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Abstract
Personal branding is a planned process in which people make efforts to market themselves. This process involves three phases. The first phase is to establish a brand identity, people have to differentiate themselves and stand out from a crowd while fitting expectations of a specific target market. The second phase is to develop the brand's positioning by developing an active communication of one's brand identity through managing behavior, communication and symbolism. The third phase is to evaluate a brand's image and that to fulfill personal and professional objectives, and thus, the practices of personal branding can help to compete in the crowded job market. Individuals involved in personal branding develop their human capital by investing in continuous learning; enhance their social capital through visibility and notoriety and access to financial success and economic profitability.
Keywords: Personal branding, human capital, marketing communication, personal and professional success.
1. Introduction
Personal branding is a new marketing concept related to the marketing strategies that a person adopts in order to promote his self in the market. The popularization of personal branding is generally attributed to the rising number of books on the subject, magazines, web sites, training programs, personal coaches, and specialized literature about how exactly to brand oneself for success in the business world (Montoya, 2002, McNally and Speak 2002, Arruda and Dixson, 2007).
Personal branding is an individualistic approach. The key premise is that people can be considered as brands, everyone has a personal brand and that regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business (Peters, 1997). Everyone has a chance to be a brand worthy of remark, that, personal branding if applied correctly can transform any person into a brand in any field (Rein and al, 2006).
Lair, Sulivan and Cheney (2005) defined personal branding by describing it as involving ".concepts of product development and promotion"..."used to market persons for entry into or transition within the labor market". Shepherd (2005) defined personal branding as a varied activities undertaken by individuals to make themselves known in the marketplace. Hughes (2007) simply equates people to goods or services and proposes that the current American Marketing Association definition of a brand is simply be extended to include people.
Since the late 1990s, personal branding has...