Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

Thinking, writing, business ideas … You’re only a stranger once.

March 14, 2006

Brand YOU–Capitalize on Your Strengths

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 7:54 pm

Know Your Product

Personal Branding logo

Your personal brand communicates your unique value in ways that others understand who you are. Developing a personal brand is a process that takes time and requires investment. Your brand develops as you develop self-awareness. You have to know your product to communicate its values–in this case. your personal strengths.

Identify Your Strengths

By the time we reach adulthood, most of us have a sense of our strengths and of our weaknesses. It’s hard to get through school and get a job without having some idea of what they might be.

But few of us actually take time to determine our most outstanding assets–our highest proficiencies, our core competencies. We often discount the things we’re best at because they come to us naturally. Thinking that everyone can what we can, we tend to undervalue our natural talents. Take a moment to ask yourself questions such as these to find your strengths.

Remember don’t overlook your great personality or that talent you have at organizing a project map in 30 seconds flat. Just because it’s a personal talent, doesn’t mean it has no value. The people that you work with rely on it–so count it as a strength. Not everyone can do what you can.

Capitalize on Your Strengths

photo of weight

To build the strongest brand, once you know your strengths, capitalize on them to make them stronger. Play to your strengths in what you do. Determine how each strength meets a specific need of the job market. Marketers call this naming features and benefits. People call this naming problems and solutions. The market has a problem or a need. I have the strength or skill set that meets that need. I’m the person for the job.

A written version of one of my skill feature and benefit statements might look something like this.

I have core competencies in teaching others to be detail-oriented champions of accuracy. That means that any work under the care of those I teach is assured to be error-free, saving the company the time, money, and embarrassment mistakes can cause.

Do yourself the favor of writing down your skills and strengths and naming the market need they meet. The act of writing out theses feature and benefit statements to define your personal brand or the brand of your business causes you to put your value into words–to internalize it, to make it your own.

Internalizing your strengths and how they meet needs in the workplace puts you in the best position to talk about your strengths when the opportunity arises naturally within the workplace.

Being about to talk freely and naturally about how your strengths meet the needs of others is a strength in and of itself–don’t forget to write that one down once you conquer it.

When you can do that, you will be fully capitalizing on your strengths. You’ll no longer need to verbalize your brand. You will have started living it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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7 Comments to “Brand YOU–Capitalize on Your Strengths”

  1. March 27th, 2006 at 11:06 pm
    Educational Technology and Life » Blog Archive » Building a Personal Brand-YOU said

    [...] Brand YOU-Capitalize on Your Strengths (Via Successful Blog.): “Your personal brand communicates your unique value in ways that others understand who you are. Developing a personal brand is a process that takes time and requires investment. Your brand develops as you develop self-awareness. You have to know your product to communicate its values–in this case. your personal strengths.” Liz goes on to expand on her tips for identifying and capitalizing on your strengths. [...]

  2. April 4th, 2006 at 10:17 am
    Successful Blog - Brand YOU–Handling Problems said

    [...] Related articles Brand YOU–Capitalize on Your Strengths Start in the Middle 3: Alligators and Anarchists Brand YOU–Making Your Weaknesses Irrelevant Brand YOU–You Are What They See Technorati Tags: big idea handling problems leadership personal branding personal image self awareness self promotion strengths and weaknesses [...]

  3. May 29th, 2007 at 9:54 am
    Business Education said

    If in business we called as SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunities and Threat.
    This is very fundamental before we jump into our business.
    If we know our strength we will have great confidence to sell our product.

    - Ruri

  4. May 29th, 2007 at 11:18 am
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Ruri!
    I know about SWOT analysis. Done with care and a heart involved it can be powerful. Done only on the surface and it’s, for me, useless.

    Stregths are our center, especially if we wire them together with our head and our heart. :)

  5. November 6th, 2007 at 4:35 am
    7 Steps to Being Recognized as an Expert - Liz Strauss at Successful Blog - Thinking, writing, business ideas . . . You\’re only a stranger once. said

    [...] Be the expert you are, not the expert someone else is. You are the only you the world has. That differentiates what you offer from the start. Know your strengths and play to them. [...]

  6. March 10th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
    How to Build a Yellow Ferrari Produce YOU Resume / Brochure - Liz Strauss at Successful Blog - Thinking, writing, business ideas … You’re only a stranger once. said

    [...] articles Building a Personal Brand YOU Brand YOU — Capitalize on Your Strengths Personal Branding: Strengths Assessment Tool Brand YOU –What’s the BIG [...]

  7. March 11th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
    Paisley said

    Great points. It does take time and effort to build a brand and as you said identifying and capitalizing on your strengths are key. There is a lot floating on the web on ways to do this. Your suggestions are refreshing; I have also found personavita.com to be helpful in the personal brand building arena as well.

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