Branding pays : the five-step system to reinvent your personal brand

245 Pages·2013·3.16 MB·English

by  Kang

To Jon
Table of Contents
Foreword by Geoffrey Moore
Best-selling author of Crossing the Chasm
Introduction
• The Importance of Reinventing Your Personal Brand
• What’s Inside BrandingPays
• My Story
Chapter 1
Take Charge of Your Personal Brand
• Branding a Political Candidate
• What Is Personal Branding?
• Personal Branding Myths
• What Are the Benefits of Personal Branding?
• Rebranding Throughout Life
• Your Goal for Branding
• The Branding Journey
• Every Brand Needs Cake and Icing
• Personal Branding Assessment Questionnaire
• BrandingPays System: Five Steps to Your Cake and Icing
Chapter 2
Step 1: Positioning
• Position Yourself for Opportunities
• What Is Positioning and Why Do It?
• What Is Your Goal?
• Positioning Triangulation
• Positioning Statement
• Who Is Your Target Audience?
• Problem or Opportunity Statement: What do they need?
• Value Proposition: How can you provide the solution?
• Differentiation: Why are you the best one to provide it?
• Evidence: How can you prove it?
• Sample Positioning Statements
• Chart Your Position
• Iterate to Hone Your Positioning
• Chapter 2 Summary
• Chapter 2 Action List
Chapter 3
Step 2: Messaging
• Message for Clarity and Impact
• The Elevator Pitch and Your Evidence
• Sample Elevator Pitches
• Different Value Messages for Different Audiences
• Back Your Positioning Claims with Evidence Messages
• How the Positioning Statement Can Feed Your LinkedIn Profile
• What Is Your Tagline?
• Chapter 3 Summary
• Chapter 3 Action List
Chapter 4
Step 3: Brand Strategy
• How to Develop Your Brand Strategy
• Brand Strategy Platform
• Key Brand Descriptors
• Sample Brand Strategy Platforms
• Chapter 4 Summary
• Chapter 4 Action List
Chapter 5
Step 4: Ecosystem
• Ecosystem: Leverage Influencers to Establish Brand
• Taking It to the People
• What Is the Brand Ecosystem?
• The 90/10 Rule
• The Brand Ecosystem Model
• Take Time for Relationship Building
• Four Keys for Strong Ecosystem Relationships
• Identifying Influencers
• Managing Your Ecosystem Relationships
• A Word About Networking
• Chapter 5 Summary
• Chapter 5 Action List
Chapter 6
Step 5: Action Plan
• Build Your Brand Action Plan
• A 360-Degree Brand
• Brand Improvement
• Brand Communication
• Four Phases of Brand Communication Using the Ecosystem Model
• Brand Action Example
• Lessons from Rebranding an Entrepreneurial Company
• A Word of Advice for Entrepreneurs
• Chapter 6 Summary
• Chapter 6 Action List
Chapter 7
360-Degree Branding: Vision, Symbols, Words and Deeds
• The Care2 Story: Rebranding from the Inside Out
• Vision or Thought Leadership Branding
• Your Look, Your Image: The Basics
• Branding in Multimedia
• Chapter 7 Summary
• Chapter 7 Action List
Chapter 8
Portable Branding and Social Media: Getting Started
• Why You Need to Be in Social Media
• Choose Your Social Networks
• Own Your Online Real Estate
• Your Google Search Results
• Your Avatar
• To Blog or Not to Blog
• Should You Promote Your Personal Brand or Your Business Brand Online?
• Online Reputation Management
• Do a Few Things Well
• Chapter 8 Summary
• Chapter 8 Action List
Conclusion
• Reinvent Your Brand for New Opportunities
• Four Stories on Overcoming Diversity Challenges in Personal Branding and
Life
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Resources
Foreword
As Karen Kang notes in her introduction, she and I were principals and later
partners at Regis McKenna Inc. during the 1980s and early 1990s. This was a
seminal time for high-tech marketing, and RMI was at the epicenter, in large part
because Regis’s book, The Regis Touch, laid out a whole new game plan for how
to bring high-tech products to market.
Fast forward to 2013. This is another seminal time, this time for marketing
“companies of one,” or, more specifically, you. In the new business order,
everyone is a contractor all the time. To be sure, you may at present be giving
100 percent of your capacity to a single client—your employer—but that in no
way lessens your self-marketing responsibilities. Your boss is your primary
client. Your colleagues are partners in your value chain. The company’s
customers are your customer’s customers. And your job is to communicate to all
these constituencies who you are, what you do, and why that is of value to them.
Hence the rise of personal branding, and specifically what Karen calls “strategic
personal branding.”
This is not an exercise in egotism. In a funny way, this is not even about you.
Rather, it is about establishing relationships within an ecosystem for the benefit
of all participating. That is why Karen’s experience at RMI is so relevant and
valuable. This is what lay at the heart of redefining high-tech marketing. It was
not about the product—it was about the whole product, the complete set of
products and services that met the target customer’s compelling reason to buy.
Karen has taken this entire suite of intellectual property and further developed
and repurposed it to serve a new constituency in a new era.
Your job is to embrace the challenge of personal branding and to leverage the
models and methods this book lays out to position yourself to provide maximum
value to others. That, in turn, will create maximum value for you, both in terms
of personal fulfillment and financial success. But it is only available to those
of personal fulfillment and financial success. But it is only available to those
who step up to the self-marketing challenge. The new business order does not in
general have time or patience to discover the real you. You must take the lead
here, regardless of how extroverted or introverted you may be. It is simply part
of your job.
BrandingPays gives you a comprehensive, proven approach to succeeding in this
task. It was developed on behalf of start-ups and entrepreneurs, and that is how it
asks you to think of yourself. As your teacher and cheerleader, Karen guides you
every step of the way. With any luck, putting these practices to work will make
for a better world and a happier you. To that end, you have my very best wishes.
Geoffrey Moore
Author, speaker, advisor
Introduction