The Chicken Bucket Personal Brand Theory: What's Your Nugget?
In this race to define ourselves in an increasingly competitive and crowded space online, you need to be sure you're equipped with three brand elements.
You need to be able to express yourself in a nugget. What makes you remarkable, in 140 characters or less? Practice it.
Some people will never want more than a nugget (your business card, twitter account, etc.) - be prepared for and okay with that. The Cup in Boulder has put their Twitter handle at checkout (shown in the slideshow) - it's simple and free press - and it bridges the gap between offline and online experience. What is your company doing to bridge that gap? Can you do more?
2. Chicken Bucket
This is your Facebook page, your Flickr account, sites that allow you to express more of yourself than Twitter does.
Some people will want to eat a bucket of you. In the case of The Cup, I might encourage them to create a Facebook Fan Page. There's low time-commitment - you set up the page with a logo and you're running. Also, they could encourage customers to tag their latte art #thecupboulder on Flickr. Voila, another layer for the community.
3. Chicken Dinner
The entire feast.
This is your blog, your in-person self, your book if you have one, your own tv show. Whatever. In The Cup's case, this is easy. A coffee shop is nothing if not a community of offline folks getting together to connect and interact. In my case, it's where I do my coworking, so it's a work community, too.
Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You. - Tom Peters for Fast Company in The Brand Called You
What makes you remarkable?
It's a question you have to answer for yourself, ultimately. It's a question to always have on your mind. And it doesn't hurt to talk with friends to ascertain what makes you so. Talk with friends and listen to how they describe you. Listen with an ear for details - what's working will become clear if you can get over the ego that wants to cling to the positive attributes they mention. Listen and then write it down. These statements, when they come as tweets, I screenshot. When they come as emails, I put into a testimonials folder in Gmail. I can't stress it enough: you are remarkable. It may take work to discover and then get it down to a nugget, but you can.
Need help getting started? Read these posts on personal branding. Also, check out these folks on Twitter. They talk about, and give, good personal brand:
Mashable: Personal Branding 101
Who do you read/love on branding, personal or otherwise? Who do you find remarkable?
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Reader Comments (9)
Oof that hat is HILARIOUS. And you my dear are my favorite flavor of nugget.
I also wanted to say (this is going to come as no surprise to you) that I think Monica Danna (@cosmopolitician) is one of the most phenomenal and consistent personal branders I know. She gets it, and she gets it RIGHT.
Absolutely agreed & updated to reflect her bio. Thanks for the nudge, Mags!
Gwen, it has been incredible to be a part of this lecture series with you. Thanks for how you pour your heart into it, and for how much you want to help people learn and grow through it! Love you, girl!
This is a great post Gwen. And I watched some of the lecture series too - you are quite an inspiration! I love the chicken nugget analogy - I struggle with 2 things mainly - 1. trying to understand who is ordering what - do they want a nugget, the bucket or the whole dinner. And my nuggets come in different flavors - I have yet to create a unique flavor for myself I guess. 2. I think I sometimes try to serve chicken curry with the nugget dinner and that does not always blend very well with the rest of the feast. I think that is a classic branding problem - doing/thinking too many things and not finding a way to align them - thus preventing a coherent brand from emerging. I did that testimonials thing with my corporate jobs - I guess you just reminded me that it is an important thing to do even when we work for ourselves ;) Thanks!
meat meat meat. :-) chicken nuggets...like your brand...have to be simple and boneless. consumable in one bite. regurgutatable (oh yeah, i googled that one!). also, in true nuggest form, your personal brand is made up of lots of parts. but fits nicely into a saturated fat skin. ;-)
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