Personal Branding

[orion_joel]

Earlier today when i was reading a Post by Dan (Here) I really got thinking about Personal Branding, and started looking at just how i could take my business and make it more personal, and if it would benefit me.

I am wondering what other's have found in this line, have you tried or do you personally brand yourself. Has it been a benefit or maybe it is just the opposite and caused you more pain then anything.

Also from a marketing point of view, can it help to market yourself for services and sales of product, or is it a bad idea to connect products to yourself?

Thanks for your input i really look forward to hearing your idea's on this topic.

[vangogh]

The decision to brand yourself probably depends a little on your business and your goals. For example you know the IBM brand. Do you know any of the names running the company? You might, but I doubt any are branded particularly well. Does a lack of personal branding hurt IBM? Not at all.

Take another large company, Microsoft. We all know Bill Gates. He has a brand. Did his brand help or hurt Microsoft? Now that he's no longer running Microsoft does his absence change your perception of Microsoft as a company? Probably not, but because Bill Gates does is a brand he can take that brand to a new company.

Take your particular case. Would your business do better because people know Joel Brown or Orion Networks? You're probably better off branding Orion Networks in this case. If you brand your name then you'll have the additional task of making sure your name is tied to the company name.

On the other hand if you brand your name well then you could more seamlessly move between different businesses. You could in theory sell Orion Networks, start a new company and pick up close to where you left off.

I don't think this is one of those things where it's better to brand yourself or your business automatically. Either can result in success. You need to decide which is more important to your business and your future plans. There's also no reason why you can't brand both your own name and your company name, though it's going to be more work to brand two names as opposed to one.

[rob-brown.com]

It's not so much about your personal brand. This is what most people get wrong. It's about your personal reputation. Here's the difference. Your brand is the messages and cues you give out. It's your blogs, webite, business card, car, the way you walk, talk and dress. Your reputation is what people think, do, feel and say when they come into contact with those messages.

My work helps people be the number one choice for what they do, and personal brand is only part of the picture. You've got to consider what you want to be known for, and what you want people to say about you when they come across you or your name. In my Amazon bestseller How to Build Your Reputation, I give 10 strategies to do this.

When you consider the endpoint - how you want to be percieved - that's when you can make the decision about whether to brand yourself or you as part of something bigger.

Rob.

[vangogh]

Interesting perspective Rob, but I think some of it is semantics. I don't think brand and reputation are different things. Your reputation is part of your brand and your brand is absolutely affected by your reputation.

I agree your reputation is important, but I don't see it as an either/or kind of thing. Your personal brand is the sum of associations people think and feel about you. Part of that will come from the message you send out and part will come from your reputation. If what you do is different than what you say then your reputation suffers, which affects your brand.

Maybe that's what you're saying and I'm misinterpreting a bit (It's been known to happen). I just want to make clear that brand and reputation aren't different things. They're very much connected and work together.

And welcome to the forum. Nice discussion as your first post. I look forward to more.

[greenoak]

i think our brand is how the customers see us... what people mean when they say to me they came because they need a fix....or it seemed like a greenoak kind of day.....im never sure exactly what they mean..but its nice and but i try to do it more.lol.....i guess in that way i try to brand...my clothes would get an f...since i paint on the job sometimes...and get all kinds of dirty..
.by having lots of inventory, and a huge variety...and good prices....and the unusuall..i try to be a fun place to shop.....like today when i bought 1000$ in big metal junk art bugs...im thinking my lake customers will love them.... they are truly amazing and worth the trip to see....nothing like hallmark!!....cant wait to put them on the blog...
to me its reality.not something you can make up......how you really function for the customers...like my builder...when the brick workers ruined a whole wall of windows the builder said dont worry, im responsible....
ann

[orion_joel]

Some interesting point of view here. There was really one primary reason that i would like to take the path of personally branding myself for my service. It really for the most part came down to i can better perceive operating as a me/I business when operating as myself, as opposed to a us/we business when i have a business name.

In reality, i think that this is entirely to do with changing my own perception. But i think that the points you made Vangogh, in your first post are quite valid, that it can be worth branding as an individual as well as a business. Which i think will really be the way that i would like to go. Primarily for the ability to in the future sell the business if i find it possible. Where as if i convert entirely to promoting myself as the brand it will be much more difficult to sell.

I suppose to some extent i have started branding myself with my blog, however this only goes half way as i have not so far connected blog and business. Plus really have not personalized the blog, it is got my name but that is almost as far as the connection to me goes. Absolutely something that i need to put some work into i think.

[vangogh]

Why not connect the blog to the business site. All it would take is adding a link in the main navigation of each.

Last year I wrote a post called branding for small business and bloggers in order to explain what brand is, why it's important, and how small businesses and individuals can build their brand. Seems appropriate to the discussions.

My favorite definition about brand is one I found searching. It's from Steve McNamara, of AdCracker.Com

“A brand is the sum of all feelings, thoughts and recognitions - positive and negative - that people in the target audience have about a company, a product or service.”

Brand has two components, one being the above feelings, thoughts, and recognitions, and the other being the reach of those same feelings, thoughts, and recognitions.

If you person knows you and sees you as an expert when it comes to computer support, then that's your brand (or at least part of it) to that one person. In order to continue to maintain that brand you'd want to do everything you could to prove to that one person you are indeed an authority when it comes to computer support.

If at some point that person asks you to come by and help them install and configure some software and you can't find the cd tray you hurt your brand with that person. If on the other hand you come in and while that person is looking for the cd you download the .exe file, install the program and have it configured by the time the person is back, you reinforce your brand.

If your brand is strong enough with the single person that person is always going to call you when they have a computer problem. You have a loyal customer.

You likely want more than one customer though, so you want to extend the reach of your brand by getting others to form those same thoughts and feelings as the person in the example above. I think reach is what most people call to mind when they think of brand as though it's all about getting known by as many people as possible. I think the part about the feelings and thoughts, the sum of all associations, is the more important part of brand.

How far your reach needs to extend depends on your business. Most small businesses do not need to reach everyone. Many service oriented businesses don't need a large number of clients to do well. Maybe it's 5, maybe it's 2 dozen. It's not on the order of thousands or millions. How many people do you really need to reach to convince 2 dozen that you're the one to hire. How far does our brand really need to reach in that case?

As your business grows and you hire employees or begin to offer products you'd want your reach to grow, but I think a lot of small business owners push into the reach without really understanding the sum of all associations component. I think that's what Rob is really talking about with reputation.

[Aaron Hats]

I suppose I am branding myself since I'm the public face of the company. Ultimately, the goal is to grow the business and increase sales. If I thought an actor or somebody else could do a better job at it I'd gladly step aside as the face of Aaron Hats.

Speaking of branding...what about those used car lot guys who have the stupidest tv commercials? Wearing women's clothes, a superhero's cape or some other ridiculous getup. What kind of brand are they building?

[vangogh]

To me those people brand themselves in a way that brings up all the associations we have with the sleazy used car salesman. I think they do it because it fills their egos to appear in commercials and maybe because it's cheaper than hiring someone. Those commercials don't get me to want to visit their dealerships, but maybe the type of people they ultimately market to like the commercials.

Their target market may think the commercials are the greatest things in the world.

[KristineS]

I think with the lot of the used car guys, they want to have a gimmick, because they think that will get people talking. They don't seem to grasp that people would want to buy a car from someone they trust, not someone who acts like a good on television.