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Use It or Lose It 5 steps to choosing your most powerful and effective personal brand attributes

Written by: Andrea O'Neill

Article Overview: When it comes to refining your personal brand, less is more. We are all complex and wonderfully multi-faceted individuals. Each of us has a multitude of adjectives that could describe us at any given time. As we craft our personal brand, however, our challenge is not to describe ourselves with the most detail, but rather to distill these descriptors down to the most memorable, relevant and unique traits.

Use It or Lose It 5 steps to choosing your most powerful and effective personal brand attributes

When it comes to refining your personal brand, less is more. We are all complex and wonderfully multi-faceted individuals. Each of us has a multitude of adjectives that could describe us at any given time. As we craft our personal brand, however, our challenge is not to describe ourselves with the most detail, but rather to distill these descriptors down to the most memorable, relevant and unique traits.
The ultimate goal of your personal brand is to create positive name recognition for the clients, positions, or opportunities you seek. You do this by taking control of the way others perceive you. Being one step ahead of their perceptions, so to speak, so that you create the impression you desire. That is not to say you pretend to be something you are not. It is about awareness of the impression you leave on others, and consciously maximizing your skills, traits, and personal attributes to be in alignment with the needs of your target audience and your personal and professional goals.
Ultimately, your brand should be memorable, relevant to your audience and very consistent. Based on these objectives, the following 5 steps will help you to choose the brand attributes with the greatest impact for success. On average, people will seldom remember more than 3 key adjectives to describe you, but different people will remember different traits depending upon the relevance to their lives, so settling on your top 5 is a good standard. Using your master list of personal attributes that you have collected from objective survey:
1. Check their relevance to your overall goals.
Based on what you wish to achieve in your career, and in your life as a whole, review which attributes serve your goals. Give each attribute on your master list a score between 1 and 5 (5 being most relevant).
2. Check their relevance to your target audience.
In step 1 you thought about how your attributes affect YOUR goals. In this step you need to thing about the goals of YOUR AUDIENCE. Your audience could be your boss, your clients, and your key networking allies. What attributes in your master list most benefit them? Give each attribute on your master list a score between 1 and 5 (5 being most relevant).
3. Which traits are most memorable?
This is a tricky one. Often these are the traits that we shy away from, so consider your evaluation carefully. You have to be willing to put yourself “out there” for a successful brand. What characteristics about you are the most shocking, outrageous, strange, unexpected, flamboyant, or unusual? These traits will probably be the most memorable. Typically these attributes are “double-edged swords” with potential negative sides, but under careful management can be true brand differentiators. An example might be Madonna’s trademark overt sexuality. Give each attribute on your master list a score between 1 and 5 (5 being most memorable).
4. Which attributes are the closest to your heart?
The things that you are most passionate about will be the easiest for you to maximize in your brand. Give each attribute on your master list a score between 1 and 5 (5 being most passionate about).
5. Add it all up.
Calculate your totals. Write down the 5 attributes with the top scores. How do they fit together? If you find some interesting contrasts do not be alarmed. Contrasting attributes in your brand add memorability, Going back to the example of Madonna’s personal brand. Her overt sexuality would have had far less impact on her career were it not partnered with her brilliant acumen as a business woman.
Once you have your top 5 attributes:
- Commit them to memory
- Use them to describe yourself consistently in every opportunity you get
Using your brand attributes clearly, constantly and consistently is imperative to the success of your brand and at the heart of any branding campaign, personal or corporate. You must feel comfortable and confident in embracing these attributes and using them in what you say, what you do, and what you write. If you do not feel fluid in this, re-evaluate the list and settle on attributes that feel more natural. Use it or lose it, baby.

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  Is Your Personal Brand Memorable?
  The Power of a Brand Name and how to make your own brand powerful
  Brand Building An Architectural View
  Strategic Branding Questions

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Related Forum Posts
The Flaw In Personal Branding...? - To what extent do you use personal branding to build your business and your business image? To build an effective personal brand, the image you convey needs to be authentic, not phoney ... so to what extent do you, or would you, allow your personal flaws to be part of your personal brand image?? We could be talking about the physical side, including physical condition and fashion, or it could be in the area of personal behaviour and characteristics or habits, or it could be in the area of lifestyle... Don't you think it might be better to have a flaw or two on display, to appear more human, and perhaps therefore more like someone people could do business with? Or is there a flaw in the whole idea of personal branding. Shouldn't we just concentrate on branding our products??
Re: Job market slump is a guy thing - Well said, Kevin. I also really like your success equation. To add to "visibility"... I think if a person has "vision" they can see there are steps on their ladder to success. It doesn't matter if they are on the bottom step of the ladder or at the top, if they bring the positive attributes of who they are, with all their talents and abilities, they will find themselves moving up the ladder. This man you talk about it a perfect example. I wouldn't be surprised if many were pleased when he ended up managing them.
Re: Who wants to be a millionaire? - My wife and my children are always urging me to go for it, because I always know most of the questions. I applied many times but was not choosing. There are thousands of people applying every day but few are choosing
Re: The Flaw In Personal Branding...? - The original post in this thread got my mind spinning in so many different directions. Typically when we think of branding we think of large company branding. It's interesting how many large companies have taken seemingly made up words and created a brand around those words. For example, what does the word "kleenex" mean? When you hear or read that word you automatically think of a facial tissue. How about the word "Google"? Google has come to mean an internet search engine. Having used those two examples though it leads me to what I think is most important about branding whether you are an individual, small business, or conglomerate. The purpose of your brand is to create a unique space or position in the marketplace that you and you alone own. In many cases people create a personal brand through there persona. Frank Kern is the good old boy strikes it big in internet marketing persona. Zig Ziglar is the good boy does good motivational speaker persona. When you hear there names you immediately associate that name with there unique space in the market. So coming back to personal branding and whether you should allow your personal flaws to show I would say you absolutely must because that's who you are and you can't fake you. Whether people like you or don't like you they have to know exactly who they are liking or disliking. Bottom line when it comes to branding or personal branding I think the critical question is... Does your brand create a unique place in the world that people are already looking for?
Re: When is your interest peaked by unsolicited mail? - In "The Copywriter's Handbook", author Robert W. Bly emphasizes that effective attention-getting words are ones that offer news. For instance, Bly says "Headlines that give news often use words such as new, discover, introducing, announcing, now, it's here, at last, and just arrived...Free is the most powerful word in the copywriter's vocabulary...Other powerful attention-getting words include how to, why, sale, quick, easy, bargain, last chance, guarantee, results, proven and save" (pg 17 & 18). However, I feel as if all of Bly's keywords are over-used and audiences have learned to ignore them in unsolicited email headlines.


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