Building your personal brand. Element No. 4 : Positioning:

Personal branding makes you a trusted professional

[Continued from last week]

Over the past four weeks we talked about the principles of personal branding and under which the first three elements were, Product 'You', Packaging and Communication. Today it’s about Positioning.

A successful personal brand is a cohesive image that positions you as a trusted professional in the chosen field or fields which is naturally recognised, respected and demanded by your target audience and conveys the value of investing in your deliverability and compulsion to ‘buy you’.

It begins to speak for you, keeps you on top of the mind of your target audience and helps establish a long-lasting memory imprint. It’s you, your brand – make it memorable.

What is a personal brand positioning statement and why do you need it? What makes you different? What qualities or characteristics make you distinctive? What have you accomplished? What is your most noteworthy personal trait? What benefits do you offer?

Distinctive

Consider integrating these elements into the brief synopsis that is your brand positioning statement. Think of it as a sales pitch. Your statement should be one or two sentences, answering what you are best at (your value), who you serve (target audience) and how you do it uniquely (USP).

It sums up your unique promise of value. Your personal brand statement should be distinctive to you and you alone for clear differentiation. It should be emotional, memorable, punchy, value based and solution oriented.

For example, the positioning of a big brand such as Nike isn't about 'sports gear', it’s a statement about what the brand makes and sells. Instead, the positioning of Nike captures how the brand makes customers feel. Instead of 'sports gear', it would be more like 'motivates the weekend warrior'.

That statement is much more emotional and descriptive of what the brand does for customers and ties directly to the brand's tagline 'Just Do It'.

How many times have you been asked, on and off the field, what you do and what makes you different? Do you feel that people really understand what you do or is it merely pleasantries? I bet you can tweak what you say and leave a lasting impression with that person, an impression that leads to admiration and high returns.

Being another good accountant or brand manager does not make you different or stand out from the rest. When you don’t stand out, you will have to compete against everyone else on price which doesn’t make you win.

DNA

At the end of the day, we all stand for something. Regardless of status – employed or in transition, business owner or employee, doctor or engineer, CEO or an artist – the best way to ensure progression in your life is to understand what you stand for. Ask yourself, 'What is my DNA?'. How does my target audience perceive me?

Start with listing your key personal attributes on a piece of paper. Once the list is complete, take a good look at it and pick out the ones that make you unique.

These will form your unique selling points, or USPs.

Look at your unique values and key attributes and you should develop a one or two sentence brand statement, answering :What value you offer (solution to others), how you do it uniquely (your USPs), whom you do it for (your target audience).

When writing a personal brand statement it’s easy to get carried away and put down what you’d like to be one day. The old 'fake it until you make it' does not work. It should be real. Never call yourself a guru, expert or even thought leader.

Only your audience can determine whether you are an expert and you will know if that is the case.

The aim of your statement is to inform and inspire the listener or the reader, not to scare them off with fancy titles.

You can review and align it to stay current whenever there is significant change in your potential value.

This is what positioning is all about and the more effective you are the more successful you’ll become. Do you have a personal brand statement? What is it? Product 'You', well packaged and presented with high awareness through effective communication helps position your personal brand for distinctive competitive advantage.

Next week I will talk to you about element No. 5 'Performance' of brand You.