We very often overlook that we are the brand buy into, and proceed to market a company. Brick, mortar and a name don't appeal a lot of the people I've met.
Chris Brogan in his book: Personal Branding for the Business Professional which you can download here, outlines a few strategies of positioning yourself as an experience. If you have valuable content, like he does, then you already have one foot in the door and become a point of reference.
He also has some useful online tools to track feedback which a bootstrapper might find useful.
Suddenly offering an experience has been made easy packaged into 2 hours of interactive reading.
Bricks and mortar will still have a market though.
Very interesting book - thanks for putting me onto it.
ReplyDeletePersonal branding has always been an interest to me. I believe it goes above and beyond the "personal" though - with so many brand touch points companies are fast realising that the strength of their staffs personal brands is of vital importance.
I'm not sure if you have played with our tool (BrandsEye.com) but its all about managing ones brand online - be it personal (R7 a month) or top end corporate (~R5000 pm). I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Tim