and end the day’s seminar with a follow-up and final thought relating to the story. In short, be consistent! So true.
Chris,
I just discovered your blog and your story today, and I’m glad I did.
When I first heard seminar presenters talking about “branding” a few years ago, I was not quite clear what they meant–not really. But after hearing various explanations and now yours, I can say branding makes sense to me.
All that you’ve shared in this article boils down to being authentic, being true to your inner vision for yourself and your company. I’m easily distracted by many new ideas, techniques and gadgets, but what keeps me on track is asking myself does this fit and advance my story. Can I do this and remain authentic? These questions help keep me on track.
Thanks for sharing this.
Hi Dr. Brown- I think you’ve come up with a great method there. It sure helps out, that’s for sure. Matching against your vision of yourself is an excellent way to keep things in perspective. : ) — Chris…
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This was a great article Chris. A definite must read and sound advice for a beginner such as myself who’s still trying to find her way :D