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GUiDe Developing Your Personal Brand

use can suck up most of your free time, so, too, can main- efforts focus on creating authentic relationships and not on 361
taining your professional brand. To help avoid this situation, shameless advertising.
start modestly and work up from there. Realize, too, that a strong personal brand is essential to
When engaging in personal branding efforts, always some careers. For example, if you want to be an independent
be guided by your personal strategy. Consider Figure 3-12 consultant, say, an expert on privacy and control for cloud
again, in light of your personal competitive strategy. What data storage, you’ll need to invest considerable time develop-
is your personal competitive advantage? Why would some- ing and maintaining your professional brand. But whether or
one choose you, your expertise, or your work products over not it’s essential, having a strong personal brand is an asset
others? Then, with answers to these questions in mind, in any field, in any job. And you can be sure that if you don’t
start building your personal brand. Again, be sure your have a good personal brand, one of your competitors will.

DiSCUSSion QUeStionS

1. Using your own words, define and describe a personal 4. Suppose you become an expert in the topic you used in
brand. your answer to question 3. Think about your experiences
2. Describe how you could use social media to make an in the past year that relate to that topic. It could be expe-
existing professional contact more personal in nature riences in class, out of class with fellow students, or in
while still maintaining your privacy. conversations with roommates. It could be something that
3. Pick a contemporary topic of interest in your major field happened at your job at McDonald’s. Whatever.
of study. For example, if you’re an operations major, a. Make a list of 10 such experiences.
pick something like 3D printing. If you’re an accounting b. Describe how you could use social media, including
major, choose something like auditing in the cloud. (Read blogs, to present five of the best of those 10 experiences
question 4, however, before you pick.) in a way that helps build your professional brand.
a. Search the Web for opinions about the realities, con- 5. Reflect on your answers to questions 1–4.
temporary uses, big issues and problems, or other a. Do you think having a personal brand is important
interesting dimensions of your topic. for you? Explain why or why not. (The answer to this
b. Find two or three experts in that topic, and go to their question may not be yes, and for good reasons.)
professional brand sites. That brand might be a blog, b. What was the most difficult task for you when for-
a Web page, a collection of articles, an SM site on mulating your answers to question 4?
Facebook or LinkedIn, or some other public state- c. Summarize what you have learned from this exercise
ment of their professionalism. about how you might get more value from your col-
c. Which of the sites is the best? Explain why you think so. lege experiences.