A lot of people think branding is logos and business cards. But those are just channels and products that reflect your branding.
The oft-repeated quote when people talk about personal branding for small businesses comes, ironically, from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”
To put it another way: when people call you to mind, what impressions come along with that?
I often talk about foreground and background messages. Foreground messages are what you tell people explicitly, like an introduction/pitch at a networking event or points you make in a blog post. Background messages are impressions people pick up about you, often with little or no conscious awareness they’re doing it – for instance from the colour scheme and layout of your website, or your writing’s tone of voice.
So branding is the process of getting clearer about what messages you want to attach to yourself in people’s minds, then using tools and channels to implement that. [Read more…] about What is branding? It’s not ink and cardboard