The Power of Your Name as a Brand in Today’s Networked World
by Mary Olson and Ellen Maidman-Tanner

Since social and professional media sites do not provide opportunities for real custom branding, it is important to consider taking control of your personal name and brand identity. Most business professionals have transitioned to online networking to support the positioning of their work and the growth of their enterprise. What strategic parameters are you using to do this?
 
The solutions provided here include measurable steps to create, manage, and grow your personal brand identity. What has traditionally worked for goods and services holds true to the individual, and the impact to be gained by a more thoughtful approach to a personal, crafted presence is significant. While many of your colleagues are brilliant e-level marketers who seem to accept the constraints of uniform template settings, there really is a better way to position yourself in the marketplace. In this era of the ever present now, the ability to break through the enormous glut of information and data with a message that clearly conveys positioning and purpose is both of value and worth pursuing.

Personal branding is an indelible impression that is uniquely you. It's partly positioning, partly graphic design and partly a process whereby people and their careers are effectively established as brands to accomplish discrete business or career goals.

Taking Control

Since social and professional media sites do not provide real custom branding, you need to take control of your personal name and brand identity. The following approach includes measurable steps to create, manage, and grow your personal brand identity:

Step One: Prepare your personal brand strategy.
Step Two: Design your logo and identity system.
Step Three: Distribute, promote and manage your brand.
Step Four: Measure, adapt and maintain.

Once you establish the basics of your brand identity, you are ready to employ it as a compelling multimedia expression -- from print to Web to video and mobile media. Want to take it further?

What is a 'personal brand' and when was it introduced?

Personal branding, self-branding and all individual branding, by whatever name, was first introduced in the 1980 book: Positioning: The Battle for your Mind, by Al Reis ad Jack Trout. Chapter 20 refers to, "Positioning Yourself and Your Career - You can benefit by using positioning strategy to advance your career."

Step One: Prepare Your Personal Brand Strategy

The performance of your brand will be measured on the strength of your brand strategy.

• Branding yourself is an investment. Set a budget.
• Register your name as a domain.
• Use your domain name and email address as primary branding tools.
• Carve out a unique position.
• Identify your attributes and what distinguishes you.
• Place a quantifiable value on your identity, knowledge and expertise.
• Tell your story. Have others read it for comprehensibility, accessibility, impact, meaningfulness. Does it say what you need it to say? 
• Identify your target audience - The "prospects".
• Understand the key influencers of the social media landscape.
• Develop a marketing tag: a positioning statement through which you articulate your unique attributes by associating a tag line with your logo.
• Don't try to do everything yourself. Collaborate with an experienced graphic brand designer.
• Launch a billboard sitelette (1-page) or a microsite (2-5 pages) as your brand anchor.
• Provide links to your official site from the social media and professional networks.

Step Two: Design Your Logo and Identity System

Phase 1: Graphic Logo Design and Brand Identity System

A logo is the distinguishing proprietary name/symbol/trademark typically combined with a marketing tagline. In this case, the graphic logo design displays attributes that differentiates a person from others.

Design Checklist:

• Logo
• Logo design with marketing tag
• Logo and brand identity system (print, web, mobile, video)

A brand identity system integrates all branded elements such as business cards, letterhead, website and mobile media. Print materials (business cards, labels, letterhead, envelopes, folders, brochures, etc.)

Phase 2: Your Website Design as the Brand Anchor

The creative process starts by designing the official source of your brand. The brand source combines an online address and a perfectly designed small billboard or "microsite" to anchor your brand. The brand message is the key to controlling your professional position. It increases your name recognition, and based on what you are hoping to achieve, will most likely generate new business opportunities.

As Shannon Wilkinson, CEO and Founder of Reputation Communications advises, “Your personal branded site is your official professional position, your stake in the online marketplace, should someone ever question or harm your reputation. Your online image or your 'online reputation' refers to the first page results generated by a major search engine in a search of your name."

Step Three: Distribute, Promote and Manage your brand.

Your branding strategy should include a blueprint for positioning your brand and getting your messages to your prospects.

• Develop a strategy to promote your brand.
• Create a marketing and promotion distribution schedule.
• Distribute your brand across all media channels.
• Build targeted visibility.
• Continuously create and publish content to control your reputation.
• Create sustainable relationships and revenues.
• Identify benchmarks on which to test achievement.

Step Four: Measure, Adapt, and Maintain

Your strategic positioning and purpose is of economic value and worth pursuing as a business enterprise. Follow these business drivers for evaluating your brand performance and be prepared to make necessary changes.

• Review your strategic plan to make sure that you haven't already outgrown what you wrote
• Measure your success -- Compare the value you placed on your name, career and knowledge from your original strategic plan.
• Track the growth of revenues as each new tool is utilized – checkpoint at 3 months, 6 months, etc.
• Monitor your web traffic.
• Keep a record of milestones and metrics of success based on the benchmarks previously developed.
• Analyze the feedback of your performance and brand growth – ask your prospects, used web-based research tools.
• Quantify your value and maintain your personal brand.

Conclusion
The great value of strategy and consistency in positioning used so successfully for goods and services in the past, can now be adapted to position an individual. Through the application of the steps described, the many communication tools available can be marshaled to greatly enhance a personal business strategy by creating a personality as a business asset.

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Mary Olson is the president and founder of Transition Networks, a full-service design and interactive media agency that defines, designs and markets premiere brands and their reputations across many industries and all media formats.

Mary [dot] OlsonTransitionet [dot] com, 22 July 2010