The last few weeks we’ve spent quite a bit of time on my re-branding… I hope to wrap this up and bring a message back to you.
It’s no secret that I’m big on personal branding. I love personal branding. Why? Because with a strong, or appropriate, personal brand you can create pull-marketing, rather than push-marketing.
When I was in my job search I was a nobody. I was cliche, a commodity, a dime-a-dozen. No one had heard of me, and I was a perceived expert in … nothing.
I knew that I had expertise, and could bring value to the equation, but nobody knew that, nor did they know me. My job search was a lot of push-marketing, and it was painful.
The power of a personal brand changes all of that. Create your personal brand, be on-brand, let your brand permeate your market, and you’ll see pull-marketing. People will call you and want to get to know you better. Your job search will be completely different (be aware, this doesn’t happen overnight!).
In my JibberJobber re-branding exercise I’ve been amazed at the feedback. Not only have the votes and comments been powerful, I’ve received a lot of advice outside of the Survey Monkey poll (hey, one more day to vote – go do it now!).
How would YOU do the same thing for YOUR brand? A lot of times, in order to figure out what our brand is or could or should be it’s helpful to understand how we are perceived. This has been huge for me, and it could be huge for you.
It’s actually quite easy. There’s a company called Reach Communications Consulting, which helps professionals like you develop and execute your own personal branding strategy. One of the tools they offer is a 360 Personal Branding Assessment. For less than $30 you sign up and get started. The idea is many of your professional contacts get a survey about YOU, and they anonymously enter their thoughts on who you are… helping you understand how you are perceived.
Maybe you think you are a hotshot, CEO-type that excels in strategic planning and motivating the worker-bees.
And then you get your Reach 360 feedback and learn that most people think you are more reserved, very logical and detail oriented – perhaps you are better suited for a Project Management role right now.
Just knowing that empowers you to make a better decision for your career path, or can encourage you to get better training and mentoring to become that motivating CEO.
There’s power in knowing how you are perceived. If this is interesting to you, I encourage you to check out the Reach 360 program. Again, it’s less than $30. If you need help there are over 200 certified personal branding strategists in 21 countries who can help you. My JibberJobber partners who are certified can be found on my career expert partner page. The partners who are sponsoring this contest who are also Reach Personal Branding Strategists are:
If you do it, let me know how it goes! I think it’s a great investment!
Jason, you definitely speak to my past experiences in the career hunting adventure…particularly that part about not being a perceived expert in anything. Since my last foray into the wild world of career hunting, I’ve been making some solid gains in building credibility and expertise that will take me further in my next move. But I know I have some blind spots in my brand management…so thanks for the tip on Reach 360. Sounds like $30 well spent. ~Chris
Jason,
Can’t wait to hear the final results…..and looking forward to chatting about JJ 2.0….
A Presto!
Megan