Brand You: The Strategy of Branding Yourself

What's the most important brand you know? The Nike Swoosh? Maybe...but it shouldn't be. The most important brand to you should be YOU. Nothing else should even come close. To succeed in business it's all about your brand and the goodwill it will create for you. Branding Guru Tom Peters predicts that almost all current white-collar jobs will not even exist in fifteen years, due to the changing marketplace. Peters states that the only way to stick around past the end of your current job is to have a 'WOW' factor. A brand that is you.

Before all you needed to be on the fast track to the C-suite was an MBA and the drive. Today, there are so many driven MBAs out there that it is essential to make your own brand, or you will be destined to never see the gates to the executive floor. Making your brand takes a proactive approach, not only do you need to get your name out there but you also need to have unique content. A great way to generate unique content is to become an expert in an emerging field. Read all literature on the subject and put out your own work encompassing what you have read and researched. Sign up to speak at conferences or, perhaps, create your own conferences. The idea here is that you must market yourself.

Be your own PR agent: get to know some journalists to get yourself some publicity. Work with a charity or at a sporting event and have journalists cover you working at it. Good PR will help get you known and hopefully, one day, you can hope to draw some publicity from a national newspaper. Try Help a Reporter Out (HARO), an free publicity website, simply join, share your story and get picked up by the media.

All these things support the branding of you. But you won't stop there, no, after you get some publicity or you publish an article, you must then market your marketing. Send your article to everyone you know and have them send it on to anyone who they think will be interested. This will help increase the awareness of you, exponentially.

A final thing to get you on track, join some clubs and associations. Clubs and associations are great places to meet individuals with the same interests. You'd be surprised how much it can help you. Networking with people in your field can help you increase your personal brand's awareness in your industry.

So, get out there and sell yourself - make Brand You the next Nike Swoosh.