Personal brands
There are many components involved in marketing yourself into a brand. They contain a variety of elements that will determine the success of how the market will adopt "you" You don't need to change yourself into a different person, but you can position or reposition yourself to influence the way you are perceived.

I was speaking with Adrian Grenier, the star of "Entourage" and producer of "Teenage Paparazzo," about personal branding, and he had some interesting thoughts: "What the internet is doing and what social media is doing is actually leveling the playing field, so that celebrities and the industry that exploits celebrities... are no longer controlled by a very few number of people. There's not a monopoly anymore on who or what you see."

Times have evolved to the point where we can create our own brand because of all the social media outlets available. The average person has greater power than ever before. Are we creating personal brands or are we trying to become a celebrity?

Grenier and I agree on the responsibility that comes with creating a personal brand or a celebrity: "If you have that power, now it is up to you to really decide what kind of stories you want to disseminate. What kind of celebrity (or brand) do you want to be? What do you want to be known for? And then there's certain terms of personal responsibility that we all have to choose to tell the stories that are inspiring and uplifting and have value to each other, not just to your own personal gain."

To get started on your personal brand, lets begin with a look at the first component, which is your brand definition (i.e. how to understand and identify your personal brand).

Your personal brand attributes
Marketers know that the art of positioning a brand involves designing an image and or an offer to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of a specific target market. Great positioning doesn't appeal to everyone -- rather, it appeals more intensely to fewer people, but the right people -- the main people you are targeting. To begin with, it is paramount to perform a self assessment of principles, values, strengths, weaknesses, ethics, and eccentricities that will establish who you are in the eyes of others.

Once you have a clear understanding of yourself, you are then ready to start looking at how to take "you" to market. The same way an agency would look at developing a market strategy for a client, you must do for yourself as a brand. Performing an investigation on your peers, competitors, and industry icons will help you further define your strategy and build a story that will resonate and distinguish you as different and unique. Next, ask yourself the big questions:

• Where do I want to be in the next five years?
• Why should people do business with/hire/like me?
• Who are my customers?

Finally, you should be asking yourself what competitive difference you bring to the market. Whether it is called a unique value proposition, or a promise of relevant differentiated benefits, it is very important that you are able to articulate your value in a clear and concise manor. You may find yourself coming up with a positioning statement that looks something like this:

To (my clients who are overburdened), I am a (thought leader) who is always delivering value through (innovation and creativity).

Once you have created this statement, it is imperative that the promise or proposition be delivered consistently at each point of customer contact, time after time.