Personal Brand Work

OK, folks, personal branding, as mentioned in the previous post, has been around for a long time now. Tom Peters introduced the concept in a Fast Company article in 1997. Here's the link: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/10/brandyou.html. It's excellent. Peters helps you get past the egotistical aspect of personal branding to find the professional survival and potential blossoming that thinking of yourself in brand terms can elicit.

Garr Reynolds, the Presentation Zen man, writes that a brand is a promise. A good brand is obviously one that keeps its promise. What do you promise? What makes you different? That is the message of a personal brand. Tom Peters recommends keeping it to about 15 words.

Once you establish your brand, you've got to promote it, but that's another activity for another post.

Here's my work in process with the Mixonian brand: Eklectic (i.e. multidisciplinary) teacher focused on meaningful communication with creativity, integrity, and elegance, who inspires and encourages creative and intelligent responses.

I'm not crazy about the "meaningful communication", but it is better than the "effective communication" I had in an earlier draft. There are other qualities I'd like to include, but for now, I'm sticking with what I wrote.

What's your brand like? What are you good at? What things catch your eye or your attention? What do you like to talk about? How to you like to help people? What do people seek your help for? What do you like to have done? Get out your pen and paper and start writing!