Building personal brand with Johnny Cash

Welcome. Johnny Cash zone.

Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.

Don’t you wish you had an intro like that? Simple, stern and elegant. As the text fades you can hear the baritone, smell the menace, and feel the swagger of that calling card.

That’s a brand . . . built with content, experience, reputation, and style.

Build your personal brand step-by-step so that you can deliver your message in as few words as possible.

• Your content cache details your professional passion. Your blog is your main thought leadership platform. Express yourself. Tell me in detail how you think, how you build, tell me of your successes, your failures. Analyze and critique the ideas of others. Be playful in tone, shift gears, be the angry God and vent in a thoughtful way. Be honest. Find a fresh way to describe what you love to read, talk and think about. Practice often delivering your message in long form.

• Your outposts are social media platforms that you maintain like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. You share great ideas and links here and maintain themes and ideas from your content cache. You engage others with a similar interest. You build them up and challenge them – this makes everyone better. You’re a good neighbor. You share your power tools. Practice often sharing your message and ideas in shorter form.

• Your elevator speech is the condensed version of your reputation, experience, and goals. Prepare a 90-second, 30-second and one-line version to share your brand. Don’t be a billboard. Create a fresh but serious sliver of what makes you unique in your category. If it’s not reTweetable, try again.

If you’ve developed your content cache and your outposts then this shortest delivery is backed by that same ringing baritone.

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