Imagine treating your personal brand as a project, with clear objectives, milestones, and deliverables. As a project manager, you'd strategize, plan, and execute. Let's delve into how this mindset can revolutionize your personal branding journey.
Summary
Everything you do that’s visible to other people in some way will factor into your personal brand
- It’s important to ensure you’re taking steps to convey the right messages
- Application of project management to personal branding efforts
- 6 key project management tenets you can follow to make it far more likely your personal branding effort will succeed
Identify Your Purpose
It’s essential to get clear on your purpose before starting, or your motivation is likely to flag quickly when time pressures emerge.
- An easy method of finding the purpose of your personal brand project is to ask several times, “Why am I doing this project?”
- Why do I want to be recognized for my expertise?
- The answer might be anything from providing for your family to getting your product or service into more people’s hands.
Lay out your resources and deliverables
Ensure that you have enough time to dedicate toward building and managing your personal brand
- Before starting the project, stop one or two activities that you are currently doing
- Give yourself sufficient resources – i.e., time – to commit to the new project
- Understand the deliverables you will be responsible for
Decide on your investment
How much will the project cost?
- For a corporate project, the cost might be measured in staff time, advertising spend, research and development, prototyping, software, etc. For a personal brand, the majority of your investment will be in the form of your time
- It’s important to recognize and proactively choose the investment you are committing to
Nail down your plan
How and when will the work be carried out?
- Break the work into smaller deliverables with deadlines to lessen stress
- Instill the habit of making and reviewing commitments each week to focus on what’s important
- Developing a regular schedule ensures that even if you get busy, the most important tasks won’t fall off your radar
- Establish a weekly status check on your personal branding project
Get clear on the benefits and how you’ll track them
How will you know you’ve been successful? What will have happened, and by when?
- Develop a hypothesis
- Identify small signs of progress to monitor
- Check progress against your goals and celebrate wins
Identify your stakeholders
Think expansively about the stakeholders that may be impacted by your brand.
- Your boss may feel threatened or worry that you’re plotting to leave your job if you suddenly start to get active on social media or take steps to raise your profile.
- Keep them apprised of your goals and enlist their support.
