Improving Your Brand from NERD Women in Technology Event

At the Women in Technology event at NERD last week, I sat in on the improving your brand sessions and took some notes. For those that attended and for those that wish they could have attended…

As Presented by Alesia Latson and Susan Hodgkinson

Your Brand… If you do not manage it… it will surely manage you

You are not your brand… your brand is the way you live in the hearts and minds of others

Brand: The opinion-the social evaluation–of the group of entities toward a person, a group of people or an organization on a certain criteria

What is Trust… Trust is an assessment that others make about how you will act in the future with something that they care about. Can they count on you to deliver consistently

How does your brand intention manifest itself in how other people see you? Objective is to create alignment between what you want your brand to be and what others think of your brand.

Direct personal experience trumps all external or indirect exposure and perceptions

How do you know who you are at any given time? What context we are in makes a difference.

Assignment: four words that you would use to describe me. Four words that I would think you would use to describe me …

wife, parents, siblings, coworkers, friends, etc.

1) Brand Persona – is the emotional connection and reaction others have with and to you as a result of your personal energy and style. It is the market places emotional response to you as a person. Strong brands are managed . outcomes, not an accident. Successful leaders take responsibility for ensuring they create and maintain a healthy, productive working relationships with others. It’s your passion. What reaction does your name elicit? Strong brands are not happy accidents. They are managed outcomes. You have much control over how people experience you. Brand persona is your captain. It guides you.

2) Brand Product – experience, intellectual capital and potential, and results you’ve delivered. intellect, smarts you bring and intelligence in your space. Technical and functional skills, leadership abilities. The marketplace has a short memory for accomplishments but a long one for failures

the only two things in life you can produce. Results or Reason for the result…(or lack of)

If you do have a failure, take responsibility and move on

The glass wall: make the shift

3) Brand Packaging is the wrapping you place around your product (you)… it’s the visual manifestation of your brand:

1. Personal appearance, team, reports, workspace, email, voicemail, time management
2. The goal is to ensure that your brand packaging reinforces and enhances your brand: if it distracts, it detracts.
3. Top 4 packaging items to be aware of … breath, body odor (scent), smile (something in your teeth), Nose (something there that should not be… it is important to have package spotters in your life.

4) Brand Promotion: a terrible thing happens when there’s no promotion… nothing P.T. Barnum. Brand promotion is the strategic and proactive management of your reputation. Who needs to know about you, your team, and your work. What it is that you choose for them to know. What you know is not enough. Much more important is who knows you know it.

1. Three types of promotion: Direct, Via Key Influencers, Social Media
2. Sponsors – who will put your interest in front of others?
3. If your mouth is moving, you are promoting something… what is it?
4. Focus on the exchange of valuable business information
   1. Ideas, intelligence, connections, best practices, efforts and breakthroughs

Brand promotion at it’s core is very subtle

5) Brand Permission is believing you have just as much to offer, if not more, as anyone else.

If you don’t give yourself permission to:

1. Come play, not wait to be invited
2. Grant yourself legitimacy
3. Want to be the best
4. Be accountable for results

Who else will?

Do you Consider yourself a member or a guest

community, Dan Stolts.fix