Etiquette and Your Personal Brand

The other day I saw a great blog post entitled “Good Branding Requires Good Business Etiquette.”  I was intrigued because I discuss three keys to creating positive personal impact in my latest book, Straight Talk for Success: 1) build and nurture your unique personal brand; 2) dress for success; and 3) know and follow the basic rules of etiquette.

Christine Buskie, the author of the post, was explaining how courteous customer service is key to building a strong business brand.  I agree.  Read the post, she makes some great points.

I was first drawn to the post because in writing about business branding, Christine hit on two of the three elements of creating positive personal impact, one of the five keys to success that I have identified.

Your personal brand is really important when it comes to career and life success.  It’s how people think of you.  And, trust me on this, if you don’t go out of your way to present create the image you want, other people will create it for you.  And, you may not like what you get saddled with by other people.  That’s why you need to spend time not only defining your personal brand, but promoting it.

William Arruda, my friend and coauthor of Career Distinction suggests that you focus on the “Three C’s” – Clarity, Consistency and Constancy – when it comes to your personal brand.  In other words, your brand needs to be clear and easily understood.  You need to act in a manner that is consistent with your brand.  For example, if you want to brand yourself as reliable, you need to keep your commitments.  Finally, you need to constantly act in a manner that supports your brand.  For example, I’m the Common Sense Guy.  That’s one of the reasons I end every blog post with a sentence that begins, “The common sense point here is…”

On the other hand, as Christine points out in her blog post, you can ruin you brand by not being polite and following simple rules of etiquette.  It’s not hard to conduct yourself in a mannerly fashion.  When you do whatever it takes to make other people comfortable, you’ll be creating positive personal impact because you’ll become known as a polite person.  Being polite is the real key to proper etiquette.

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people create powerful personal impact.  Your personal brand, great business and personal etiquette, as well as dressing for success will help you create positive personal impact.  Work hard at managing your image and you will be rewarded.

That’s my take on business and personal branding, what’s yours?  Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  Also, if you know someone with a unique personal brand, please give him or her a shout out by telling us about him or her.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
FREE CAREER SUCCESS BOOKS FOR VISITORSDOWNLOAD

Speak Your Mind

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.