A CIO’s 10-part guide to personal branding

Start small – If you’re new to thought leadership and wish to add this aspect to your personal brand, you can often start small with a ‘land and expand’ approach. Start small with an article or blog, a media interview, a speaking slot at an industry event or conference, or even by entering some suitable industry awards. This all builds credibility, adds to your personal profile, portfolio, and media kit, and can help land your next “win” such as a book, a keynote, or a major award, such as the CIO 100 Awards. When selecting any of these outlets, choose wisely, since your personal brand will be shaped by the brands you associate with.

Amplify your personal brand – The Thinkers360 study found that specialist communities were the number-one destination for access to thought leadership content by readers, and a top-three destination for thought leaders to disseminate their content after social media and individual web sites. Depending on the business model, these specialist communities can often help you to build, amplify and monetize your personal brand as well.

Use your career journey to tell your brand story – Your life experiences and career journey all tell a story about your personal brand. Think about the various career moves you’ve made over the years, the rationale for each move, and how this helps to shape the narrative about your personal brand. This may also help influence your next move too.

Round out your competency over time – Once you’ve become a world-class author, influencer, or speaker (no small feat in itself), the next step is to round out your skills so you’re even more versatile. Gartner encourages this among their analysts and advisors, so they develop their skills not only in terms of one-on-one advising and writing research reports, but also in public speaking in front of both small private groups and large audiences at conferences. This helps to develop skills to best connect with your audience regardless of the context.

Use your personal branding to promote your organization – As a CIO, you can be an excellent employee advocate for your own organization, and many CIOs do this to a greater or lesser extent based on personal preference. This may involve piloting solutions internally before they’re released to the public, and helping with internal case studies. Many CIOs, not only pilot internally, but hit the road with other members of the C-suite to meet with key clients and share their experience.

Make your content insightful, engaging, and actionable – The Thinkers360 study found that thought leadership consumers cited insightful (94%), forward-looking (90%), engaging (89%), relevant (88%) and actionable (84%) as extremely important or very important attributes of thought leadership. In an era of increased competition for attention, thought leaders plan to cut through the noise by making their content highly actionable (73%), multichannel (59%), and shared via specialist communities (55%).