Self-Improvement - Marketing Yourself As A Brand
There is an old marketing adage that should be burned in to your head: "You are not your product." You are a person. But your brands are products, and if you're not promoting them well enough, you might find yourself out of work. Once that happens, it's easier for companies to offer their jobs to the next best thing.
The idea of branding yourself as a product is an alien concept, but one that shouldn't be. A company brand is a representation of a company as much as the products it produces. You're essentially representing a company when you fill a job, so in reality, you are being brand-promotional even when you aren't aware of it. But many technical professionals don't consider that they're promoting companies and brands when they're looking for work. That's why job postings that specifically promote a company brand and describe the product-like qualities of the position are more effective.
The product-like qualities of a job include making sure prospective candidates know how they're going to be marketed to, what type of employees they're going to be, what kind of culture and environment you'll have, and the ways the company values their time. You can do the same to define your job as a brand.
Many people choose to ignore or belittle the importance of branding themselves, but it's one of the most important aspects of being a technical professional because if you're not willing to brand yourself for a company, you may find yourself unemployed or in a job that really isn't what you want.
You need to understand that branding yourself as a product is just like any other marketing process. You need to create awareness, build trust and establish equity. These are things technical professionals already do quite well if they're in the right position, and they're easy to do when you look at your job as a product.
The first step in branding yourself as a product is to create awareness of your job. You can't expect to get hired if you don't let people know that you're available and what your value is. You need to stand out and make sure others know about you.
If you don't have a LinkedIn account, start one today. And use it regularly. Use it to make your brand visible, which has a direct correlation to the likelihood that people will find you.
Don't believe it? Just look at LinkedIn's graph of the average number of views for each company profile over time. While the graph doesn't show . . . nothing . . . over 18 months, you can see that LinkedIn's audience for your company brand has gone up significantly over time. When you work on improving your visibility on LinkedIn, your brand will create awareness about itself.
Nathan Korte, the creator of a site called Jobbrain , has included the use of hashtags along with keywords in his articles and job postings. This is one of the ways job seekers are able to get others to pay attention to their profiles.
There are many ways to demonstrate your brand on social media, but remember that people don't want information about you. They want information about your brand. You need to be credible and leave them feeling like they should trust you.
You can blog and write articles on Web 2.0 sites that promote your brand, but you need to create a blog for yourself first. Don't use someone else's domain name because it won't be recognizable and people won't find you. If you do that, they will just go to the blog of the person who registered your domain name.
Once you have written articles about your company and blogged about yourself, then you can start posting on other people's blogs. These are all great ways to get your name out there and let people know about your brand.
The second step in creating awareness is building trust. You can't expect someone to hire you without an expectation of what you're going to do for them. Credibility is essential if you want to build a solid career for yourself, and showing it through your actions is paramount in the world of self-branding.
When you brand your company, you need to show what it can do for others. Show why people should have faith in the product and the production line. If you can do this, you will create a reputation for yourself that others will be more willing to trust and work with.
You can also use community building as a tool for building trust. The more social involvement you have with a company or project, the more others will look at your work and find it credible because of your involvement. This can go a long way in building credibility if you're trying to brand yourself for a job.
You can also work on building equity for your brand by taking feedback from people and using it to help build your product. For example, you could have an online survey where people can rate the job they did at a previous company. Once they've been rated on these exercises, ask them what they liked most and their biggest obstacles to moving forward with their career.
Conclusion
Branding yourself as a product is an important thing to think about when looking for a job. It's a way to demonstrate your value and convince people that they need your brand to accomplish their goals. If you can do this well, you will find yourself with a new career in no time at all.
Your brand is an extension of your personality and values, which means that it needs to incorporate these things into the image you want others to see.