Do you have a solid brand? Or a tarnished one? What’s a brand and how do you brand yourself?

On October of 2012 I attended PRSSA National Conference in San Francisco.

I checked the sessions ongoing, and I thought listening to someone from the Happiest Place on Earth, a.k.a. Disney World, and address personal branding, would be a good call.

The first true and funny thing the speaker, Social Media Manager at Disney, Matt Prince,  said was that we’ve been branding ourselves our whole lives without even knowing.

First thought that came to my mind, “Heck yeah! Half way already done and I didn’t even make a single effort!”

I think 99% of the audience thought something similar: “Wow! Really? That’s awesome! I’m so cool.”

But I bet just a few seconds later, some thought, “OH-MY-GOD, I’ve been branding myself my whole life!?! Facebook photos? Raging Twitter updates? Depressing love Tweets? Photos my friends tagged me doing a keg stand or underage drinking?! Bars? Smoking? Oh my God! I need to clean up my Facebook stat! Where’s my iPhone?!?!! I need my iPhone!??!?”

Prince kicked off his session fantastically and caught our attention. He made us identify ourselves with what he said. – The underlying message of his speech: tell a memorable story.- Now I will always remember his session because he made an impact on us, his audience. And that’s what we should always do if we want people to remember our brand.

First off, what is branding?  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines branding as “the promoting of a product or service by identifying it with a particular brand.” Yeah, that sounds great but what’s a brand?

A BRAND is a name, term, sign, symbol, design or any other feature that allows consumers to identify the goods and services of a business and to differentiate them from those of competitors. Probably the first words or images that come to your mind when I say the word “brand”, is the Nike “swoosh”, the M of McDonalds, Starbucks logo, the like logo of Facebook, Twitter, the apple for Apple Inc., and if you are a car-person, any of the car brands or makes.

But how does a simple eaten apple shape in silver color have such a high value, make you immediately identify it with the Apple products, the mac computers, and iPhones? Apple’s BRAND MARK is the eaten apple that you think of. The eaten apple doodle is not what makes the computer worth $ 2ooo , instead of $900. The computer is probably just a bit more expensive than a Toshiba, but the fact that it’s an iMac, an Apple product, is what makes the computer twice as expensive. Why? Because of Apple’s reputation and prestige. When you think of Apple or the eaten apple, you think of good quality, you think of a product that is hard to break, that is technological, useful and trendy, expensive and prestigious, and many other adjectives, hopefully for the company, positive ones.

The positive image that a brand carries drives consumers to prefer buying that product instead of one which may have the same functions and capabilities. Why not buy a Toppler running shoe that is plain white and people won’t check it out, when you can buy a Nike pair of shoes, where people will see the “swoosh” and will think, “oh nice shoes.” This may sound to some a bit “rich-person” thoughts, but it actually affects everyone, from the rich to the poor. Because even if you have the Toppler shoe because you can’t afford to buy a more expensive pair of shoes, you will still have that thought that you could have that Nike pair of shoes instead of the plain old white ones.

Good branding lets consumers recognize a product instantly, prefer a product over another competitor’s and in the best of cases, creates a relationship with its customers, building a brand loyalty with them. This means that people will buy products or services made by that company, over and over again.

Now, what does the Nike “swoosh” or the Apple eaten apple have to do with you?

As I said, brand can be a product, a service or even a person. And that’s where you come in. There is a high chance you want to get, keep or change a job right now. To get a new or different job, you need to get hired. To get hired, the HR person must believe you are a good fit and will benefit the company, that you will be a better contributor to the company than the 200 other applicants he has interviewed in the month. How do you get hired? You show the HR person what you best do. Why you are important, why you are better than the rest. There, you are selling yourself.

You are showing your strengths, turn your weaknesses into opportunities and show you are a good investment for the company. Right there, you are selling your brand. If you have a bad brand image, let’s say, you have a social media account full of spelling mistakes, you Tweet inappropriate content, you have your face all pierced and you arrive to the interview at the  corporate offices of IBM or Microsoft with ragged clothes or a stained shirt, chances are you won’t get that callback you were looking forward too. With just those tiny details, you’ve just ruined your brand. And what if that person also knows someone in Apple, and when you go to apply there, the Microsoft HR person recognizes you and instead of recommending you, he tells his friend not to even call you? You just ruined a remotely possible job before even getting to the office, and without even doing anything! Once again, you ruined your brand.

The same bad branding that a company may develop because of bad choices or inadequate management of a crisis, like the so quoted and case studied BP spill, can also occur to you. To prevent that from happening, you have to be smart and think ahead. Think twice before you post a Facebook update about how drunk you are or how rough the weekend was.

Prince in the session said that companies are becoming more like individuals and individuals are becoming more like companies. We are our own CEO, CMP, Publicists and clients.

“As a public relations practitioner, the biggest and most important client in your life is you,” Prince said. And that is an absolute truth.

Prince said personal brand is the definition of you defined by others.

Your brand is not what you do, but what people think you do. – Matt Prince

According to Prince, there are 5 components that make up one’s personal brand:

1) Name

What does your name evoke?

2) Image

What do people think when they see your photo?

3) Online ID

Type your name in Google. Make sure what appears in the results is you and is what you want people to know you for.

If you have a name that happens to coincide with the name of a serial killer, a bank robber or a stripper, invent a new name for your brand.

4) Reputation

One’s image and name are gone when we leave the room. Reputation is what you leave behind.

5) Network

It’s not only online, it’s also offline! Network on social media AND face to face. Network with your peers, your teachers, your classmates, your coworkers, everyone around you. Engage in meaningful conversations.

So, now that you know what makes up your brand, you can asses whether you have ruined your brand in any of these areas, or actually have done a really good job with it!

If you think you have something that may negatively impact your brand, find it and fix it. How? How do you fix something you poster  5 years ago? One word: Reppler.

You need to get rid of a post made on a social media? Reppler is a tool to fix it and manage your online reputation across social networks.

Now, if you are associated with a negative event that occurred way back, before Facebook was created, then you still need to track it down and make amends. How? One word: re-brand.

Prince gave his audience 10 secrets of personal branding which you can read here.