Your Name is Your Personal Brand

Just like the name of your organization, your name is your brand. What your name stands for and the associations that people make with you when they hear or see your name plays a significant role in your personal and professional life. Most organizations do not have an effective brand strategy, and most people do not either. When organizations develop a brand strategy they too often limit the process to an advertising campaign, logo or tagline. People do the same thing.

People limit their personal brand strategy to their resume or facebook page. Just like the organization that you work for, you need to develop a personal brand strategy. Start off by typing your name in Google and see what comes up. I am amazed when I teach personal branding sessions how many people have not done this. When you are looking for a job or trying to get new business, your potential employer and client will be doing so. They will base much of their decision on whether or not they want to work with you on how your search portfolio looks like. Are you a valuable asset, do you look like everyone else or are you invisible online?

If you have a common name, then you are going be competing with a lot of other folks online. Those who clearly understand who they are what they stand for, and have effectively utilized social networking will have a better chance of standing out, even if their name is the same as others. Those who have less common names like me will stand out too. We will stand out more if we have a brand strategy and include search engine optimization as a part of our strategy.  

On this Mother's Day, I encourage all moms and dads not to name their kids with a common name like Mike Smith. There are a ton of those and they become a commodity brand in the digital world. Just like businesses, you have to recruit and retain brand champions for you!

Rex Whisman

Brand Champions Blog

BrandED Consultants Group

Comments

[Ymen]

Great article. Can you suggest me a way to be the king of branding. Recently I was going through the branding ways and I wasn't satisfied. But one thing that striked me is http://surfdoubler.com/ which is a good site. Suggest me other sites from which I can learn branding.

[DanSchawbel]

Rex, I completely agree that your name is your personal brand. Wherever your name appears, your personal brand is at stake!

[@RobinMaiden]

Rex,

Great post.

Tell the parents to buy their child's domain name. I've got my son's...

[Rex Whisman]

Thanks all for weighing in. Robin, good call!

[Felipe Huicochea]

Yes, personal branding is really important, but also is a business decision whether you build a brand to be sold or to keep.

[Damon Klotz]

Great article Rex. I googled 'Damon Klotz' in January of this year and was quite shocked by the amount of useless and embarrassing information that appeared.

Ever since I have been on a personal branding adventure to ensure that the real Damon Klotz actually shows up on google.

The change in results still astounds me to this day, in three short months I have the first three pages of hits to my sites. I try tell others to do exactly the same.

[Erichards24]

Rex,
Great article! When coaching new graduates I also suggest they google their name to see what google footprint they have left behind. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

[Kate Hutchinson]

I ran into this problem when I went to try and register katehutchinson.com--it's owned by another Kate Hutchinson in Canada.

If you're trying to find out if your name is taken as a domain name, a great tool is United Domains' Namecheck (http://www.ud.com) which lets you search all available domains for your name. Handy way to find out if your have same-name competition!

[Mike Smith]

My name is Mike Smith. I think I am in big trouble. Read Catherine Kaputa book: "YOU are a Brand" for deeper analysis on this personal branding discusson. MS

[Rex Whisman]

Hey Mike, thanks for taking time to weigh in. Even though you have a common name, there are ways to leverage it. If you develop a personal mission and core values you are way ahead of the competition. Make a presence on as much social media as possible keeps you ahead of the game too. You just did by the way!