MarketingProfs.Com Your Personal Brand: Don't Expect to Lead Without It

"Leaders need to have having a strong personal brand through good times and bad. Defining yours and bringing it to life through consistency in action is something that today's best business leaders instinctively recognize, whether they articulate it or not. And the ability to build and demonstrate a compelling personal brand will continue to be a critical career success factor, whether you're starting, changing or optimizing your career.

How does one go about building a personal brand? The underlying principles are the same as those applied to the branding of a soft drink, an automobile, or a technological service. Recognize your personal strengths and gifts, think about how you best connect with people, consider what your target audience needs and wants, identify the value you deliver to meet those needs and wants, and communicate in a way that reaches your constituents in their hearts and minds and via the channels that work best for you."

John Robb K-Logs and Personal Branding

"There has been a discussion of the issue of personal branding as it relates to K-Logs. While it may seem amorphous and slightly shallow, I can vouch that it actually works. The benefits of running a high traffic K-Log within a company or on a publicly available server (for CEOs in particular) are many. They include:

1) The ability to showcase your thinking. Well reasoned posts showcase your ability to think. If you are a knowledge worker, as most of us increasingly are, this is a must. You need to demonstrate your ability to solve problems and to reason through alternatives in order to gain stature. Want competition for your services? This is the way to generate it.

2) The potential your K-Log will become an important corporate resource. IF your K-Log is a constant source of insight that many co-workers refer to, it enhances your position and makes you a corporate asset.

3) A chance to demonstrate your vision and leadership. This is particularly important for managerial K-Logs for both internal and external audiences. Externally, a personal K-Log provides a CEO the opportunity to demonstrate vision (hopefully with clarity) to a wider audience (how often do most people talk to the CEO of their company or the CEO of the company they buy lots of product/services from?). This allows the company to talk to customers and internal audiences in a way that rises above the marketing hype surrounding most corporate communications. If there was ever a vehicle for clue train status, this is it."

redux [08.14.00]
The New York Times Magazine Me, My Brand and I
[requires 'free' registration]

"There is something, I think, about the Internet -- with its microtargeted discussion groups and virtual celebrities who are famous to 15 people -- that ramps up the possibilities of personal hype. The padded résumé is probably as old as the résumé itself, but with one's own Web site, it is easy to showcase not just your padded resume but also complimentary blurbs from friends and colleagues, thoughtful sound bites, photographs of you with friends, etc. These little self-marketing monuments exist now by the thousands. Two years ago, it was rare for a serious author to have such a site, but now even New Yorker writers have them, successfully creating viral marketing campaigns that were not possible in, say, J.D. Salinger's time. Of course, the strategy isn't limited to published authors. I recently stumbled across a Web site that advised chat-room denizens on how to establish their personal on-screen brand. For starters: "Develop a catch phrase."

It is all part of the "Brand Called You," a sort of life-as-company philosophy articulated by the management guru Tom Peters -- and long since swallowed whole by the career-advice wing of the business press."