Nurturing your personal brand and professional presence
Tags: Personal Branding, Branding

Ever heard of a Personal Value Proposition (PVP)? Zone’s Alix Tenneson gives us the low-down on how to sell yourself successfully.

Many of us who work in marketing spend a lot of time thinking about our clients’ brands. We regularly talk about how important brand identity is and encourage businesses to think carefully about how they communicate with consumers. We explain that it’s how brands are perceived by others — those outside of the office — that make a brand’s vision of themselves a reality or a total disconnect.

This world view was echoed at a seminar I recently attended about creating a personal brand and developing professional presence. The speaker began with: “Let me start by being perfectly clear with you all. Your personal brand is not your own. Those who experience you, own your brand. Their perception of who you are and what you stand for is your identity.”

And he’s not alone in this belief — it’s no coincidence that mega-successful people are just as savvy about their personal brands as they are about their company’s. One example is Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, who said: “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

But what do we really mean by personal brand and professional presence? Well, your brand is ‘a widely recognised and largely uniform perception or impression of an individual based on their experience, expertise, competencies, actions and/or achievements’. And one of the key ways that this impression is created is through your presence, which is how you make others feel.

At this point in the seminar I thought: this sounds almost impossible. How can I manage an internal dialogue that’s focused on presenting my personal brand effectively, while still appearing authentic and engaged in an interaction? I’m going to tie myself up in knots, surely?

And then the speaker explained the biggest challenge you have to overcome in order to master professional presence. It’s not that it’s determined through the eyes of the beholder, it’s that 55% of how we communicate happens via our physiology and 50% of that comes from micro-behaviours that happen on a subconscious level.

These micro-behaviours are things we do all the time, such as blinking, head movements, pauses and vocal inflections. And they all help to shape our perceptions of one another.

The truth is, creating a great personal brand is not a straightforward exercise, otherwise we’d all be Jeff Bezos, or Oprah, or Richard Branson. It won’t happen overnight and you won’t nail it on every interaction, but that’s OK. You can get started by working on these simple tasks that will help you to begin influencing perceptions in line with your vision for yourself.

First, you need to understand how you are currently perceived. Ask for feedback from those around you.

Develop a Personal Value Proposition (PVP). It only needs to be a 60-second soundbite, but its purpose is to describe what you want to be known for in a clear and succinct way to help you articulate it to others. Once you’ve written it, rehearse it! Video yourself and play it back to make sure it sounds right and share it with someone you trust for feedback.

Align the way you communicate with others, both written and verbal, with your new brand PVP. And don’t be afraid to tell people about yourself.

Once you have done this, try not to overthink it. The most important thing is to be yourself. Don’t lose your authenticity by being overly analytical or trying to change who you are. Developing a strong professional presence will add great value to your personal brand, but only if it’s credible.

To read more about personal brand or professional presence, there are some great articles on personalbrand.com, or you could try one of the books the speaker recommended: Own Space and Physical Presence by Amy Cuddy, I am My Brand by Kubi Springer or Branding by Adii Pienaar.