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Marketing yourself and your business is the way forwardCreating a personal brand is not reserved for when you are looking for a job. It should be the hallmark of who you are as a person – be it in business, in private, or as a company owner
“Why raise your profile? To attract the work you love; to be headhunted; to elevate your status; to earn more.”
This is how the back page of Jenny Handley’s most recent book, Raise Your Profile, describes what one can expect inside.
The book is a fantastic read, even for the most experienced marketers. It is insightful and quirky, with fantastic anecdotal stories about how people have leveraged their strong points to build a personal and professional brand.
Brand “Me”
The book follows a logical sequence, starting off with the idea of personal marketing. It could be argued that one should always ensure that one is positioned correctly in the industry, relative to oneself and where one sees oneself going.
During tough economic times, and due to the soft economy we are experiencing at the moment, this has never been more true. Personal brands do stand out and carry weight.
“Personal marketing is all about developing our brand into a recognisable one; defining our style; and standing out in a crowd. We need to have a mark of originality that is memorable,” writes Handley.
There are many schools of thought that suggest job-searching is a marketing campaign, where job seekers are the product. In most instances, no matter how good the product, they will not succeed without a marketing strategy.
Everything begins with a plan. Handley’s new book provides the framework for that plan, from assessing your individual brand value through to shaping the platform; product, packaging, place, price, people, promotion, profile, and a host of other P’s.
Creating a personal brand is not reserved for when you are looking for a job. It should be the hallmark of who you are as a person – be it in business, in private, or as a company owner.
Handley dedicates a chapter in her book to the role of social media – a section titled, “Push-button marketing”:
She refers extensively to the role that digital communications can play in the creation of a brand and raising its profile.
The chapter starts off with the basics – creating a meaningful signature in an e-mail, going through to the prioritisation of news that comes through, i.e. are you spending your time going through what is important, or wasting time on rubbish?
Later, the complexities of social networking profiles, wikis, viral marketing and web presence are unpacked, in an easy-to-understand manner.
When reading the book, one cannot help but realise that the tools of marketing yourself are valuable as part of ongoing career management.
A good self-marketer will ensure that he/she promotes strengths and talents to enable the achievement of specific goals. Raise Your Profile highlights the importance of knowing yourself; knowing to whom you are projecting “Brand Me”; and establishing a realistic and well-planned campaign for self-development.
Where Handley’s book really cooks is in her simple-to-read tone and personal interaction with her readers, through the many first-hand stories and experiences. It is not your average academic slog, with terminology as long as the complete works of William Shakespeare.
She also includes brand practice sections, where readers can apply the narrative to their lives.
Using marketing strategies that have been useful in business is a good place to start, as the personal marketing plan contains important information about the basic five P’s – particularly how to position yourself.
Evaluating and assessing one’s brand reputation is very similar to the process of measuring the brand presence of a company in the media.
To second an analogy from media monitoring, it is critical to look at specific key performance areas in an analysis: these could be leadership, financial, corporate, and corporate social investment, to name a few. This is done through extensive analysis of media presence and perception.
Through analysis, this then forms a foundation of broader market research, having established brand value and presence from a media perspective.
Similarly, one’s own brand is looked at from the feedback and successes that one can achieve in one’s professional career on a different set of matrices.
It is also credible to analogise a person to a business or product. Similar to a Product Life Cycle, there is a Personal Life Cycle that highlights different points in one’s career and where one’s brand is positioned at any point in time.
Raise Your Profile is also useful if one wishes to take stock of where one is at and conduct a situational analysis. The book provides for all the basics, and forms the foundation upon which something like this could be done.
As with any business plan, an important component is the follow-up and periodic review. Reviewing your personal brand on a regular basis will ensure that you keep an eye on whether it is working for you or not.
As with business, your options should be kept open to alternative strategies for achieving the set objectives. Again, this correlates to trends in media evaluation, where more and more measurement plans are being based on setting out goals and objectives and measuring the planned outcome through regular output. This is done through trended analysis and regular evaluation of campaign progress.
About Jenny Handley
Jenny Handley owns Jenny Handley Performance, a successful PR and brand management company that manages diverse brands from high quality products to high profile people. Success stories range from Mercedes-Benz to Ernie Els’ Big Easy restaurant, and non-profit organisations such as the Hospice and Palliative Care Association. Jenny has addressed a wide variety of international audiences that range from businesses, schools and sports teams to lecturing at business schools, and offers unique individual brand management consultations for top executives, leaders and entrepreneurs. For Jenny, business is a team sport, and she is passionate about multi-level brand management and people development, which forms the backbone of her sought-after corporate Raise your Performance courses and talks. In 2006, Jenny Handley co-authored the business book, Raise your Game ™, with Gavin Cowley.
She regularly writes columns on self-development and business skills in Career Times and Risk SA magazine.
She has earned the reputation of brand strategist, and provides meaningful strategy consultations for those wanting to improve the way they do business; change direction in their career; or elevate their status within their industry.
Daniel Munslow
This article was previously published on www.newsclip.co.za
