Not long ago, I dissuaded one of my regular clients from working on a catchy new business name and tag line. She expressed surprise, because thinking up appropriate company names and tag lines is one of the services I provide. "I need some branding," she had said. "Don't I?"

In fact, personal branding involves much more than a flashy or witty new identity. A new company name, a nickname for herself or a memorable little slogan are actually relatively minor ingredients of effective branding. Much more importantly, she needed to have clearer, more compelling answers in her own mind to certain central branding questions.

Branding Questions

· What are you an expert in or on?

· For whom are you the expert of choice and why?

· What skills are your top strengths?

· What's your point of view?

· What is your promise?

· How can you be controversial or provocative?

· What character traits and values do you want people to know you for?

· What else can you provide that others can't?

Ponder these questions until you can confidently answer at least five of them. Compose a short summary of your thoughts, for reference. Then take your knowledge of what you stand for into your use of particular marketing tactics.

Put Your Branding Answers to Work

If you blog, make sure at least 60-80 percent of your blog posts are in line with what you most want to be known for. Once in a while, look at whatever blog posts happen to be showing on your blog's first page and ask yourself whether someone seeing those as their introduction to you would get the right impression of what you're about and want to hire you. If not, adjust what you blog about or how you write about it in your blog.

Do likewise with your Twitter postings. Look through the most recent 20 posts and ponder whether or not they show you as the kind of person you want to be perceived as. From time to time I get curious about people who have signed up for my Twitter feed, and I look through the posts showing on their Twitter home page. Often I feel like I've stepped into a cocktail party with a lot of incomprehensible but emotionally charged crosstalk. Other times I quickly get a positive sense of what makes this Twitterer tick. When you're on Twitter to advance your business, the latter is what you want to happen.

If you participate in topical online discussions, in forums, on discussion lists or in other social media venues, be mindful of how you might be coming off behaviorally as well as focusing on the content of what you have written. Are you hotheaded or reasonable? Do you put down people who mean well but don't know any better, stick up for those who are being unfairly targeted or always seem driven to get in the last word? Make sure these tendencies are consistent with your branding intent.

Branding can also show up in your photos. Have you selected a traditional corporate head shot or a whole-body shot where you're doing something unexpected? The style of the photo can reveal as much as your facial expression, the colors you are wearing and your hairdo.

The same goes for your voice mail. Do you come across as impatient, upbeat, dreamy or commanding? Again, make sure that fits with your desired branding.

Finally, think about whether a tag line or motto might pull together all the strands you're creating in everything you do. This is an optional step that has power when it sums up your clear, authentic self-expression, instead of representing some Madison Avenue invention that you chose because it sounds cool or clever.