From Function to Feeling in Personal Branding

Posted on 3. December 2009 by Dan Schawbel

There can be major emphasis placed on the importance of function when relating to personal branding. “Send me your resume,” the manager will say, “I want to know more about your experience.” Function can be defined as your ability to accomplish a task. This could also be called your “technical” skills.

I wanted to shift your focus from the technical aspects of personal branding to more of the emotional processes. Many individuals focus solely on how much experience they have instead of the power of the emotional process.

Learn the functionality

Learning the functionality of a certain tools (like Twitter or a Blog) is the first step towards success. You need to be able to show your abilities and technical prowess. What is even more important? Now… where should you be spending the majority of your hard-earned knowledge and time? You should be focusing on feeling. How are you going to make social media a success towards your personal branding endeavors?

Personality. Emotion. Transparency. Be human.

When you are selling your expertise do people buy for functionality or feeling? They are buying into YOU as a business owner or marketer.

The important thing to remember when using social media as a personal branding tool… never focus too much on the functionality of a service… you will learn as you go…

Always focus on how you can recreate yourself, your personality, and your traits in the online environment.

Author:

Kyle writes a regular blog at KyleLacy.com and is a regular contributor to Smaller Indiana. His blog has been featured on Wall Street Journal’s website and Read Write Web’s daily blog journal. Recently, Kyle was voted as one of the top 150 social media blogs in the world (on two websites), and produces regular keynote speeches across the Midwest. He also just finished writing Twitter Marketing for Dummies by Wiley Publishing.