Building Your Professional Brand - When You is Bad

It’s safe to assume that your branding takes place on different levels, at different times, across a variety of platforms. Because of this, it’s not just you doing the branding and outreach – you’ve got a lot of marketing materials to help brand who you are.

Take a good look at your marketing materials – what kind of conversations do they reveal?

Many individuals and business owners chu
out marketing content that takes at length – and in bullets – about expertise, experience, resourced, staff, inventory, facilities, etc. Each of these are great for tooting your own horn and building an image of who you are – but it that always the best way to lead off with your branding?

While it’s important that the people you target see you as a superstar, sometimes it’s equally important to focus the initial conversation in another direction.

Everyone is searching for a solution to something – some challenge that they face. When you want to magnetize your branding you have to carefully mix your message so that it’s not just about you. It needs to be about them as well. Initially, when you’re listening to your target audience to decide how to elevate your brand and attract these people, you need to make the conversation more about them.

You have to give first in order to take.

All the self-promotion and you stuff is important – do not discount that. You have to toot your own horn and make yourself stand out but that information is best left on your central branding hub (website, blog, profile) and other branding resources.

Too much emphasis is placed on the virtual resume – where key facts and experience make for connection. It’s the idea that you can land the perfect job with a resume alone. Most businesses and even some individuals have this problem and their branding and marketing becomes an exercise in ego. The information about you and your business can still be expressed, but it needs to be done in a way that stresses “them” not “you”.

When you change the conversation, you change the game. It makes you stand apart from everyone else constantly screaming “me”. You’re still saying “me” but you’re doing it in a way that makes sense to the target audience. When you can directly ease their pain, provide a solution or a path to a solution then it shows off your strength. You will inevitably build credibility with your audience and the power of your brand grows exponentially.

Position some of your marketing and branding materials to be all about “them”. Once you attract their interest and connect with them, you can continue to engage and move them more toward the “me” end of your branding process.