Personal Branding: How to create your own brand plan

If you’ve ever been in a job so long that you don’t have an updated resume or Linked In profile, you’re in a dangerous place. In today’s economy, you want to stay aware, keep current and always be on the lookout for what’s next. As we push the personal branding, you should be able to articulate your own brand in 7 seconds, 60 seconds and 30 minutes, all shaping and telling the same story. Start off your next interview with a 7 second pitch that describes yourself (e.g. I’m a marketer that finds growth where others can’t), follow that with a 60 second articulation of what that means, and use the rest of the interview to layer in the elements of your 30 minute story.

 

Finding your Big Idea

Everyone talks about the 7 second elevator pitch, but it’s not easy to get there. I suppose you could ride up and down the elevator and try telling people. That may drive you insane. The Big Idea (some call it the Brand Essence) is the most concise definition of the Brand. For Volvo, it’s “Safety”, while BMW might be “Performance” and Mercedes is “Luxury”. Below is the Tool I use to figure out a Brand’s Big Idea revolving around four areas that help define the Brand 1) Brand’s personality 2) Products and Services the brand provides 3) Internal Beacons that people internally rally around when thinking about the brand and 4) Consumer Views of the Brand.  What we normally do is brainstorm 3-4 words in each of the four sections and then looking collectively begin to frame the Brand’s Big Idea with a few words or a phrase to which the brand can stand behind.

 

Once you have your Big Idea, you should then use it to frame the 5 different connectors needed to set up a very strong bond between your brand and your consumers.

 

Creating a Personal Brand Plan

You need to build a Brand Plan that focuses your efforts in the market place. Use a traditional brand plan format, to include vision, purpose, values, goals, issues, strategies and tactics to create a plan. Here are some definitions to help trigger your thinking.

 

And now when you bring these two documents together you can create your own personal Brand Plan on one page. Below is my document that we use for our “Beloved Brands” personal brand. You should try this out using your own brand and you’ll use the strategies to focus your tactical efforts.

 

Manage your personal brand as though you would the brand you work on