Boston College Student’s Get a Lesson in Personal Branding

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I feel that personal branding should be the heartbeat of higher education. The logic here is that the sooner you discover your personal brand, the more risks you can take, as well as the easier it is to carve our your career path. Personal Branding Boston College

Today I spoke at Boston College to some freshman and seniors who are trying to understand what it takes to start a business, as well as incorporate personal branding in their lives. The presentation was almost an hour in length and I went over various topics, such as the current dilemma (economic recession), a brief history of personal branding and how self-impression needs to equal perception.

As an exercise, two students volunteered to write down three attributes about themselves and about each other, with the sole object of matching perception with self-impression. That is how you know if you are branding yourself correctly.

Next, I went through my personal branding story and provided insights and learnings at each step. Also, I touched on Google searchability, the definition and elements of personal branding, the Octopus Model of Relevancy, key terms, the 4-step process, tangible and intangible aspects, and benefits. The main idea was that personal branding is the small piece of an iceberg that people notice, and that networking is the large piece that few people recognize because it’s below the ocean. By developing an eBrand, you are in fact drawing people to your brand, in what I call a “pull strategy.”

Click here for the article

Here is 10 minutes of my presentation:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkBU1EgRugQ]

These are the slides I used:

[slideshare id=274756&doc=f-1203565996913989-3&w=425]

Special thanks to my fellow Personal Branding Magazine staff member, Scott Bradley, for organizing this event.

Picture of Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting firm. He is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success (St. Martin’s Press) and the #1 international bestselling book, Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future (Kaplan Publishing), which combined have been translated into 15 languages.

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