I had the pleasure, today, of attending a great, healthy discussion and training on Using Technology in Personal Branding presented well by Jason Alba, jobseeker advocate and founder and CEO of JibberJobber, an online tool to help you actively manage your personal network–CRM style.
He videotaped the event, so I expect to see something online soon about it. Great stuff.
I will note that the training happened after the weekly meeting of a very sharp executive networking group that meets weekly from 8:00am to 9:30 at 625 East 8400 South in Sandy, Utah (in the South East corner of the LDS Chapel there).
Some quick notes about Personal Branding:
- Developing your personal brand is not new.
Any one person who stands out from the crowd can be defined by their personal brand. Their brand may not be large or influential on a global scale, but it can be infinetly influential upon the people they know and the people that respect them. - Someone referened Lee Iacoca a man who clearly understood the power of a personal brand (apparently evidenced by changing his name from “Lido” to “Lee” to allow an easier pronounciation of his own name)
- Shel Israel, co-author of Naked Conversations, noted how Steve Rubel’s departure from CooperKatz to Edelman PR is an indication of how Rubel developed his own brand thanks to his blogging efforts (among other things–surely), something that belongs to Rubel–not his employer (although his current employer, Israle notes, absolutely benefits from the attention).
- Very strong personal brands even associate people with the superstars in that field. As human beings, we like “people”, so we associate things with people–either people we experienced something with (i.e. will you ever forget who you were with on September 11, 2001?) or the people who come to define a certain activity.
For example, if I say “News”, “Politics”, “Golf”, “CEO”, “Boss”, or even “Family Member” you will probably associate a person with all of those keywords.
- People with the highest personal brands also demand the highest salaries (and greatest requirement to maintain it). One peek inside the life of a strong personal brand like Jennifer Lopez, and you will see what I mean.
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