Why not create a personal Web site? A Web site is a terrific and cheap marketing tool for your brand, and a great way to force you to clearly articulate who you are. With a good-looking site, you look as polished and professional as any major corporation on the Internet.

This may sound trivial, but it's not. Little choices make big impressions.

Broadcast Your Brand

You've got to become your own PR firm, as I'll talk about in the next chapter. Take on the projects no one wants at work. Never ask for more pay until after you've been doing the job successfully and become invaluable. Get on convention panels. Write articles for trade journals and company newsletters. Send e-mails filled with creative ideas to your CEO. Design your own Me, Inc. brochure.

The world is your stage. Your message is your "play." The character you portray is your brand. Look the part; live the part.

24. Broadcast Your Brand

Now you have your "content," and the beginnings of a brand. You're getting good, really good. That's how you've become an authority in your company. But your job is not done. If the rest of the world isn't familiar with how good you are, you and your company are only gaining part of the benefit. The fact is, you've got to extend your reach and level of outside recognition. That's how you'll become an authority not just in your company but in your industry. It comes in part from visibility. I'm not suggesting you stand on your local street corner with a sign on a sandwich board exclaiming, "Put me on TV!" Though come to think of i t . . . well, let's hold off for now. I've got some suggestions on high-stakes self-promotion that will make your effort becoming known a little bit easier, sans the public embarrassment. And I'm no stranger to embarrassment. I've taken a few knocks to learn the right and wrong ways to let others know about what I do.

You don't have to look far to see why increased visibility might be important for your career, and for extending your network of colleagues and friends. Take, for example, self-promoting phenom Donald Trump. How many other real estate moguls do you know offhand? Right—I can't name anyone else either. Why is the "The Donald" considered the ultimate dealmaker? Probably because he's called himself that a million times over in any number of articles and television interviews and now a highly rated TV show. Because he has a book entitled The Art of the Deal.

But his self-promotion is not just ego (though by how much, I'm not quite sure); it makes plenty of business sense, too. His buzz-worthy brand now has a value unto itself. Buildings with his name on it are more valuable and bring in higher rental fees. When The Donald went bankrupt, banks that would have otherwise foreclosed on any other struggling mogul gave Trump leeway, not only because they knew he was good at what he did but because they knew his name alone would go a long way in helping him recover from his setbacks. Trump is a talented developer, but then so are a lot of other people. The difference? He promotes himself.

The fact is that those people who are known beyond the walls of their own cubicle have a greater value. They find jobs more easily. They usually rise up the corporate ladder faster. Their networks begin to grow without much heavy lifting.

I can hear the groans of discomfort already stirring. You may be thinking, "I'm shy. I don't like to talk about myself. Isn't modesty a virtue?" Well, I can assure you that if you hide your accomplishments, they'll remain hidden. If you don't promote yourself, however graciously, no one else will.

Like it or not, your success is determined as much by how well others know your work as by the quality of your work. Luckily, there are hundreds of new channels and mediums for you to get the word out.

So how do you promote Brand You?

Every day, you read or hear about companies in newspapers, magazines, on television, and on the Web. Most of the time the article or story is about celebrity CEOs and big companies. It's not because they are more deserving of the press than you or me. It's the result of well-planned and strategic public relations. Big companies have PR machines working for them to shape and control their image (though not always successfully).

Smaller companies and individuals have to do it themselves. But by using some pluck and a strategy of your own, access to the media is not as difficult as you may think. Journalists do less sleuthing for their stories than you'd imagine. They get a majority of their stories from people that have sought them out, and not the other way around. And like everyone else in any profession, they tend to follow the herd. Which means once you get written about, other reporters will come calling. Assigned you as a subject, they'll do a quick Google search, and presto: They'll find you are an already cited source and will seek you out to cite you again.

One article creates visibility, which in turn will put you in front of other journalists, creating the possibility of more articles and visibility. A journalist's deadlines make magazine and newspaper work the art of the possible, not the perfect.

The key is to view the exposure of your brand as a PR campaign. How are you going to get your message out there? How are you going to make sure that the message gets out the way you want it to get out? Sure, your network is a good start. Everyone you meet and everyone you talk to should know what you do, why you're doing it, and how you can do it for him or her. But why not broadcast that same message to a thousand networks across the country?

Now we're talking.

As I mentioned before, when I became CEO of YaYa, it was a company with virtually no revenue, and clearly no recognized market. We had visionary founders, Jeremy Milken and Seth Gerson, but we needed a market.

There was, however, one company with a similar product. I'm going to call them Big Boy Software. They had created a software tool that facilitated the actual creation of high-end games. They too were trying to find their business model and generate revenue. Both of us were in a race to become the established brand in the new market we were creating.

Soon after we defined the advergaming space, Big Boy saw how YaYa was picking up steam (and generating operating revenue) selling games to big brands. They followed suit, positioning themselves as competitors to YaYa. The main difference between them and us was that they had way, way more money. They had raised a huge amount of capital that put our resources to shame. There is no need to go into the comparative details of who was a better company (I'm a little biased, of course). But the fact remains, they had tons of resources and we did not—at all.

So how did YaYa become the market leader?

The answer is, we created buzz: that powerful, widespread phenomenon that can determine the future of individuals, companies, and movies alike. Buzz is the riddle every enterprising person is trying to solve. It's a grassroots, word-of-mouth force that can turn a low-budget flick about a witch into a multimillion-dollar blockbuster. (Ever hear of The Blair Witch Project?) You feel its energy in Internet chat rooms, at the gym, on the street, and all of it is stoked by a media hungry for the inside scoop. Buzz is marketing on steroids.

Here's an example of how well it works: Remember Napster? One day it was a clever software idea hatched in some kid's dorm room allowing users online to link up and share MP3 music files. Six months later, it was a Silicon Valley start-up, the source of a major lawsuit, playing bandwidth havoc with servers around the country. Even when it was shut down, the name had enough buzz to be bought for something like $50 million.