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Personal Branding for Technology and Product Leaders.

The best builders are often the least known. A personal brand makes the work you shipped visible to the people who hire, fund, and follow product leaders.

By Mashman Consulting GroupApplies to: Technology / Product Leader

Why Personal Branding Matters for Tech Leaders

Technology rewards the people whose thinking is public. Writing about what you built, why, and what you learned turns private competence into credibility that recruiters, founders, and investors can find.

The Manifesto also looks ahead to how people will find you. It expects Artificial Engine Optimization to matter as more questions are answered by AI. A technology leader should be the first to check whether they show up in those answers.

Artificial Intelligence is worth including as Artificial Engine Optimization (AEO) will, in my opinion, become prevalent in the years to come.

Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence, Second Edition, 6.11

Where You Stand on The Hierarchy of Personal Branding

Many technologists are known only inside their team. The State Representative, known across an industry or a technical community, is reachable through writing and speaking about the work.

  1. Tier 6The International Icon
  2. Tier 5The National Personality
  3. Tier 4The State Representative
  4. Tier 3The Local Hero
  5. Tier 2Friends and Family
  6. Tier 1Unconscious Incompetent

Where most stand: Tier 2, Friends and FamilyBuild toward: Tier 4, The State Representative

The tier measures how large a position is. How good it is, is measured by The Five Personal Brand Pillars. Read more about the six tiers.

Recommendations

Across The Five Personal Brand Pillars.

The moves MCG starts with for technology and product leaders, grouped by pillar, in order. Each one cites the subchapter of Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence it comes from.

01

Omnipresence

25%
  • Build a Brand That Travels With You Keep your profile and site independent of your employer. Subchapter 1.1, What Is Personal Branding?
  • Build in Public Where Your Peers Look Share your work on the platforms your field reads. Subchapter 6.11, Distribution
  • Claim Your Professional Profile Complete a professional network profile with your one-liner. Subchapter 4.16, Seamless Branding
02

Credibility

25%
  • Speak at Meetups and Conferences Give talks at local meetups and apply to industry conferences. Subchapter 6.12, Selling From Stage
  • Credit Your Work Publicly Ask to reference the products and projects you built. Subchapter 8.1, Integrity, Etiquette, and Taking Credit
  • Open-Source or Publish Something Release a small tool, dataset, or paper under your name. Subchapter 5.4, Building Credibility
03

Seamless Branding

20%
04

Reputational Health & Risks

15%
05

Marketability

15%
  • Point the Brand at an Outcome Decide: next role, clients, investors, or a product, and link to it. Subchapter 4.11, Deliverables

Content Ideas: The Skyline Strategy for Tech Leaders

All consumed media educates, entertains, inspires, or connects. The Skyline Strategy asks for two pieces about your work for every one about your life. Here is one of each, for each purpose.

PurposeBrand PostPersonal Post
EducateTeach something useful.A complex idea explained for non-technical people.Your workspace and tools.
EntertainMake it enjoyable to follow you.The bug that took a week and was one character.Your worst tech purchase.
InspireShow what is possible.A product you shipped and what it changed.How you got into tech.
ConnectGive people a reason to reply.Credit a collaborator on a project.Ask what technology people wish worked better.

More Ideas for Tech Leaders

  • Build in Public. Share what you are building, what you learned, and what broke.
  • Explain Complex Work Simply. Translate one technical idea a week into plain language for a non-technical audience.
  • Publish Your Point of View on Trends. Write on where your field is heading, including AI.
  • Blend Humor Into Business Content. Add one light moment to every piece of professional content: a story, an aside, a self-aware joke.

Plan the ratio with the free Skyline Planner (opens in a new tab).

What to Avoid

Avoid

Work No One Can See

If what you built lives only inside the company, your name is not attached to it. Ask up front what you can reference publicly.

Avoid

All Signal, No Person

Technical content with no human detail gives no one a reason to follow you. Use the Skyline Strategy's two to one ratio.

Avoid

Invisible in AI Answers

Check what search engines and AI models say about you, and fix what is missing or wrong.

Measure It First: The Identity Positioning™ Brand Audit

Twenty-five questions, about seven minutes, free. Choose Technology / Product Leader on the intake and the audit scores all five pillars, places you on The Hierarchy of Personal Branding, and returns the three moves that would raise your score most, each traced to the subchapter it comes from.

Take the Brand Audit (opens in a new tab)

Frequently Asked Questions

Should engineers and product leaders build their personal brand?

Every engineer and product leader already has a personal brand, even if it is only known inside their team. If you want your work to open doors, build it. Public writing and speaking turn private competence into credibility others can find.

What should a tech leader publish?

What you built and why, decisions and trade-offs, lessons from failures, and the human side, within what your company allows you to share.

What is Artificial Engine Optimization?

The Manifesto's term for making sure AI models answer accurately about you, the way SEO did for search engines.

The Wiki

Keep Reading

By Profession

Executives and C-Suite Leaders

More executives are becoming the public face of their companies. The ones who do it well build a presence before a crisis or a stock price asks them to.

By Profession

Business Owners and Founders

Your company has a brand. So do you, and the two should grow together. A founder's personal brand opens doors the company cannot open alone.

By Profession

Creators and Influencers

A large audience is fame. Whether it buys, believes, or follows you to a new platform is influence, and that is the part a creator has to build on purpose.

Subchapter 6.11, Distribution

Distribution

The last thing you want is to pour your effort into work no one sees. Distribution decides whether it reaches anyone.

The Identity Positioning™ essay

The Skyline Strategy

A 2:1 ratio from Identity Positioning: A Macroscopic View on Personal Branding. For every two steps that grow the brand side, take one that grows the personal side.

Subchapter 5.14, Compiling Wins

Compiling Wins

By compiling wins, future successes become easier to obtain. A record that speaks for you does the convincing you once had to do yourself.

Engagements

Your name is already being interpreted. The question is who are they, and what are they thinking?

Engagements are accepted by application and seats are limited each quarter. Tell us who you are, what you are building, and the position you intend to hold.

Speaking fees available on request. Speaking for non-profits and charities is free of charge. You can also email contact@mashmancg.com (opens in a new tab) directly, or play Identity Quest™ (opens in a new tab) first.