I first read William Arruda’s first book, Career Distinction, in 2007. What a revelation!
After reading his book, I was so excited that I even became certified in Arruda’s Reach Career Personal method as a Personal Branding Strategist. But at that time I would never have expected to see my name next to his…
I’m really happy to announce that on September 24th, the Italian edition of Digital You comes out and the cover will bear both our names!
Much more than a translation into Italian
This is not merely the Italian edition. In fact, it integrates my design thinking and visual approach to Personal Branding with William’s enormous experience, verve and bubbly writing style. Digital You is the first book on Personal Branding to be dedicated specifically to anyone who works for a company / organization and who wants to give their Personal Brand a digital boost to achieve their career goals. Included in the Digital You Italian edition is the Digital You Canvas, a map that facilitates the application of the methods detailed in the book. The book of course includes an Italian edition but if you want to know more about the Canvas, you can download the English version here!
Have you read the English edition of the book? Here’s Brandi’s delightful example, contained in both editions, mapped on the Digital You Canvas.
How this book came to be
It was 2008 when I wrote the first edition of my Personal Branding book for Hoepli – the first book in Italy on the subject. It was a great success. Indeed, the book has now completely sold out. Back then, Personal Branding was all about promoting yourself online. In fact, at the time being successful online was enough to emerge and achieve a positioning. I still remember the example we included of an attractive young lady dressed in the latest fashion who uploaded beautiful photos to Flickr. That young lady, at the dawn of her career at the time, would go on to become one of the world’s most famous social media influencers. I’m of course talking about Italian entrepreneur Chiara Ferragni!
The topic of Personal Branding slowly caught on although it was virtually unknown in Europe when I first started looking at it in the mid-2000s. In the meantime, Personal Branding has changed radically:
- Planning and Strategy: being constantly present online is no longer enough. Today, to cut through all the digital noise, you need to become a powerful signal. Planning and strategy have become essential to ensuring you differentiate yourself and build your network, so you do not end up as mere digital background noise.
- Personalization: Personal Branding is above all determined by the career strategy of each and every worker and of their “personal business models”. The Personal Branding needs of employees differ from those of their CEOs or those of professionals and freelancers. That’s without mentioning the enormous evolution of the last 10 years affecting the world of work, professions, careers and job roles. Doing Personal Branding does not simply mean mimicking the behavior of influencers, motivators and currently trendy gurus – some of whom have even authored Personal Branding books! On the contrary: most of the time such an approach is harmful and counterproductive, especially for those working for companies.
- Social Mania: the vast proliferation of LinkedIn and social media in general. A free electronic headhunter, LinkedIn is effectively an outsourced personal HR, marketing and training office. Yet even today many people still ask us: do I really have to be on LinkedIn? What exactly do I need it for?
- Empowerment: in recent years, in connection with our projects, we have met thousands of people who work for companies all over Europe and I couldn’t help noticing how many workers still need to understand the value they deliver or could deliver and the importance of enhancing their images, especially online. Being good at what you do is simply no longer enough!
- Agility: the most important aspect of all. Today’s complex work context requires an approach to one’s career that’s similar to the way startups evolve: “The startup of you” as Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn) and Ben Casnocha wrote in their 2012 book of the same name. All our futures need to be constantly planned and to achieve this, we need to evolve our Personal Branding strategy continuously.
For all the above reasons, after the release of Business Model You in Italian, I decided to release our Professional Innovation Toolkit for free. This Toolkit is a series of visual thinking tools we use for our own projects. I published it because I wanted to help as many people as possible find a more innovative and personalized approach to personal branding that was more effective than a book. The Toolkit has been downloaded by tens of thousands of people and is now used as a daily work tool globally by major companies, universities and business schools. The Digital You Canvas is an adaptation of the Personal Branding Canvas included in the Toolkit since 2013. It has been specifically designed to help you to apply the method introduced in the book.
Acknowledgments
This new book merges two approaches to personal branding to create an instructive, inspirational guide to the topic of Personal Branding which includes a number of useful visual thinking tools. I have to thank William very much for his support and for promoting the project as well as for constantly assisting me with the integration of our material. He is awesome! I also want to thank my publisher Hoepli, the top Italian technical publishing company, for their continued support and for always believing in me.
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