Branding Yourself, Where To Start? Personality = Uniqueness

Written by: Landon

Posted on April 11, 2008 
Filed Under Branding, Starting your Online Business

Brand Yourself To Stand Out

Where do you start when creating your brand?  Unique personalities stand out from the crowd.

Your personal brand is the anchor that you tie your online activity to.   Your online presence is the sum total of all your online activity.  I was fielding questions on Monday for a project I am working on when  the question  “what do you mean online presence”?  “Isn’t that just your website”? Was asked.

The answer to that is this, 5 years ago your online presence was your website, today, with all of the social communities we belong to and the multitude of places to leave our mark, your online presence is the culmination of everything you do online.  Including the comments you leave on other blogs and the picture you use to define your brand… everything you do online makes up your “online presence”.

So, we have:

You.   Who are you?  I mean, who are you really?  You are not the “things” that you  do.  You are not the “things” that you own.  You aren’t even the things you are responsible for.

So, who then, are you?  You are the sum total of what you believe, desire, think and feel.  Uh oh, here comes the philosophy.  Not really, we dont need to get philosophical to figure out who we are.  Ask yourself this question.  What makes me want to do, have and become that which I have decided on?  In other words, what turns you on about the world, yourself and the things you want to experience?

It’s actually easier to do than you may realize.  The answer is this… it’s a feeling. Lets use me as an example.  I like to be happy and a bit of a smart ass, and I always come from the heart, I am passionate and yes sometimes to a fault and I am  enthralled by the mysteries of life and people.  I have an affinity with the cartoons of my early childhood and thus The Mad Hatter exemplifies that and the fact that the picture I use to brand myself across the web is difficult to forget.

The point is, it’s a feeling that makes you who you are.  Do you feel compelled to feed the hungry? Teach the masses or become a self sustaining individual?  If you take those feelings and add them to other aspects of your personality you will be able to find the basis of your true persona and be able to translate that into an unforgettable character.

Think of  the top actors and actresses, when I say Jack Nicholson, what character pops into mind?  The military general?  The Joker?  The book author with some OCD?  Or the lunatic?  Aall of these fit his personality because they are feelings he can empathize with.

Now how about you?  The reason I have said all of that is this.  If you plan to become an expert in your given field of passion, on the internet and you are serious about that, you absolutely must distinguish yourself from the crowd.  The only real way to do that is to leverage who you really are and capture that in an image that looks different from everyone else out there.

You know, I am always wearing a regular tee shirt or polo and I could easily use a picture of me like that, but that says nothing about who I am AND it looks exactly like the 3,276 other people out there who are doing the same thing in the various markets I operate in, many of those men and women are very good at what they do (teach others how to utilize the net for monetary gains, which is a completely different post) but ask yourself this, how many of them can I remember after a month?  Very few probably.

Do you feel that standing out from the crowd is necessary?  If you are going to put the time into building a solid online presence it is.  Think about this and how you can create your brand, this coming Tuesday I will post a step by step on how to create the foundation of your online presence.  Have a great weekend!

Welcome feel free to look around. Subscribing to my Feed or Newsletter guarantees you don't miss any new content, give it two weeks, you will love it RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Hope to see you again soon.

Tags:, , , ,

Related Posts

    Your Brand, Your Business. Be Serious About Both!

    Are you serious about your online business? If you are, do you realize how important your brand is to your business success? Have you ever heard of RC Cola? If so, can you remember what the can looked like? Okay, how

    Uh oh, What Is Don Doing Now?

    Hello there! My name is Landon Porter, also known as "The Social Agent." I am a new writer here at... MakingSalesMakingMoney.com. Yep, all I had to do to get this spot was to tie Don up and

    A New Look and a New Wordpress Theme

    When the technology world gives you lemons you find a way to make lemonade. My recent fiasco to start the week has turned around considerably. For some of you repeat visitors, if I still have any, you will notice a

    WordPress or Websites

    Often times I am asked by someone wanting to set up an online site as their home based business, should I use Word Press or a website? First off know this. You can make money with both. The arguments for

    Writing Content in your own Unique Voice

    Often times some friends or business associates that know me personally will see me and mention that they read my latest post. Sometimes complimentary, sometimes critical, but they always say that as they were reading the thought entered their mind,

    Vic Franqui to Make Video Debut On Blogger Unleashed

    I had to take some time out and stray off topic today to share this .I stopped by Blogger Unleashed to see how many readers he has added since his hiatus from the site and to see if he had

    Content Writing with Prejudice, Procrastination and Perfection

    Responsibilities, assignments and duties don’t just go away now that you own a home based business. You are now charged with the task for insuring their completion. If you are like most, you are doing this by yourself. It then

    Use What You Know to Make Money

    I answer e-mails and have conversations every day from people who want to start their own home based business. Usually the conversation includes an idea about purchasing a franchise, and MLM opportunity or an internet marketing possibility. All legitimate, all

Comments

6 Responses to “Branding Yourself, Where To Start? Personality = Uniqueness”

  1. bloggingzoom.com on April 11th, 2008 5:41 pm

    Branding Yourself, Where To Start? Personality = Uniqueness…

    Landon is back with some food for thought about branding and you. How about YOUR online presence? He explains this subject matte rin deatil and again presents a strong case for branding your home beased business. Somehow I keeep thinking he is picking …

  2. Evan on April 11th, 2008 6:54 pm

    I’m not sure that my uniqueness is what other people are interested in.

    How does this fit with all the advice about not focusing on ourselves but customers?

    I look forward to hearing what you have to say in your next post.

  3. Landon on April 11th, 2008 7:41 pm

    Don, I’m not picking on you… lol! You are doing a great job of branding “you” and you have done a great job of branding MSMM.com.

    @Evan, you absolutely need to focus on your customers, however, before they become your customers, you need to pull the “truth” of who you are out and leverage that with something memorable and remarkable and do that in a way that will help your existing customers as well as prospective customers relate to who you are.

    It is all about focusing on your customers… to get them to be customers you need to

    1. Stand out

    2. Relate

    3. Offer value

    It all starts with standing out, so first you need to focus on yourself and create a brand that captures the interest of people so that you can then focus on them as customers…

    Landon

  4. Monika Mundell on April 12th, 2008 2:55 am

    Good post there Landon, the branding bit is so important isn’t it. I wish they would drill that into kids at school rather than teaching them to follow blindly.

  5. Don Miller on April 13th, 2008 2:07 am

    Landon unless it a Tampa Bay Rays hat I don’t see me wearing one, but it looks good on you! It was all I could do to get the picture on

  6. Sandy Reed on April 13th, 2008 11:51 am

    I went through an extensive branding class. It had some good information, but I found that as I built my business my brand naturally unfolded. As I figured out how I wanted to serve my customers, and how they want to be served it came to me.

    Yes, I believe it’s important to differentiate yourself, and it’s important to serve your customers. But you still have to be true to yourself in the process, otherwise you might as well work for someone else.

Leave a Reply