Formula One car

The ABCs of Personal Branding

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When I speak on reputation management and personal branding, I enjoy telling audiences that as much as I wish the topic were highly sophisticated and complex, personal branding is relatively simple. There are no tricky formulas or graphs. In fact, I share one graphic (the formula to building credibility) and very few statistics.

While personal branding might be simple, it is not easy. The journey to uncover your values, create a strategy for positioning yourself, and sticking to those values at all costs is sometimes challenging.

Here are my simple ABCs for building a meaningful and impactful personal brand:

A’s

Authenticity:

The foundation of personal branding rests on authenticity: The ability to tap into your genuine, humble, and individual human qualities from which your identity, personality, and character stem. Most of us walk around without much thought to being “authentic.” We expect that others will take us as they see us. Some of us even boast, “What you see is what you get!”

But is it? Are you living authentically — using your values, beliefs, and dreams guide you? Are you letting others know you — truly know you — or are you hiding behind a shield of appropriateness and conformity?

By understanding and exploring your passions, interests, motivators, and challenges, you can better articulate your value to the audiences who need to see you as relevant. The goal is to have control over the brand you live, how it’s expressed, and how others assign you value and relevance. Authenticity is the critical component to developing successful personal and business brands that have longevity.

Accountability:

Personal branding is the process of articulating your value proposition to a target audience and building a compelling reputation. In order to effectively develop and communicate a solid personal brand, we need to know who we are, how we want to be perceived, who we need to focus our efforts towards, and what results we expect to receive. These are all important ingredients in this personal branding formula. Leave one out and it just doesn’t work the same way. Holding yourself accountable can be a very daunting task! Living up to someone else’s expectations is often easier – there are consequences to not following through. But we can easily let ourselves off the hook when it’s convenient to do so.  Put reward/consequence systems in place to keep yourself accountable and stay on track.

Audience-focused:

In personal branding we strive to make ourselves relevant and compelling to a specific target audience — and that’s not everyone! Not everyone you work with or network with will get your jokes, find you compelling, or feel good about you. Targeting those clients, customers, and stakeholders who will find you relevant is critical and cuts down on your marketing efforts!

If your goal is to win over a colleague who insists on holding on to their first impression of you, when you were naive and unaware of your personal brand goals (and maybe you made some mistakes in how you treated others), realize that some people will never come around. Instead, focus on building brand relevance with audiences who hold opportunities for you (i.e. your supervisor, clients, vendors, key staff) and not on people who are harder to win over and have little influence on your future.

B’s

Bold:

While authenticity is at the heart of personal branding, in order to develop your own unique identity, you first must identify the genuine traits, skills, and values that make you compelling. It starts with understanding your values: What bold promises will you uphold? What do you stand for? What is so core to your moral and ethical fiber that if it were removed you would not be you? How do your values set the expectation others can have for you? Only after you understand your bold values can you begin to market yourself effectively to the audience who most needs you.

Beliefs:

Focusing on what genuinely makes you unique allows you to grow your brand from a place of strength, while understanding and managing weaknesses. At the heart of effective brand development is clarity on your beliefs – practicing what you preach; being totally clear about who you are, what you stand for, and what you do best. Not everyone wants to be a leader, a resource for others, or a team player. That’s okay!

Only after a critical and honest assessment of your foundational beliefs can you begin to map the distance between how you want to be known (desired reputation) and how you are known today (current reputation). Only with this understanding can you begin building the legacy you desire. The discovery process is very internal and introspective, but when you start from the core, you develop a brand that sticks – because it’s genuine and compelling.

Behavior:

People form opinions about us based on many things – their own biases and prejudices, as well as our behavior. How we act influences how others see us. And how others see us affects the opportunities we get assigned. In personal branding, we take control of our reputation (perception) in order to craft and manage our legacy.  How do you want to be seen by others who matter (your audience)? What will it take to make that perception reality? How are you behaving in person and online.

The person who seeks to be known as approachable needs to be approachable — they leave their office door open, have good eye contact, and include others in the conversation. Similarly, the person who seeks to be known as credible backs up their bold value statements with action. Behavior is where we put action to our beliefs. Or not…

C’s

Credibility:

I mentioned the one formula in my program: The formula for credibility. It is really quite simple: Credibility = Values + Action. You need to make it very clear to your target audience what it is that makes you special; what it is that you value and believe in that are truly assets to your personal brand.

Then you need to walk the talk.  You need to live those values in everything that you do in order to earn credibility.  If you want to be known as honest and that’s something that you really value, then you’re going to demonstrate honesty.  You’re going to be honest.  You’re going to attract honesty and transparency.  After doing this, you will earn credibility and a reputation for someone who is honest.

Communication:

Your personal narrative is the way you communicate, internally and externally about your value. If you’re filled with fear and self-doubt, that undoubtedly is reflected in how you come across to others. Becoming aware of how you promote and communicate your passions and values directly impacts how others will appreciate you.

Do you use the wrong narrative when talking to others (or yourself) about your plans and your vision? Maybe the reason people see you as difficult to get along with is because you complain about your work day, instead of celebrating the fact that you have a job and are contributing to the organization? We can easily look outward to find reasons and excuses for missed opportunities and to explain our shortcomings, but it could also be we’re telling the wrong message in the first place.

Consistency

In branding, we drive towards legacy – the reputation we create for ourselves today and the way we will be remembered by clients, patients, colleagues, and our community a long time from now. We pay attention to how our actions, marketing, relationships, and products reflect our values and our vision.
Building trust is how we build integrity and credibility. By stating our values and acting consistent with what we believe, our target audiences can learn to trust us. Trust affects how our audiences will feel about us. If we want our audience to feel safe, valued, loved, validated, and respected, we must build trust.

Across all mediums — from in-person networking to social media, from body language to image to your messaging and elevator pitch — are you consistently articulating your value and demonstrating action towards that value. That is how you build consistency for your personal brand.
While I sometimes wish my topic was more complicated and included complex diagrams, I am happy that it truly comes down to one basic thing: You have the ability to get control over how you are perceived in the world, and that is a very empowering place to work from.

Acknowledgement lida360.com ( I is Lida a world authority on Personal Branding )

How can we promote a brand on social media? Especially using Google Plus

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1. Create a page in Google Plus
2. Fill the compete profile – About page, Cover photo, Profile Pic ..etc
     a. Try to write a good introduction and make sure that you used good set 
         of keywords (SEO TIP)
     b. Contact info is a must
     c. Links to the website and other channels as well.
3. Search for your competitors pages or pages similar to you. Analyse them. 
4. Search for your industry influencers. Add them or follow them. It is a way to 
    let them know that you are present in google plus. If required say hello.
5. Important and useful point is google plus pages can participate in google plus 
    communities. 
6. Search and join relevant communities of your industry and be active.
7. Google plus page can even start a community. Having a community of your 
    own and making sure valuable conversations to happen can be a good reason
    to improve your visibility across your industry and brand value.
8. Make sure to do atleast one post a day.
9. They say, Pictures speaks 1000 words. I say picture with a caption or a note 
    speak exactly what you want that picture to speak. 
10. Associate your other social networks accounts with google plus in links 
    section in profile page. 
11. Go to settings page and customise the tabs you would like to have in your 
      profile.
12. Google plus had a benefit, you can customise to whom you are sharing a 
     post. 
13. Another important feature, hashtags. We already know a lot about hashtags. 
     Google plus has another perk with hashtags. It automatically adds few more 
     hashtags which it feels related to the post and the author of the post can 
     always edit them. It is called ‘Related hashtags’.
14. Similar to Twitter it also has trending hashtags. 
15. Don’t forget to promote your google plus page through other social 
      sites like twitter and facebook.
16. Update Google plus cover photos regularly.

How much do top Brand Companies Make per second.

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WHILE YOU WERE READING THIS, SAMSUNG MADE $20,000

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How to Build Your Brand with Humor

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Audi Type E

Audi Type E (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

House of Humour and Satire

House of Humour and Satire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Furious rabbit (humor)

Furious rabbit (humor) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Santa Monica Looking From The Pier

Santa Monica Looking From The Pier (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

House of Humour and Satire

House of Humour and Satire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How to Build Your Brand with Humor

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Posted on 11.27.2013

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:: By Moazzam Adnan, Atlantic.Net ::

A few years ago, a ridiculous theater of life marketing experiment took place in Santa Monica. Two car dealerships, one Audi and one BMW, started a tug-of-war match of one-upmanship, through billboards targeting each other.

Audi started the impromptu sign war with a picture of the A4 and the taunting tagline, “Your move, BMW.” BMW responded with a billboard across the street with a shot of its own M3 Coupe and the line, “Checkmate.” Audi came back with a second sign featuring another rib: “Your pawn is no match for our king.” Finally, BMW had the last word by raising a blimp above the second Audi board, emblazoned with its Formula One car and the words, “Game over.”

The essence of this lighthearted advertising contest is that showing personality and humor can draw attention to brands. The ridiculousness of the racecar as the ultimate victory is clear, because no commuter will be driving 200 mph to work. Both BMW and Audi received significant press attention for the interaction, attention diverted away from the other luxury automakers.

Luckily with content marketing through social media and the blog on your site, it’s not necessary to rent roadway signs to make an impact. Let’s look at how you can use humor to build your business’s brand.

WHY HUMOR WORKS FOR MARKETING

Former news anchor and social media speaker Cindy W. Morrison believes that showing your sense of humor on Facebook and Twitter generates a twist on ROI called ROR, which stands for “Return On Relationships.” She provides the example of a sign at a brick-and-mortar business stating, “Children Left Unattended Will Be Given An Espresso And A Free Puppy.” As she notes, the sign serves a function while also giving patrons a chuckle and the opportunity to relate to the business owner’s perspective.

The same angle can be used on the various social sharing platforms. Humor offers a great opportunity to present something amusing to you, perhaps an anecdote. As long as the joke isn’t mean-spirited, it provides potential customers an opportunity to connect with your humanity. Developing loyalty is all about forming relationships, and the “Return On Relationships” often starts with marketing.

Broadening the picture, marketing gives brands an opportunity to stand out. Humor is recommended because people like to laugh, so you’re giving away an emotional upswing for free, as long as your users can connect with the sensibility of the comedy.

Several of the other bold maneuvers mentioned further demonstrate why humor works. One of them is personalization of the company through its brand pages, which is certainly achieved with humor. Another is relationship building, again central to humor and in agreement with the ROR concept above. What better way to connect with people and to show them that “you” (the business’s identity) don’t take yourself too seriously?

DIFFERENT TYPES OF MARKETING HUMOR

According to Business 2 Community, buyer personas and demographics are primary concerns with humor. You don’t want to appear disrespectful or distasteful. Luckily, though, there are a variety of tactics you can use to deliver humorous content through your blog and social media pages:

Double entendres – Using puns or wordplay with multiple meanings works for everyone. It’s especially helpful for serious fields such as healthcare and law. Humor must be more conscientious in those arenas, but you can at least go for a smile (as with Kaiser Permanente’s shot of celery stalks with the line, “Beat obesity with a stick”). If you are in a more carefree industry, of course, double entendres are a great way to be adult and family-friendly at the same time.

Pop culture & current events – Nothing places you in the here and now like a reference to a TV show or movie, which subtly expresses the fact that your company is made up of real people who appreciate similar entertainment to your audience. These references can create an inside joke across a broad spectrum of people. A good example is a meme created by Impact Branding and Design, featuring Dwight from NBC’s The Office and the line, “Fact: I sold 70% more beets online this year because of inbound marketing.”

Memejacking – Numerous types of media hijacking are popular online, including newsjacking (“stealing” the thunder created by a news story) and memejacking (creating a twist on a popular meme). The fact is, online hijacking is simply following trends and relating to the current climate. Following the leader in this way can work very well on social media. For instance, a Willy Wonka meme starting with the line, “Oh you have 57 Facebook fans?” was repurposed with the new punchline, “You must be an inbound marketing expert.” It’s not hilarious, but it’s light and relatable to those who get the parody.

Let’s face it: everyone appreciates a laugh. You can create a real-world stir with a stunt like that pulled by the Santa Monica car dealerships. Even if you just focus on your website’s presence to express humor, marketing can create a Return On Relationships. Just be sure you consider your buyer personas before determining what type of approach your humor should take.

Moazzam Adnan – Director of Business Development, Atlantic.Net

Moazzam currently holds the position of Director of Business Development at Atlantic.Net, where he contributes to the growth of Atlantic.Net by branding and leveraging their product offerings with Web and social media marketing. With over 12 years of experience in marketing and business strategy, he has successfully launched and managed products from concept to marketing to profitable campaigns.

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