What is personal branding? Personal
branding is the process of identifying the unique and differentiating
value that you bring to an organization, team and/or project and
communicating it in a professionally memorable and consistent manner in
all of your actions, both online and offline, to all current and
prospective stakeholders in your career.

The Lighthouse Personal Branding Model
The lighthouse is a great model for breaking down the branding process
into four key steps: the foundation, the beacon, the tower and the beam.

Foundation: Your foundation is your unarguable
strengths and experience in your chosen area. To identify your own
foundation, write down the strengths that differentiate you from the
rest and ask your friends, family and colleagues/managers to do the same
for you. Identify the top three to five overlapping strengths that
support the career direction you want to pursue.

Beacon:
Your beacon is the memorable and consistent communication of your
strengths and experience. Now that you have identified your foundation,
it’s time to create your beacon by finding a word or phrase that
represents these strengths and can become your brand. Develop a short
pitch that can follow your brand, describing your strengths in more
detail. Ensure that your word or phrase is versatile and can change with
your direction.

Tower: Simply put, your tower is your
visibility, reach and presentation, both online and offline, which
support the beacon. This is really everything you do to proactively
build your personal brand. The higher you build your tower with your
efforts, the more visible you will be to potential career stakeholders.
Here are some ways to proactively build your brand and credibility in
front of your target audience:

Beam: Your beam is
your career direction and more active personal branding and career
search strategy. It involves you gaining and projecting a strong
understanding of where you want to go, what you want to pursue and how
you will pursue it. First, you need to determine what functional area,
geography and industries/companies you want to target. Then, you need to
actively network your brand with potential career stakeholders. Here
are some ways to start:

Personal Application
I used this model to help develop my own personal brand during my MBA
career search. Having identified my foundation to be my endless energy,
out-of-the-box creativity, relationship building and problem solving, I
looked for a word that could pull all of those strengths together into
one memorable brand message. The beacon I chose was “generator” as I
generate energy, creativity, relationships and solutions to problems. I
was pursuing a career in marketing and brand management, and therefore, I
became a brand and marketing generator. I proactively built my tower by
incorporating my brand directly into my online profiles, my resumes and
my entrepreneurial efforts. I then took a more active approach,
targeting the “beam” by incorporating my personal brand in my interview
responses, networking introductions and informational interview
outreach. It was this process that helped me successfully secure my
current employment, and this model continues to help guide all of my
professional and entrepreneurial ventures. As you create, build and
improve on your personal brand, keep the lighthouse in mind as a visual
model and guide to personal branding success.

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There are many elements of a business that could be used for branding. It could be a logo, a name, a picture,a product or any other tangible thing that creates an association with a product, service or company.Branding can be difficult to accomplish because you cannot command people to associate a goodfeeling with your products or services. People need to experience this in order for the branding to become meaningful. You need to start of by establishing what exactly it is that you want tobrand. Will it be your products, your company name or a logo? It should be something that will associate all of these business elements together.One important component of branding is the “experience” customers have, during and after an interaction with a “branded” entity. In order for the branding to reflect a positive experience, theinteraction and experience must also be positive.Branding can best be described with one word: TRUST. It is the trust in branded entities that prompts people to patronize them. Trust is the same reason that branding cannot happenovernight; it takes time to build client trust. You need to be aware that trust can also be lost in an instant. Trust is a feeling; therefore, it is one of the quickest things your business can lose. Forthis reason, it is imperative that all your efforts go into making each client interaction a positive one. Think for a moment of the things you purchase and why you purchase them. Take a commonproduct like cola. There are many brands of colas available. Some are well -advertised and promoted while others rely simply on their price. What do you buy? Do you buy the more expensive brand because you have seen all the ads for them over the years; you have consumed the product many times and have always found it to be refreshing and consistent? Or, do you buythe cheaper brand that you have never heard of before, never tried and don’t know the company or its product? If you are like most consumers, you will likely buy the well-advertised and”trusted” product most of the time, and very occasionally purchase an unknown brand. Branding is relying on trust and experience to influence our decisions.So how can you use branding? I highly recommend that you “brand” your website address. The reason for this is that when you brand your website address, no matter what product or serviceyou provide, or change, people will always associate your website with a known and trusted entity. You can begin “branding” your website address by focusing all of your promotions onsending people to your website, where they can find out all the information about you, your products and or services, and your company. You need to be consistent in ALWAYS advertisingand promoting your website. There are many more activities you can engage in that will help brand your website address. Some good examples are: Incorporating your website address intoyour logo, making sure your website address appears on all your promotional material and using a catchy name for your website address.Many large corporations have more than one “branded” entity. With some companies it is simply their name; with others it is a variety of elements that have been created and associated with thecompany. Just a few of the companies that have successfully “branded” their products or services are:An Internet-based company that began as an bookseller, and then branched into a variety of products. Amazon.com is the perfect example of a company that branded its web address. Even people whohave never visited the Amazon.com website are aware of the company

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

My name is daksh and i help online business to improve their link popularity and especially for web article submission, directory submission seo and bookmarking links.