Art of Branding

Article by Catherine Kaputa in Execunet Newsletter, May, 11, 2010

You got the appointment and
spent the last week researching the
company and fine-tuning your résumé.
But you blew it in the first five minutes.
That’s because you planned everything
but the most important thing — making
a great first impression with an “elevator
speech.”

The First Ten Seconds
May be All You Have
People make judgments about you in a
matter of seconds: winner/loser, strong/
weak, hire/don’t hire. Such judgments are
based on first impressions: how you enter
the room, what you’re wearing, your body
language, your facial expressions, and the
first words out of your mouth.
These first, blink-of-an-eye impressions
are powerful. Research shows that
how you are viewed coming out of the
gate is usually indelible and doesn’t
change over time.
That’s why it’s important not only
to research the company, but also how
you look, how you walk and how you
connect to others at the meeting. It all
starts, of course, with the first words
you plan to say.
Most people flub the most basic
and popular opening statement, “Tell
me about yourself.”

The 60 Second Elevator Speech
The words you use to introduce yourself
and your accomplishments can be
powerful and memorable or instantly
forgettable. Too many people waste the
beginning of a pitch with a long-winded
life story while their audience is wondering
why they’re there and what they do.
Instead, prepare an elevator speech, a
pithy explanation of who you are, what
you’ve done and can do for them, and
why it matters.
Here are the tenets of creating and
delivering a great elevator speech:

Be Short
An elevator speech should last about a
minute and a half, the time it takes to
go up a few floors in the elevator.

Position Yourself and
Your Value as an Employee
It should contain a value proposition: why
you and your business accomplishments
and abilities are relevant in the marketplace.
Strong positioning for you could
be to represent innovation and growth.
So frame your career story that way.

Be Memorable
Include a memorable phrase that embodies
the idea, like an ad slogan. Another
way to add interest is through analogy.
Try to put two different ideas together to
express who you are and what you are
about, such as “I’m a cross between
_____ and _____” or “It’s like ______”
relating the business to something in a
totally different industry. For example,
one market researcher who specializes in
the women’s market calls herself “the
Oprah of Madison Avenue.” I often
define myself in my elevator speech as
“a personal branding strategist — you
might say I’m a cross between a P&G
brand manager and an executive coach.”

Be Conversational
Your elevator speech shouldn’t seem
wooden and rehearsed. The key is to
practice, but to avoid memorization
so you don’t sound like you’re scripted.
Keep an elevator speech as conversational
and spontaneous as possible.

Look the Part
It may seem superficial. After all, why
should you be judged by your looks?
Self-presentation — your visual identity
in branding terms — is important
because of the link people make between
what something looks like on the outside
and what is on the inside. The fact is the
way you look, carry yourself, your facial
expression, the clothes you choose all
talk — sometimes more loudly than
what you say.

Project Confidence
There are easy things you can do to
project confidence — even if it has been
battered internally. Stand tall. Give a
good firm handshake. Make eye contact.
Smile. Ask questions, too; don’t just
respond to questions. When you engage
in conversation and ask questions, you
level the playing field because you come
across as someone who has options, too.

Brainstormer Exercise
Try this short brainstormer exercise to
get you started. Set a stopwatch for 60
seconds. Practice your elevator speech.
What hooks, connections, stories, or
analogies can you add that will make
your opening more powerful and relevant?
Test different approaches to your
elevator speech with a few colleagues.
What works best?

by Peggy Lowe Orange County Register Blog, April 22, 2010

What’s in a name?

In these days of high unemployment, a great deal. The many experts out there trying to help jobseekers, including my host, Tim Tyrell-Smith, constantly urge folks to create a personal brand. Put old-school, it’s called making a name for yourself.

They are right, of course. It’s important to, as Ryan Rancatore told Tim, match “your inner qualities, strengths and passions with your outward, visible persona.”

So why in heaven’s name would anyone brand themselves a “ninja?”

The Wall Street Journal reports that “ninja” is replacing “guru” as the hot new job title. Apparently, computer programmers who are trying to distinguish themselves from all the other geeks sitting in cubicles across the country are touting their application of the “sly skills of the feudal Japanese warriors to writing software.”
I’m sorry, but if a resume came across my desk with the term “ninja” on it I would toss it to the trash as fast as one of those would-be warriors using a throwing star. The term “ninja”conjures a vision of my little brother in his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pajamas.

I thought the point is to be original, to set yourself apart from the thousands of people who want that job. I ran my theory by Catherine Kaputa, a personal brand strategist and author of two branding books. She agreed with me and said the key to personal branding is authenticity.

“The way to do well in business is not to run with the herd,” she said. “The two cardinal rules of branding are ‘be different’ and ‘be authentic.’ When you latch onto the buzz word of the moment like ‘ninja’ to describe yourself professionally, you brand yourself as an imitator, a B-player who hops onto the latest trend.”
So how to make yourself into an A-player? Be a Dirtbag.

Dirtbag lore goes like this: It was 1989 and Coach Dave Snow hired on as head baseball coach at Long Beach State. To creatively say Snow had a big job in front of him would force me to use 100 sports cliches. The team had a 14-45 record the previous year, had a bunch of new players and played without the benefit of a home field, splitting their season across three local ballparks.

Not only did these kids not enjoy a home field advantage, the infield guys were forced to practice on a nearby all-dirt Pony League. This is where the dirt comes in. After a hard day at practice and returning to the campus practice field, the infielders were teased and called “dirtbags.”

I don’t need to play the soundtrack that always goes with those come-from-behind sports movies, but that’s the kind of story this is. This scrappy, ragtag group of kids adopted what could have been a pejorative — dirtbags — and made it into capital D Dirtbags. And they created a legend at a school with a laid-back name. (Fans yell “Go Beach!”)

The Dirtbags finished the 1989 season 50-15 overall, which is still a school record, and advanced to the NCAA Tournament for their first appearance at the College World Series. Since then, the program has become a West Coast powerhouse, with four College World Series appearances, 18 regional playoff berths and 28 players sent to the major leagues.

They also created a killer personal brand. To be a Dirtbag meant that no matter the tough circumstances, you play to win. It meant that you might not be the most talented player out there, but you will give 100 percent and go home dirty and proud. To go back to old-school speak, you play with a lot of heart.

Steve Tinoco, the Dirtbag’s current first baseman, is from Coto de Caza and grew up knowing the legend. I asked him for the definition Wednesday night, following his team’s stunning 16-4 win over No. 5 UCLA.
“It means you go out every single day and give it your all, leaving it all on the field,” he said, “being the dirtiest guy on the field and having fun. Having fun beating all the other teams.”

“We’re going to be reckless and abandoned on the field, but respectful off the field. We’re going to beat the other team, having that chip on our shoulders.”

My advice on this personal branding business? Dream up a name or image that best represents who you are. I’m not suggesting you put that on a resume — I might still toss one that uses a sports, warrior or guru metaphor. But use that name as your guiding force, your mind’s eye vision of you. Then own it, and wear that name as a badge of honor.

So get out there, dig deep and find your inner Dirtbag.

In a hyper-competitive job market, employers are having trouble finding potential employees among a sea of qualified candidates. You can convince them that you’re ideal by developing and communicating a compelling and unique personal brand.

By Catherine Kaputa on Tue, April 13, 2010

CIO Magazine— Zeroing in on your unique personal brand and communicating it consistently and effectively in your job search is a surefire strategy for attracting employers’ attention and landing a new job. Here are four personal branding tactics that will make you irresistible to hiring managers.

1. Brand yourself in a sentence.
Effective brands are defined succinctly and competitively in a single sentence. The sentence should declare what’s different about you and why it matters. It should be short enough to write on the back of a business card and definitive enough to describe the brand’s purpose. For example, Google (GOOG) defines its brand this way: “Google organizes the world’s information and makes it universally accessible and useful.”
When you are composing your brand sentence, think of how you can label or position yourself differently. For example, rather than calling myself a career coach like others do, I call myself a “personal brand strategist” and go on to say, “I use the principles and strategies from the commercial world of brands for the most important brand—Brand You.”
Similar to this Article
• Personal Branding: 8 Tips That Will Help You Stand Out
• Personal Branding: IT Professionals’ Four Pain Points
• Developing a Personal Brand for Your Job Search
• 6 Personal Branding Mistakes That Can Threaten Your Job Search
For an IT professional I worked with, we devised this brand sentence: John Doe: A technology solutions pioneer developing new revenue streams through technology in the converging worlds of Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

2. Get feedback on your 60-second elevator speech.
Brands hire experts to create their ads, then test them to get feedback.
There’s an easy way for you to get feedback: Just grab a video camera and record yourself giving your elevator speech or your answer to the most popular interview question, Tell me about yourself. Then sit down and evaluate your performance. The only way to get good is to practice, make a video and rate your performance.
Your personal commercial should elaborate on your brand sentence in an interesting way. Take another page from the branding playbook and include a memorable phrase that embodies your brand purpose, like an ad slogan does for a brand. Try an analogy: Put two different ideas together to express who you are, such as “I’m a cross between X and Y” or “I’m like A meets B. Tazo Tea, for example, defined itself as “Marco Polo meets Merlin.” I sometimes say, “I’m a cross between a P&G brand manager and a career coach.”
Even though you’ve practiced and videotaped your delivery, your elevator pitch shouldn’t seem wooden and rehearsed. The key is to practice, but to avoid memorization so you don’t sound like you’re scripted.

3. Create branded marketing materials that break through the clutter.
Every brand has marketing materials: advertising, a website, brochures, business cards and other collateral that are all designed with a distinctive look and feel and a message focused on the brand vision—the best brand story possible.
You should do the same. Your marketing materials are your business card, cover letter, email address, voicemail message and resume. Later you can expand your brand’s marketing materials to include online social networking profiles, a website and a blog. It’s easy to do them for free or economically though a service such as VistaPrint. But don_t use their free business cards with their logo on the back (that will brand you as cheap!) or use a template design. You are a brand, after all.

Make sure that all your marketing materials have a similar look (they should use the same fonts and colors, for example) and tell your best brand story.
You can take another page from the branding playbook and get “celebrity” endorsements in your marketing materials. Of course, we’re not talking about actual celebrities, but getting a quote from a former boss or client about a project where you played a major role. Put together a Resume Addendum that lists key projects in a case study-Challenge-Solution-Results-format. Then put the quote from your boss or client at the top of each case study. You can also use your endorsement quotes in your cover letter, website and your LinkedIn profile.
Similar to this Article
• Personal Branding: 8 Tips That Will Help You Stand Out
• Personal Branding: IT Professionals’ Four Pain Points
• Developing a Personal Brand for Your Job Search
• 6 Personal Branding Mistakes That Can Threaten Your Job Search

4. Develop an e-mail “Stalking” campaign.
CNBC “Street Signs” Anchor Erin Burnett got her start on television after writing what she called a “stalker letter” to anchor Willow Bay. Of course, Burnett wasn’t literally stalking Bay, but a clever email and letter campaign to companies and hiring managers can brand you as someone with initiative and get you noticed.
Many of my clients have used this technique successfully in today’s tough job market. Here’s an email sent a client, a young technologist in transition, sent that got him a series of interviews and eventually a job offer:

Subject line: Looking for ways to keep costs down for your clients?

Body of email: I’m a technologist who recently supplemented my technology training at ABC University’s program in xxx. I’m a go-getter who can deliver projects and services at a lower rate for your clients, a key concern during these economic times.
In today’s environment, I think it’s important to segment tasks that require someone to do a process or a project versus those that require someone with extensive experience to exercise judgment. Today’s clients are looking for ways to decrease costs and I can help provide different ways to bill the client at a more cost-effective rate.
I would love to get on your calendar for a phone or in person meeting to discuss how I can add value to your company. I have attached my background and look forward to speaking with you.

When you get into the branding mindset, you’ll want to reassess your personal brand regularly just like any brand manager would do—not just when you’re in transition. After all, Brand You is a journey that will last your whole lifetime.
Catherine Kaputa is a personal brand strategist and president of SelfBrand. She is the author of the book You Are a BRAND! How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success, which won the Ben Franklin award for Best Career Book 2007. She also wrote The Female Brand, Using the Female Mindset to Succeed in Business (May, 2009).

Savvy brand managers spend a lot of time delineating differences: different product benefits, different look, different message, and different target audience. What they are creating is a distinct brand strategy explaining what their brand has to offer that competing brands don’t. And the payback can be enormous.

Look at high profile entrepreneurs who hit the big time like Donald Trump or Martha Stewart. They built a compelling brand idea or USP (unique selling proposition) for themselves and their business idea every step of the way.

No matter what you do, you should do the same.

Branding is about finding your big idea – your unique selling proposition – that something special that sets you and your business apart from others and helps you to be more successful.

In my book, You Are a Brand!, winner of the Ben Franklin Award for Best Career Book 2007,  I outline the strategies and actions that people in all types of careers can do  to propel business success and build a personal and business brand identity.

Let’s look at one of them, Alexandra, an executive coach who had been in business for more than ten years. Alexandra had a marketing brochure and fancy logo but no different idea. After I read her brochure, all I could remember as a takeaway message was “executive coach who works with all kinds of people and all kinds of problems.”

A lot of business people make this mistake. They want to cast a wide net so they won’t miss any business. However, the opposite usually occurs. They don’t get much business because people don’t have anything to sink their teeth into. Alexandra offered no reason for someone to choose her and gave no sense of the kind of clients she was best suited to help.

We got our brand insight when I asked Alexandra, “What kind of client are you really good with?”

“Believe it or not,” Alexandra told me, “I like working with really difficult people – managers with poor people skills, the kind that are featured in books like How to Work for a Jerk.”

Eureka! We had our different brand promise.

With her focus on difficult managers and the people who work for them, Alexandra had a point of difference and a USP on which to build her self brand and company brand. She had a public relations platform for pitching reporters doing stories on how to cope with an abusive boss or a difficult client.

Alexandra’s different brand strategy also became a way of being memorable and staying at the top of everyone’s mind. And as we know, out of mind is out of business if you are an entrepreneur.

#

Catherine Kaputa is a brand strategist, speaker and the founder of SelfBrand LLC (www.selfbrand.com)  , a NYC-based personal branding firm. Her newest book is The Female Brand: Using the Female Mindset to Succeed in Business (Davies-Black, 2009, www.femalebrand.com). Her previous book, You Are a Brand! How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success, won the Ben Franklin award for Best Career Book, 2007

How come so many executive women don’t have a strong business network and most men do? Whether it’s from years of playing together in team sports, guys understand the value of a big team of helpers and use it to their advantage, that’s why they call it the “Old Boys Network.”

Here are 5 networking mistakes women make:

1. Favoring a small group of supporters over a larger, more superficial group.

It’s in our DNA to favor deep relationships studies show. But in the world of work, a small group of intense relationships is not as powerful as a large group of superficial connections.

The more people you know and who know you – even superficially – the better. It’s often these “soft links” – people that you don’t know well that lead to opportunity.

2. Not trading in the networking economy.

Networking is an economy – an economy of favors – one that men know well and women are just learning about. The networking trade works like this: I do you a favor and there is an unspoken understanding that if an opportunity arises you will return the favor. Favor givers are attracted to those who reciprocate and punish those who take a favor and don’t reciprocate. For an economy to thrive, there has to be active trade back and forth. Be an active trader in the networking economy.

3. Having mainly women in your network.

An all female network is a weak network. Since more men are in positions of power, make sure you have a good mix of genders in your network, too.

4. No follow up.

It’s one thing to go to a networking event, and quite another to leave with new connections who will become a part of your ongoing network. Make sure you’re not just collecting business cards. Follow up afterwards with an email note and build a connection.

5. Episodic networking syndrome.

A lot of women use networking as a job search tool. And it is. So when their jobs look dicey, they start networking. Then, they go off on their merry way until the next job dislocation. It’s sort of like yo-yo dieting. About the second or third time you do this, your network starts to feel used.

Successful networkers take a long-term rather than short-term view. Be one of them.

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Wall Street Journal, Liz Garone, March 8, 2010

With fierce competition for open positions in finance, job seekers need to expand the ways in which they conduct their searches. In today’s marketplace, building a positive online presence is more important than ever, even for an accomplished finance professional, employed or not. “Regardless of your current position, online branding is critical because there is no such thing as job security,” says branding expert Dan Schawbel, author of “Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success.” “In order to protect yourself and become searchable in Google and various social networks, it’s imperative that you invest in your own online identity.”

Be the First to Claim Your Name
Before you do anything else, you’ll want to “claim your name” on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, says brand strategist Catherine Kaputa and author of “U R A Brand.” You’ll also want to try to purchase the domain for your name. If it turns out your name has already been taken, then you’ll want to use a slight variation, such as a middle name or initial, she suggests. Just keep it consistent across the Web. By taking these steps, you’re calling the shots on how you will be perceived, says Kaputa.

Take Your Time to Develop Your Identity
Once you own your name, you can slowly develop a presence, starting with basic information and then adding to it as you go. “This is something you can control,” says Kaputa. “It’s an opportunity to really develop your brand yourself.” It can also be an opportunity to reinvent yourself, says Schawbel. “If you aren’t especially happy with your current job, then use your online platform to rebrand yourself.”

Don’t Go Overboard
Prof. Sree Sreenivasan, who teaches digital media at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, has received membership invitations from more than 40 networking sites. Each time he receives one, he politely declines, having made the decision early on to limit himself to three: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. “There is just not enough time,” he says. “Pick two or three, then cultivate a presence there.”

LinkedIn is the Place to Be
If you only have the time to join one site, most experts agree that LinkedIn, with 60-million-plus members, is the most essential — at least right now. “LinkedIn is the premier business social networking site, so it is the one crucial place to be if you are a business executive, professional or entrepreneur,” says Kaputa. Steven Burda, who works in financial planning, procurement, and cost management for The Boeing Company, used LinkedIn to start a group for finance and accounting professionals; the group now numbers more than 47,000. “Linkedin is required in this day and age. It’s the survival of the fittest amongst professionals,” says Burda. “As of now, I get dozens of opportunities from recruiters — most are finance, business development and management jobs.”

Stay Current and Up-To-Date
For every network you join, you’ll need to update your profile regularly, especially if your position changes or you lose your job. Even after promotions, people don’t always remember to make the changes online, something people rarely forget to do in the traditional resume marketplace. “Curate [your online profile] the same way you would curate your one-page resume,” says Sreenivasan. If you choose to set up your own blog, commit to adding a new entry each week. This is the minimum, says Kaputa. Anything less than that and you’ll lose your readership.

Connect With People You Know
Expand your network carefully; only add people you actually know or with whom you’ve done business. Whether it’s on LinkedIn, Facebook, or any other networking site, “it’s much more of a quality game than a quantity game,” says Krista Canfield, a LinkedIn spokesperson. A recruiter may choose to contact one of your connections to ask about you; you wouldn’t want that person to be someone you don’t really know or trust — or be someone who doesn’t really know you very well.

Google Yourself on a Regular Basis
Increasingly rare is the employer or recruiter who doesn’t Google a potential employee prior to the interview. Google yourself regularly, so you can see how you stack up on the Web compared to others and whether your “personal brand” is compromised in any way. If you do find something out of line, it’s your job to fix it, says Schawbel. “You should create content, join social networks, and run your own personal PR campaign to push that result down.”

Consistency Is Key
It’s essential that you keep your brand consistent across the Web and treat it like the “broadcast medium” it is, says Lauren Doliva, a partner at executive-search firm Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. “If an executive is using online sources to network, it’s important for the person to present the full story of his or her experience. This should include corporate title, functional title, reporting relationship, an outline of responsibilities, the specific scenario and context and, most importantly, the results,” she says. Everywhere you go online, you’ll want to use the same picture, brand name and personal brand statement, says Schawbel.” “By doing so, people will be able to follow your digital tracks and get to know you better.”

—

An online presence is essential in today’s marketplace. It’s just a matter of making sure you create the one that puts your best foot forward, say experts. “Whatever you put on a profile or networking site sends an impression of who you are. It becomes part of your personal brand identity,” says Doliva. “The key is to be thoughtful about the content you are conveying and what others might assume as a result of reading or seeing it.”

– Liz Garone

Email Liz about this article here. Please make sure to include the title of the article in the email subject line.

The careerist: ‘There’s a human need to show how good we are’

By Rhymer Rigby

Published: The Financial Times, March 1 2010 02:00 | Last updated: March 1 2010 02:00

The annual awards season culminates with this Sunday’s Oscars, but it is not just the film industry that likes to recognise its own. So how can you boost your career with a gong in your own industry?

Do awards really make you stand out? “They differentiate you from other people and act as a kind of third-party endorsement, which is very valuable in today’s tough jobs market,” says Catherine Kaputa, a New York-based personal branding expert. “People like things that are easy to latch on to and remember, so they’ll say: ‘Oh, he or she won an award for that.’ It can become a kind of recommendation.”

Alan Young, creative director at St Luke’s, the London advertising agency, adds: “In creative circles, there’s a huge desire for peer group recognition and having produced award-winning work will certainly keep you employable and may boost your earning power.”

Are all awards equal? No. For a start, awards are much more important and prevalent in some sectors than others. Second, the money-making potential for the people behind the awards (usually via pricey ceremonies and high entry fees) means there are plenty of less credible schemes out there. So you need to do your research.

“There are awards that aren’t worth the paper they’re written on and to be encouraged by them is a road to confusion,” warns Ben Williams, a business psychologist in Edinburgh. Indeed, having a low-rent award might even tarnish your personal brand.

Should I advertise my awards? “You need to weave it into your personal narrative rather than shout about it,” says Ms Kaputa. “You don’t want to seem arrogant. If a third party brings it up, that’s great.”

Equally, you should not campaign too hard to be entered for awards. It is fine to promote yourself, but do not appear to be overly self-promoting or, worse, deluded. Stevan Rolls, human resources director of the professional services firm Deloitte, says that for those who win them, an award is usually just the icing on the cake: “The important thing to remember is that . . . they tend to be good anyway – that’s what really drives their career progression.”

Are there other benefits? Whether or not you win, awards can still be a powerful incentive to raise your game. “Being in the running for an award can give you a goal to work towards and act as motivator,” says Ms Kaputa. “There’s a human need to show how good we are, particularly if we’re ambitious.”

Awards can also have wider implications for the organisation as a whole. “When an individual or a team wins an award, it says something about us as a firm,” says Mr Rolls. “Everyone feels good.”

Mr Williams says they can also help put training and development on the agenda.

Are there any pitfalls to watch out for? “If you become too fixated on them and don’t win, you can be crushed,” says Mr Young. He adds that too narrow a focus on sectoral prizes can be harmful in other ways, too. “In our industry, the ads that win awards are often the crazy, weird showy things that slip through the net. Having an award-winning agenda can often create a lot of tension with the clients you’re working with.”

CIO Magazine, By Meridith Levinson
IT pros sense that personal branding can advance their careers, but they sometimes have trouble putting it into practice.
I’m always amazed at the amount of traffic personal branding stories generate for CIO.com. My last story on the topic, 6 Personal Branding Mistakes that Can Threaten Your Job Search, turned nearly 16,000 page views in its first week.
The numbers tell me that CIO.com readers are hungry for information on this subject. To understand why, I spoke to two personal branding strategists who have experience working with IT professionals. They explained why personal branding is such a hot topic right now as well as IT professionals’ most common hang-ups around the practice.
Randi Bussin, a certified career coach and Reach personal branding strategist, attributes IT professionals’ interest in personal branding to the competition in today’s job market. They realize that landing a new job requires a lot more effort than searching the web and sending out resumes, she says of her clients in IT._At the same time, she adds, they’re seeing and hearing a lot about the role personal branding can play in their job searches, but they don’t know how to put the principles of personal branding into practice for themselves.
“People are realizing you have to do this,” says Bussin. “It’s a non-negotiable. If you can’t say what makes you unique from everyone else applying for the same job, you’re going to have a hard time rising above the noise.”
Personal branding is equally important to IT professionals who want to increase their job security, if not advance their careers with their current employers, notes personal branding strategist Catherine Kaputa, who is also a speaker and the author of You Are a Brand!

“In the business world, soft power trumps hard power,” she says. “The farther up you go in a company, the more important these soft power skills are.”
These soft power skills, which include leadership ability, communication skills, presentation skills, and relationship-building skills—combine to create an individual’s personal brand.
Despite the advantages personal branding confers to IT professionals, the practice can be painful for them. Here are four common pain points IT professionals experience around personal branding:

1. Some don’t want personal branding to matter in their career advancement.

“A lot of information technology people are struck by the fact that the school rules no longer apply in the business world,” says Kaputa. In school, she says, the student grind pays off: Their intelligence and hard work leads to good grades and academic recognition. But in the business world, she adds, intellect and hard work aren’t always enough to yield a promotion or job offer, and this bothers some IT professionals. Candidates often need to showcase exceptional soft skills and have good reputations as well.
2. They don’t like the idea that their appearance matters.

Like it or not, your personal brand is inextricably bound up with your appearance—the way you dress, whether or not you wear glasses, your grooming. “There’s a lot of evidence that packaging plays a strong role in how people view you,” says Kaputa. If you want to be a VP, you need to dress the part, she says, adding, “You can’t be wearing gym clothes.”
3. It’s hard for them to see the big picture.

Bussin says IT professionals have trouble identifying what’s unique about them—the lynchpin of their personal brands. They tend to be, by nature, so focused on details that seeing the forest through the trees is hard for them, she adds. Another challenge: Figuring out how to talk about the projects they’ve worked on as success stories.
4. They don’t like to promote themselves.

Self-promotion comes naturally to few people, yet it’s a key component of personal branding. To make it easier for IT professionals, they should think of self-promotion not as inauthentic boasting or beating their chests, but as a way of communicating the skills and expertise that they take such great pride in and that could help others.
Are you interested in personal branding? What aspects of personal branding are hard for you?

Tough times are bad, but the flip side is creative destruction. New things appear out of the old.

As much as we may hate it, difficulty forces you to be innovative, more focused and smarter, and that’s good.

That’s why, during this current tough time, make sure your brand is positioned right for today and tomorrow.

Some people have to find new opportunities for themselves, or if you’re an entrepreneur, you have to do things in a more economical way, not same old, because business just don’t come in over the transom like before, you have to earn it of course.

In a tough economy, your brand must be different and it must be relevant.

Look at my case.

My focus before 2009 was primarily on individual coaching of entrepreneurs and executives.

One friend even said, with so many people out of work, this would be the best of times for you because so many people will be needing your coaching services.

In fact, it was the opposite. It was the worst of times. With the recession and job layoffs, people either didn’t have the money or were afraid to invest in personal coaching. And I initially saw a drop-off in business.

What I did was expand my brand footprint and change my business focus almost completely to corporate speaking and workshops. I limited my individual coaching to entrepreneurs and senior executives who were interested in either doing an intensive 2-month coaching program, The SelfBrand Strategy and Mini-Marketing Plan, or SelfBrand Speech-Writing, both areas where I could make a strong contribution to their brand.

I focused my marketing efforts on corporations, particularly the human resources area, for my talks and workshops, You Are a Brand! (based on the ideas in my first book that came out in paperback edition in 2009 )and The Female Brand (my new book on female leadership came out last summer).

In marketing yourself in a touch economy, you need to fill a gap – have the right solution for the right price and be different so that you stand out from the competition. That way you’ll be a brand for all seasons.

CIO.com
In 2009, personal branding became the buzzword of choice for job seekers and career coaches alike, and for good reason. When done right, personal branding–the act of identifying and communicating your unique value to people who can help advance your career–promised to be the job seeker’s silver bullet, his surefire way to stand out in a crowded job market.

The social media and social networking technologies that took 2009 by storm sure made personal branding easy. Too easy, perhaps, since many job seekers made careless mistakes in their haste to brand their way to a new job.

Personal branding experts say some of these mistakes can undermine professionals’ job searches and career management plans. For example, too much self-promotion can alienate the audience you’re trying to reach, says Catherine Kaputa, an advertising executive turned personal branding strategist.

[ Personal Branding Really Is the Key to Finding a New Job ]
Kaputa and two other prominent personal branding strategists list the six most common and most damaging personal branding mistakes people make, so that as you recharge your job search for the new year, you can ensure your personal branding efforts put your best face forward.

1. Putting the cart before the horse. The biggest and most common mistake people make is using the tools for personal branding, such as blogs, LinkedIn and Twitter, without first taking the time to define a strong, authentic brand for themselves.

“One of the most prevalent myths about personal branding is that it has to do with just creating a lot of visibility,” says personal branding strategist and Career Distinctionco-author Kirsten Dixson.

Consequently, people lay “a lot of digital footprints,” she says, before considering who they are, what they want to become known for long-term, and how they can differentiate themselves from people with similar goals and backgrounds.
Kaputa advises clients to think strategically when they’re defining their personal brand. She recommends they go through many of the same exercises marketers use when releasing a new product. These include such tactics as: SWOT analyses, setting goals for themselves, considering the visual and verbal identity for their personal brand, and establishing a marketing plan for themselves.

Dixson says honing in on your personal brand is hard and takes time, but it’s worth the effort as it guides all of your future personal branding efforts. What’s more, many of the other personal branding mistakes people make stem from not having a clearly articulated brand. Therefore, taking the time to define your brand sets you up for success and function as a preventative measure.

2. Having an unfocused brand. Many job seekers purport to practice personal branding. But instead of identifying and demonstrating their unique value through their communications, they continue to brand themselves as, say, an IT project management expert and a business process improvement expert and a virtualization expert.

“People have ’slash’ identities, and it’s a problem,” says Kaputa, author of You Are a Brand! “In the world of branding, being a generalist, jack-of-all-trades gets you nowhere.”

3. Adopting a copycat or generic brand. The purpose of personal branding–and, indeed, any kind of branding–is differentiation. Savvy job seekers work to brand themselves in order to distinguish themselves from other job seekers with similar backgrounds and skill sets. So don’t fall into the trap of branding yourself a “results-driven manager” or “turnaround CIO,” says Kaputa. You’ll just look like everyone else who’s describing themselves the same way.

“You want to own an idea,” she says. “You want to stand for something that’s a strength and a competitive advantage.”

4. Behaving inconsistently. When you commit to personal branding, you commit to having one identity, one voice that’s consistent across all media, all channels (e.g. phone, voice mail, e-mail, instant messaging), and between the physical and online worlds.

If you represent yourself as a paragon of professionalism on your LinkedIn profile, says Dixon, but you leave mean-spirited comments on blogs or your e-mails come off as less than professional, your target audience will question your authenticity.

5. Not committing to social media and social networking. Blogs and social networking sites are effective vehicles for personal branding, but only if you use them regularly. Otherwise, you look lame and uncommitted.

“If you establish a Twitter profile but you never tweet, it’s going to hurt you more than help you,” says Dan Schawbel, personal branding expert and author of Me 2.0.

Similarly, Schawbel adds, if you have a LinkedIn profile, make sure it’s 100 percent complete. And if you’re taking the time to write a blog, you must also take the extra time to promote it so that people can find it in a sea of more than 133 million blogs.

“You have to be as committed to your social media profile as you are to your husband or wife,” says Schawbel. And he means genuinely committed.

6. Over-promoting yourself. Some people go overboard with self-promotion when they embark on a personal branding campaign. Too much self-promotion can do more harm than good. That’s why Kaputa advises clients to think about the frequency of their self-promotion efforts.

Too much self-promotion can manifest itself in the way people represent themselves on the comment section of blogs, adds Schawbel. Most people leave their name, URL and their comment, as is customary. But some people who are trying too hard to brand themselves also leave their title, the name of their company and their personal branding statement, he says.
“They look bad because they’re over-promoting themselves,” says Schawbel. “What matters is writing a great comment that inspires or states an opinion on the post. When you do, people will click on your URL. It’s about the soft sell.”

Follow Meridith Levinson on Twitter at @meridith.