Weekly Business Insights from Top Ten Business Magazines | Week 299 | Leading & Managing Section | 2

Extractive summaries and key takeaways from the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Week 299 | June 2-8, 2023.

A New Approach to Building Your Personal Brand

By Jill Avery and Rachel Greenwald | Harvard Business Review | May–June 2023 Issue

Listen to the Extractive Summary of the Article

Much of professional and personal success depends on persuading others to recognize your value. For better or worse, in today’s world everyone is a brand, and you need to develop yours and get comfortable marketing it.  Personal branding is an intentional, strategic practice in which you define and express your own value proposition. And though people have always carefully cultivated their public personas and reputations, online search and social media have greatly expanded the potential audience for—and risks and rewards associated with—such efforts.

The authors, based on their reading and experience, suggest seven steps, each of which informs the others as you move from strategizing to testing to tweaking in response to feedback.

1. Define your purpose. First you need a long-term vision and mission. What difference would you like to make to the various audiences that are important to you, personally and professionally, and what values would you like to embody as you do so?
2. Audit your personal brand equity. You need to identify and analyze the brand you are today so that you can fruitfully build on or shift it to stay true to your personal proposition. Think about the raw material you have to work with, including awareness (what people know about you), associations (their thoughts, feelings, and attitudes about you), and meaning (the stories they know and tell about you).
3. Construct your personal narrative. A brand is built on the meaningful stories that you’ve communicated and that your audience has processed. You need to identify, craft, and refine the narratives that will communicate your brand.  Your personal value proposition becomes more memorable, resonant, accessible, and persuasive when you convey it with stories.
4. Embody your brand. Each social interaction can move your personal brand closer to or further from your ideal. It’s therefore important to be aware of the messages you’re sending.  You should also learn how to creatively introduce your personal narratives during first meetings, casual small talk, and formal career conversations. Ask yourself, “What do I want to share about myself, and what’s the best story to illustrate it?” Then look for opportunities.
5. Communicate your brand story. Contemplate how you can use owned, earned, and paid media to spread your stories. As in product or service marketing, the goal is to increase discoverability, awareness, and understanding with your audiences.
6. Socialize your brand. Personal branding isn’t an individual exercise; you need other people to share your stories, thereby enhancing your credibility and helping you reach new audiences. So carefully identify which gatekeepers, influencers, promoters, and communities you might enlist to assist you on your journey.
7. Reevaluate and adjust your brand. Personal branding is an ongoing process. So you will need to regularly assess how your value proposition and narratives fit into your current professional and personal context and how they’re being received, and then tweak them accordingly.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. Much of professional and personal success depends on persuading others to recognize your value. For better or worse, in today’s world everyone is a brand, and you need to develop yours and get comfortable marketing it.
2. Personal branding is an intentional, strategic practice in which you define and express your own value proposition. And though people have always carefully cultivated their public personas and reputations, online search and social media have greatly expanded the potential audience for—and risks and rewards associated with—such efforts.
3. Seven steps to informs others as you move from strategizing to testing to tweaking in response to feedback are: define your purpose, audit your personal brand equity, construct your personal narrative, embody your brand, communicate your brand story, socialize your brand, and 55reevaluate and adjust your brand.

Full Article

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Topics:  Marketing, Personal Branding