The lack of innovation in the field of Personal Branding

The other day I had a short discussion with Alexia Leachman (@AlexiaL) at the UK based company Blossoming Brands.

There are a lot of posts and discussion about personal brands and personal branding on various blogs, but we both agreed that there is little innovation in the discussion and hence not very much of development. For my part I also find a lack of real development in the books about personal branding, even though they are interesting to read, I expect more from the foremost experts in the field.

So, what’s the purpose of this post? It is not about complaining, but rather inviting you and everyone else interested in Personal Brands and Personal Branding to discuss and identify what factors and questions should be addressed to take the field of personal branding to the next level.

My thoughts

I focus a lot more on the development of a genuine brand, than the actual branding/marketing of the brand. I would like to see more discussion about the importance of establishing the brand values and getting to know yourself. This is in the field of personal development and psychology rather than marketing, and is the foundation for a successful branding process in the next stage. As I expressed before, I think that Personal Branding as a concept get a lot of bad will and criticism due to not working enough with the person and his/hers values before the marketing process.

Lack of specific show cases is another area where I would like to see more development. Did you follow a specific program for developing you personal brand and later marketing it; did you have specific goals and strategies that you worked with and what was the obstacles and gains of the process. Maybe you have a success story of a client of yours.
Success stories and best practices should be shared more to show the ROI and development of the field.

We cannot stop here and say that Personal Branding is great, we have to keep developing the area to find new approaches.

My last comment today is that I think there is far to much focus on career branding and job search in the field of personal branding. The discussion should focus so much more on the person behind the brand than on the job market.

Please join the conversation, add a comment here, post your ideas at twitter and use the hashtag #PersonalBranding, or write your own blog post with your ideas.

– Ola Rynge (@rynge)

Ola Rynge is the CEO of The Rynge Group and author of the The Rynge Blog, which focuses on Personal Branding as a personal development tool and how it can be be used to create more opportunities for entrepreneurs.