I gave a presentation on Personal Branding at the IABC Business Communicators Summit last week. Instead of just regurgitating all of the long-winded points I rambled about in my presentation, I’ll just give you the short and sweet version in 10 easy digestible points.

If you still have questions or want to complain about something after reading these (below) or viewing the PowerPoint …tell me in the comments. I’ll reply with answers to anything you ask. I promise.

1.) Personal branding, if understood and practiced well- can establish trust, credibility and more importantly define and distinguish you among your friends, family and work colleagues.

2.) Everything you do communicates a message- the first step is to recognize and be cognitive of that- the second is to provide definitive, consistent positioning with that message so people understand what you’re noteworthy and remarkable at.

3.) Consistency facilitates recognition. Don’t forget that. Be consistent.

4.) Step #1, Understand how your friends, family and work colleges perceive you.

5.) Step #2, Do a search, find out how Google perceives you.

6.) Step #3, Define your objectives and mission statement for your personal brand (what do you want to be famous for?).

7.) Step #4, Get to work and make a plan with how you can achieve those objectives.

8.) Some of the objectives you set for yourself might be really hard- and require you give up your free time to do your homework to achieve them. Stop watching Lost. You must be willing to make sacrifices.

9.) Step #5, Share right (don’t brag) and share often. Tell the story, so someone else isn’t telling it for you.

10.) Step #6, Water the trees in your social graph / network. Be helpful and feed social capital. Have real interactions with real people online, don’t just publish content (via social media).

Note: To achieve success you need to continuously learn, evaluate, and adapt. IMHO, you should repeat steps 1 – 10 at least x3 times a year.