Boundary, Sixer. Your Personal Brand has Hit a Century

Personal Branding is like Cricket

Let us understand personal branding through the eyes of cricket and its terminology.

You are the batsman (for your Personal Brand) and the audience which cheers you is like Twitter followers and Facebook Fans (Tweet This). (Batting without an audience is as worthless as Twitter profile without followers). Competitors (whether colleagues or competitive businesses) are the opposition team trying to clean bold you all the time, sometimes with a spin (office politics) and sometimes with malpractices (like bodyline). Fielders are like the jealous colleagues waiting for a slip from your side and the runner is like your reputation or shadow.

You can hit boundaries and sixers (when your content is retweeted on Twitter or shared on Facebook) but sometimes you have to be satisfied with singles (only the likes). But each run you make is adding to you and your team’s (organisation) score or your personal brand.

You are in limelight and you need wisdom all the time. Sometimes the referee (government officials) can be corrupt. There is whole lot of audience to cheer you if you hit it right. Sometimes the audience can go berserk with excitement (your content can go viral). People say you need “Knowledge, Skills and Attitude” but I say, “You need wisdom, Skills and Faith.”

If you are Sachin or Kapil Dev, you begin the game with immense pressure from the audience in the form of expectations (your content must be perfect). But remember no one becomes a Sachin overnight. It requires passion, efforts and time (I call it PET).

You must have the killer instinct (deepest passion) to win the game and sportsman spirit, if you lose. Wear the helmet and pads for safety and make sure you do not get LBW (bad word of web).  To create a great score, you require focus and practice. It often starts with a Ranji (Regional Brand) and leads to the World Cup (Global Brand).

Play slow till you understand the bowling and the pitch (rules of online and offline branding). Be a humble and yet assertive skipper and demonstrate leadership (building a community and leading it on Facebook). Sometimes you are in form and sometimes not but have an indomitable spirit.

Remember to retire with grace-before you are thrown out (When you have created a great Personal Brand, get away from media and public slowly). And if you retire with grace, you shall be remembered for a long time to come.

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Dr. Amit Nagpal is a Personal Branding Consultant, passionate Blogger, and Motivational Speaker based in New Delhi, India. He specializes in personal branding with a holistic touch. His philosophy is “Enlarge as a Human Being, Excel as a Social Media Being and Evolve as a Personal Brand"