How Smart Women Brand Themselves for Business Success
How Smart Women Brand Themselves for Business Success
By Catherine Kaputa
Success for a woman - whether as an entrepreneur, a professional or a corporate executive in a Fortune 500 company (or any company these days) - requires careful, calculated branding, both to enter the arena and to stay in the game. And double that if you want to succeed at the very highest levels in your profession.
Look at Katie Couric: well known, well connected, and well paid. Even she developed a full-scale self branding campaign to secure the job as the first woman solo anchor at CBS.
The problem? Couric needed a strategy to counter her critics who said she lacked the “gravitas” and hard news credentials for the job.
The cornerstone of her rebranding campaign? According to the New York Observer newspaper, Couric and her people put together a 15-page “image” book. It positioned Couric as anchor material page after page by highlighting the famous people she had interviewed, her early days as a reporter covering the Pentagon and many awards and achievements. And, of course, it downplayed the softer side of Couric’s experience.
The truth is, smarts and hard work are not enough to ensure career success for anyone, not even Katie Couric. But tapping into the principles and strategies from the commercial world of brands can help propel career success. Here are some of the self branding ideas from my new book, U R a Brand! How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success to get you going:
Tap into “brand strategy” and “soft power”
Self branding is about developing a personal strategy that positions you differently from others and formulating the tactics that get you from A to B all the way to Z. Branding is also about “soft power” - forging an appealing image and visual identity and harnessing the power words, sound bites and verbal identity. It’s about building visibility and a reputation in some arena.
Be aware of perceptions - other people’s perceptions about you.
If people think you are on top of your game, you will be. If people think you’re a B player, you will be – until you change their perceptions. You success in business or life is based on perceptions, other people’s perceptions of who you are, how good you are, and even what you are worth. Branding strategies and tactics can help you build the right perceptions in the minds of others about you.
Be different
The cardinal rule of branding is, “Be different.” Brand strategy is about pinpointing relevant differences and creating positive perceptions. It’s the same with people. It used to be about, “Can you do the job?” Today many people can do what you do. So it has to be about something more.
Branding for people is about finding your Big Idea – your unique selling proposition (USP). The USP is the big idea that brands are always searching for. A USP gives a brand a compelling value proposition with its target audience. Likewise, you want to represent something special that sets you apart from others and establishes a value equation for you and your abilities.
Stay relevant
Another key tenet of branding is, “Be relevant.” That’s why marketers frequently conduct a brand audit - studying a brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats – called the SWOT analysis. You can do the same.
The SWOT analysis is an intensive look at your strengths, and weaknesses in a real-world framework. “Strengths” and “weaknesses,” the first two areas, deal with you. Start with skills, experience and accomplishments. Then expand the list to include personality traits. Expand it to include anyone you have ever known or ever met, or anything you have ever explored or been interested in. The “opportunities” and “threats” deal with things that could affect you in the future. What is going on that could dramatically change things? Business is dynamic so there is always movement and change.
Create a powerful “self-brand package.”
It may seem superficial. It may be unfair. We may not like it. After all, why should you be judged by your looks? Self-presentation – your visual identity – is important because of the link people make between what something looks like on the outside and what is on the inside. We do this today despite all the familiar admonitions, such as “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
That’s why you should think about visual identity like brand managers do. The good news for people is that ideas of “appealing,” “attractive” and “successful” have expanded tremendously today.
Harness the power of verbal identity
The words you use can be powerful and memorable or blow away like a feather in the wind. What if President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had not crossed out the phrase “world history” and replaced it with “infamy” in his Pearl Harbor address. One little word. And today Roosevelt’s phrase is arguable the most famous ever uttered by a U.S. president.
Brands try to won a word, or a short phrase, in the minds of consumers. If they succeed, people think of the brand when they hear the word, and vice-versa. For example, “overnight” is FedEx, and “safety” is identified with Volvo. Owning a word helps people too. Your word can be a positive attribute that defines you, your philosophy or your accomplishments. Smart business people use a defining word or phrase in defining key initiatives or the business philosophy at their company.
Become a little bit famous.
In self-branding, we’re talking of being famous for something – an idea, a belief system, an accomplishment, an area of excellence. And we’re talking about visibility on some level – your industry, your company, your community, even the nation if you’re ambitious.
Visibility – what advertisers call mindshare - brings big rewards. You can get a higher price for your services or a bigger salary. People will seek you out. That’s because of the connection people make between something that’s well-known being better than something that is not. (“She must be good, or why would she be so well known?”
Develop an action plan to move the plot along – the plot to your career and life story.
Defining a great self-brand strategy is one thing. Making it a reality is another. Brand managers use a marketing plan to tie it all together to achieve your goals and you should, too. A self brand action plan includes the following: goals, target markets, the self-brand strategy, time frame, tactics and measurement. Throughout your career, your reputation and the perception people have about you is constantly changing whether you do anything or not. If you’re trying to move up the ladder in your career, you should prepare a “Brag Book” like Katie Couric did that positions you apart from competitors , maximizes your assets, and demonstrates that you have the track record for the job.
Remember. If you don’t keep a successful narrative going with new developments and accomplishments, the story line could get away from you, and you will be regarded as yesterday’s sensation.
Catherine Kaputa is a brand strategist, speaker and workshop leader. She is the author of U R a BRAND! How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success (www.urabrand.com). Kaputa is founder of SelfBrand, a brand consultancy that works with companies, products, and individuals (www.selfbrand.com).
How Smart Women Brand Themselves for Business Success - To learn more about this author, visit Catherine Kaputa's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
How Smart Women Brand Themselves for Business Success
By Catherine Kaputa
Success for a woman - whether as an entrepreneur, a professional or a corporate executive in a Fortune 500 company (or any company these days) - requires careful, calculated branding, both to enter the arena and to stay in the game. And double that if you want to succeed at the very highest levels in your profession.
Look at Katie Couric: well known, well connected, and well paid. Even she developed a full-scale self branding campaign to secure the job as the first woman solo anchor at CBS.
The problem? Couric needed a strategy to counter her critics who said she lacked the “gravitas” and hard news credentials for the job.
The cornerstone of her rebranding campaign? According to the New York Observer newspaper, Couric and her people put together a 15-page “image” book. It positioned Couric as anchor material page after page by highlighting the famous people she had interviewed, her early days as a reporter covering the Pentagon and many awards and achievements. And, of course, it downplayed the softer side of Couric’s experience.
The truth is, smarts and hard work are not enough to ensure career success for anyone, not even Katie Couric. But tapping into the principles and strategies from the commercial world of brands can help propel career success. Here are some of the self branding ideas from my new book, U R a Brand! How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success to get you going:
Tap into “brand strategy” and “soft power”
Self branding is about developing a personal strategy that positions you differently from others and formulating the tactics that get you from A to B all the way to Z. Branding is also about “soft power” - forging an appealing image and visual identity and harnessing the power words, sound bites and verbal identity. It’s about building visibility and a reputation in some arena.
Be aware of perceptions - other people’s perceptions about you.
If people think you are on top of your game, you will be. If people think you’re a B player, you will be – until you change their perceptions. You success in business or life is based on perceptions, other people’s perceptions of who you are, how good you are, and even what you are worth. Branding strategies and tactics can help you build the right perceptions in the minds of others about you.
Be different
The cardinal rule of branding is, “Be different.” Brand strategy is about pinpointing relevant differences and creating positive perceptions. It’s the same with people. It used to be about, “Can you do the job?” Today many people can do what you do. So it has to be about something more.
Branding for people is about finding your Big Idea – your unique selling proposition (USP). The USP is the big idea that brands are always searching for. A USP gives a brand a compelling value proposition with its target audience. Likewise, you want to represent something special that sets you apart from others and establishes a value equation for you and your abilities.
Stay relevant
Another key tenet of branding is, “Be relevant.” That’s why marketers frequently conduct a brand audit - studying a brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats – called the SWOT analysis. You can do the same.
The SWOT analysis is an intensive look at your strengths, and weaknesses in a real-world framework. “Strengths” and “weaknesses,” the first two areas, deal with you. Start with skills, experience and accomplishments. Then expand the list to include personality traits. Expand it to include anyone you have ever known or ever met, or anything you have ever explored or been interested in. The “opportunities” and “threats” deal with things that could affect you in the future. What is going on that could dramatically change things? Business is dynamic so there is always movement and change.
Create a powerful “self-brand package.”
It may seem superficial. It may be unfair. We may not like it. After all, why should you be judged by your looks? Self-presentation – your visual identity – is important because of the link people make between what something looks like on the outside and what is on the inside. We do this today despite all the familiar admonitions, such as “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
That’s why you should think about visual identity like brand managers do. The good news for people is that ideas of “appealing,” “attractive” and “successful” have expanded tremendously today.
Harness the power of verbal identity
The words you use can be powerful and memorable or blow away like a feather in the wind. What if President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had not crossed out the phrase “world history” and replaced it with “infamy” in his Pearl Harbor address. One little word. And today Roosevelt’s phrase is arguable the most famous ever uttered by a U.S. president.
Brands try to won a word, or a short phrase, in the minds of consumers. If they succeed, people think of the brand when they hear the word, and vice-versa. For example, “overnight” is FedEx, and “safety” is identified with Volvo. Owning a word helps people too. Your word can be a positive attribute that defines you, your philosophy or your accomplishments. Smart business people use a defining word or phrase in defining key initiatives or the business philosophy at their company.
Become a little bit famous.
In self-branding, we’re talking of being famous for something – an idea, a belief system, an accomplishment, an area of excellence. And we’re talking about visibility on some level – your industry, your company, your community, even the nation if you’re ambitious.
Visibility – what advertisers call mindshare - brings big rewards. You can get a higher price for your services or a bigger salary. People will seek you out. That’s because of the connection people make between something that’s well-known being better than something that is not. (“She must be good, or why would she be so well known?”
Develop an action plan to move the plot along – the plot to your career and life story.
Defining a great self-brand strategy is one thing. Making it a reality is another. Brand managers use a marketing plan to tie it all together to achieve your goals and you should, too. A self brand action plan includes the following: goals, target markets, the self-brand strategy, time frame, tactics and measurement. Throughout your career, your reputation and the perception people have about you is constantly changing whether you do anything or not. If you’re trying to move up the ladder in your career, you should prepare a “Brag Book” like Katie Couric did that positions you apart from competitors , maximizes your assets, and demonstrates that you have the track record for the job.
Remember. If you don’t keep a successful narrative going with new developments and accomplishments, the story line could get away from you, and you will be regarded as yesterday’s sensation.
Catherine Kaputa is a brand strategist, speaker and workshop leader. She is the author of U R a BRAND! How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success (www.urabrand.com). Kaputa is founder of SelfBrand, a brand consultancy that works with companies, products, and individuals (www.selfbrand.com).
How Smart Women Brand Themselves for Business Success - To learn more about this author, visit Catherine Kaputa's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
 | |
 |
No article feedback found. |
| |
Leave Your Feedback |
 | |
| |||
Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
|||
Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
|||
George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
|||
Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
|||
Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
|||
David BarrDavid Barr is the President of Venture Opportunities, Inc. David has been a professional business broker/intermediary since 1980 focusing on General Business Brokerage and Mergers and Acquisitions representing client transaction value from $400,000 to $20,000,000. Mr. Barr has handled the sale of over four hundred and fifty companies. David earned a university degree from the State University of New York majoring in economics and business. David holds the Mergers and Acquisition Master Intermediary and the Certified Business Intermediary designations from the International Business Brokers Association. He is also a Senior Business Analyst and a Texas licensed Real Estate Agent. For more information about David and Venture Opportunities, visit www.bizdealmaker.com. - Visit David Barr's Website |
|||
Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
|||
Casey GollanCasey Gollan, Business Coaching & Mentoring Programs. Add $1 Million to $10 Million in the next 1 to 3 years. Since 1996 Casey has to added hundreds of millions of dollars to businesses. Watch a free video see client results Business Coaching website. - Visit Casey Gollan's Website |
|||
|
To learn more about the Evan Elite Author Program please contact us. | |||
 | |
|  |
Subscribe to Catherine's articles
 | |
|
|  |
 | |
|
| |
 | |||||||
|
 | ||
|
||
|
||
 |
||
|
| ||
 |
| Have you written articles that would be of value to entrepreneurs? Become an expert on our site by publishing them! Expose yourself to a wide audience, drive more traffic to your website and get more sales! Click Here for details. |
|
|
 |
| Modeling the Masters: Learn the true secrets behind Walt Disney's business success factors & grow your company! Video produced by Phanta Media |
|
|
 |
"Learn straight from Evan how you can Make a Full Time Income (And More) from a Website"
Click Here To Learn More |
|
|
|
|
Get advice & tips from famous business owners, new articles by entrepreneur experts, my latest website updates, & special sneak peaks at what's to come!
|
|
|
 Start eTutoring Business 5 Step Action Plan Business / Personal Plan Performance Improvement Plan Is your branding on the nose? |
|
 | ||
 |
Top 50 Raising Capital Blogs
Top Blogs To Watch In 2008 | |
 |
Choose A PR Topic
Press Release Builder | |
| ||
 | ||||
| ||||
|
| ||||
| ||||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||
|
Email us your ideas on how to make our website more valuable! Thank you Sharon from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for your suggestions to make the newsletter look like the website and profile younger entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez and Sean Combs!
|
|
|
| ||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||