Personal Brand Strategies and other BS

Does all this talk about Personal Branding have you a bit confused?  It all sounds really convincing, but after the babble from the "experts" ends what are your next steps.  How do you develop a Personal Brand?  I'll get to that below, but first I have to vent and rant a bit...

Personal Branding, Your Personal Brand, Branding, more Branding, blah, blah, blah has been run into the ground by career "experts" since the job market tanked, maybe even before.  The talking heads drone on and on, but few ever really say anything and never seem to specify a course of action. Mostly they say, you have to have a personal brand to differentiate yourself, or personal branding is vital in today's job market, your personal brand makes you standout as a well qualified candidate, but they never outline or specify an actual course of action.   Instead they talk in vague terms like a weatherman in Texas or Florida when it comes to the rain forecast.

Dilbert.com

Branding is important to companies and professionals, and this is a good idea, but what is their point.  I have yet to see a blog post or expert cite solid examples of exactly what they mean or how to apply this.

So where does "branding" start?  Before you start to develop a brand you have to have a Creative Brief.  Every marketing campaign by a major company or marketing agency starts with this.  It helps them define the audience, message, tone, etc. for the campaign.  If you are going to develop a "Personal Brand" first you need to develop your creative brief.  This is normally applied to corporate campaigns to sell everything from cars to toothpaste, but is it really that different for your job search?  You are selling a product, and that product is you, so why not develop a Creative Brief.  It will help you define your Personal Brand and figure out what you are selling.  Frankly, without something like this to use as a starting point I don't know how you would define your Personal Brand.

Links to Creative Brief Templates:

According to Personal Brand Strategy "experts"to have a success job search you have to have a really good line of BS (that's Brand Strategy, what were you thinking?).  So here's my handy cross reference guide for Brand Strategy (BS) Terms:
  • Personal Brand Strategy: Personal BS
  • Brand Strategy: just BS
  • Career Brand Strategy: Career BS
  • Brand Strategist: BS'r 
OK, I was just having some fun with that...  Seriously I hope you find the Creative Brief examples and links helpful.  The Creative Brief is THE starting point for a successful marketing campaign and can be helpful in defining your career marketing plans.

As always I wish you the best and brightest future
Bill Grunau, aka @own_your_future on Twitter


Posted by Bill Grunau at 10/26/2010 8:46 PM
Categories: Job Search Discussion, Career Development Planning, Career and Job Search
Tags: resume career development
 

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  • 10/27/2010 12:50 PM Sima Dahl wrote:
    Bill long gone are the days when a "job well done" offers a guarantee of employment.
    Today employers hire when they need you, let you go when they don't. And employees meet this lack of loyalty with an equal "every man for himself" career mentality. In this age of referral, finding meaningful employment, or business leads, or board seats... unearthing opportunity requires each of us to be known for something - who we are, what we do, and why we're special. If you're the only one who knows what you're good at, you lose. 
    It's no longer who you know, but who knows you. And call it personal branding or horn-tooting or shameless self-promotion but I encourage individuals to take ownership of their "personal brand." Tell your story, tell it consistently, use keywords, be on-message... be on-brand. 
    As a lifelong marketer I embrace this age of personal branding - the principles apply - the only difference is that the product is you. Creative brief or not - your good name stands for something - best to be the captain of that ship than be at the mercy of the wind.

    Reply to this
    1. 10/28/2010 9:11 AM Bill Grunau wrote:
      Thanks for your comments Sima.  Actually your brief comments said more about personal branding than some entire blog posts I've read!
      I agree that Personal Branding is very important, my rant was about "experts" babbling on and on about it without really saying anything of substance or telling people what to do or how to do it.  
      I looked up branding on Wikipedia and then found personal branding.  Pretty good explanation of what a personal brand is, albeit it a bit short.  Has some good links to books too, oops, probably should have included those in the original post.   
      I was suggesting using a Creative Brief to develop and define a Personal Brand.  You need to determine what that brand, the look and feel, message, etc.  A Creative Brief is a great way to define it.  Maybe a good tool would be a Personal Brand Brief for designed for professionals to outline and identify what their personal brand is (I thought of it first).  The example in Wikipedia of Donald Trump, like him or not, THAT is a Personal Brand and it cannot be missed or confused.  
      All the best, and thanks for your comments,
      Bill Grunau
      PS you can follow Sima on Twitter at @simasays or her website is SimaSays.com and by the way, she is another excellent example of Personal Branding not quite as well known as the Donald, YET.   

      Reply to this
  • 11/3/2010 5:33 PM David Sandusky wrote:
    I like your direct style. Linking to a different post of yours in my ask a recruiter forum next, but thought I would stop by here and say "hi".

    On to a bunch of "BS", personal, product, business, culture...what ever. Watching closely, I've noticed mainly authors, writers, online journalist and struggling resume writers doing this BS. No strategies, business, marketing plans and certainly no business models. Just writing and promoting or bitching about BS. Other than CEO's or hiring entrepreneurs with product, there are almost no actual brand managers online; marketing, sales, PR a plenty. Which is cool.
    Reply to this
    1. 11/3/2010 8:26 PM Bill Grunau wrote:
      Thanks for posting your comments.  You definitely got my point!  There are so many "experts" out there offering generic advice at best or outright bad advice.

      I also blog on SelfSEO.me  about social media, SEO and using these tools for developing your online presence.  

      Thanks for the link, I'll check out your site.  

      All the best
      Bill Grunau @own_your_future

      Reply to this
  • 2/3/2011 5:02 PM Mark in State College wrote:
    I just received a new, "ready to go" profile built around my "Brand." In all reality, it looks like the best resume I could have ever spliced together by myself, and it took about 3 weeks of interviewing, one hour per day, to come up with my opening statement, Expertise, Core Competencies, Character sketch, bullet points of Value added uniqueness, Awards, Career history and experience, and Education. Three pages! Which every recruiter tells me is a page too long. Maybe they just don't like reading.

    The reason I jumped for the service was I know I'm a great candidate, but who wants to get passed over because your keywords or resume is passed over by a screening computer?

    Anyway, it's been out there two weeks. Let's see how it goes over the next two.

    So far, branding is a really good looking Executive Leadership Profile(resume).
    Reply to this
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