I just picked up a copy of the 20th Anniversary Issue of Small Business Opportunities magazine at our local Pathmark store, and came across this article by Dan Schawbel (of PersonalBrandingBlog), “Brand Yourself Now! Uncover a new world of business potential with personal branding.”

In the article, Schawbel says “today there is such a high volume of competition, and transactions are created directly between people, where credibility is at stake.”

Schawbel defines Personal Brand as an individual’s “total perceived value”, relative to competitors, as viewed by their target audience.

He enumerates the four steps of personal branding:

• Discovering your brand — seek your inborn abilities and understand yourself as a business person.
• Build a new age press release — or Press Release 2.0, which utilizes user-driven technologies such as blogs, RSS feeds, wikis and podcasts. Use these to brand yourself with your core message.
• Brand creation — a “tangible piece of your identity” such as a website or blog.
• Maintenance - as your business grows, you gain new skills and experience, so you must update your “collateral and core message.”

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