Inc.com: Your company's brand is one of the most important factors for its eventual success. It's the culmination of your company's identity, packaged and presented in a way that's pleasing, familiar, and attractive to your prospective and recurring customers.
However, companies and organizations aren't alone in the need for solid branding. Personal branding, the art of building a unique brand around yourself as an individual, is just as important. Just as so with a traditional brand, personal branding requires you to find a signature image, a unique voice, and a recognizable standard that your readers, fans, and customers can grow to recognize.
10 comments:
Branding is one of the biggest challenges I've faced recently. It's like the Mt. Everest of professional development. Okay, maybe that's a little dramatic...but let's be honest it's not an easy task, and it isn't meant to be. Some might think that if the product is you, that should make it easier, but it's quite the opposite. Having said that, recently I've considered burying a decent amount of my online presence, as opposed to using it to promote my "brand". That's mostly because my facebook and twitter accounts are date back to my younger college days, and has largely been a way of communicating with friends from that time in my life...which well, isn't as necessarily the best professional image of me, or the brand I'm trying to create now. So is it better to start over and re-brand. Lose that connection to years past, how does one do that without alienating my long-time friends who occasionally post...stupid things? Furthermore, how does an individual not yet established in an industry really establish themselves? How do I convince someone that what I have to say is credible and worth posting in their blog/website or magazine?
Yes, a personal brand is absolutely important, and creating a brand through an Internet presence is definitely important, but I’m really conflicted about the role of my social media usage in my professional image. I know some artists who are constantly posting about their work and the industry on Facebook and while it’s great that they’re so invested in the conversation, it gets really annoying. I want to be the artist who can leave the theater and go home and be alone and be a REGULAR PERSON at the end of the day, not the 24/7 working theater artist who broadcasts every play I read and see and every thought I think even remotely relevant to the theater. I don’t want to name drop my whole network in every Facebook post. I don’t want to live-Tweet artistic conference events (which EVERYONE was doing during the LMDA conference in Boston this year) and movies I’m watching and political events unfolding before I have a chance to process the information, just to prove that my brain is active and I’m engaged in the world around me and my profession. I’d like to think of Facebook as a place where I can communicate with my friends and be less concerned about my professional image (but of course, I’m very careful not to post anything stupid that could devalue me as a person/professional). And I don’t post many status updates on Facebook because I’m a private person and I don’t want the world to know my business. I’m not even on Twitter because it seems kind of pointless to me and I don’t need yet another Internet distraction in my life. I have a professional website and a LinkedIn, and I’d like to think those are sufficient to establish my professional Internet presence…am I wrong? Is it impossible to escape the tide turning towards social media branding?
Fortunately I feel I'm not quite at the point in my career where I absolutely need to have a personal brand, but I think that it is important to start thinking about, nonetheless. Even after reading this article, and giving some serious thought as to what my brand might be, I've come to a standstill and realized that this could actually be quite difficult to accomplish. How do you capture your image, your voice, your work ethic, and everything that you stand for in a working environment? Also, Joe brings up an excellent point and is more of an issue for our generation and our large presence on social media, how do you incorporate your professional image into your social media without it being colored by your past experiences that are such a large part of that social media image? Do you restart? I would like to hope not, but I will tackle that when it comes my way.
While this article isn't specifically about theatre, I think that this is a huge, under utilized aspect of creative life. Even if you are an actor or designer with a huge artistic range, it is vital to have some way to categorize yourself, so that when someone is coming up with a project, yours is the name that comes to mind. You want people to associate your name with reliability, talent, dedication, and your own particular flavor of you.
As the article says, a great way to do that is online. We live in an age where people expect to be able to find all information quickly and easily, so when someone searches your name, you want a nicely laid out website with a clear, concise and enjoyable way to read all of the amazing things you've done. Its a necessity of the era. You want people to associate your name with greatness, and a well marketed person is only the beginning. After you've convinced someone to call you, its your skill and performance that will convince them to call you back.
While this article isn't specifically about theatre, I think that this is a huge, under utilized aspect of creative life. Even if you are an actor or designer with a huge artistic range, it is vital to have some way to categorize yourself, so that when someone is coming up with a project, yours is the name that comes to mind. You want people to associate your name with reliability, talent, dedication, and your own particular flavor of you.
As the article says, a great way to do that is online. We live in an age where people expect to be able to find all information quickly and easily, so when someone searches your name, you want a nicely laid out website with a clear, concise and enjoyable way to read all of the amazing things you've done. Its a necessity of the era. You want people to associate your name with greatness, and a well marketed person is only the beginning. After you've convinced someone to call you, its your skill and performance that will convince them to call you back.
(Sorry I forgot to post my name, but this comment is mine)
I think my generation faces a unique problem in that we remember - and were raised - in a time where social media was not an everyday fact of life. During my almost-20 years, I have seen that jump from face-to-face, to technological interface. I balk at the idea of using the internet for something as serious and important as a personal brand. The internet still exists in my mind as a "fun" thing. This article makes me question, however, to what extent I need to utilize the internet and market myself there to stay relevant. Is word-of-mouth even a viable way to build a reputation? I know I present best to people in a physical, face-to-face setting. However, I understand the advantages the internet offers. Trying to navigate this limbo will undoubtedly make this already gargantuan task all the harder.
I find this article to be ironic because it states that having a personal branding will increase your sales process dramatically because "people want to do business with people". But maybe my understanding of branding isn't fleshed out, but to me branding screams corporate. I think of all the well established fonts and little images that I affiliate with all major corporate brands, and I don't find any of them to be personable or "warm". I do trust the quality of products with brands versus non brand company merely because I know they have plenty of resources and if I am dissatisfied with a product the return/exchange process is a lot simpler to navigate. The only thing I really agree with in this article is networking and using social media as a free and smart way to get yourself out there.
The first point about specificity really struck with me. "Specificity is a trade of volume for significance." As humans, we are naturally inclined towards curiosity. It's very easy to reach wide and develop many fascinations. Conversely, I understand that people love putting others in boxes, especially checkboxes. You do lights for theatre. You so sets for opera. You do media for underground music artists. You are a stage manager. Of course, when someone wants a lighting designer, they can go to their boxes, and easily find someone. But where does the lighting designer/media designer go? The scenic designer/costumer? Why is it difficult for one person to have multiple associations in our minds? It's definitely a fine line and something to consider when creating a brand. If a person wants to brand themselves as having a capacity in multiple areas, they have to be clever about it so that it doesn't become a laundry list.
The writing and publishing point isn't super applicable to our work, at least not yet. Maybe if someone is looking for a university job. Social media also probably isn't the most useful thing for a designer, manager, or technician.
Creating case studies about your past work is a fabulous idea. I've seen something sort of similar on websites of theatrical designers but where this is extremely strong is on the websites of industrial and communication designers that just go out of college. They usually select a few projects and take you from inception to completion, showing sketches, technical drawings, renderings, etc to explain how they work. It is very effective and could be very useful for theatre, especially for the more ephemeral areas of media and lighting.
Networking is so important and I like the way the article talks about "social influencers". That's a really good way to describe the people we all know who seem to know everyone and are really good at networking.
Branding is definitely important in this day and age. I'm not sure what this article is trying to say personal branding, because when you try to improve your image, you lose the personal touch that makes something seem more human. Additionally, the internet is losing locations (websites) for people just to be them because everything is scrutinized. I agree with Rachel and the others in saying that facebook should be left for personal use to keep up with friends and family. Leave LinkedIn and the other websites for professional use.
Having a personal brand in this industry is incredibly important, and although this article wasn't written for theatre people I think it's still very applicable to what we do. This summer at my work we all sat down and talked about branding and about the importance of business cards, resumes and websites. My resume is still under construction, and my business card is nonexistent, but as things are now a person can look at my resume and my site and know that they're both mine, without having to read my name. We also discussed the importance of having a network, which means so much in the world of theatre, and just the importance of selling yourself. My boss was very good about introducing us to people who we could one day find ourselves working with/for, and I think that my personal brand, if I have one, has definitely grown into something more professional than it was a year ago. One of the most important things to me is that all of my stuff is purple, and even though it sounds stupid I think it's really important. At my interview my bosses couldn't find my resume so they were talking about it, and they referred to it as the purple resume. I think it's things like that that are super important.
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