Quick Tips: Create your own personal brand
- Determine your strengths and weaknesses
- Leverage your experience and try out new possibilities
- Craft a narrative and create content that illustrates your expertise
What's your personal brand? Don't have one? You might want to get on that … "or else," as Tom Peters advised in the now-famous Fast Company cover story.
Peters helped popularize the notion of cultivating a personal brand and semi-regular reinvention. He also cautions "everything communicates" … from the way you handle phone conversations and e-mail to the way you manage meetings.
We're not talking about being self-absorbed or blatant self-promotion. As leadership and business strategist Glenn Llopis suggests, managing your personal brand is both a mindset and responsibility, an asset you must protect.
He contends that less than 15% of people have truly defined their personal brands, and fewer than 5% are consistently personifying it.
It doesn't necessarily get easier with time . A survey conducted by Generations United and Pfizer revealed the greatest fear among workers (61%) is not being able to find a new job should they lose their current one. This is especially true among workers over 40.
This is where personal branding may be priceless. Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You, outlines a systematic approach for branding yourself and shares these actionable tips:
• Conduct a personal 360 interview to identify how you're perceived — what do people really think of you? This can be humbling and eye opening. Most people are aware of their weaknesses, so you should probably fear this process less than you might imagine. You're likely to learn about strengths you may not realize you have.
• Discover who you want to emulate, and establish a broad-based personal board of directors who can serve as ongoing advisers (your very own kitchen cabinet.
• Leverage your experience, and determine points of differentiation and transferrable skills. A little uniqueness goes a long way — an engineer who plays flute, an accountant who does triathlons.
• Test-drive new possibilities by volunteering, job shadowing and joining boards while you plot your next move.
• Craft a narrative that make sense and threads where you were, where you are, and where you're headed.
• Create content that showcases your expertise. Are you published? Could you submit a guest blog post to a trade website? Are you commenting on industry articles? Tweet much? Are there speaking opportunities you can pursue? All these things can be done quickly with a little research and a lot of perseverance.
Try getting started on Brand YOU today, and remember, real reinvention doesn't happen overnight.
Regina Lewis is a national television contributor and host of USA TODAY's "Money Quick Tips" videos. Follow her on Twitter: @ReginaLewis.
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