How to Get Others to Go to Bat for Your Personal Brand

Posted by Ioana Filip on 10.26.09 @ 03:49 PM


Ioana Filip

Your personal brand should be managed as any other brand -- by increasing your perceived value to your targeted employer and thereby growing your own brand equity. Proper brand management will increase your market value or may get you into the right agency. Personal brands don't benefit from brand parity, so you need to manage yours exceptionally.

One way to do that is by cultivating personal brand advocates. By now, all of us should have a blog or at least a portfolio website that we regularly update, so it's time to start doing some online brand management. Talent seekers always research their potential employees on the internet, so you should do the same. Continually look for any information displayed on the internet related to you, your work or agency, and analyze how that affects your image. Act or respond in time to any issues related to your personal brand, and stay aware of market needs and the trends you can build upon.

With thousands of great creative people in the world who probably offer the same value as you, competition is huge. It's time to start your own CRM program, something that will make those talent seekers remember you. Sure, the only way to build up on your personal brand recognition is by doing great work, but if you think you're on the right track with your portfolio, it's good to think of ways to retain those headhunters on your website and slowly try to make them brand advocates.

Build a loyalty system that will help you attract visitors back to your website, by offering them something in return—anything from relevant news feeds to a personal touch on your portfolio, surveys or virtual creative brainstorming; basically anything that may be interesting to your target is a major advantage to other personal brands. Collecting data from your viewers may also be helpful but make sure you give them something in return. There's no real recipe for doing this; innovation is the key word here.

There are a dozen free traffic counters online, so make sure you have one on your website and analyze your situation regularly. Most of the time you can identify the people who have visited your website and you are able to know if someone in your target visited the website. This can help you make a move. Also, a counter can help you identify the weak links in your website and help you increase your bouncing rate.

If there's one thing the crisis has stimulated, it is the personal brand. In a market where competition is getting increasingly harder to break through, it's time you acted like a real brand manager and created your own brand advocates.

4 Comments

By FFcommunicator | charlotte, NC October 27, 2009 10:00:31 pm:

Good advice. I'll RT. For more insight, read "The Cult of Personality" by our Craftsman at http://www.famefoundry.com/637/the-cult-of-personality-part-1

@FFcommunicator

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By Robert | Planet Claire, NM October 28, 2009 11:21:39 am:

"Personal Brand?" Seriously? Are you aware that people make jokes about idiotic buzzwords such as this? At least the intelligent, talented, creative people I know and work with do. While everything you're saying might be true, that doesn't make it right. And it certainly doesn't make it inherently good.

This business is being taken over by people who are great at technology and talking cool, but are void of any original thought. "Collecting data" from site visitors? That's stalking. So the new self-promotion borrows from sleazy CRM tactics? Count me out.

It's sad to see what's happening to an industry that was once fun and filled with interesting, dysfunctional and creative people who had a book, a reel and a vivid imagination. They let their work speak for itself. That was their personal brand.

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By ioanafilip | Bucharest October 28, 2009 01:22:25 pm:

@Robert I totally agree with you - all of us need to have GREAT portfolios just to be considered for an interview at any agency. I don't think anyone is questioning that! I just think it might be a plus to look at our online portfolios as websites as well - from the way we design it, to the way we manage it.

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By chrisdialfredi | Chagrin Falls, OH October 28, 2009 03:21:19 pm:

WTF?!?

Okay, I know a thing or two about brands. Brands are over-hyped, over-analyzed, and over-relied upon to make up for weaknesses that a company, product, event, service, or person may exhibit. Strong brands are the ones that focus on providing their consumers with the best possible and consistent experience. They don't have time to keep trying to figure out ways to manipulate people to become their brand advocates. It just happens because people will naturally advocate (go to bat for)and share a good experience. That includes relationships with individuals.

Dale Carnegie had it pegged way back in 1936 with 'How to Win Friends and Influence People'. It's still a good read. As a fellow designer, I can tell you that competition for work is incredibly fierce, but manipulating people into going to bat for you is not a good way to gain leverage against the competition. Good creative work aside, being a good person that is well liked, performs reliably, is honest and trustworthy, and delivers a consistent brand experience, will ultimately generate 'real' word-of-mouth referrals. Brands built upon bullshit will always have a short shelf-life. Especially personal brands!

Consider this: being nice and genuine could possibly be so 'against the grain' these days that it helps you, as a creative professional, to stand out from the intense competition. Can you think of any commercial brands that employ a genuine focus on customer service and being nice, and how it may be the key differentiator to increasing their market share? (Think Zappos, for starters).

Chris DiAlfredi
www.rubberbrandman.com

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