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What is a Personal Brand?

Guest post by: Mike Harding

Article Overview: Have you heard the term "personal brand" before? What is it? And more importantly, why should you care about it. This article will provide some insight into personal branding on the what and why dimensions.

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What is a Personal Brand?

When you hear the word "branding" you might think about giant companies like Coke or Apple and all the cache and money they invest in their brands. Or, you might think about the mark left on the hind end of livestock identifying this particular animal as being part of the Bar X Ranch.

Those are both good examples because we are now in a place where it is very important to think about establishing your personal brand given the global nature of competition and the sheer amount of information and interaction we now face every single day. At the core, a brand is a representation of something distinct with an inherent promise of some sort of experience when invoked, used, or purchased.

Thus a personal brand is a brand applied to a single person, you!

In the times before the internet people practiced personal branding. For instance, it could be argued that John F. Kennedy won the Presidential election in 1960 because of his personal brand of young, vigorous, and passionate aided by new technology to convey that, the television.

Today, with the internet, people post blogs, comments, status updates, have Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts, photo accounts, participate in forums, etc. Do you give a thought about how all that information creates a defacto brand for you? If you don't care, you should because potential employers and potential customers now routinely perform at least a basic background check via the internet search before engaging with you.

It is now possible to establish and curate your personal brand so that you not only avoid disqualification, but can enhance your chance of begin the person to win the job or win the business as potential employers and/or customers seek the best talent to satisfy their needs.

The steps to do this are simple. First, consider what you want your personal brand to be. Second, construct the story (based upon facts!) that helps convey your personal brand. Third, use one of the modern personal branding tools to be the home repository for your brand and pay attention about how you accrue value to that brand and presence through your online interactions.

Give it a try, over time, it can be the difference between you and the faceless mass of people who don't establish and curate their own personal brand.

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Article Tags: blog, branding, consulting, job search, personal branding, resume, social media

About the Author: Mike Harding
RSS for Mike's articles - Visit Mike's website

I am an entreprenerd; I mix business and technology to solve hard problems. Over my 25 year career, I have founded six startups and have had four successful exits. One of these startups was a dismal failure, for which I bear complete responsibility. It represents at its worst "the most expensive business school in the world" and at its best "a valuable learning experience about business, technology, and self."

My present project is re.vu (pronounced "review") - the cure for the common resume. Create your re.vu today at http://re.vu/.