Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The Reputation of Your Personal Brand: It is all about Trust!

As a luxury real estate marketing professional your reputation is at the core of your personal brand equity—the value of your brand. Your reputation, your trust factor can be the deciding factor in selecting you to list a luxury property over your competition or be selected as a buyer’s representative.

Blogging is a great way to build trust over time with potential clients, providing you have something of interest to say on a subject about which you are passionate. It is a wonderful way to build your reputation and your personal brand in the minds of potential referral sources who do not even know you personally. But, your column must be follow-worthy and comment-worthy. If you really want to stand out, it must be “buzz-worthy”. That is, your content must be worthy of sharing with others. To spark word-of-mouth advertising your content must remarkable.

Do you still subscribe to a newspaper? We do, but only to one: the digital edition of the Wall Street Journal where we can customize the content that we want to read and also receive news alerts of things that matter to us the most. Personalized, customized news is readily available for free, yet we are willing to pay a nominal monthly subscription fee to WSJ for a good reason. The reason is simple: we trust the Wall Street Journal as a news source and we follow certain columnists like Walt Mossberg, whose opinion we trust.

Walt Mossberg is the author and creator of the weekly Personal Technology column in The Wall Street Journal, which has appeared every Thursday for almost 20 years. Walt is a perfect example of a “power journalist” and a one-man-brand. He is an opinion leader with an impeccable reputation.

Walt is also the co-creator and co-producer of the technology industry's most prestigious annual conference, D: All Things Digital. On allthingsd.com, Walt spells out his Statement of Ethics. “It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out”, says Walt.

With the general trust level for real estate agents in general, blogging can set you apart as a trusted advisor. You may not have to include a Statement of Ethics on your blog or website. But, if you set high standards like the WSJ and Walt Mossberg, not only can you create a strong personal brand, but you can also build a solid reputation that will give you a competitive edge.

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