WHY YOU NEED TO MANAGE YOUR PERSONAL BRAND

Something that’s been on my mind lately is the desire to help people succeed in business online. No, I know I don’t have all the answers. But over the years, our two global companies have discovered some answers that work for us, and perhaps they’ll work for your company as well. As always, take what you like and leave the rest!

Why you need to manage your personal brand

Something that’s been on my mind lately is the desire to help people succeed in business online. No, I know I don’t have all the answers. But over the years, our two global companies have discovered some answers that work for us, and perhaps they’ll work for your company as well. As always, take what you like and leave the rest!

To begin with, let’s talk about branding.

The fact is, everyone has a personal brand – whether they know it or not. And the internet is a powerful multiplier. It enables people from around the world to develop opinions about you. It’s important to manage your personal brand so that the message others get about you is the one you want them to hear.

What is a brand?

Many people think of branding as something done by an advertising firm, or at most the marketing department. But in fact the entire enterprise is involved in the development of its brand image. Why? Because every experience the customer has with that firm, from ordering to paying to product quality and service after the sale, contributes to the brand image that customer carries around with him. A brand is everything that a person thinks or feels or believes about the branded item. The brand is influenced by the person’s past experience with the item, what other people say about it and what they can conclude about the brand from the messages it sends out. (Okay, I said “item” there, but you realise that this could be a company or an individual or a service – not just a solid object.) Let’s take Queensberry as an example, since that’s a brand I know from the inside out. When our photographer clients, or their clients, think about a Queensberry photo album, what comes to mind?

Here are some of the things I would hope they’d associate with the Queensberry brand: Established. Trustworthy. Genuine. Authentic. High-quality. Artful design. Emotionally connected. Memories made real. Memories to last a lifetime. Now suppose we decided to cut costs by using a lower grade of paper. Or suppose that we delivered 80% of our orders after the promised date. Would our brand continue to convey “premium quality”? “Trustworthy”? Probably not. (Which is why we’ll never do those two things.) And as you can see, neither of those two hypothetical decisions would have been made by the marketing department. One of them would have been made by purchasing, and the other is the result of a flawed production process. The entire company contributes to the brand image.

So why do you need a personal brand?

Well, as I said before, you already have one. It’s called your reputation. Your track record.

The real question is, does your reputation match the reality?

Does your real reputation match what you want it to be? Have your “customers” – the people who interact with you,who might hire you and so on – been getting the messages you want them to hear about you?

As a personal example, let’s say you’ve applied for a new job. Your resumé is a carefully crafted marketing tool that, in the best-case scenario, sends exactly the message you want to convey, and nothing else. Just like the advertising developed by a firm’s marketing department and ad agency. But remember, it’s not just your resumé – your personal marketing department, if you will – that sends out the messages about you. There’s also how you dress for the interview, your phone manners before and after, whether you’re late or not, whether you’ve been indiscreet on your blog or FaceBook page, and so on – any one of which may send a message undermining your carefully-prepared resumé.

Before you take your business online, carefully consider how you’re going to manage your brand.

To take your business online successfully, you need to establish yourself as an expert. Establishing a strong personal brand of your own will help you get the word out about your company. I’ll cover exactly how this works in later posts.