Corporate Training Magazine

The Three Elements of a Successful Personal Branding Strategy
Vol 1 Issue 2- Nov 2005

By Krista Green

Your personal image -- the one you greet the world with every day -- speaks volumes about you. Your clothes, your hairstyle, even the pictures you hang in your office may seem insignificant, but are in fact quite the opposite. Each contributes to or contaminates your personal brand. Together they reflect your personality and shape others' perceptions of you.

By creating a powerful personal and professional identity that highlights your natural talents, skills and outstanding features, you can instantly communicate your values and personality to prospective clients, co-workers or employers.

Three major elements ensure success in the creation of your personal brand strategy clarity, consistency, and authenticity. These elements are non-negotiable. You can't pick and choose from the list; all three elements must be present. Sure, you can get by with two out of the three if you're only interested in 15 minutes of fame, but not if you want to be successful over the long term. It's all or nothing.

Clarity
Being clear about who you are and what you stand for is the cornerstone of your personal brand. It's the foundation upon which everything else‹including your signature style and personal image‹is built. Clarity will help you get noticed among your competitors, and you need clarity to effectively communicate your brand promise. (A brand promise answers the question: "What's in it for me?")

Just as it's important to be clear about what you want, who you are and what you can provide, you must also be clear about what you don't want, who you are not, and what you won't stand for. When you're able to successfully communicate these things, your target market will define itself. By authentically being yourself and telling the universe what you want, you will begin to attract your ideal customers: people who want what you deliver.

Consistency
When you're clear about your brand image, the disciplined repetition of key messages about that image will help you be remembered in the marketplace. The principle of consistency helps train those around you into a belief system about your values and personality, while creating an expectation about what you can do and how you will perform. It takes time and repetition to build a habit, and the same is true for building a powerful personal brand.

When you repeat the same fundamentals over and over again, your target audience will begin to assume that you provide consistent results. This will promote trust in your performance, which will in turn help you gain loyalty with your followers. Conversely, if you're not continuously projecting the same brand image, you're sending mixed messages to the people around you. These mixed messages can destroy your credibility, confuse your audience, and make it extremely difficult to associate any amount of power with your name and image.

The best way to communicate the concept of consistency is to imagine that you're planning to franchise yourself as a human being. To do this, you'll need to develop a standardized methodology for your personal presentation style. This will include determining a personal uniform, a marketing style for your distinctive talents, qualities and skills, and a code of ethics for your new company the company called You.

Authenticity
It's entirely possible for a brand to be successful for a while with only the first two elements, but for long-term impact the third element - authenticity - must be present. This means staying true to who you are in your most focused core. It means not attempting to be everything to everyone. It means abiding by the guiding principles you've chosen to follow and living those principles daily, setting an example through each and every action, whether someone is watching or not.

Utilizing authenticity as the foundation for your personal brand not only gives you staying power when things are going well, but it also promotes longevity in the marketplace to carry you through challenging times.

Donald Trump is an iconic personal brand whose style is undeniable, and most definitely authentic. If he were in a lineup of businessmen standing side by side, all wearing suits, from the neck down you might not be able to pick him out. But --raise your sightline and it's easy --one look at that hair, and you're an instant winner! His hair is symbolic of his no-nonsense, I-don't-give-a-rat's-ass-what-you-think style, which is a clear representation of his style in the boardroom as well. He's risky and to the point, and having built that into his brand gives him staying power even when 'The Donald' says or does things that the public disagrees with, we simply write it off as being just "how he is".

Authentic branding is important for another reason besides the forgiveness factor when you slip up or do something that those around you disagree with (as you inevitably will). By choosing to consciously cultivate a brand image that reflects the authentic strengths and perceived shortcomings of your personality, you attract like-minded people to you. When there isn't a good fit, others will know right away they're better suited for a different service provider or employer. Authenticity is about being upfront and honest no false advertising.

Your personal brand image is a reflection of your authentic self, and should have both your strengths and your weaknesses incorporated into it. Your long-term role as brand manager is to repeatedly perform checks to ensure that the three elements - clarity, consistency and authenticity are present in your brand's image at all times. This will maintain your long-term quality control standards, the integrity of your brand and the magic of your own individualism.

Stay focused on your vision, allowing it to act as your North Star. It will provide direction and keep you on the right path, leading you closer to the life you want to live. At any given moment you are different‹the way you look and feel, and the way you think. And the nature of being human is that you must BE. You must experience. You must share in the glorious triumph of victory and the utter despair of defeat.

Strive to be all you can be. Enjoy being all that you are. And through it all, just be yourself: it's a very tough act to follow.