David Beckham signed for Real Madrid in 2003. His arrival caused an unprecedented stir in the modern history of football. People did not know how to pronounce his name correctly, and the vast majority had never seen him play a football game. Despite these referents, the shirt and other merchandise with your name or image sold out in just under a few hours.
Prioritize your core values and passions
The identification with a name is also the key to success in the musical field. AC / DC, the recently deceased Prince – also known as the symbol – or Miley Cyrus and his previous alter ego of Hanna Montana, have crossed the musical barrier to the point of being recognized internationally despite not having heard much more than a handful of songs of yours at the best of times. All of them have achieved renown around the planet thanks to a clever marketing maneuver by which they stopped being singers to become personal brands.
Define your key traits
Advertising has been identifying products with segments of the population for more than half a century with the sole purpose of associating their possession with a lifestyle or social status. Brands such as Audi or Hugo Boss have a similar image of success. McDonald’s tries to break free from its image of fast food for a more ecological and natural (changing the red for the green in its premises). Benetton developed campaigns seeking diversity and provocation for rebellious young people of upper-middle class. And Guinness has managed to symbolize an entire country with its black beer.
Develop your personal image
The advertised or sold oneself, now known as personal branding and personal branding, is of recent origin. It is true that using the name or surname for commercial purposes is a very common tactic when it comes to setting up businesses (Rockefeller, Trump, and Hilton). It was just a matter of time before someone realized the possibilities of this system and put it in the hands of anonymous people.
The pioneer of the personal brand was an American writer and economist named Napoleon Hill. In his book “Think and Grow Rich” in 1937, introduced the concept of personal positioning, emphasizing the importance of transforming the name of a person in an idea. Until the year 81, the perception of the person as a brand was not recovered. And this appeared in a book called “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” by Al Ries and Jack Trout. These consultants and experts in marketing techniques brought the term of personal positioning back to the fore. Finally, it would be an expert in business management practices who take him to fame in the late 90s: Tom Peters.
From that moment, the bookstores were flooded with self-help books focused on showing the different systems and benefits of making one’s own company, becoming its authors a clear example of the association between name and brand. Both radios and televisions were flooded with figures of experts whose presence brought authority and expertise in countless subjects.
However, with the advent of the Internet, the creation of a personal brand became available to the general public, offering the possibility of leaving anonymity without the need to have contacts in the mass media.
Follow in the footsteps of an expert
The steps to follow when creating a personal brand are not very different from those of the formation of a company. However, they require rather introspective fieldwork. That is to say, to know well our strengths and weaknesses and to establish defined objectives to achieve in different terms. Or, in other words, what values and virtues make us stand out from others and what would be our main market niche. Once our own personality is well defined, it is time to make ourselves known. And our main ally will be social networks.
But before taking that step, we will need our virtual office, transmitter center of our personal brand. For this, we will have to have a personal blog. We must take the time necessary in its creation since that will be the channel through which the public will know us. Therefore, it is advisable to take a look at the pages of the most current bloggers in order to get a better idea of the best way to show our professionalism with simplicity. In addition, on the web, we can find several pages that will guide us in its creation. The most important thing is that we clearly position ourselves in a specific sector, that navigation and information are accessible to the user, keep it updated regularly and, if possible, find a differentiating element that allows us to highlight or attract attention. Be careful, and this last point should not be read lightly. Being vulgar or offensive draws attention, but not in the way we intend.
The next step is to make yourself known to the outside world. And I mean the Internet with its social networks. One of the most important at present is LinkedIn, a professional social network where you can contact professionals in the sector and make yourself known. The other great network of contacts is Facebook, which allows creating differentiated profiles at a personal and professional level with two accounts. Finally, Twitter will enable you to spread your ideas and comments more dynamically while opening another channel of contacts with simplicity.
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