30 Painful Personal Branding Mistakes to Avoid at All Cost

See ‘intellectual dishonesty' if you think this list isn't for you.

We're all somewhere on this list.

And that's not a bad thing, it means there's still room to grow.

30 personal branding no-nos

In no specific order…

1) No plan – lack of a chosen, designed branding plan to follow, including online and offline strategies

2) No tracking – not measuring your branding activities i.e. never knowing how well you're following that plan

3) No intellectual honesty – such as misreporting numbers to make it appear as if your plan is on track

4) No honesty in general – perhaps in making promises you can't keep

5) Too self-serving – it's always about you and your projects

6) Appearing too self-serving – just as bad

7) Entitlement – feeling entitled to success and acting like it

8) Lack of foresight – impatience with branding tactics before they can succeed

9) No execution – over-reliance on past achievements

10) Poor execution – overly slow progress towards new achievements

11) Too modest – waiting too long to brand yourself as a mentor or expert

12) Not authentic – not practicing what you preach

13) Phony – not even being able to demonstrate what you preach

14) Poor decision-making – such as choosing the wrong niche to brand yourself in

15) Poor self-evaluation – taking too long to realize you're in the wrong niche

16) Wasting time – branding yourself in unrelated niches

17) Not creative – branding yourself with your job title

18) Too lazy – adopting a copycat or generic brand

19) No self-confidence – lacking personality possibly due to fear of exposure or vulnerability

20) Immoral – caught publicly doing something inappropriate, especially if you have role model status or aspire to

21) Unfocused – having a seemingly random web presence

22) Unprofessional – failing to check the quality of your content

23) Not up-to-date – not owning your personal domain name

24) Being a mooch – asking too much of your contact network

25) Too selfish – not giving enough back to your contact network

26) Not listening – not having profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and any other social websites critical to your niche

27) Poor social media management – such as having too many social profiles to manage or not keeping those profiles updated

28) Poor personal management – e.g.  resulting in being late

29) Poor network management – such as spending too much time with people who only take and not enough time with people who can give

30) Poor brand management – such as not recognizing any of the other errors in this list and then taking corrective action

Question of the article

How have you recovered from one of these branding mistakes? Tell us in the comments.

I originally published a version of this article on the terrific Personal Branding Blog.

If you liked this list, you'll also enjoy my 5 Personal Branding Mistakes That Could Ruin Your Brand.

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