For the past few months, I’ve had the privilege of partnering with Mike Bowers and Tonya Wilson, of the SBDC, on building out content for some of the event sessions Ohio-based small business entrepreneurs will partake in at this years Ohio Growth Summit.

The event takes place June 9th in Columbus, Ohio at the Columbus State Community College in the Small Business Development Center.

I’ve written today’s post so that you can meet the panelists for the BIG Personal Brand Panel that will kick off the event.  I’ve picked these 10 uber-sharp people because they are leveraging personal branding in a wide variety of ways – all of them driving their business efforts.

Please click here to visit the Ohio Growth Summit Blog and read the post there.

Cheers!

@nateriggs

I’m happy to be speaking tomorrow morning.

A group of smart business people involved with Ohio Web Leaders will wake up early to allow me to share some ideas on how they can start Building Brand YOU.  (BIG thank-yous to Tom Augustine & Amy Marshall for the invitation.)  We’ll be talking about everything from what’s behind brands, to strategy and outposts, as well as some of the benefits of investing time and effort in digital self-branding.

One of the most compelling arguments for self-branding is that the content you create online is critical in establishing a context for building relationships, especially when you are using technology to communicate across geographical distances.  But more on that tomorrow…

Shift in Ownership
In the Old West, brands implied ownership.  Red hot branding irons were used to permanently mark cattle with symbols, so others would know to whom and where they belonged.  Good for the cowboys, but likely unpleasant for the cattle, right?

Brands have changed since then, and there are literally millions of ideas out there on what a brand is and what brands mean.  Adding to the mix, here’s my take:

A brand is a collection of content in the form of stories, experiences and media, that creates a perception of a company, product or individual in the minds of the consumer, to evoke an emotional response.

Thoughts?  Am I close or completely off-base with what you think about a brand?

One of the key questions today, related to brands, lies in ownership?  Does a brand still signify ownership? If so, who are the owners of a brand?  Really. In terms of media, there is quite a contrast from the old school mindset to the new school mindset in regards to brand ownership:

It’s important to remember that we have seen a major shift in media over the past few years.  Today’s media is built on a foundation of widespread accessibility and ease of use.

It used to take the a significant amount of dollars, time and skill to reach  millions upon millions of people with a given message.  It used to be that you needed to be a famous celebrity or high profile executive leader to have an opportunity to get your face in front of a national or international audience.

Today, any video that is interesting enough to spread can literally be seen by millions of people overnight on YouTube.  Today, power bloggers and Twitter users have overshadowed journalists and become celebrities in their own right, using social media outposts to communicate ideas to mass audiences AND engage them in conversations.

Today, just about anyone and everyone with an Internet connection has the power to draw attention to a brand – good or bad – and influence people.  Increased media accessibility has made this the easy part.

Make sense?  Disagree?  Do you feel like you own a brand?

P.S. The event tomorrow was sold out due to the size of the room, so I promise to post a video of the presentation tomorrow with some of the ideas I’m going to share with the group.