Brand "Me" — or the Power of Self-Marketing

Has the following ever happened to you? One of your co-workers got the promotion you wanted, even though their professional credentials and achievements at work were not as good as yours. Unfair? Perhaps. But maybe it was simply because your colleague was better at “selling” their achievements than you.

And what is true for employees is even more so for the self-employed and for entrepreneurs – both small and large. At a time when we are flooded with information through the media and online, it is less important than ever before to simply be good at something.

Some people believe it is enough to be “good” at something because quality will eventually prevail on its own. That is naive. If that were the case, companies such as Mercedes or Apple could have stopped their advertising and PR campaigns decades ago.

Even people we don’t normally associate with self-marketing owe much of their fame to their ability to build their personal brand, even those who claim that fame is a nuisance to them.