I am re-reading The Brand Called You by Tom Peters from 1997 that was in Fast Company. It has some great information in it.
Notes:
- To start thinking like a brand manager ask the question - What is it that my product and service does that makes you different?
- Write it down in 15 words or less
- Qualities or characteristics that make you different from colleagues
- What have you done that helps you stand out
- What would your customers or colleagues say is your greatest strength?
- What is the Feature / Benefit Model that you offer?
- Deliver work on time
- Dependable, reliable service that meets strategic needs
- Anticipate and solve problems before they become crises
- Save money and headaches by being on the team
- Complete projects within the allotted budget
- What do I do that adds remarkable, measurable, distinguished, distinctive value?
- What do I do that I am most proud of?
- What have I accomplished that I can unabashedly brag about?
- What do you want to be famous for?
- What's the pitch for you/
- Sell the sizzle
- Market the bejesus out or your brand -- to customers, colleagues, and your virtual network
- Branding campaigns - the first step is visibility
- How do you market brand you?
- Moonlighting
- Sign up for an extra project inside your organization
- Freelance project
- Teaching a class at a community college, adult education program, at your company
- Write an article
- Sign up to make a presentation or be part of a conference panel
- Everything you do matters
- The key to any personal branding campaign is "word-of-mouth-marketing"
- Your network of friends, colleagues, clients, and customers is the most important marketing vehicle you've got.
- What's the real power of you?
- Influence power
- Largely a matter of perception
- We live in a project world
- Ideal for growing your brand
- Projects exist around deliverables, measurables, and they leave you with braggables
- Resume should include
- Skills you've mastered,
- The projects you've delivered
- The braggables you can take credit for
- Constant updating to reflect the growth - breadth and depth of brand you
- What's loyalty to You?
- Not to a company but to your colleagues, team, project, customers, and yourself
- Grow yourself
- Promote yourself
- As long as you're learning, growing, building relationships, and delivering great results, its good for you and it's great for the company
- Free agency
- Treat your resume as if it's a marketing brochure
- Check with the market on a regular basis to have a reliable read on your brand's value
- Do you have a Brand User Group?
- Ask for honest helpful feedback on your performance, growth, and value
- What's the future of You?
- A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand
- Career - What you want is a steady diet of more interesting, more challenging, and more provocative projects.
- Write your own mission statement
- What turns you on?
- Learning something new?
- Gaining recognition for your skills
- Definition of Success, money, power, fame, doing what you love
- Four things that you've got to measure yourself against:
- You've got to be a great teammate and a supportive colleague
- You've got to be an exceptional expert at something that has real value
- You've got to be a broad gauged visionary - a leader, a teacher, a farsighted imagineer
- You've got to be a businessperson - you've go to be obsessed with pragmatic outcomes
- Start Today
If you are interested in building your Brand this is a great article with a lot of information. He has also written an entire book on it.
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