Recently I became a certified Personal Branding Strategist. I have gone through the methodology and I have uncover new things about me. But besides that, I am feeling that we are missing something.
According to Wikipedia the personal branding concept was first introduced in 1981 by Al Ries and Jack Trout but the term was first discussed by Tom Peters later. The idea was simple, to apply the processes used for corporations at the personal level. First we look inside ourselves and we try to extract what makes us unique, then we try to communicate this clearly, constantly and consistently and on the third step we manage the brand environment.
Personal Branding existed long before the term was invented. From ancient times there were people that stood out of the crowd and remained well known for something that they did with great skill like Phytagoras (known for his theorem) or Aristotle (known for his contribution to physical sciences). And they are still strong personal brands. In more recent times William Arruda, using his corporate branding expertise, defined a process to insure the success of creating and managing a personal brand.
Like most of our actions, personal branding should have goals. A person going through this process will need to get some results at the end of it. These may be the increased notoriety of that person but in most cases they are: landing a better job or earning more money. With personal branding we become known, but this does not ensure that we have more or better job offers. It will not get you more speaking or business opportunities unless you will convert the increased attention you may get into leads and the leads into business.
Personal branding gets you under the spotlight, it differentiates you from the crowd, but you should employ other marketing techniques in order to achieve your goals. And, since outbound marketing has its limitations especially if you are on a budget, why not employ the inbound marketing techniques for getting found, lead nurturing and conversion?
[...] Prevoiously I have argued that personal branding is not a new thing. It exists for ages. What is new is that personal branding became a methodology for masses. [...]
[...] my gorgeous daughters and it made me think about personal branding. As I was arguing previously, personal branding is not a new thing, just the term was recently invented. It existed in ancient times and it was transposed in fairy [...]