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

Your Personal Brand, Pt. 1

Many of us have probably heard of a personal brand. For those that haven't, it's high time you had, so here is the OFFICIAL definition:

"Personal branding describes the process by which individuals and entrepreneurs differentiate themselves and stand out from a crowd by identifying and articulating their unique value proposition, whether professional or personal, and then leveraging it across platforms with a consistent message and image to achieve a specific goal."
(Source: http://personalbrandingwiki.pbworks.com/FrontPage)

I have begun my own individual personal branding project. For me, it's like a very well-fleshed out way of reminding myself who I am and who I always want to be, for those times when I lose myself. It's also a way for me to remind myself of what my goals are, in the "doing" sense, as well as the "being" sense.

That same web site puts this supplement forward:

Personal Branding consists of three elements:

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

So that brings us to our question of the day: What is your Value Proposition?
I haven't met many people in my life who can honestly answer the question "What do you stand for?" without having to think about it for quite a while. Most of us have probably heard the quote "If we don't stand for something, we'll fall for anything," but how many of us actually apply that quote into our life and CONSCIOUSLY DECIDE to stand for something?

In a few words, I stand for education, peace, free agency, and forward movement. Listed below are the qualities I stand for/want to be known to BE. (Hopefully the resolution is not too bad! Tell me if it is/if you can't read it, please.) As you can see, I am still working on being all those qualities :)



















So, that brings us to the end of today's blog. I look forward to seeing your Value Propositions in the form of a comment! WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR??


Until Tomorrow's Awesome Blog,

Ryan!