Un-SQL Friday: Branding

Today is the first Un-SQL Friday, the brainchild of @MidnightDBA. The original post can be found here http://www.midnightdba.com/Jen/2010/11/un-sql-friday-001-branding/

While in Seattle for the PASS Summit I decided to get my freak on FreeCon with Brent Ozar. Part of the seminar had me take part in an exercise about branding. Brent talked about our “brand wheel” and asked for each of us to write down three words that we wanted people to think of whenever they thought about us. Since I was fairly certain that “bacon” is already one of them, I went with these three words:

• Knowledgeable
• Capable
• Passionate

I may not have ever held a job that has had the word ‘marketing’ in the title, but I would like to believe that over the past four years I have been able to market myself and build a brand that represents those three words. As part of the brand wheel you would next branch off into other words that help describe the three main words and then go from there. The idea is that everything you do, every appearance you make, every action you take in public should always going to tie back to words in your brand wheel.

If you are thinking about getting started with blogging, or are thinking about starting your own business perhaps as a consultant, then you need to sit down and think about the brand you want to market. Start with whatever words come to mind and spend some time thinking about the actions you need to take in order for others around you to think those same words about you.