Reputation is pretty important in business, and that might well be one of the understatements of the century so far.
Whatever it is you do in your professional life, whether you’re a copywriter, or an entrepreneur focused on selling bathroom taps, your personal and professional reputation will have everything to do with the ultimate success of your business or your career. It will determine if you get fired, or progress in a company. It will be instrumental in determining whether anyone else ever wants to hire you again.
Of course, your professional reputation isn’t just something “accidental” or based purely on shallow considerations. It’s a strategic judgement on various dimensions of your personality and professionalism, including such things as your trustworthiness, capability, conscientiousness, and reliability.
Here are some tips for managing your professional reputation so as to help ensure the best possible outcomes in your professional life.
Increase your public profile through marketing, participation, an engagement on various platforms
There’s the old saying that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. Well, that’s certainly a stretch too far, but it is, in any case, true that simply being seen and noticed is half the battle — if not more.
One of the primary aims of marketing isn’t specifically to convince people to buy your product or use your services, but in fact, just to reveal the fact that you exist to as many people as possible.
In managing your professional reputation, you will generally want to raise your public profile through marketing, participation in industry events, and engagement on various platforms which are prevalent in your industry.
You could, for example, take a leaf out of the book of Jozef Opdeweegh Miami Businessman, who is featured on the Bloomberg website.
Make personal accountability a core principle
Various people in the leadership and business-success coaching industries have commented on the absolute importance of adopting absolute personal accountability, as a path to success.
The key here is to never make excuses, or to pass blame on to others, but to accept responsibility for, essentially, everything, and to act with diligence and care, as a consequence.
Reputations are often ruined by people who habitually look for scapegoats and excuse themselves for their professional misbehaviour. Taking ownership of all your professional dealings and blunders, however, indicates that you have the kind of character that everyone wants in their colleagues and associates.
Be creative and push the envelope in what you do
The term “USP” is well known in business and refers to a “Unique Selling Point” or “Unique Selling Proposition”.
The basic point of a “USP”, is that it’s the thing, or things, that will differentiate a given business from the competition and enable them to stand out in the mind of prospective clients.
In your attempts to manage your reputation in the best way possible, it’s important that you are able to be creative, and to push the envelope in whatever it is you do.
You need USPs that will make you stand out, and that will serve to differentiate you, appropriately, from the competition.
