Personal branding matters. Let’s see what Warren Buffet says on the topic.
Personal Branding is not a new thing.
Personal Branding is a buzzword these days. There are 656,000 posts on Instagram with the hashtag #personalbranding. There are 201,000 more with the hashtag #personalbrand. Sometimes buzz is only that, but sometimes buzz is about something real.
Personal branding is a real and important thing, and it’s not new. Don’t believe me? Ever heard the words “reputation” or “trust”? We’re just talking about it in different ways now.
But still, many of you might be thinking that personal branding is just something millennials talk about. I could point out that many millennials are very smart, successful people (wait, I just did!) but I ‘d rather hand the whole discussion off to someone who will never be confused with a millennial…
Warren Buffet on Why Personal Branding Matters
You could spend hours researching what Warren Buffet says about branding. Now Buffet isn’t a social media guy, but personal branding isn’t just social media. Again, it’s reputation and trust. Social media just happens to be one of the tools that can help you build a personal brand.
So let’s now look at four articles featuring Warren Buffet talking about personal branding.
Reputation
In this Inc article, we immediately get into Buffet’s thoughts on reputation. He says you are a business of one whether you are a sole proprietor or work in a large organization. Taking this into account, you realize quickly your reputation is everything. Looking after your reputation becomes the way you take your business or career to the next level.
Lead by Example
Next, he discusses the asset that is your personal brand and how it can help your business. This article clues the reader into the point that a personal brand is not a logo or tagline or elevator speech; your personal brand is “a strategically crafted message that communicates consistency through multiple channels. This includes both online and offline presences, such as speeches, publications, networks, social media, testimonials authenticating their positive contributions.”
Consistency
In this Huffington Post article, he talks more about product branding, but in a way that relates to personal branding. It’s about consistency. Your product, your service needs to achieve what you said it would. It needs to match your message. That’s how you build trust. That’s how you build your reputation. Ultimately, it’s how to keep your end-user happy.
Trust
This YouTube video gets into Berkshire Hathaway’s entry into real estate. Buffet, of course, approaches real estate from a branding angle. A real estate agent who works for Berkshire Hathaway is trusted because Berkshire Hathaway is trusted. The topic here is a company brand, but just like a personal brand it was built on years of a consistent message and it matters because it is trusted. Of course, it’s up to the individual agent to create a personal brand to help their company and their career now and going forward.
Brand matters. Personal Branding is for real. Just ask Warren Buffet.
If you want to refine your content marketing strategy, we can help you!
Personal branding matters. And podcasting is one way to create that brand. So here’s our podcast.
Image of Warren Buffet was taken by Stuart Isett under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.