When Tom Peters wrote his prophetic piece “The Brand Called You” for Fast Company nearly 20 years ago, he described a work environment that required each of us to think of ourselves as brands. He posited that competition in the world of work would require us to actively express our authentic and differentiated value so we can attract the attention of decision makers.
It took a long time for his predictions to match reality. (I know – I was there at the beginning of the personal branding revolution, which was really more of a turtle-paced evolution that took a decade to take hold!) But today, if you don’t know what you offer and deliver value that’s distinctive and compelling, your chances of reaching your goals and gaining fulfillment from your work are diminished.
So if, as Tom Peters predicted, you need to think of yourself as a brand and market yourself as a brand, expressing your brand to your target audience, you need the same branding tools an organization uses. One of those tools every successful company uses to share its message with the world is a website. It’s the place where you can showcase who you are, what you have to offer, what makes you unique and what value you can add to others.
For many of us, LinkedIn has played the de facto role as our website, and it has been an incredibly valuable resource for personal branding – and for building and nurturing a professional network. But for career-minded professionals, augmenting a LinkedIn profile with a truly customizable website that showcases your value is both differentiating and high-impact.
It’s not LinkedIn vs. a professional website. It’s LinkedIn plus a professional website. In fact, having a robust, accurate and compelling LinkedIn profile is the first step in the process of building your personal website.
First, completing your LinkedIn profile helps you get clear about your message, your story, your skills, and other essential components. It helps you clarify your message and think clearly about your target audience.
Second, it requires that you create high-quality branding content like your headshot, bio, and summary (learn how to write the perfect summary here) – all of which are equally important elements of your website.
And once your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date and accurately conveys your brand differentiation, it becomes the raw content for your personal website. And you need not re-create the wheel. There are a host of online personal branding platforms that allow you to import your LinkedIn content into a personal website. My favorite of these is called branded.me (disclosure, since writing this article, branded.me has become a business partner of my company, Reach Personal Branding).
The platform allows you to:
- Import content from your LinkedIn profile with a couple clicks and generate a beautiful website in a matter of seconds
- Augment your LinkedIn baseline content with other important personal branding communications
- Completely customize how you display the content by defining your personal brand identity system (colors, fonts, images) to create a truly one-of-a-kind, interactive billboard telling the world who you are and why they should care.
- Import images and other media to augment your message
- Be creative and design a beautiful visual representation of your brand without design restrictions or the need for technical skills
- Create your personal internet real estate with a domain of your choice
- Humanize the experience of someone finding you online
And best of all, it saves time and energy by importing your LinkedIn content and it doesn’t require a giant investment in designers and developers, or time.
Here’s a link to my branded.me site so you can see what it looks like.
Once you have your web site, you can:
- Add your web address to your business cards, thank you notes and other communications
- Provide a link to it from your emails and other online correspondence
- Include it as a link in your LinkedIn profile so visitors there can get a more branded, precise understanding of who you are and why they should care, as well as add it to other social media profiles.
There was a time when having a personal website was overkill. Today, it is becoming a more common expectation. And while websites are still somewhat of a differentiator, in the future, everyone will have a website. If you want to showcase your brand, and position yourself as an innovative leader (not a reluctant relic), it’s time to build your web site.
Learn about building your personal brand. Download my complete list of 50 eye-opening questions to ask yourself when uncovering your brand here.
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