Market Your Personal Brand With Social Media

Typically, today’s sales professionals stick to the company line. Representing the company brand is what they get paid to do. Marketing departments work hard at positioning the product against both customer needs and the competition.

It’s easier to regurgitate the company brochure than create one’s own brand.

Internet Marketers work hard at developing their own, personal brand. They add value with interesting news and analysis. As a result they build a personal relationship with readers and a subsequent permission to market product.

For these guys it isn’t business, it’s personal, and the business will follow.

The bottom line here is companies by from companies like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. Reps for these businesses take orders and manage the revenue pipeline.

Those of us who work for less strong brands need to do things differently. We need to build personal relationships with the buyers. In our space companies don’t buy from companies, people buy from people.

In order for people to buy from us, as individuals, we need to add value in the person to person relationships.

Once we’ve done that we’ve started to build our personal brand, just like the Internet Marketing guys.

Do you have one? What does it say about you, as a person, as a professional, as potential friend, or as a potential enemy?

Whatever it says it should be ‘real’ – none of us can get away with pretending to be something we’re not.

There’s no good or bad in personal brand – these things are always good and bad. What’s important is that brand should stand for something, and stand out from the crowd. People must be able to relate to that brand and understand what it means for them.

The very fact there’s a brand there helps all sales people stand out from the competition, and helps the customer know what he’s dealing with, and that’s half the battle.

The other half of the battle is persuading the customer there’s value for him/her in that brand.

So what does your brand say about you? What does that mean for the customer. How does it relate to the personal brands of the competition?

How do you promote your brand? Have you built a web-presence? Do you have a personal blog? If so is it connected to your Linked In and Facebook profiles? Do you participate in the big conversation?

Does everything about you support your brand?

The world has moved on from corporate brands. Those things are too “managed” by the marketing people. We don’t take any notice of them now. We look for the personal brand, because that’s what we’ll buy in the end.