Is It Time To Strengthen Your Professional Brand?

Beverly Jones

Updated Mon, Feb 24, 2014 8:11 am
What's your brand at work? And why does it matter?
There's you, the essential person you are. 
And then there's your professional brand.
Originally a "brand" referred to a word or symbol indicating the owner or producer of a product. Ranchers used hot irons to brand cattle.  And back when soap was usually just called "soap," Pears Soap was named after the barber who invented a gentle cleaning bar.
As it's used today, the term "brand" isn't the same as a "brand name."  In a branding effort, marketers try to distinguish a product, highlighting how its attributes differ from those of competitors. But a "brand" is an even broader concept than that, because it encompasses not just the qualities of a product but also how customers perceive those qualities.
Your professional brand is a reflection not only of you and what you do, but also of others' assessment of your expertise, your work product and your character. Your brand can greatly impact your career opportunities and satisfaction. And yet it might be quite different from either the real you or the high achiever you strive to be when you are on the job.
In other words, even if you are a good person, and you work really hard, there's no guarantee you'll have a strong brand that differentiates you from the competition and brings you the career success you deserve.  So smart professionals manage their brands, using strategies like these:
Do research. When marketers want to pump up a product brand, they start by getting a handle on how the product is currently perceived.  They may conduct surveys or find other ways to collect customers' views.  If you want to gauge your brand, gather feedback from other people.  On the job, this might take the form of a "360 review" in which your bosses, employees and colleagues are quizzed by a third party about your performance.  A simple approach is for you to simply ask people who rely on your work for suggestions about how you might be even more helpful. Or you might find a way to have one of your work products evaluated by the people who use it. 
Others notice if you resist change, have a bad attitude, or put your workplace look together like you don't really care. If you feel like it's time for a bit of a makeover, look around for people who appear energetic, polished, positive and powerful.  And consider small steps that might help you acquire some of their gloss.
Shape your online presence. The way you show up in an online search has become vital to your professional reputation. If you want to set up a meeting or call, you must assume the person you're trying to reach will Google your name.  You can't get around this by doing nothing. Your employer, your university and maybe your competitors have mentioned you somewhere. And your absence from the blogosphere and other professional arenas may be regarded as saying a lot about you. So if you don't have a social media strategy, consider these starting with these basics:
  • Set up your LinkedIn profile. If you can't bear to share, you don't have to complete everything. You can project your brand to the world simply by typing in a few sentences in the summary section.
  • Curate. You can show what you know without creating original work.  If you choose to be a "curator," it's considered legit to collect and republish others' articles, photos and info-graphics on a site like (of course with full attribution).
Building your professional brand does not mean being fake or manipulative.  In fact it's the opposite. It means becoming better attuned to how your work impacts other people, and more adept at understanding and displaying your best self.
For a good description of how marketers help with branding read this post from
