Skip to the content
Undercover RecruiterUndercover Recruiter
  • Employer Branding
  • Talent Acquisition
  • Workplace
  • Advertise
  • The Employer Brand Index
  • The Employer Branding Podcast
Categories
Workplace

4 Ways to Prevent Personal Brand Injury

  • Post author By Peter Sterlacci

Have you experienced personal brand injury? When you decide to embark on the personal branding process you are so energized to do as much as you can to be your brand. The process is motivating as you start to see the fruits of your labor and the results of your hard work.

However, along the way you may suffer from a setback – something that has perhaps caused a strain in your personal branding effort. In such cases, you need to avoid the temptation to push forward and risk personal brand injury.

Here are 4 areas you should not rush into when branding yourself. Take appropriate breaks and recover before risking personal brand injury.

1. Your Brand Colors

Do the colors you use reflect your brand attributes? For example if your brand is seen as “passionate”, “energetic”, and “active”, are you using RED? If others see you as “mysterious” and “spiritual” are you using PURPLE? Are your colors culturally appropriate for your target audience?

I recently noticed that 4 different sites to hire freelance professionals all use the color blue in their logos. This actually makes perfect sense as blue represents ‘authority,’ ‘integrity’, ‘trust’ and ‘loyalty’ – all the brand attributes you would want in a person you hire for a freelance project.

2. Your Brand Logo / Slogan

The heart of your visual personal brand is your logo and slogan.  Once you launch your logo and slogan they immediately become your brand identity.
Make sure you have invested the time in selecting the best logo, image/icon, and slogan to represent you.  Hire a professional to design a bunch of options, select a handful that you like, and then informally survey people in your target audience.  Always inquire as to why they prefer a particular logo or slogan over the other choices. Look for consistency in their feedback.

Do your options clearly articulate the brand message you want to express? If not, take a break, recover and start again before injuring your personal brand. Trying to revamp a published logo and slogan later on will prove to be a big nightmare!

3. Your Website or Blog

A great way to prevent personal brand injury to to make sure your brand has a strong core such as a website or blog. To develop this strong core you must be able to answer the following questions and develop your site/blog around these answers.

  • What are the goals for your site?
  • Who is your audience?
  • What are their needs?
  • What thought leadership content can you give to meet these needs?
  • Who are competitors and how will your site stand out?
  • What visual vocabulary will the site have to show your brand? (colors, style, logo, etc)

If you are not ready to invest in a website, or if you are not interested in blogging, then at least set up a ‘personal portal’ on About.me, Flavors.me, Pitch Engine, Profiled.com, or Vizify. These can function as your website. Just keep in mind that these portals also need to have a strong core that sends out the right visual message for your brand.

4. Your ‘About’ Page and Bio

Your about page is usually the first page on your website or blog that people will visit to learn about you and make that critical decision to connect and do business with you. It may be the only page they will use to decide if it is worth spending their time to either click on your other links, or “bounce” off your site. The same goes for your bio on a personal portal site. Take the time to create a branded bio that captures your authenticity and story. By uncovering and including your story, you can truly provide that emotional hook to draw people into your brand.

Do you have any other suggestions to prevent personal brand injury? Please share in the comments below.

Image: Shutterstock

Share this post:

LinkedIn Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Email
  • Tags about page, Brand Colors, logo, Personal Branding, Personal Portals, slogan

By Peter Sterlacci

Peter Sterlacci is known as “Japan’s personal branding pioneer" and is one of 15 Master level Certified Personal Branding Strategists in the world. His company, BeYB, is introducing a leading global personal branding methodology to on-the-move careerists in Japan. Follow Peter on Twitter @PeterSterlacci

View Archive →

← All You Need to Know About the Facebook Job Board → How to Improve at Online Sourcing

Recent Posts

  • How to Grow Awareness of Your Employer Brand
  • Creating an EVP with Design Thinking
  • 3 Common Misbeliefs About Video Interviews
  • How to Invest in Employer Branding

Places to Go

  • Employer Branding
  • Talent Acquisition
  • Workplace
  • Advertise
  • The Employer Brand Index
  • The Employer Branding Podcast

© 2021 Undercover Recruiter

Powered by WordPress

To the top ↑ Up ↑
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settings ACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
CookieTypeDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary011 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-non-necessary011 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Non Necessary".
csrftoken011 monthsThis cookie is associated with Django web development platform for python. Used to help protect the website against Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks
DSID11 hourTo note specific user identity. Contains hashed/encrypted unique ID.
viewed_cookie_policy011 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Non Necessary
CookieTypeDurationDescription
test_cookie011 monthsThis cookie is set by doubleclick.net. The purpose of the cookie is to determine if the users' browser supports cookies.
Analytics
CookieTypeDurationDescription
__gads02 yearsThis cookie is set by Google and stored under the name dounleclick.com. This cookie is used to track how many times users see a particular advert which helps in measuring the success of the campaign and calculate the revenue generated by the campaign. These cookies can only be read from the domain that it is set on so it will not track any data while browsing through another sites.
_ga02 yearsThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, camapign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assigns a randoly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gat_gtag_UA_25578561_101 minuteGoogle uses this cookie to distinguish users.
_gat_gtag_UA_5784146_3101 minuteGoogle Used to distinguish users.
_gid01 dayThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form.
GPS030 minutesThis cookie is set by Youtube and registers a unique ID for tracking users based on their geographical location
Advertisement
CookieTypeDurationDescription
bsc0The cookies is set by ownerIQ for the purpose of providing relevant advertisement
IDE12 yearsUsed by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile.
mc01 yearThis cookie is associated with Quantserve to track anonymously how a user interact with the website.
NID15 monthsThis cookie is used to a profile based on user's interest and display personalized ads to the users.
pxrc01 monthThe purpose of the cookie is to identify a visitor to serve relevant advertisement.
rlas301 yearThe cookie is set by rlcdn.com. The cookie is used to serve relevant ads to the visitor as well as limit the time the visitor sees an and also measure the effectiveness of the campaign.
uid01 yearThis cookie is used to measure the number and behavior of the visitors to the website anonymously. The data includes the number of visits, average duration of the visit on the website, pages visited, etc. for the purpose of better understanding user preferences for targeted advertisments.
uuid02 monthsTo optimize ad relevance by collecting visitor data from multiple websites such as what pages have been loaded.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE15 monthsThis cookie is set by Youtube. Used to track the information of the embedded YouTube videos on a website.
Performance
CookieTypeDurationDescription
__utma02 yearsThis cookie is set by Google Analytics and is used to distinguish users and sessions. The cookie is created when the JavaScript library executes and there are no existing __utma cookies. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics.
__utmb030 minutesThe cookie is set by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to determine new sessions/visits. The cookie is created when the JavaScript library executes and there are no existing __utma cookies. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics.
__utmc0The cookie is set by Google Analytics and is deleted when the user closes the browser. The cookie is not used by ga.js. The cookie is used to enable interoperability with urchin.js which is an older version of Google analytics and used in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine new sessions/visits.
__utmt010 minutesThe cookie is set by Google Analytics and is used to throttle the request rate.
__utmz05 monthsThis cookie is set by Google analytics and is used to store the traffic source or campaign through which the visitor reached your site.
_gat01 minuteThis cookies is installed by Google Universal Analytics to throttle the request rate to limit the colllection of data on high traffic sites.
YSC1This cookies is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos.
Uncategorized
CookieTypeDurationDescription
_csrf0
_uv_id02 years
ab01 year
AWSALB01 week
AWSALBCORS01 week
b30msc030 minutes
btc010 years
CMID01 year
CMPRO02 months
CMPS02 months
CMST01 day
cref01 year
d02 months
datahero.sid1
i01 year
id01 year
KADUSERCOOKIE02 months
KTPCACOOKIE01 day
language0
mc_session_ids[default]15 minutes
mc_session_ids[multi][0]05 minutes
mc_session_ids[multi][1]05 minutes
mc_session_ids[multi][2]05 minutes
mc_session_ids[multi][3]05 minutes
mc_session_ids[multi][4]05 minutes
mdata01 year
na_rn04 weeks
na_sc_e04 weeks
na_sr04 weeks
na_srp01 minute
na_tc01 year
ov01 year
S11 hour
sc_anonymous_id09 years
sp_landing01 day
sp_t01 month
u01 year
UIDR01 yearThis cookie is set bu scorecardresearch.com. The cookie is used to tracks the users activity across the internet on the browser such as visit timestamp, IP address, and most recently visited webpages. and may the data send to 3rd party for analysis and reporting to help their clients better understand user preferences.
vuid02 years
Functional
CookieTypeDurationDescription
bcookie02 yearsThis cookie is set by linkedIn. The purpose of the cookie is to enable LinkedIn functionalities on the page.
mid09 yearsThe cookie is set by Instagram. The cookie is used to distinguish users and to show relevant content, for better user experience and security.
na_id01 yearThis cookie is set by Addthis.com to enable sharing of links on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter
ouid01 yearThe cookie is set by Addthis which enables the content of the website to be shared across different networking and social sharing websites.
Preferences
CookieTypeDurationDescription
lang0This cookie is used to store the language preferences of a user to serve up content in that stored language the next time user visit the website.
Save & Accept