F E AT U R E By Diana Chrouch
Diana Chrouch is a personal branding and marketing consultant and director of Chrouch Consulting. She has worked extensively with landscape professionals.
Standing out from the crowd In a digital age – with a wealth of information at our fingertips – it’s quick and easy to find out about colleagues, collaborators and clients. So how do you make sure your personal brand shines? Branding consultant Diana Chrouch offers some advice ...
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hether you are employed or self-employed; work in the residential, commercial, heritage or other sectors, the strength of your personal brand is an important element in supercharging your career. A good personal brand is a valuable asset that differentiates you in a construction industry where competition for top commissions for landscape architects can be keen. Misunderstandings by key stakeholders about the pivotal role of landscape architects – even by other professionals in the sector – can be an aggravating factor. A strong personal brand can also go a long way towards getting you the recognition you deserve. Not only does it promote the important role of landscape architects, but also showcases your own specific range of skills and achievements. As a consequence, you can benefit from 46
raising your profile and also paving a pathway to more opportunities and greater success.
Why should you care about your personal brand? Well, we all have a personal brand – whether we deliberately cultivate one or not. Think about it… We can now find out something about almost everyone through digital media, with just a couple of mouse clicks. So it makes sense to develop a good personal brand that you have some control over.
mystified by the purported need for personal branding. And they have frequently complained about being bamboozled by the range of jargon and definitions they have to wade through to explain personal branding. To address this, I have developed a user-friendly equation to condense and clarify the key elements of personal branding. There are two main elements of a personal brand – the individual’s image, and their reputation. In turn, these elements work together to give your personal brand its value. To put this all together simply:
What is personal branding? Personal branding is the practice of marketing yourself and your career as if it were a product, with its own identity, reputation and value. As an experienced personal branding consultant, I have worked with a range of professionals and business owners that have been
+ Image
= Reputation
Personal brand value
