Personal Branding for Tech Professionals
By Bob Donnelly
Branding yourself is as important as the brand identity associated with the products that you buy. However, many people, and especially tech professionals, don’t realize that this concept applies to them, as well.
Every brand and every person elicits an emotion.
Everyone has what I call a “mental product grid” in their mind, something similar to a mini ice cube tray with individual cubes that are repositories for images/information on products. These mental images have been formed over your lifetime from a variety of experiences and have formed an “emotional bond” with the products that you favor and buy, and “own” a position or share of your mind.
These positions in your mental product grid form what is called a product’s “brand equity”, or the value associated with your repetitive purchases of those products that have established their own emotional bonds with you. The mind is like a dripping sponge and the only way a new product can get in is by displacing an old one that over time has become less emotionally valuable to you.
What has all this got to do with you?
Well – you are a brand, too, even though you may have never thought about it. The 4 P’s of marketing (package, promotion, price, and place) apply to you in the same way that they apply to the products that you value and buy. You are the “package” and have to package yourself in the same way that the products that you value are attractively packaged. You also have to “promote” yourself (who else is?) to maintain your brand equity. Likewise, you have to “price” yourself for what you are worth, and lastly, you have to be at the right place to be recognized, which today is on the internet.
So as you can see you need to brand yourself. Personal branding is creating an electronic profile of the essence and “value” of you, or the value of the emotion that you reflect. This is especially critical for any techie to be able to market themselves more effectively in today’s highly technical new world of work.
Personal branding is creating and enabling you to market your unique value proposition. It’s how you differentiate yourself from your peers and can command a higher level of compensation and personal career satisfaction.
Get started today – brand yourself ! Bob Donnelly, is an author, educator, and brand builder for businesses and individuals. His book is: Personal Brand Planning for Life, available on Amazon
