Defining Your Personal Brand

  • 1 min read

Defining your brand is critically important to your personal and business success. Beginning years ago with “The Brand Called You” by Tom Peters, the importance of defining and building your personal brand has been growing and is hitting a tremendous stride in 2009. Peters pioneered the idea that your brand is not the company you work for but rather who YOU are in that company.

These days, superior skills, great resources, and inside knowledge are merely prerequisites if we even hope to compete in today’s global marketplace. Rising above, standing out, and hitting your target has become more difficult than ever. It is very crowded out there and it’s said people receive literally thousands of branding messages every day from news media, movies, online, print, billboards, radio, TV, etc. Our personal brand – the words and phrases we want others to think of when they think of us – is all that’s left to differentiate us from the rest of the pack. Add to that the fact that people are now changing jobs and careers so often, and your personal brand has become more important than ever.

You first define and then communicate your brand with a clear strategy. For many, navigating that invisible line between clear and effective communication of your brand and offensive self-promotion is tricky. It’s important to be authentic and speak to your accomplishments. However, you will wear out your welcome if you try too hard, sell too much, speak too fast. On Broadway, it’s called flop sweat. You’re not sweating because of the bright, hot klieg lights. You’re sweating because you’re losing the audience – you know it, and they know it.

Develop a Compelling Brand Message

On the other hand, people will pay close attention to a strong and compelling message. They’ll ‘lean in’ to something that resonates with them. Since it’s the first of the year, take time to review your brand message:

  • Conduct a personal brand audit to determine your how your values and vision might have changed over the past year.
  • Define who you are by writing a list of words that describe who you are and what you do.
  • Review your online presence to ensure you’re maximizing the new tools available. When was the last time you Googled your name?

At the beginning of this year I wrote down the following words to describe what I’ve been doing for the past few years: I consult, teach, write, and speak. What’s changed in 2009 is my messaging strategy. My personal brand audit turned up an opportunity to ramp up my online presence significantly via social media tools. Social media is an outstanding communication channel and network builder for personal branding. My focus on my Twitter presence alone has already brought new clients and opportunities this year – a clear indication that the strategy is working.

Define your brand. Decide on a compelling message and audit your online visibility to make sure you’re maximizing social media tools and tactics. Update your Linked In profile and get on Twitter, if you’re not already there. Explore blogging, podcasting, Facebook and more to learn how you can expand your visibility online. Be authentic and consistent. Make sure 2009 is your year!

Author:

Beverly Macy is Managing Partner at Y&M Partners LLC in Beverly Hills. She also teaches a social media class at UCLA and is organizer of the Gravity Summit event at UCLA February 25, 2009.

Picture of Beverly Macy

Beverly Macy

Beverly is an instructor at the UCLA Business and Management Extension Program. She is one of the few educators who has a class offered by a university on Social Media Marketing. She’s also the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Y&M Partners and before that she spent 14 years at Xerox Corporation in a series of increasingly demanding sales and marketing management positions where she was awarded eight consecutive President’s Club honors. Macy began her career at Wang Laboratories in software development.

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

Psychologists did not coin emotional intelligence until 1990, and Goleman’s book did not popularize it until 1995, so people raised between 1945 and 1975 grew up with no shared vocabulary for feelings, many still improvising one from watching, guessing, and going quiet when intimacy calls for words.

Psychologists did not coin emotional intelligence until 1990, and Goleman’s book did not popularize it until 1995, so people raised between 1945 and 1975 grew up with no shared vocabulary for feelings, many still improvising one from watching, guessing, and going quiet when intimacy calls for words.

Global English Editing
MLive announced in September 2026 that it will end print production entirely for eight of its Michigan newspapers, shifting those communities to digital only coverage after years of steadily declining print subscriptions across the whole state

MLive announced in September 2026 that it will end print production entirely for eight of its Michigan newspapers, shifting those communities to digital only coverage after years of steadily declining print subscriptions across the whole state

The Blog Herald
Thomas Stanley and William Danko mailed 3,000 surveys to American households and found that among the 1,115 replies, 385 came from actual millionaires, half of whom said they had never spent more than 399 dollars on a suit, 140 on shoes, or 235 on a watch.

Thomas Stanley and William Danko mailed 3,000 surveys to American households and found that among the 1,115 replies, 385 came from actual millionaires, half of whom said they had never spent more than 399 dollars on a suit, 140 on shoes, or 235 on a watch.

Global English Editing
The more the women in one survey prized happiness, the lower their well-being, though only when life was less stressful, and reading that happiness pays made a gold-medal moment land flatter

The more the women in one survey prized happiness, the lower their well-being, though only when life was less stressful, and reading that happiness pays made a gold-medal moment land flatter

The Vessel
An AI company built specifically to replace vanishing local reporters in news deserts nationwide shut its entire operation down in 2026 after journalists discovered it had been copying, nearly word for word, stories those same reporters had already written

An AI company built specifically to replace vanishing local reporters in news deserts nationwide shut its entire operation down in 2026 after journalists discovered it had been copying, nearly word for word, stories those same reporters had already written

The Blog Herald
Many women in their seventies say the decade feels better than their thirties, forties, or fifties, not because there is more time now, but because they finally stopped needing a thesis defense to justify disappointing someone with a simple no.

Many women in their seventies say the decade feels better than their thirties, forties, or fifties, not because there is more time now, but because they finally stopped needing a thesis defense to justify disappointing someone with a simple no.

Global English Editing
Load more
CATEGORIES
Explore