Up Your Personal Brand Game

I was reading an article today about the two tech giants Google and Microsoft.  The article focused on how Microsoft may be positioning itself to make a play in the highly competitive search marketplace.

Dominance and perseverance

Google was referred to as having market dominance. Microsoft was referred to as having perseverance. Clearly, the article was referring to market share and market position.

I started thinking about how these words could be applied to personal branding:

• Brand Dominance Market dominance is a measure of the strength of a brand relative to competitive offerings.  Market leaders are brands with clearly defined personality. The brand personality is the chosen character that best communicates the brand proposition to the target audience. It is not the personality of the target audience, it is the personality that is most likely to draw their attention, interest them, and encourage them to take action and buy the brand. The vulnerable brands in any market sector are those with vaguely defined brand characteristics.

• Brand Perseverance Brands that are sustained superior performers are those that maintain a higher than average market share over an extended time span.  These brands are said to be superior persistent performers because their performance endures. Somehow they stay above the crowd.  Such brand perseverance, despite obstacles, can provide reassurance to brand loyalists.

Applying this to personal branding

I like what Gill Corkindale offers in her Harvard Business School blog – 11 Tips for Creating Your Personal Brand. Here are four points I think fit in with the concept of dominance and perseverance as they might help you “up your personal branding game” :

1. 
   Learn from the big brands. Identify what makes you distinctive from the competition. What have you done recently to make yourself stand out? What would your colleagues or your customers say is your greatest strength?
2. Build and manage your marketing network. Your friends, colleagues, clients, and customers are an important marketing vehicle for your brand. What is said about you will determine the value of your brand.
3. Learn to influence. Use your personal power, your role and your network. But use them sensitively and intelligently, or else you will not be regarded as a credible or trustworthy leader.
4. Make yourself visible. Build your profile internally and externally. Ways to do this include networking, signing up for high-profile projects, showcasing your skills in presentations or workshops, writing for internal or external publications, volunteering for committees or panel discussions at a conference.

At the end of the day, a brand is a promise. Make sure your personal brand promise can deliver by thinking through what it takes to dominate and persevere.

Author:

Beverly Macy is the Managing Partner of Y&M Partners and teaches a social media class at the UCLA Extension.  She also co-hosts Gravity Summit events.