For Career Success, Five Key Personal Branding Tips

For more than a century, marketers have known the power of branding -- building a positive, compelling, and consistent promise of quality/performance that entices consumers to buy their products. Think Google, BMW, Southwest Airlines, Coca-Cola, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, GE, IKEA, Disney... all these companies have spent enormous amounts of time and effort building their brands.

Think about your buying patterns. Do you tend to favor well-known brands? Brands that you trust over unknown or unsubstantiated brands? Brands that promise quality and performance and consistently deliver on that brand promise?

Why would employers be any different? Organizations want to hire strong employees who will consistently deliver high-quality performance that enhance the overall results and profitability.

How does a personal career brand help both you and employers? By developing your career brand, you will be able to identify and promote the key selling points that make you a better hire than the competition... and employers will more easily be able to spot potential star-players through strong career brands.

Whether actively or passively job-hunting, use these five personal branding tips to enhance your overall profile -- and better prepare you for your next great career opportunity.

Five Career Branding Tips

1. Develop Your Brand Promise/Branding Statement. A good brand is simply a promise of performance, a promise of quality. Your personal career brand should incorporate your mission, values, accomplishments, and unique selling proposition (what makes you different/better than all other job-seekers). Your statement should be concise (one-sentence), easily understood, and memorable (for both you and the employer). Examples:

• Passionate, innovative, and empowering educator, marketer, and writer who engages, challenges, and transforms students, colleagues, and clients.

• Administrative assistant extraordinaire who transforms workplaces with my communication, organizational, and time-management skills, providing consistently dependable and reliable results.

2. Flush Out Key Brand Accomplishments. A good brand statement is essential, but to be successful, you'll also need to prove to prospective employers that your brand is built upon actual previous successes and accomplishments -- and not just a promise.

Develop a list of your key accomplishments, remembering that they can come from all your experiences, not just previous jobs. When thinking of accomplishments, always tie them to your brand, and when possible, quantify the results.

3. Update and Maintain a Consistent Brand Message Across All Communication Platforms. Whether actively job-hunting or not, add your brand to all your social media outlets -- and make sure your brand is consistent across all platforms. Assume employers will review all your profiles and posts, not just those on LinkedIn. And, of course, add your brand statement as a headline under your contact information, above your summary of qualifications.

Remember to keep all your accounts current and active -- while always showcasing your brand. (More in Tip #5.)

4. Share Your Career Brand With Your Network. Once you have completed your career brand, share it with your network, especially with your closest contacts. Not only might you get important feedback that helps you tweak the brand to make it even stronger, but these are the people who may hear of a job opportunity and suggest you as a candidate.

5. Actively Work at Making Your Personal Career Brand Discoverable. It makes no sense spending all the time and effort in developing your career brand if you keep it to yourself. After adding your branding statement to all your profiles, make sure you post and share regularly -- but only information, resources, and the like that support your career brand.

Final Thoughts on Career Branding Tips

Final bonus branding tip: before you get called for your next job interview (or even an internal promotion opportunity), develop brand stories -- anecdotes from your past experiences that focus on accomplishments that showcase your brand, told in story format to help your audience better remember who you are and what you can do for them!

For more key branding tips, see my other article: Five Essential Career Branding Elements/Tools.