Personal branding
What is personal Branding and why is it so important .
I usually get the question “what is Personal Branding and why should we care about it?”
The answer - you should care and worry about it and here is why.
First of all for those who are unaware of what personal branding is. Consider this scenario, If you travel to any country in the world and if you don't speak the language, there is one word for sure that everyone will understand and that is “Coke”.
You can go into the Jungles of Africa or the North Pole and everyone would know what coke is. That is truly the power of a brand. So Personal branding is strengthening your name through marketing yourself as a professional in your area.
The term “Personal Branding” is thought to have been first used and discussed in a 1997 article by Tom Peters.
Now just imagine you being a brand. Could you imagine your name being that famous? You say it's impossible but yes maybe you cannot gain the same popularity as coke but nothing is stopping you from becoming the next Stephen Hawking, Michael Hyatt, Robin Sharma, Anthony Robbins etc....
You see having a great brand opens doors. Whether its a job, a speaking engagement, or the next big contract for your company, having a strong brand puts you on a pedestal and gives the impression to others that you are an expert in your field (Of course you also need to work hard in your field to retain your brand power).
If you want all or most of the above things happening to you. Build your brand. Follow my posts on personal Branding, I will be posting some great ways to build your brand in the coming days and also get your hands on some personal branding books (Will share a list in a few days).
It doesn’t matter, even if you are happy in your current job, building a strong brand means people would be interested in what you have to offer and you will be in huge demand. Your Organization will notice this and reward you in different ways to retain your services. That could be through promotions, salary increases, more engaging work and much more. In addition if you have created a strong brand you would be known in the market as an expert in your area and speaking engagement, teaching gigs and much more will come your way. These are all additional sources of income for you.
Just to prove how important Personal Branding is here is a multi million dollar company that is making money just through improving brands of people. With the arrival of the internet peoples Personal Brands get affected by bad publicity on the internet. This in turn affects your chances to get a job etc. This company helps in turning this around. You see this company would not exist if personal brands were not important in this day and age. This is the power of a brand.
Here is the link to the article and video on Inc. showing how the company came about http://bit.ly/1pl5d4T
Personal branding can take you a long way. But in order to get there you need to put in the effort and the work. Don’t get discouraged it may take time to develop but end results are always fruitful.
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