Social Media Week: Personal Branding Tips

Personal branding is a topic that seems to keep popping up: in class, on Twitter, on blogs. It seems to be a crucial tool in any job search, and we are being advised to set ourselves apart from the competition. I know a lot of my classmates (myself included) are struggling with the idea of a personal brand. What exactly does it mean? Is my personal brand my interests or skills? How do I choose what skills set me apart? Like my classmates, I had tons of questions and felt a bit overwhelmed with the idea of creating a personal brand.

Thankfully, last week I had the opportunity to attend a personal branding workshop at Toronto’s Social Media Week 2010. Social Media Week is an annual conference that takes place in multiple cities around the world. The aim of each event or workshop is to advance the use and understanding of social media in the corporate, public and non-profit sectors.

One event that caught my eye was called Personal Branding to Compete in the 21st Century. Since developing a personal brand is so important in our careers and is a main focus of our class, I thought it would be a perfect event to attend.

Paul Copcutt–a personal branding strategist–was a great speaker. He was very clear, informative, and made the event fun. We were asked to break into groups a couple times to brainstorm ideas relating to what he was discussing, which I thought was a great way to engage us and keep us interested. Here are a few key points he made about how and why we should all be developing a personal brand to be successful.

EXTRACT: What are you good at? What skills do you have that set you apart from your peers? How do people see you? List your top 5 strengths.

EXPRESS: Communicate it. Get it out there. He gave an example of how his kids love Baskin Robbins ice cream. Why? Because they allow you to try all 31 flavours before you buy. He asks, “what are you doing everyday to send out your flavours?”

EXUDE: Is everything you do on brand? Once you’ve established what you bring to the table and where your passions lie, make sure everything you do is on brand.

He suggests to:

- Have a branded bio on LinkedIn

-Pick your top 5 strengths and organize your profile to reflect how you consistently used those strengths in past work experiences to achieve measurable results.

- Be authentic. Promote yourself. Use the “real estate” of your email signature, change your voicemail message to reflect your personal brand. The places you volunteer at, work at, groups you join, and places you meet all say something about your brand, so make sure it’s an accurate reflection of how you want to be portrayed.

What Else

Your personal brand should include:

VISION (ex. Walt Disney)

PURPOSE (Mother Theresa)

VALUES (Oprah)

PASSION (Richard Branson)

What’s My Personal Brand?

After discussing my interests and goals with Paul, he helped me create an outline for my personal brand.

“I use my geeky passion for social media to help lifestyle organizations understand its importance for their clients. “

Simple, concise, and includes my skills, passion, and ideal companies to work for.

What are your thoughts, challenges, or questions about developing your personal brand? Does everyone think it’s necessary to have a personal brand in order to get a job? Does having a personal brand really set you apart from your peers?