Your Personal Brand, Pt. 2A

Hello, my blog-reading friends!

As you may remember from yesterday's blog, we were discussing creating one's Personal Brand. What is a personal brand? What should I include in my own personal brand? And specifically, what is YOUR personal Value Proposition? I shared a few of my stands with you, and then invited you to leave a comment about what your stand in this world is, defining your own unique value proposition.

Today we will discuss the second step of creating a personal brand: Differentiation. What is Differentiation? You may remember this list from yesterday:

Personal Branding consists of three elements:

• Value Proposition: What do you stand for?
• Differentiation: What makes you stand out?
• Marketability: What makes you compelling?

Differentiation is not only what makes you stand out from others, but it is the mastering of the art of marketing yourself in such a way that you stand out in people's minds. This is an important quality to master for many reasons.

Let's say that you enter a contest and win and the prize is that you get to fly over to London, stay there for a week, and during that week, you get to meet the Queen. Now, big deal, right? No one wants to make a fool of themselves in front of the Queen; wouldn't it be even better to not just not embarrass yourself, but to impress her such that she remembered you after your visit?

An example on a smaller scale:
You've been laid off. You go to apply for a new job. This recession has been hell for all of us: there are over 30.5 million Americans who are unemployed, so you definitely have your cards stacked against you. You NEED to have the employer remember you, it's just that simple.

So what makes you different than Joe Blow in the interview right after yours? (In fact, this aspect of Personal Branding will carry throughout you, and will be evident even before you ever secure the interview!) How will you differentiate yourself? What makes you remarkably different from anyone else on this planet? And once you know that, it will be time to move on to figure out how exactly you will let everyone know just how unique and special (and, possibly, hirable) you are -- which we will move to in tomorrow's blog, "Your Personal Brand, Pt. 2B".

I look forward to reading your comments regarding the second step in your process of creating your Personal Brand.


Cheers,

Ryan