Personal branding – fundamentals first!

All this social media chatter about personal branding reminds me of the dot-com bubble-and-burst of the late ’90s and early double-nots, when entrepreneurs put marketing and advertising in front of anything resembling business fundamentals and watched their stock prices skyrocket … until someone said, “Hey, wait a minute …”

Fast forward to today. Social media is on fire with advice for staking out your little place in the spotlight and promoting your personal brand via personal websites, blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. It’s not terrible advice if that’s your thing, but as was the case in the dot-com era, the focus too often is marketing and advertising, with fundamentals again getting short shrift.

If you need evidence, check out the Twitter widget at right. Read the personal branding tweets as they appear. You’ll see things like, “7 key ways to promote your personal brand,” “10 indispensable tools for personal branding,” “Building personal brand within the social media landscape,” and on and on.

Someone needs to say it, so it might as well be me: “Hey, wait a minute …”

In a BNET post on personal branding, business guru Seth Godin said:

“In an increasingly competitive global economy, doing good work simply isn’t enough. Professionals need to make themselves ‘indispensable’ by being willing to stand apart from the herd and voice their unexpected insights.”

I agree wholeheartedly with the point, but I would add a short phrase to make the statement whole and give a nod to fundamentals:

“… Doing good work, while utterly foundational to establishing a strong personal brand worth promoting, simply isn’t enough …”

It doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur running your own business, or if you (like myself) work for a giant corporation, the way you do your work is what establishes your personal brand. If you’re fantastic at your job and deliver value and/or benefits that people can’t get from anyone else, you have the makings of an excellent brand. If you produce uninspired, get-it-done-quick-and-go-home quality work, your personal brand will stink; and no amount of social networking will improve it.

Promoting an empty brand will set you up to have your own bubble burst — like all those dot-coms of a decade ago.

The reality is (and you already know this), a brand — personal, corporate or other — isn’t what we say it is, it’s what users of the brand say it is. If people are saying good things about you and your work — sure, tweet away. Get thee to LinkedIn and Facebook and spread the word. But if the things people are saying aren’t complimentary (and that encompasses content both negative and neutral), you need to log off of social media and get busy changing their tune.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, presented a brief, crystal clear, how-to for establishing a rock-solid personal brand in his book Winning.

“Deliver sensational performance, far beyond expectations, and at every opportunity expand your job beyond it’s official boundaries.”

That’s it. If you do that, you will succeed – and chances are excellent you’ll lack the time, the need, and the inclination to tweet or otherwise chatter about your personal brand.

But in the spirit of joining the parade of those offering a list, here is mine.

7 Steps to a Rock Solid Personal Brand:

1. Work your tail off and add unique value.
2. Do awesome work – if you’re not sure what excellence looks like, find someone who does and ask them to review/edit/advise you.
3. Under promise; over deliver.
4. Seize opportunities to help other people do their jobs well.
5. Keep learning.
6. Don’t be a butt kisser – nobody likes a sycophant; not even the person whose butt you’re smooching.
7. Act passionate – even if you’re not, do what you can to make people think you are.

Once you’ve done all that, go ahead and dive into social media to promote your brand.

Make sense? Tell me where I’m wrong.

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