Medical Reference Services Quarterly

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Personal Branding: Building Your Pathway to

Professional Success

Jodi L. Philbrick & Ana D. Cleveland

To cite this article: Jodi L. Philbrick & Ana D. Cleveland (2015) Personal Branding: Building Your
Pathway to Professional Success, Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 34:2, 181-189, DOI:
10.1080/02763869.2015.1019324

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Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 34(2):181189, 2015
Published with license by Taylor & Francis
ISSN: 0276-3869 print=1540-9597 online
DOI: 10.1080/02763869.2015.1019324

Personal Branding: Building Your Pathway

to Professional Success

JODI L. PHILBRICK and ANA D. CLEVELAND

College of Information, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, USA

Personal branding is an introspective process by which you define

yourself professionally, and it can serve as your pathway to
professional success. There are six steps to building your personal
brand: (1) taking an introspective look, (2) understanding the
brand that may already exist, (3) developing your personal brand
mantra, (4) crafting your physical footprint, (5) creating your
digital footprint, and (6) communicating your message. Your per-
sonal brand is a promise of value and performance, and it is neces-
sary to meet the expectations of your audience. Effective brand
management is a key component to maintaining a positive brand
reputation.

KEYWORDS Brand management, librarians, personal brand,

professional development

INTRODUCTION

The underlying question at the heart of personal branding is, What makes
you special? As Simons writes, in a tough job market, differentiating your-
self from others with skills and backgrounds similar to yours is a necessity.1
However, personal branding is a process by which you define yourself pro-
fessionally, and it should begin long before you start the job search. When
you engage in personal branding, you are developing your human capital
by investing in continuous learning and enhancing your social capital

# Jodi L. Philbrick and Ana D. Cleveland

Received: December 5, 2014; Revised: January 23, 2015; Accepted: January 24, 2015.
This article is based on a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Medical Library
Association in Chicago, May 19, 2014.
Address correspondence to Jodi L. Philbrick, College of Information, University of North
Texas, 1155 Union Circle #311068, Denton, TX 76203. E-mail: jodi.philbrick@unt.edu

181
182 J. L. Philbrick and A. D. Cleveland

through visibility and notoriety and access to financial success and financial
profitability.2
The concept of personal branding is gaining traction in the field of
library and information sciences. As one example, Bohyun Kim, associate
director for Library Applications and Knowledge Systems at the University
of Maryland Health Sciences and Human Services Library, organized a panel
on personal branding at the American Library Association Midwinter
Conference in 2011.
The personal branding process is deeply introspective, and it will take
time and effort to complete. Using the steps outlined in this article, you will
be able to jumpstart your personal brand.

WHAT IS PERSONAL BRANDING?

The history of branding starts in the 1800s in the western United States when
ranchers marked livestock with distinctive symbols to deter theft and allow
lost animals to be identified.3 According to Lair, Sullivan, and Cheney,
consumer branding began in the late nineteenth century, and its peak period
of time lasted from 19201970.4 Brand products were marketed as unique
goods able to provide unique advantages to consumers; it was the brand
name that distinguished a productfor example, SpicNSpanfrom other
household cleaners.4 Therefore, the personal branding movement is a natu-
ral extension of consumer branding, creating a self-package of what is
unique about you.
The term personal branding was popularized by Tom Peters in his 1997
article The Brand Called You; however, as Khedher mentions, some
authors have debated that the term was indirectly introduced by Erving
Gofman in his 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.2 Over
the past 40 years, there have been three changes in society that have led
to the growth of the concept of personal branding.5 The first change
occurred in the 1970s when there were massive layoffs in some of the larger
corporations in the United States. These layoffs demonstrated that individuals
could no longer depend on employers to be guarantors of life-long
employment and personal economic stability.5 The second change was
societys new-found idea that work could be a source of personal satisfaction
and meaning. Not surprisingly, the third and final change has to do with tech-
nology and the ability to communicate using a variety of online tools to share
our personal thoughts.
Many definitions of personal branding exist, but there is one common
themeperception. According to Rampersad, self-esteem is about how
you perceive yourself and personal branding is about how others perceive
you.6 Everyone has a personal brand, whether they know it or not, because
it is how they are viewed by others. The most important thing is that you
 Personal Branding 183

should be the one that crafts the perception that others have of you by
managing your personal brand strategically, consistently, and effectively.6
A personal brand can be defined as the combination of personal attributes,
values, drivers, strengths, and passions you draw from that differentiates your
unique promise of value from your peers, and helps those assessing you to
determine if they should hire you or do business with you.7 More simply, a
personal brand identifies, clarifies, and communicates who you are to the
world around you, whether it is a business environment, an academic field,
or an entrepreneurial setting.8 Not only does personal branding relate to
perception, but it also indicates the value you can contribute to whatever
organization hires you.
Personal branding is not synonymous to marketing, self-promotion, and
image, as a personal branding joins together what is most deeply real and
compelling about ourselves with our definitive accomplishments to date in
an effective strategy for professional fulfillment and success.4

BUILDING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND

There are six steps involved in building your personal brand: (1) taking an
introspective look, (2) understanding the brand that may already exist, (3)
developing your personal brand mantra, (4) crafting your physical footprint,
(5) creating your digital footprint, and (6) communicating your message.

Introspective Look
The first step in building your personal brand is to take an introspective look
at yourself by asking the following questions:

. What are my values?

. How and where do I find meaning in life?
. What am I passionate about?
. What distinguishes me from others in and out of my field?
. In what environments do I function most effectively?5

You should also conduct a Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats

(SWOT) analysis as you go through this process. Identifying your strengths
and weaknesses will help you to understand your value to your potential
employer, and determining opportunities and threats will help you to see
what you are up against in your career path.7 As an example, library and
information sciences graduate students enrolled in the core courses taught
at the University of North Texas College of Information have an assignment
focused on personal branding where they are required to identify their own
184 J. L. Philbrick and A. D. Cleveland

strengths and weaknesses and create a plan to address areas needing

improvement.

Existing Brand
The second step to building your personal brand is to understand that there
may already be a brand that exists. The existing brand can be seen from two
points of view: (1) your own existing brand that you may or may not already
know about and (2) the brand of your profession. It is a good idea to conduct
a brand audit where you examine at your current web presence to see what
message you are conveying. Be sure to look at your personal accounts and
profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and professional association
websites as well as your own personal website.9 Also, you need to Google
yourself and set up alerts for your name on a regular basis.
Librarians have been concerned with their image since 1949 as indicated
in the professional literature, and in the late 1980s, the Special Libraries
Association established a Presidential Inter-Association Task Force for the
Enhancement of the Image of the Librarian=Information Professional.10 Since
librarianship has its own brand, you have to see how you can customize or
personalize this existing brand to align with your personal brand. As Gall
writes, librarians in general already have a brand . . . librarians are the
people who know where the information is.11 As an example, Sally Gore
has merged the brand of health sciences librarianship with her own personal
brand of being an informationist through her various positions at the
University of Massachusetts Medical School. In her blog, A Librarian by
any Other Name <http://librarianhats.net/>, she has described how she
has used her information skills in her transitions from being the Head of
Research and Scholarly Communications to Informationist and Research
Librarian to her current position outside of the library as Research Evaluation
Analyst at the Center for Clinical and Translational Science.

Personal Brand Mantra

The third step to building your personal brand is developing a personal
brand mantra. The personal brand mantra is a quick, simple, and memor-
able statement describing who you are and what you have to offer.12 In
order to develop your personal brand mantra, you need to determine your
emotional appeal, description, and function and put them all together. Your
emotional appeal relates to your personality, and you need to consider the
following questions: How do I make people feel? and What words would
others use to describe me?12 You can ask trusted mentors, colleagues,
friends, and family to help you answer these questions. Your description is
the industry in which you work or a tangible skill that you have, and you
need to consider the following questions: What field or industry am I in
 Personal Branding 185

(or do I want to be in)? and What are the words that I would use to describe
my work?12 Your function is what exactly that you do, and you need to
consider the following questions: What service do I have to offer people?
and What do I do that makes me stand out from everyone else?12 Once you
have considered all these questions, you need to combine the three aspects
together to formulate your mantra. Your personal brand mantra will serve as
the foundation upon which you craft your physical footprint, create your
digital footprint, and communicate your message. As an example, the
presidents of the Medical Library Association bring their own personal brand
mantra to the membership throughout their tenure in this position.

Physical Footprint
The fourth step to building your personal brand is crafting your physical
footprint, which includes your appearance and workspace. Although per-
sonal branding is more than just about your appearance, you do need to con-
sider this aspect of your brand. As Simons writes, you can be sure that
potential employers, work colleagues, and anyone you have to meet in the
course of your professional life does notice what you wear and how you
present yourself overall.1 Looking polished and professional will enhance
your personal brand. Another aspect to consider is having a professional
photograph of yourself, but this will need to be updated as your look
changes.
Another way to communicate your personal brand is by decorating your
workspace. This is a strategy that might be appealing to more introverted
individuals. A professor at the University of North Texas College of
Information is a youth services librarianship expert, and her office features
comic book posters, a gumball machine, and announcements about her con-
ference presentations. For anyone walking by her workspace, it is obvious
that she is interested in library services for children and young adults. As
health sciences librarians, you could display Medical Library Association pos-
ters and memorabilia representing health sciences librarianship and health
informatics. You can also communicate your brand through your workspace
by displaying your diplomas and=or awards, which communicates your
expertise in a field. The physical footprint may seem like a superficial
method for building your personal brand, but its importance cannot be
overlooked.

Digital Footprint
The fifth and most important step to building your personal brand is creating
your digital footprint. One of the first things you should do when creating
your digital footprint is to come up with your brand name to use throughout
186 J. L. Philbrick and A. D. Cleveland

social media. If you have a common name, you may consider using your
middle initial or middle name to distinguish yourself. Thomas recommends
that your brand name is easy to read and spell phonetically and, ideally, isnt
too long, and she suggests that you should Google it and search it on major
social networks to make sure that it is original.13 Websites, such as namechk
<http://namechk.com> and knowem <http://knowem.com>, can help you
determine name availability throughout social media. Michelle Kraft, Senior
Medical Librarian at the Cleveland Clinic Alumni Library, is an example of
someone who has a creative brand nameThe Krafty Librarianfor her
blog <http://www.kraftylibrarian.com/>. Additionally, she has @krafty as
her username for Twitter. This is a clever way to embed her last name into
her social media brand presence.
Once you have established your brand name, it is time to start creating
your digital footprint online, and you need to decide which channels you are
going to use to share your message. Using social media is a low-cost solution
for creating your personal brand, and you can communicate with and receive
feedback from a broad audience. One of the drawbacks to having a presence
in the online environment is that there is a lack of information control, and by
having your information available, you can be at risk in terms of misdirected
and insufficient branding.14 Eke provides a listing of activities that librarians
can engage in to create their digital footprint:

. Join academic communities online (such as LinkedIn);

. Upload personal documents and videos online;
. Create websites and blogs with your name as domain name;
. Add content to wikis and other online encyclopedias;
. Participate in online discussion forums;
. Cross-link and post your links;
. Create Google Alerts;
. Comment on other peoples blogs and pages.15

Make sure that your professional profile on LinkedIn includes a recent

photograph, accurate professional and academic history, and a crisp view of
your past accomplishments, strengths, and career aspirations.16 Of course,
other social media platforms can be used in addition to LinkedIn, such as
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest. Do not be afraid to
experiment with new social media platforms as they are introduced.
Not only do you have to create your digital footprint, but you also have
to invest time in maintaining your online presence. With social media, its all
about the content, frequency and consistency of interaction.17 You will need
to devote time to writing and sharing content on a frequent basis through
social media. The main point of having a digital footprint is to make yourself
visible to your colleagues and peers throughout the world and create a
following.
 Personal Branding 187

As mentioned previously, you should conduct periodical brand audits

to monitor your digital footprint. You will need to be conscientious
about the nature of your social media presence and decide how much
personal information that you want to share along with your professional
message.

Communicating Your Message

The sixth and final step to building your personal brand is communicating
your message, and as Bence writes, good, strategic personal branding starts
with your audiencethe people you most want to impact your career.18 It is
important to know who you are targeting when you are creating your
personal brand, so you can design your message appropriately. Building
an emotional connection is one of the inside secrets of branding in the busi-
ness world. Think about the feeling you get when you smell your favorite
brand of laundry detergent. You need to think of ways that you can connect
emotionally with your audience through your personal brand.
You need to keep the three Cs in mind with your brand communication:
clarity, consistency, and constancy. You need to be clear and authentic about
your personal brand, consistent across multiple communication channels, and
always visible to your target audience.8 Nicole (Nikki) Snyder Dettmar, evalu-
ation librarian at the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Outreach
Evaluation Resource Center, is an example of someone who has a strong
and consistent digital footprint through her blog <http://eagledawg.net/>
as well as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. She serves as the
#medlibs chat lead moderator under her brand name of @eagledawg, which
is a combination of her two alma maters University of North Texas (eagle)
and University of Washington (dawg).
Your personal brand is often communicated through your cover letter,
resume, elevator speech, professional biography, presentations, publica-
tions, and as mentioned before, your digital footprint. According to Simons,
a cover letter should convey how your skills will help and enhance the
organization, and a resume should list your qualifications in depth to
back it up.1 The elevator speech is a way for you to share your personal
brand mantra in an oral fashion, and it is important to practice the delivery
of your brand message. A good exercise is to write a professional biogra-
phy that conveys your experience as well as your personal brand. If you
are not comfortable giving presentations, it would be worthwhile for you
to join a group, such as Toastmasters International, to improve your pres-
entation skills. Publications are another method by which individuals can
create their brand, as you can publish articles on a topic or area of interest.
This is another avenue by which introverts can communicate their personal
brand. Communicating your message, through the physical footprint, digital
footprint, or by other means, is key to the success of your personal brand.
188 J. L. Philbrick and A. D. Cleveland

BRAND REPUTATION

Once you have built your personal brand, you have the task of sustaining the
reputation of your brand. Remember that your personal brand is a promise of
value and performance, and you want to meet the expectations of your audi-
ence as they have bought your brand. Brand reputations can be positive or
negative and can change over time. Think about public figures who have
engaged in activities that have tarnished their brand reputation. Some of
these individuals have recovered from the negative brand reputation while
others have not. It can be challenging to change perception. Effective per-
sonal brand management will help you to avoid this possible pitfall. One
approach to managing your personal brand is to consciously, but subtly,
communicate your brand through five key everyday activities: actions,
reactions, look, sound, and thoughts.18

SUMMARY

Building your personal brand can serve as your pathway to professional suc-
cess. A personal brand helps you to summarize and concisely communicate
what makes you special to the professional world. Following the six steps
presented will assist you in creating your personal brand. Keep in mind that
personal brands are not static, and they will need to evolve with career
changes and trends in the field. Remember, achieving and maintaining your
personal brand is a journey, not a destination.19

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8. Arruda, William. Brand Communication: The Three Cs. Thunderbird

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Jodi L. Philbrick, PhD (jodi.philbrick@unt.edu) is a Lecturer, College of Infor-

mation, University of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle #311068, Denton, TX
76203. Ana D. Cleveland, PhD, AHIP, FLMA (ana.cleveland@unt.edu) is Sarah
Law Kennerly Endowed Professor, Regents Professor, and Director, Health
Informatics Program, College of Information, University of North Texas,
1155 Union Circle #311068, Denton, TX 76203.