Personal Branding - Your identity

As mentioned in my previous blog, the first step towards determining your personal brand is - to ask yourself what is it that you want to leverage as your brand identity.
This is a very crucial step, hence you really need to spend enough time thinking about your brand identity. Once you are fixed on it, Congratulations! you have crossed the first step in the Personal Branding Ladder.
Once you have fixed on your brand identity, try to introspect and figure out whether you actually possess the necessary skillsets to help you establish your chosen identity.

e.g. if you want to be a personal brand in the field of Photography, you need to determine whether you have the necessary skills to be a photographer, eye for beauty, creative mindset and moreover knowledge of operating professional cameras. If you have them GREAT! If you do not - don't worry, the next step should be in gaining those skills. Going by the Photography example, buy a professional camera, enroll for a photography course. Go out on weekends, click photographs.
In short, no matter what you have chosen for yourself, try to develop or hone your skills. And, your chosen identity doesn't necessarily have to be unique or rare, it can be common but try and figure out how can you bring about a sense of uniqueness in it.

Personal Branding - Google Me

Google Me on the Web: Easy Online Identity Management

from Personal Branding Blog - Dan Schawbel by Adriana Llames

http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/google-me-on-the-web-easy-online-identity-management/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=google-me-on-the-web-easy-online-identity-management

Personal Branding blog - A good read

The Authentic Self: The Only Brand To Promote By: Nathaniel Broughton on June 19th, 2011 at 1:30 pm
http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/the-authentic-self-the-only-brand-to-promote/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-authentic-self-the-only-brand-to-promote
Source - Personalbrandingblog.com by Dan Schawbel

Personal Branding - What do you want to be known for?

One of the main aspect of branding is differentiation. A Coke, Pepsi, Fanta, Sprite or 7UP, all of these are cold drinks but with a differentiation. And this differentiation comes out in all their marketing communication.

Similarly to start considering yourself as a brand, you need to figure out what will be your differentiating factor (if any) so that you can stand out from the rest. If you can't think of one, don't worry, it's not the end of personal branding. Incase you can't think of one particular differentiating aspect, then as mentioned in my previous post, you need to ask yourself the most critical question - 'What is it that you want to be known for'.

The answer of this could be your interest or passion, your strength or your current job profile or education. This could be a main aspect of your brand, hence you need to spend as much time as possible to arrive at one. Once you are fixed on the answer, you need to maintain it. Yes, too many changes in the brand essence in communication can confuse the customer. Similarly, frequesnt changes in what you would like yourself to be known for can cause confusions and unsurety about yourself amongst others. So, take your time, but be very sure of what you would like to be known for...All the best!

Personal Branding - Is it possible?

....... Continuation of my earlier post (Introduction to Personal Branding)

Doubts were raised by many including experts in the field of branding and advertising. They were amused when they heard us say that a person can be branded. "Individuals are not products to be branded" is the usual kneejerk remark we get - "All this while we have only heard of products undergoing the branding excercise" said one branding professor in a well known MBA school. Imagine every individual being called a brand - Brand Harish Menon?? So, coming back to the question - Can a person/individual actually be branded? Can we really have a branding excercise or brand an individual like we do for products?

The answer is Yes and I mean it - Jokes apart. Lets dwell into some detail - lets pick any existing brand - a brand well known or a brand of your choice. If you carefully assess the brand you've chosen, you'll agree with me that one of the most important aspect / property of a brand is its name. There are no brands existing in this universe that do not have a name - all brands have a name be it Coke, Reebok, Microsoft. Now, lets go ahead and do what we have sought to do i.e. compare the chosen brand with a human being. When you compare a brand and a human, you'll notice and agree with me that like any brand, every individual too has a name. e.g. my brand name is 'Harish Menon'. Apart from just the name, there are numerous properties of a brand that distinguishes itself from other brands, these could be sounds, mnemonics, appearance, emotional appeal etc.

Likewise we all know that no 2 people created by almighty are the same, there has to be some or the other difference that distinguishes one individual from the other. Each and every individual in this world is in some or the other way different from the other. The first and the most crucial step towards any branding excercise for a product is to look for an Unique Selling Proposition (USP) of the product - A proposition that distinguishes one product from the other in the market. Similarly, the first step towards branding an individual is to dig out one important aspect / feature in us that distinguishes us from the rest. A feature, that we would like ourselves to be known for. Hence the most important question that we need to ask ourselves while branding ourselves is "What do I want to be known for?" This is also, one of the most crucial step in Personal Branding ( This will be explained in detail in bey upcoming blogs). Personal Branding in toto is all about building, maintaining and promoting the brand 'Harish Menon' and likewise. And, in this case nobody else but WE are resposible, fully responsible for our brand. Building it, Maintaining it and Promoting it is our responsibility. I'll be trying to explain this better and in much detail through my upcoming book which will pick out each and every aspect of a brand and compare the same with a human.

Think over it and if you agree with the above, start considering yourself as a brand. And you need to start considering it not from tomorrow, not today but right now.....and do read my upcoming blogs wherein we will dwell more deep into the world of Personal Branding. Till then .... Happy Personal Branding!!

Branding gets Personal

Hi,

At the outset, I would like to thank you for visting my blog. This is my first ever attempt to blog. But hey, I'll try to make it interesting and will make sure that it stays that way for all my future blogs to come. I'm a firm believer that every cause has an effect and visa-versa. That way, this blog too is an effect of a cause. The cause - my more than a year old research on an upcoming concept in the world - Personal Branding.

I'm Harish Menon and I've been researching on this concept for more than a year. My motive is to spread the concept across to people through my blogs, books, workshops so that more and more people stand benefited. Sounds interesting? Then let's take the first dip into this as fresh as a daisy concept.

With the help of this introductory blog, I would like to introduce you to Personal Branding and gradually we will dwell deeper into the subject, share views and insights. So, let's get started......

I'm sure you will agree that most of us have role models and mostly our role models are celebrities. We idolize our role models for their success in the field they are in. Most of us aspire to be like them but somewhere down the line our aspirations remain as wishes. Have you ever wondered what is it that makes your celebrity role model successful and what would it take you to be like him/her? Let us ask ourselves - “What is it that I want to be known for?”

Most of us have asked the above question to ourselves, but during the progress in our career, our question remained unanswered. Even if we knew the answer, we were unable to make our wish a reality due to various reasons in our life be it peer pressure, family pressures and a need to sustain the financial element in our lives. The result is most of us are stuck in jobs which we are not happy doing. But we continue to be in the job because we have mortgages to pay, families to feed and lifestyles to maintain. We are constantly worried about our job security. This make us insecure.

Is there something that can help make our lives better?

The answer is Yes.

What is it that can help make our lives better? The answer lies in the most used word in Marketing - "Branding".

How can branding help us achieve what we want to do? - Through a new concept called - Personal Branding. The concept was first introduced by Tom Peters in 1997 in his book ' Branding you'. The concept due to some reason still is in its initial stages of development with very few people around the globe actually talking about the concept. So what is Personal Branding?

Personal Branding is taking branding a step further. A step closer to You!

Regardless of your age, status and profession you are branded each moment of your life. Throughout your life you support and endorse other brands but forget to promote the most crucial brand “YOU!”

Watch out this space to dwell in deep into Personal Branding.

During my research, I've bounced off the topic to numerous individuals from varied strata of interests and professions - Academicians, corporates, creative geniuses and so on. To my amazement, most of them (including experts from the feild of marketing & branding) had just one thing to say " How can we brand ourselves? We are not products !"

To be continued............