Scars from Sin City

Personal Brand Activity:

Develop your personal branding statement

Have you heard that your personal brand is what people say about you when you aren’t in the room?

Well, what do you think they say?

Developing your personal branding statement is the first step in steering that conversation.

Your personal branding statement is succinct: 1-2 sentence summary of what you do and why the way you do it is unique. Best of all, you can leverage your personal branding statement in networking to ensure you have a strong opener to captivate your audience.

So how do you create a personal branding statement?

STEP 1: Using free-flow writing to list your skills, your areas of experience, your strengths and aspirations.

STEP 2: Think of your audience: where are you happiest when doing the things on your list?

STEP 3: Fire up LinkedIn. Search for and find a few people in your industry. How do they describe themselves and what they do? Great. Now make sure you’re saying something different.

STEP 4: Go back to your list from Step 1, and pull out those qualities, experiences or strengths that make you unique from others in your field.

STEP 5: Go back to Step 2, and think about who of these people you want to hire you. Don’t over-complicate it: you can simply narrow it down to a specific industry, location or even job title.

STEP 6: Simple math. Add your unique quality from Step 4, to your answer from Step 5. e.g. “I do social media for companies in the Insurance industry”.

STEP 7: Refine your statement to make sure it’s easily understandable and memorable. Instead of saying “I do social media for companies in the Insurance industry”, you could say “I build communities that help others plan for the uncertainties in their future”. And then continue to refine as needed.

Some examples of great personal branding statements include:

I help clients improve their company image and create websites with aesthetically pleasing and efficient interfaces. In doing so, I've increased company leads by 19%-154%.

I help companies with waste management and profit maximization. I do this by analyzing their facilities and processes to cut costs and develop more efficient practices.

Let's build great brands together.

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