Everything in life has an opportunity cost associated with it. By choosing one thing you are as a result unable to chose another — choose to spend one hundred dollars and you give up the ability to save one hundred dollars — choose to go to the movies and you can’t go to the beach at the same time. The choices you make about building your personal brand are no different.
Lost opportunity costs
Here are some of the lost opportunity costs you choose by not creating your personal brand.
- Your achievements will go largely unnoticed by those who can help you.
- You will not have a way to promote yourself effectively to superiors and decision makers.
Unsolicited opportunities will be unable to find you.- You will receive fewer opportunities to advance your career.
- It will take you longer to reach your self-defined goals.
- You will not have a way of differentiating yourself from the pack.
- Google will not index you and your page rankings will suffer and go unnoticed.
- You will have less credibility than those who do have a powerful personal brand.
- You will constantly be searching for the next opportunity instead of letting them find you.
- You will fall behind those who have personal branding savvy.
- You will not have a forum to share your expertise and advance your thought leadership.
- You will make less money than you could otherwise.
- The top ranking person for your name will own your search results.
- Others will shape your personal brand, despite whether it’s true or not.
- Promotions at work may go to less qualified candidates because you couldn’t show your unique value.
- You will have a smaller social network and social network safety net.
- You will meet less people and build fewer relationships.
Did any of those sound good to you? Of course not! Who would want to have any of the above happen to them? No one in their right mind. It simply doesn’t make sense to not begin building your personal brand right away. There are too many great opportunities to be had to wait any longer!
Go get started and as always, have a relaxing weekend!
Author:
Chad Levitt is the author of the New Sales Economy blog, which focuses on how Sales 2.0 & Social Media can help you connect, create more opportunities and increase your business. Chad is also the featured Sales 2.0 blogger at SalesGravy.com, the number one web portal for sales pros, the professional athletes of the business world. Make sure to connect with him on Twitter @chadalevitt.
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This was such a great list!! So true, I have had so many cool opportunities find me because of my blog! I love your blog! Thanks for a great post!
@Maria- So glad you enjoyed the post! Can you please share some of the cool opportunities that have come your way because of your blog?
Chad,
You have a convincing argument to create a personal brand. Any tips on specifically creating a brand in your workplace without being over the top? I think many young professionals in our generation want to make sure we’re recognized, but we don’t want to seem like we’re starving for the credit.
@Josh- Great question and thanks for commenting! My biggest tip is to just get started — the rest seems to take care of itself with time. What I mean is that as you promote your personal brand through your online social networks people will eventually notice your brand without you having to actually tell them — that’s the power of the web!
Go get started and don’t let fear hold you back!
Thank you for your comments. I have stumbleupon it and sent it out to a number of LinkedIn groups. I will be presenting at the ASTD 2009 conference in Washington DC on 6/2/09 on this very topic, The 16th Minute: Creating a personal brand. Great minds working together.
[...] dass es sinnvoll und vorausschauend ist, seine Marke im Internet aufzubauen und zu pflegen, sei dieser Artikel empfohlen. Er listet die Opportunitätskosten von Personal-Branding-Gegnern. Hier die wichtigsten [...]
Chad, I have never considered the fact that there is other side of not building personal branding. Thanks for this eye opening piece.
@Yinka- Your welcome — please share with your social network and keep reading!
[...] The costs of not branding – click here. [...]
Chad: Great post! I’m an executive recruiter and have been encouraging my candidates to work on establishing their personal brands via social media sites, blogs and blog postings, so they can stand out among their peers. This is a very detailed list of opportunities that could be missed by not establishing your brand and one that I will share with my candidates as well. Thanks for putting it together for us.