Donald Latumahina of the Life Optimizer blog wrote an excellent post on personal branding called The 10 Immutable Laws of Personal Branding. In the post, Donald discusses why your success depends on your personal brand. I have written many articles on personal branding so I am a big believer in taking the time to develop your own unique proposition. Below are the 10 laws that Donald lists. To read more detail, you should read his entire post.
1. Find your unique value proposition
2. Have a word or phrase to associate your name with
3. Develop a strong message
4. Identify your prospects
5. Maximize your visibility
6. Repeat your message
7. Prove your worth
8. Be persistent
9. Be consistent
10. Leverage your existing network
This is an awesome list. I have one other point to add, which is that you need to develop your own subject matter expertise so you become the go to person around a particular topic. Find something that you are passionate about and develop your brand around it such as marketing, sales, networking, personal branding, etc. Naturally, much of what you do will be tied to your subject matter expertise.
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well said.. I'm sure there are many more... My book 365 personal brand Marketing Thumb-rules offers many highlights like you just did; in bookstores in a month (woohoo).
And following your example, I would add: Share your expertise (e.g., blogging, articles, podcasts, video).
Cool...
~ Vikram
PersonalBrandMarketing.com
Posted by: Vikram Rajan | December 13, 2007 at 04:16 PM
Thanks Vikram for reiterating the importance of personal branding. Sharing your expertise is exactly what you need to do otherwise people have no idea of what you can offer.
Posted by: Jason Jacobsohn | December 13, 2007 at 10:54 PM
Vik is one of the best commentors in our space.
Anyways, I'm glad you highlighted visibility, as you can be the smartest person in the world, but if no one knows about you, then you miss out.
Posted by: Dan Schawbel | December 14, 2007 at 09:15 AM
Jason, You have an incredibly useful and practical site here. I could spend hours here, on top of the time already spent here. Keep it up.
Posted by: Joe Chiappetta | December 14, 2007 at 09:39 AM
Thanks for additional thoughts Dan. You are also an expert in the personal branding space so thank for taking the time to comment. Joe, thank you for the nice words. Glad that you find the blog useful for you.
Posted by: Jason Jacobsohn | December 14, 2007 at 11:27 PM
Hi Jason,
Agree with your additional point, "develop your own subject matter expertise", doing everything and anything will make us ineffective, I'm currently reading the book from Jack Welch titled "Winning" and he shared about the life of a company called Enron below...
"Enron’s new mission meant it focused first on trading energy and then on trading anything and everything... And it was in that context –of no context– that Enron’s collapse occured."
Thanks for sharing!
Robert
Posted by: Robert @ reason4smile | December 15, 2007 at 09:00 AM
Hi Jason,
Agree with your additional point, "develop your own subject matter expertise", doing everything and anything will make us ineffective, I'm currently reading the book from Jack Welch titled "Winning" and he shared about the life of a company called Enron below...
"Enron’s new mission meant it focused first on trading energy and then on trading anything and everything... And it was in that context –of no context– that Enron’s collapse occured."
Thanks for sharing!
Robert
Posted by: Robert @ reason4smile | December 15, 2007 at 09:01 AM
Thanks Robert for your thoughts and for commenting.
Posted by: Jason Jacobsohn | December 15, 2007 at 02:11 PM