Welcome to my first newsletter for 2010. I hope you have a great year and I encourage you to not just blend in in 2010...but to stand out and shine. I’ll try and help you to do that through my tips and ideas about personal branding and impression management. 

My feature article this month explores the first step in the personal branding process and that is to really understand yourself more through a self-brand, self-analysis. Read more below. I’d love to hear any comments you may have. Contact me at sue@suecurrie.com.au or post a comment on my blog.

 
Keep shining!

Australian superstar Kylie Minogue was once labeled the singing budgie; an image perhaps not too flattering. Fast forward to 2009 and Kylie, completely reinvented was voted the most powerful Australian personal brand. Next on the list was Elle Macpherson followed by Shane Warne, Dame Edna Everage, and Greg Norman. So what makes these people stand out from the crowd?  Apart from the fact they are all very talented and good at what they do – how did they become memorable brands?

Branding is building a relationship between a product or service and the consumer. It is how we feel about that brand that will determine whether we as consumers want to have a relationship with it or not.

These people are all famous but they have built their brand and reputation in a variety of ways.  Over the next few months through my newsletter we’ll explore some paths to help build your personal brand and make a positive impression. Who knows you might end up famous too.

Inner Personality

The first step to realising our personal brand is to understand ourselves better. What kind of personality do we have, what is the impression others have of us? To do this write out a list of words you think describe you. What adjectives would you choose if you were a journalist and writing a story about you? How would you describe that person?

What about your passions? What is it you really love doing and what is the feeling you get from that? How do others see you? Can you get some feedback from your family, work colleagues and friends? Ask them to choose words to describe you and see what they come up with – good and bad! Did those words match up to your list? If so then you are getting close to your true personality.

Have you some hidden dreams, ambitions that are yet to be realised. Perhaps there’s some negativity or attitudes or behavior that needs to be modified.  It can be hard to self-reflect but is invaluable to really understand yourself more.

Is there a characteristic or talent that sets you apart? For Elle Macpherson it was her amazing figure that launched her career. Kylie Minogue – her singing talent. They had those raw talents but needed to develop other skills, package themselves better and grow as businesswomen to really move on.

Once you have an understanding of your personality and your positive attributes, combine that with your skills and talents and work toward writing a personal brand statement that is just for you – your internal dialogue – then you can use that as a basis for external communication.

Here’s a tip from personal branding expert Lesley Everett from the UK company Walking Tall. 

Why not try Wordle, an online website for generating “word clouds” from the text that your provide. It is is a fun way to visualise your personal brand. Simply enter all the words you have come up with such as personal values, strengths and motivators into the site at www.wordle.net . The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can also tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes then print it out as a visual reminder of your personal brand.

Let me know your comments on my Blog.

Shine Communications assists you by providing keynote presentations, in-house training and one-on-one coaching to you or your team. We teach valuable skills for career and business growth. Our programs include:

Personal Branding
Your style was warm, engaging and credible and you delivered excellently to our brief of raising awareness of the importance of image and personal brand in today’s workplace. Participant feedback was very positive with comments like, "Great. Left me wanting more, “a great reminder on how to stand out and show your brand.” Was great to get feedback on how my peers see me.”
Cerebos 

Public Relations Strategies

Great to learn the basics of “Priming the Press” in getting your message out there effortlessly and effectively.
PRIA

Media Skills 

The day was a great success and perfectly pitched to the needs of our organisation. You were able to assess exactly where we were in regard to our attitudes and dealings with the media and then crafted an excellent training programme to help us get to where we need to be.
Montessori

Our unique approach to combining personal image and branding with brand visibility helps you to shine for success.

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