To begin with the top tier celebrity does not have a personal brand.

Celebrities have well crafted personal images. The top tier celebrities like Oprah, Donald Trump, Tiger Woods (before the Viagra) didn’t focus on building a personal brand.

Read Further or watch video below…

What Are They Doing?

They are building a personal based image that can be leveraged to sell, endorse, and profit. I guess you could argue this is somewhat a brand but not really.

I remember watching Oprah when I was younger. 5 days a week Oprah was on TV. She was good, could bring the audience and the guest to tears. But beyond that she knew how to run, manage, and create a very effective media empire.

Did she leverage her name? Yes. Did she do this first? Did she only focus on this? I’ll let you answer that.

Donald Trump, he didn’t build a personal brand. He bought low sold high. Bought raw land or dilapidated buildings added value and sold. Shrewd real estate and business deals built Donald Trump. Not some focus on building a personal brand. Heck have you seen his hair?

Tiger Woods before his straying ways was and will be by far the greatest golfer of modern times. His driving, putting, and dedication to improvement can’t be touched by anybody else on the course. Did Tiger say years ago… I’m not going to range today instead I’m going to start working on my personal brand. Uh… no!

What Did They Really Do?

These celebrities are known for what they are good at. Not because they focused on some personal marketing or corporate rejected term like personal branding.

I know personal brand fan boys and girls[sarcasm] use those as examples as to what’s possible. Okay I get that but maybe you should talk more about how they refined their craft or their talent. They molded that talent day after day. How they took their skill and leveraged that into a very profitable personal image.

So what should you do?

Don’t focus on building a personal brand. Focus on being great. Focus on being the best at what you do. Focus on being YOU.

I have a feeling that if you do that the whole personal brand thing will take care of itself.

Watch Video Presentation:

It was a great movie, what struck me is how the Star Trek brand was able to transition from stale brand to create a more modern and fresh image in which to  leverage for many profitable years to come.

So why not do this for yourself?

I suggest you look on your personal image shelf, dust it off a bit and identify what items are stale in your personal brand or company image. Which one of these items are you not highlighting that you can leverage to re-brand and take your message and business to the next level.

Here is a quick video on my thoughts:

In today’s world with instant response this provides a great lesson on communication of not only your brand, your message, but the key features you, your product, or your service provides.

Personal branding is not for everybody. The work and focus required to truly achieve a good personal brand cannot be fully appreciated unless you truly do answer this question.

So before you consider spending time crafting and creating the personal brand that defines you, your product or service, ask yourself this critical question.

How do you know if personal branding is right for you?

To answer this overall question there are other questions that you must answer.

Do I want to be a leader?

One of the main goals and benefits of creating your own brand is to emphasize your leadership and notable qualities. People are naturally wired to follow leaders. Your market is going to follow someone so it might as well be you.

Before you answer this question, realize that being a leader is often times a challenge. As a leader you will be held to higher standards, you will be placed on a pedestal, and as a leader you must always be a head of the pack.

Leaders make it look easy, but very seldom do you see the blood, sweat, and tears the leader put in to get there.

Michael Jordan one of the most renowned basketball players of all time. You see his performances at games but were you there when night after night in his local neighborhood basketball court he was shooting hoop after hoop well past the sunset?

If you don’t have the mindset or stamina for the rigors that it takes to be a leader in your field you should simply not attempt a personal brand. The reason is simple, anything you try to accomplish will be sub-par and you will never accomplish the results you are seeking.

More important, no matter what type of field or industry, if you aren’t a leader all the work and strategy to creating a personal brand will be pointless.

If you can’t be a leader no brand building will be effective.

Are You Always Authentic?

This is a big and often overlooked question. When you enter the market place in a big way as you will when forming a personal brand certain items become out of your control.

You will lose control of what is said and portrayed about you Sure you can respond to all conversations, in fact this is one of the most effective ways to build a brand. Just be cautioned when you put yourself out there you have to realize that you lose a tremendous amount of control.

Sure you can craft your messages but the world today is much more transparent than it used to be. If you are not true to who you are the real you will always come out sooner or later.

So ask yourself right now if you are true and authentic to your values, skills, goals, and passions?

If the answer is no or if in any way you are hiding some true intentions please be warned these will be known.

So it is critical that you be completely authentic in whatever you do.

Can I be an Expert in my field?

This is an easy question to answer, because you are in one of two spots. Either you are currently seen as an expert in your field or you are not.

If you are seen as an expert most likely you are already on some path of leadership and you have differentiated your views and opinions.

If you aren’t seen as an expert in your field don’t be concerned, this is exactly what personal branding can help you accomplish.

These days when done correctly it is easier than ever to go from literal unknown to expert, so don’t fret if you aren’t quite seen as an expert yet.

A point of caution, just as being authentic is critical, being an expert cannot be faked. Your target market, and especially the other leaders in your field will see right through you if you don’t have the creditably to back up your expert status.

Can I be different than other leaders?

Being unique in your field is huge. One of the biggest mistakes made by the majority of people embarking on personal branding is what I call ‘leader cloning’.

Leader cloning is essentially when someone in a given market literally parrots or rides the coattails of a leader in their field. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery except when you are the one doing the imitation.

Leader cloning is easy to spot. Most likely each and every message from the CLONE follows the actions or views of a given leader in a field. Frequently this simply is not an overt attempt by the person. Usually this person highly respects this leader or is following this leader.

They forget that instead of constantly following the direction of this person they need to be charting their own waters.

Another common reason this occurs is when building a personal brand there is only so much space for leaders in media, blogs, podcasts, and social media. So a new person parrots or dovetail off thought leader messages or great insights thinking they will benefit from this attention. Remember your market will always know the original source.

So ask yourself a few questions:

• How can you be different?
• How can you advance your given field?
• How can you give back, what do you see lacking?

Doing this will add value to your given market or field and will gain the respect of your peers.

Answer these for questions and you will know if personal branding right for you.

These are critical to have an effective personal brand that makes a difference and accomplishes what a true personal brand should. Until you can say…

• Yes, I want and am able to be a leader.
• Yes, I am authentic in everything I do.
• Yes, I can be an expert in my field.
• Yes, I am different than other leaders in my space.

Keep going to the drawing board until you can say the above with complete confidence.

These questions don’t stop at the creation of your brand, these are great check up questions to ask yourself every so often as you build your brand awareness.

You should be asking yourself am I being a leader, being authentic, seen as an expert, and am I different than the other leaders in my field?

Leave a comment below with your questions or your best tips on the above questions.

My intention in doing this is to break through some of the nonsense I see around personal branding.

Also to help you focus on what truly matters and to help you with tips and advice on exceeding at whatever it is you do. So each post will slightly rail on personal branding but it will always have a very strong point.

So do you have a personal brand or a personal image?

The personal brand or the personal image?

Here is where we have the difference. What really got me thinking about this was this post here How to Create a Personal Brand without Being a Jerk. It wasn’t so much the subject of the post as to some of the points made. Then Joshua and I went back in forth with some comments.

I believe a focus on a personal image is more important than any thought about a personal brand. You can’t control a brand. I hope this goes without saying as well– that you should focus on being great at what it is you do. This above all else builds your image or errr.. your brand.

Take the example of Steve Jobs. Sure you could argue he has a personal brand, but not really. The feeling and the things that you feel or think about him are a result of his actions. How he has guided Apple and how he has created one of the most innovative companies of our time. Also his ability to speak, reason, persuade and sell a crap load of Apple products probably doesn’t hurt his “personal brand”.

Sure there are discussions of positioning statements, personal statements, and personal positions an executive must take. Which leads me to the point that I think is critical.

I don’t think a brand is something you can control. I read a post a while ago about the difference between a brand and an image. I agree with what is contained in that post. To me there is a difference between what a brand is and what an image is.

You can craft your image. You can change your image. You can try to change your brand but it will be tough if your brand is not consistent with your image. I know this seems like splitting hairs but I don’t think it is.

Why is this Important?

It’s important because when you go about stuff such as crafting your elevator statement or working on your business cards. When you do these types of things you are working on your image, not your brand. But personal brand evangelists like to say you are working on your personal brand.

I would say the next steps are to make sure what you do, what you wear, the vocabulary you use, and your actions are consistent with what your target market would expect (or tolerate).

To do this you must define the core of who you are to create the core of your personal brand.

This is the essence of you. What you are, your values, you personal mission from the inside out.

This is a critical element of your personal brand. You can’t fake this, if you do create a core brand that is not in alignment with your primary values everything around your brand will be completely ineffective.

A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization. It’s a person’s gut feeling, because brands are defined by individuals, not companies, not markets, or publics. It’s not what you say it is, it’s what they say it is.

Your Core Brand Must Differentiate

Our brains act as filters to protect us from too much information. We are hardwired to notice only what’s different.

So explore your landscape and be different.

You want to create a personal brand for which people believe there is no substitute.

When you are speaking or doing something from your core you don’t have to think about it. In fact, your prospects or customers will resonate with this.

Communication is even more nonverbal as it is verbal. When you are speaking from your core of knowledge and experience no matter what medium you choose, this will resonate true.

Core Brand Creation

Creating a core brand is not as easy as it looks. Answering the below questions will help you get started but keep in mind this takes focus.

• Who are you?
• What do you do?
• Why does it matter?

Unless you have amazing answers to these questions you need more focus.

Or more concise questions:

1. Clearly define your product or service.
2. What are your core values?
3. What is your personal mission in life?
4. What is your tagline? Yes, personal brands need taglines.

Now comes the difficult part. You must take the above items and dig even deeper. The goal here is to get to the level within yourself where the core of what you do and say comes natural.

This done correctly will create an instant bond with your customers and prospects. They will know you are speaking and communicating on a core level. In fact, this is the most effective way to build your personal brand.

The key in answering the above questions is to be concise, clear, and effective. Take some time to do this exercise as done correctly it will pay off massively.

In the next segment I will give you the key steps on how to innovate and create distinctiveness with your personal brand.

http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2009/11/social-media-not-the-answer-for-weak-brands.html

How to Be Found

Another great insight comes from Brian Halligan on How to Be Found.

Brian Halligan is the founder and CEO of HubSpot, an Internet marketing software company that helps small and medium-sized businesses get found on the Internet and converts website visitors into leads and customers. He is also the author of Inbound Marketing: Get Found In Google, Blogs, and Social Media.

1. Be remarkable. A few years ago you needed to spend tons of funds on PR and advertising to spread the word about your your brand. Today the friction that marketing must overcome is very low for amazing and remarkable ideas  that can spread on their own. Unremarkable ideas remain unfound no matter how much PR and advertising you do. So make sure you have a unique, remarkable services or product and  it will spread like wildfire on the Internet if it’s truly different.
2. Create content. Once you have your remarkable product or service, start creating lots of content about it—including blog articles, videos, podcasts, and tweets. Remarkable content about your remarkable product gets hyperlinked from other websites. Those links send you traffic, and they also tell Google that you should be higher in the rankings.
3. Optimize content. Before publishing your content, you need to “optimize” it for Google and for the people on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc who will spread it. For Google, you should include some of your “keywords” in the title of your content piece so it will be easier for Google to find it. For readers, you should make your titles as irresistible as possible. A good model for this is this blog that uses titles like “The Art of Schmoozing,” “MBA In A Page,” and “The Top 10 Lies of Venture Capitalists.”
4. Promote content. Once you have a remarkable piece of content that is optimized, start spreading it. Post it on your blog, email it to your newsletter subscribers, tweet it, update your Facebook fan page and LinkedIn profile with it. If the content is remarkable, others will spread it for you. As that content spreads, you will have more people follow you or subscribe to you, so that the next piece of content you publish will have a wider audience in the future.
5. Measure results. You need to measure your results for each channel. For example, you should compare your results for Google organic branded search, Google organic non-branded search, Google paid, blog, email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn group, and tradeshow campaigns to each other. For each campaign, you need to track visitors, leads, opportunities, and customers over time. Then double down on the campaigns that are working and kill the ones that aren’t.

This is also a great listen to get some insights into what other small business owners and professionals are currently doing to succeed in today’s economy.

Click the play button below to listen

Create a story on how your product or service was used in a powerful way.

I wanted to share with you a powerful technique that you can employ in your business that draws emotionality and creates connections with your target market.

This strategy is to showcase your product or service by telling a story how someone has used or employed it in a unique way.

You can tell a story on how this has changed their life or business. How your product or service plays into their daily life or as allows them to have a great business opportunity.

An awesome example of this comes from Evernote. A program that I use daily to keep my thoughts, visits to websites, and all types of information in one place. What does it do?

Evernote: Use Evernote to save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer or device you use. For free.

In a post Evernote showcases Patrick Jones and how Evernote helps him living with a traumatic brain injury. It’s worth a read for not only for this example but as an inspiring story.

What Do They Do Right?

First notice how they showcase Patrick and what he does or overomces in 95% of the story. It’s not about you, it’s about how your product or service plays into someone’s life or business. Their product enables a fuller life.

This story includes a beginning, middle, and end. That’s key, you know how he got there. You see his challenges. Then how he overcomes those and how it ends up. Throughout this story one of the major supporting actors is Evernote but does a great job of not taking the spotlight. You would want to do the same with any story you tell.

This post also educates throughout and has what I believe the all important awe factor. That has the potential to drive content that get’s shared and commented on.

I also commend the company for donating premium accounts to Deacon Patricks Mind Your Co-op.

If you read some of the comments you see additional stories and people that have unique stories of how the Evernote has really been integrated into their lives. Very powerful and engaging stuff.

What Can You Learn

Note: I should mention whenever you dissect something like this you run the risk of portraying that all the above was an intentional thought out process. Usually it isn’t, it’s just the nature of great company and great staff but I believe this is something that provides a great learning opportunity.

Think about your product or service and how it has made changes to people or businesses that employ or use what you do.

Also care. It’s apparent when you read the above post that it is not really about the company. While indirectly you could say it is– the post is great story of how a man has overcome a challenge with the use of ingenuity and a great tool.

Then work with the person or organization to learn more and put this into a story. Remember a good story has a main character, supporting characters (your product or service) and three parts, beginning, middle, and end.

Need help… get started working with You Brand, Inc. with a free consulting session.

Steve Gewecke - The Phone Pro

Excited to share the insights as we roll out a new strategic partner and client today, Steve Gewecke, the Phone Pro. Check him out:

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