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10 Self-Branding Strategies for Career Success
By Catherine Kaputa
Brand strategist (www.selfbrand.com) and author of U R a Brand, How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success (www.urabrand.com)
You're always competing for someone's attention. Whether it's at work or at a job fair, whether it's delivering a new business pitch or speaking to a large group, whether it's a school application or a job application. And if you're smart, you'll not only capture someone's attention, you'll persuade them to your charms, and seal the deal.
After all, and this is important, because it goes against everything you've been taught, smarts and hard work are not enough. Your talent and brains, your years of experience, your top grades and accomplishments, your superior ability- none of these factors are “enough" to create demand for you over others. (They help, mind you, but they are not enough.)
Success Strategy No. 1:
Tap into branding and “soft power."
Success in any endeavor these days requires careful, calculated branding, both to enter the arena and to stay in the game. Hollywood icons and high-profile athletes have long tapped into the branding model to create and build a personal brand. Now, savvy professionals, business people and entrepreneurs are using personal branding to be more successful.
The truth is, smarts and hard work are not enough to ensure career success. We all know lots of hard-working, intelligent people who are underemployed or even unemployed. (We may have even been one of them.)
Personal or self-branding is about “soft power." It's about developing a personal strategy that positions you differently from others and formulating the tactics that get you from A to B all the way to Z. It's about forging an appealing image and visual identity. It's about developing executive comportment- how you conduct yourself in any situation, how you enter a room and engage other people. It's about harnessing the power words, sound bites and verbal identity. It's about building visibility and a reputation for yourself in some arena. These are the soft power skills that help brand you as a success.
Success Strategy No. 2:
Learn how to consciously build positive impressions about yourself.
If people think you are on top of your game, you will be. If people think you're a B player, you will be- until you change their perceptions. You success in business or life is based on perceptions, other people's perceptions of who you are, how good you are, and even what you are worth. Branding strategies and tactics can help you build the right perceptions in the minds of others about who you are.
Success Strategy No. 3:
Have something that is different about you and your message.
The cardinal rule of branding is, “Be different." Brand strategy is about pinpointing relevant differences and creating positive perceptions. It's the same with people. It used to be about, “Can you do the job?" Today many people can do what you do. So it has to be about something more.
Branding for people is about finding your Big Idea- your unique selling proposition (USP). The USP is the big idea that brands are always searching for. A USP gives a brand a compelling value proposition with its target audience. Likewise, you want to represent something special that sets you apart from others and establishes a value equation for you and your abilities.
Success Strategy No. 4:
Celebrate yourself and your uniqueness, but also keep tabs on the big picture and market changes.
Another key tenet of branding is, “Be relevant." That's why marketers frequently conduct a brand audit - studying a brand's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats- called the SWOT analysis. You can do the same. The SWOT analysis is an intensive look at your strengths, and weaknesses in a real-world framework. “Strengths" and “weaknesses," the first two areas, deal with you. Start with skills, experience and accomplishments. Then expand the list to include personality traits, Expand it to include anyone you have ever known or ever met, or anything you have ever explored or been interested in. The “opportunities" and “threats" deal with things that could affect you in the future. What is going on that could dramatically change things? Business is dynamic so there is always movement and change.
Success Strategy No. 5:
Build an emotional bond with your key target markets
Today, brand managers put a strong emphasis on emotional branding because people form the strongest relationships with brands they like and care about. Your goal as a self-brand is to build satisfied, loyal "customers" - people who have good things to say about you because they have strong feelings about you.
Remember, it's the emotional ties that bind. Rationally, we often can make a case for why the capabilities of one company are better than another's or why one person is superior to another. Yet our gut tells us something different. We choose the one that makes us feel more comfortable emotionally.
Success Strategy No. 6:
Use the principles of visual identity to create a powerful “self-brand package."
It may seem superficial. It may be unfair. We may not like it. After all, why should you be judged by your looks? Self-presentation- your visual identity- is important because of the link people make between what something looks like on the outside and what is on the inside. We do this today despite all the familiar admonitions, such as “Don't judge a book by its cover." The fact is the way you look, carry yourself, the clothes you chose, the way you decorate your home or office have a profound influence on other people's judgment of you. That's why you should think about visual identity like brand managers do. The good news for people is that ideas of “appealing," “attractive" and “successful" have expanded tremendously today.
Developing a signature item as a trademark of your visual style is a great tactic for self-branding. You're creating a branding element that identities you, like the logo on a product. Chosen well, it will convey a brand message about you to others, or even change the way you see yourself. Bono has his tinted wraparound sunglasses, as vivid a symbol for his self-brand as the golden arches are for McDonald's. Your trademark could be an item you dispense with that everyone else wears. Katharine Hepburn eschewed skirts and pants became her trademark. Sartorially, John F. Kennedy's trademark was his hatlessness at a time when men wore hats everywhere, even to activities like baseball games.
Secret No. 7:
Harness the power of verbal identity: names, signature words, and phrases to lock in your self-brand message.
The counterpoint of visual identity for a brand is its verbal identity: a brand's name, message and tagline. You should do the same. The words you use can be powerful and memorable or blow away like a feather in the wind. What if President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had not crossed out the phrase “world history" and replaced it with “infamy" in his Pearl Harbor address. One little word. And today Roosevelt's phrase is arguable the most famous ever uttered by a U.S. president.
Brands try to won a word, or a short phrase, in the minds of consumers. If they succeed, people think of the brand when they hear the word, and vice-versa. For example, “overnight" is FedEx, and “safety" is identified with Volvo. Owning a word helps self-brands too. Your word can be a positive attribute that defines you, your philosophy or your accomplishments. Smart business people use a defining word in defining key initiatives or the business philosophy at their company. Many people end up owning a word by writing a book, as Tom Friedman did with “flat" and Jack Welch did with “winning."
Secret No. 8:
Become a little bit famous.
In self-branding, we're talking of being famous for something- an idea, a belief system, an accomplishment, an area of excellence. And we're talking about visibility on some level- your industry, your company, your community, even the nation if you're ambitious.
Visibility- what advertisers call mindshare - brings big rewards. You can get a higher price for your services or a bigger salary. People will seek you out. That's because of the connection people make between something that's well-known being better than something that is not. (“She must be good, or why would she be so well known?"
If you work in a corporation, there are a lot of low visibility tactics you can use to build mindshare in the company and in your industry such as volunteering to be a project leader, writing trade articles, speaking at an industry conference, participating in an industry panel, or contributing to the company newsletter. Senior executives and entrepreneurs can use high visibility tactics such as being an expert on television, writing a book, being quoted in national media articles, serving on charitable or corporate boards, giving key note speeches, or the ultimate high-visibility tactic these days, associating with a celebrity pal.
Secret No. 9:
Capitalize on first impressions
First impressions are lasting impressions. In fact, the first two or three seconds on meeting someone new are the most valuable. It's what is known as “thin-slicing." People pigeon-hole you based on their initial impression of how you come across: how you look, carry yourself, and what the first things your say are. So, be prepared to maximize those first impressions through creating a strong and positive visual and verbal identity.
Likewise, Ii you take a new job, the first 100 days are the most important. Notice how the media follows the first 100 days in office of a new president. Your behavior and actions when you start a new job will be scrutinized and have a strong impact on how you are perceived over the long haul.
Secret No. 10:
Develop an action plan to move the plot along- the plot to your career and life story.
Defining a great self-brand strategy is one thing. Making it a reality is another. Brand managers use a marketing plan to tie it all together to achieve your goals and you should, too. A self brand action plan includes the following: goals, target markets, the self-brand strategy, time frame, tactics and measurement.
Catherine Kaputa is a brand strategist and author of U R a BRAND! How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success (www.urabrand.com). She is founder of SelfBrand, a brand consultancy that works with companies, products, and individuals (www.selfbrand.com). Sign up for the Branding Double Shot: the BrandExpresso newsletter (www.brandespresso.com) and the Selfbrand newsletter.
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