Personal branding is often reduced to visibility: posting consistently on social media, having a professional profile, sharing your expertise, or becoming known for something. But visibility alone does not make a strong personal brand; you can be everywhere online and still leave people unsure about who you are, what you offer, or why they should remember you.

I have found that this is where many people struggle with personal branding. They focus so much on what to post that they rarely step back to ask a more important question: what actually makes a personal brand a personal brand?

A personal brand is more than your reputation, image, or the way you promote yourself. It is the intentional combination of what you want to be known for, the value you create, the expectations you establish, the qualities that make you distinct, and the visible evidence that reinforces your story.

Think of it like building a house. Your social media posts, website, photographs, videos, and other content may be what people see, but they are only the visible structure; underneath them are the decisions about positioning, value, identity, and consistency that give the structure meaning.

Researchers who have examined the construct of personal branding identify five key attributes that help explain what makes it distinct: strategic, positive, promise, person-centric, and artifactual. These five attributes give us a useful framework for understanding personal branding beyond the usual advice to “be visible” or “post consistently.”

In this article, we will unpack each attribute in practical terms and look at how they work together. The goal is not to turn you into a carefully manufactured version of yourself, but to help you understand how to intentionally build a personal brand that is clear, valuable, authentic, and supported by real evidence.

What Are the Five Attributes of Personal Branding?

Before looking at the five attributes individually, it helps to understand what an attribute means in this context. An attribute is simply a defining quality or characteristic, so these five attributes help us examine what personal branding is made of rather than focusing only on how it looks from the outside.

The distinction matters because personal branding is often confused with activities such as self-promotion, reputation management, or social media marketing. Those activities can contribute to a personal brand, but they do not fully explain it; the five attributes give us a more complete picture of the thinking and actions behind a recognizable personal brand.

The first attribute is strategic. Your personal brand should have direction: you should have some understanding of whom you want to reach, what you want to be known for, and how your activities work together to move you toward that position.

The second is positive, which means your brand should create a favorable or desirable impression for the audience you want to attract. This does not mean you have to be universally liked or constantly cheerful; it means that the qualities you communicate should be perceived as valuable or relevant by the people who matter to your goals.

The third attribute is promise. Every recognizable personal brand creates expectations, whether intentionally or not, about the value, experience, expertise, or perspective people can expect from that person.

The fourth is person-centric. Unlike a corporate brand that can exist independently of an individual, a personal brand is fundamentally rooted in the person behind it—their experiences, strengths, values, personality, perspective, and distinctive qualities.

Finally, there is artifactual, perhaps the least familiar term of the five. It refers to the visible and tangible expressions of your brand—the content you publish, the projects you create, your website, portfolio, photographs, videos, presentations, and other evidence that allows people to experience the brand rather than simply hear you talk about it.

These attributes are not five separate branding tricks to apply one after another. They work more like the pieces of a system: strategy gives your brand direction, positivity creates appeal, the promise creates expectations, the person gives it identity, and artifacts make it visible.

Understanding that relationship changes how you approach personal branding. Instead of asking only, “What should I post?”, you can begin asking better questions: “What am I intentionally building, who is it for, what do I want people to expect from me, what makes it mine, and what evidence am I creating?”

1. Strategic: Your Personal Brand Should Be Intentional

The first attribute of personal branding is strategic. A strategic personal brand does not develop from randomly posting whatever comes to mind; it is built through deliberate decisions about who you want to reach, what you want to be known for, and how your activities support that direction.

This is one of the biggest differences between simply being active online and actually building a personal brand. You can post every day, join conversations, attend events, and share your achievements, but if those activities do not contribute to a clear perception, you may be creating visibility without creating positioning.

Researchers have described personal branding as both targeted and programmatic. In simple terms, targeted means your branding activities are directed toward a defined audience, while programmatic means those activities form part of a coordinated series rather than existing as disconnected actions.

I think of this like planning a trip. Knowing that you want to travel is not enough; you also need to know where you are going, why you are going there, and which route will get you there.

The same principle applies to personal branding. If I decide that I want to be known for helping small businesses turn content into leads, for example, I should not build my entire online presence around whatever topic happens to interest me that day.

My content, conversations, case studies, services, collaborations, and even the opportunities I pursue should gradually reinforce that positioning. They do not have to be identical, but they should make sense together.

Why Strategy Matters When Building a Personal Brand

Strategy gives your personal brand direction and coherence. It helps you decide what to say yes to, what to leave out, which platforms deserve your attention, and which topics are worth becoming known for.

Without strategy, personal branding can easily become reactive. You see someone talking about a trending topic, so you talk about it too; someone launches a new content series, so you copy the format; a particular post performs well, so you suddenly change your entire content direction.

There is nothing wrong with experimenting, but experimentation works better when you have a destination in mind. Otherwise, you may gain followers without building the reputation, relationships, or opportunities you actually want.

Strategy Does Not Mean Becoming Rigid

Being strategic does not mean planning every sentence of your life or forcing yourself into a narrow niche. Your interests can evolve, your audience can change, and your positioning can become clearer as you gain experience.

The important thing is that your personal brand has a clear direction, even when the route changes. Think of strategy as a compass rather than a cage: it helps you know where you are heading without dictating every step you take.

A Simple Example of Strategic Personal Branding

Imagine a CEO who wants to become known as a forward-thinking leader in the technology industry. Instead of simply posting about their daily activities, they might consistently share insights about innovation, discuss emerging industry trends, contribute to relevant conversations, appear on podcasts, and speak at events related to their area of expertise.

Each activity does something different, but together they reinforce the same perception. Over time, people may begin to associate that person’s name with innovation and leadership because the brand has been deliberately reinforced across multiple touchpoints.

That is the power of strategic personal branding: individual actions become more meaningful when they work together.

The Key Lesson

A strategic personal brand is not about being everywhere or posting constantly. It is about making intentional choices that consistently move you toward how you want to be understood and remembered by the people you want to reach.

2. Positive: Your Personal Brand Should Be Valuable and Appealing

The second attribute of personal branding is positive. In this context, positive does not mean being cheerful, agreeable, or liked by everyone; it means creating a favorable impression by offering qualities, ideas, experiences, or value that your intended audience considers desirable.

This distinction is important because personal branding is not a popularity contest. You do not need everyone to like your personality, agree with your opinions, or connect with your communication style; you need the right people to see something valuable and relevant in what you represent.

For one person, that value might be expertise. For another, it might be humor, creativity, leadership, reliability, honesty, or a distinctive perspective. A personal brand becomes positive when the qualities you consistently communicate align with what your intended audience actually values.

Positive Does Not Mean Trying to Please Everyone

One of the easiest mistakes to make when building a personal brand is trying to make yourself appealing to everybody. In reality, the qualities that attract one audience may have little appeal to another, and that is perfectly normal.

Consider a comedian whose brand is built around sarcasm and uncomfortable observations. That style may not appeal to everyone, but if the audience they want to reach finds it entertaining and relatable, the brand is still creating a positive impression within that audience.

The same principle applies professionally. A consultant might build a brand around being direct and challenging conventional thinking, while another might be known for being patient and reassuring. Neither approach is automatically better; what matters is whether the qualities are relevant and valuable to the people they want to attract.

Your Brand Needs to Match Audience Expectations

A strong personal brand creates some level of alignment between what you communicate and what your audience values. When that alignment exists, people are more likely to see your content, expertise, personality, or services as relevant to them.

Problems arise when there is a significant mismatch. You might be exceptionally knowledgeable, but if your communication gives people no reason to understand or appreciate that expertise, your intended value may never become part of their perception of you.

This is one reason consistency matters. If you repeatedly communicate one set of qualities and then regularly demonstrate something completely different, people may struggle to form a clear impression of your brand.

Insufficient and Misdirected Branding

Personal branding can fail in two different ways. Insufficient branding happens when you do too little to communicate your desired identity, while misdirected branding happens when your activities communicate an impression that does not support the position you want to establish.

For example, imagine a career coach who wants to be perceived as a trusted expert but rarely shares useful insights, examples, or evidence of their expertise. Their audience has very little material from which to form that perception.

Now imagine another coach who consistently publishes content but spends most of it criticizing competitors, chasing trends, or talking about topics unrelated to their expertise. They may be highly visible, but that visibility could be reinforcing the wrong perception.

The solution is not simply to “post more.” It is to become more intentional about what your visibility is communicating.

The Key Lesson

Positive personal branding means creating a perception of value that is desirable to the right audience. You do not have to make yourself universally appealing; you need to communicate qualities that are meaningful, credible, and relevant to the people you want to attract.

3. Promise: Your Personal Brand Should Signal What People Can Expect From You

The third attribute of personal branding is promise. Whenever people repeatedly encounter your name, content, work, or services, they begin to form expectations about what you represent and what they can expect to receive from you.

That expectation is your personal brand promise, whether you have consciously defined it or not. It answers a simple but important question: “What can I count on this person for?”

A personal brand does not necessarily need a catchy slogan to communicate a promise. In many cases, the promise develops naturally through repeated experiences; if you consistently teach clearly, people may come to expect useful education from you, while if you consistently solve complex problems, people may begin to associate your name with practical solutions.

Your Brand Should Create Clear Expectations

Think about the people you already trust professionally. When you see their name, you probably have some idea of what they are good at, how they approach their work, or what kind of value they tend to provide.

That expectation did not appear overnight. It was built through repeated interactions, conversations, content, results, recommendations, and experiences that gradually connected the person’s name with particular qualities.

This is why consistency in personal branding is more than using the same colors or posting on a regular schedule. Consistency is about repeatedly reinforcing the same meaningful expectation.

Your Personal Brand Promise and Positioning

The idea of promise is closely connected to positioning. Positioning is essentially about the place you occupy in your audience’s mind and the qualities they associate with you.

Suppose I position myself as a content and lead generation strategist for small businesses. My audience should gradually understand not only what I do but also what they can expect from working with me: perhaps practical strategy, clear messaging, content that serves a business purpose, and systems designed to turn attention into opportunities.

The promise becomes stronger when my content, services, communication, and actual results consistently support that expectation.

Standing Out Is Not Always About Being Completely Different

Personal branding often comes with advice to “be different,” but differentiation does not mean you must invent something nobody else has ever done. In many cases, standing out means demonstrating a quality your audience already values at a particularly strong or recognizable level.

There are thousands of coaches, consultants, designers, marketers, writers, and executives in the world. What can make one person memorable is not necessarily that they created an entirely new profession, but that they developed a distinctive combination of expertise, perspective, personality, experience, and value.

A Simple Example

Imagine two marketing consultants who both help businesses improve their online presence. One consistently focuses on helping overwhelmed founders simplify their marketing, while the other specializes in building data-driven content systems for growing companies.

Their services may overlap, but their promises create different expectations. If someone wants simplicity and clarity, they may naturally gravitate toward the first consultant; if they want structured growth systems, the second may become more relevant.

The Key Lesson

Your personal brand is a promise about value and experience. The stronger the connection between what people expect from you and what you consistently deliver, the easier it becomes to build recognition, trust, and a meaningful professional reputation.

4. Person-Centric: Your Personal Brand Should Start With You

The fourth attribute is person-centric, and this is where personal branding becomes fundamentally different from traditional product branding. A product can be manufactured, packaged, and positioned independently of the person who markets it, but a personal brand is built around an actual human being—their experiences, strengths, values, personality, perspective, and capabilities.

This does not mean sharing every part of your life online or turning your personality into a performance. It means understanding yourself well enough to make intentional decisions about what you want your professional identity to represent.

Researchers have connected this attribute to three important ideas: agency, reflection, and differentiation. Together, they explain why a personal brand should not simply be something that happens to you; it should be something you actively shape from an understanding of who you are.

Agency: Take Ownership of Your Story

Agency means taking an active role in shaping how you are known. Instead of leaving your professional identity entirely to chance, other people’s opinions, or whatever opportunities happen to come your way, you make deliberate choices about the story you want your work and presence to communicate.

This does not mean you can completely control what everyone thinks about you. You cannot, and trying to do so would be exhausting; what you can control is what you consistently put into the world and the associations you intentionally build around your name.

Reflection: Understand Yourself Before Marketing Yourself

The second element is reflection. Before deciding what to communicate, it helps to understand your strengths, values, interests, experiences, personality, knowledge, and the kind of problems you genuinely care about solving.

This is where many personal branding conversations become too focused on tactics. People ask, “What should I post?” before asking, “What do I actually want to be known for?” Without that self-understanding, it becomes easy to copy someone else’s positioning simply because it appears to be working for them.

Your personal brand should give your audience a clearer picture of your value, not a carefully constructed imitation of somebody else’s success.

Differentiation: Understand What Makes You Distinct

The third element is differentiation. It is about identifying characteristics that make you meaningfully distinct and valuable to the audience you want to reach.

Differentiation does not require you to discover something nobody else can do. Your distinction might come from an unusual combination of skills, experiences, perspectives, personality traits, industries, or approaches that you bring together in a way that feels recognizably yours.

For example, I might combine graphic design, content marketing, SEO, teaching experience, and digital strategy in a way that shapes how I approach marketing problems. None of those skills is unique by itself, but the combination creates a perspective that can become part of my personal brand.

Personal Branding Is Not the Same as Fame

This is also why personal branding should not be confused with fame or reputation. Fame can happen accidentally, and reputation can develop through other people’s experiences and opinions, but personal branding involves a greater degree of intentional participation in shaping your professional identity.

You can become well-known without having a clearly defined personal brand. Likewise, you can have a strong personal brand within a specific professional community without being famous to the general public.

The Key Lesson

A person-centric personal brand begins with self-awareness and agency. The goal is not to manufacture a personality that will attract attention, but to understand what is genuinely valuable and distinctive about you and intentionally communicate it to the people you want to reach.

5. Artifactual: Your Personal Brand Needs Visible Evidence

The fifth attribute is artifactual, which is probably the least familiar word in this framework. In simple terms, it means that your personal brand needs visible or tangible expressions—things people can actually see, experience, or interact with that communicate something about who you are and what you represent.

This matters because a personal brand cannot exist only in your head. You may know that you are an excellent writer, strategic thinker, designer, leader, or consultant, but your audience needs some form of evidence through which they can understand and evaluate that claim.

What Are Personal Branding Artifacts?

An artifact is simply something that carries or communicates part of your brand. In the past, these might have included personalized stationery, business cards, monograms, signatures, or other physical objects associated with an individual; today, many of our most important brand artifacts exist online.

Your LinkedIn profile, website, portfolio, social media posts, videos, photographs, articles, presentations, books, podcast appearances, and digital resume can all function as personal branding artifacts. Even the way you present your work, communicate your ideas, or organize your professional portfolio can become part of the evidence people use to understand your brand.

Your Brand Needs Evidence, Not Just Claims

There is an important difference between saying what you are known for and giving people evidence of it. If your LinkedIn headline says you are a thought leader but your profile contains little evidence of your thinking, the claim has very little weight.

The same principle applies to expertise. If I say that I understand content strategy, the strongest support for that claim is not repeating it in every introduction; it is showing the strategies I have developed, the content I have created, the problems I have solved, the results I have contributed to, and the ideas I can teach.

Your artifacts therefore act like evidence in a case. They give people something concrete to examine instead of asking them to accept your claims at face value.

Your Digital Presence Is Part of Your Brand

This becomes particularly important because people often encounter us online before they ever meet us personally. Someone considering working with you may look at your LinkedIn profile, search your name, read your articles, watch your videos, browse your portfolio, or examine your social media presence before deciding whether to start a conversation.

Each of those touchpoints contributes another piece to the picture they form of you. If the pieces tell a coherent story, your brand becomes easier to understand; if they contradict one another, your audience may struggle to know which version represents you.

For example, imagine describing yourself as a corporate leadership expert while your online presence primarily consists of unrelated personal content with little evidence of leadership expertise. There may be nothing wrong with the content itself, but it does not necessarily support the professional perception you are trying to establish.

Artifacts Do Not Have to Be Perfect

There is also a danger in interpreting “artifactual” as “everything must look polished.” A personal brand does not require a perfectly designed website, expensive camera equipment, or professionally produced videos before you can begin.

What matters more is relevance, authenticity, and consistency. A thoughtful LinkedIn post, a useful case study, a well-explained project, or a simple video teaching something you know can provide more meaningful evidence than an expensive piece of content with no clear connection to your expertise.

The Key Lesson

Your personal brand becomes more credible when people can see evidence of what you claim to represent. Artifacts turn an abstract identity into something tangible, allowing your audience to experience your expertise, personality, perspective, and value rather than simply being told about them.

How the Five Attributes of Personal Branding Work Together

It is tempting to treat the five attributes as separate branding techniques: create a strategy, be positive, define a promise, be authentic, and produce content. But that misses the bigger idea behind the framework; the five attributes are most useful when they work together to create one coherent personal brand.

Think of them like parts of a navigation system. Strategy gives you a destination, positivity gives people a reason to pay attention, promise tells them what to expect, person-centricity ensures the brand is rooted in a real individual, and artifacts give people something tangible through which they can experience it.

Strategic + Positive: Know Who You Are Trying to Create Value For

Strategy answers the question, “Who am I trying to reach and what do I want to be known for?” The positive attribute then asks whether what you are communicating is actually valuable and appealing to that audience.

You therefore need both direction and relevance. A beautifully planned personal brand will struggle if the audience sees little value in what it offers, just as valuable expertise can remain overlooked when there is no clear strategy for communicating it.

Positive + Promise: Turn Value Into Expectations

When people repeatedly find your content, expertise, or perspective valuable, they begin to develop expectations. That is where promise comes in.

For example, if you consistently create practical content that helps small business owners solve marketing problems, people may eventually associate your name with practical marketing guidance. Your value has become an expectation, and that expectation becomes part of your brand.

Promise + Person-Centric: Make the Promise Believable

A brand promise becomes more credible when it is grounded in the person behind it. Your promise should not simply describe what sounds attractive in the market; it should connect to your actual capabilities, experiences, strengths, and perspective.

This is why self-awareness matters. If you promise something that has little connection to who you are or what you can consistently deliver, maintaining that positioning will eventually become difficult.

Person-Centric + Artifactual: Make Your Identity Visible

Being clear about who you are is only the beginning. Your audience needs opportunities to see that identity in action, and that is where artifacts become important.

Your content, projects, portfolio, website, presentations, videos, and other visible expressions should give people evidence of the qualities you want associated with your name. In other words, your artifacts should make your personal brand observable.

Artifactual + Strategic: Make Every Touchpoint Count

Finally, your visible brand assets should support your broader strategy. Your LinkedIn profile, website, social media content, portfolio, and other touchpoints do not have to look identical, but they should tell a reasonably coherent story.

If your strategy says you want to be known for strategic leadership but your visible presence communicates something completely different, there is a disconnect. The problem is not necessarily that any single piece of content is bad; the problem is that the collection of artifacts is failing to reinforce the position you want to occupy.

The Bigger Picture

When the five attributes work together, personal branding becomes more than self-promotion. You are intentionally building a position, creating value for a specific audience, establishing expectations, expressing your genuine strengths, and producing evidence that reinforces the story.

That is what makes a personal brand recognizable and meaningful. It is not one post, one profile, one logo, or one viral moment; it is the cumulative effect of many intentional signals working in the same direction.

The Five Attributes of Personal Branding at a Glance

Now that we have examined each attribute individually, it helps to step back and see the framework as a whole. Each attribute answers a different question about your personal brand, but together they explain how a personal brand moves from an idea in your mind to something other people can recognize and understand.

Attribute	What It Means	Why It Matters
Strategic	Your personal branding activities are intentional, targeted, and coordinated.	Gives your brand direction and purpose.
Positive	Your brand creates a favorable, valuable, or desirable impression for your intended audience.	Makes your brand relevant and appealing.
Promise	Your brand signals what people can reasonably expect from you.	Creates clarity, consistency, and trust.
Person-Centric	Your brand is rooted in your identity, strengths, experiences, values, and distinctive qualities.	Makes your brand authentic and differentiated.
Artifactual	Your brand is expressed through visible and tangible evidence.	Makes your identity and expertise observable.

The important thing is not to focus on perfecting one attribute while ignoring the others. A strong strategy without visible evidence may remain invisible, while impressive content without a clear strategy can create attention without a meaningful position.

The same applies to authenticity. Being genuinely yourself is important, but authenticity alone does not automatically create a strong personal brand; you still need to understand your audience, communicate value, establish a clear promise, and consistently demonstrate what you represent.

This is why I find the five-attribute framework useful. It shifts the conversation from “How do I look like a personal brand?” to a much better question: “Am I intentionally building something people can recognize, value, understand, and trust?”

That question takes personal branding beyond aesthetics and visibility and brings it back to what matters: the meaning people attach to your name.

How to Evaluate Your Own Personal Brand

Understanding the five attributes is useful, but the real value comes from applying them to your own personal brand. Instead of asking whether your brand looks professional enough, use these five attributes as an audit to identify what is working, what is unclear, and what needs more attention.

You do not have to score highly on every attribute immediately. The purpose of the exercise is to find the gaps that may be preventing your personal brand from communicating as clearly and consistently as you want it to.

Strategic: Do You Have a Clear Direction?

Start by asking whether you know who you want to reach, what you want to be known for, and why you are building your personal brand in the first place. If your content, services, networking, and other activities are pulling in completely different directions, your brand may need greater strategic clarity.

Ask yourself: If someone looked at the last 10 things I shared or worked on, would they be able to identify the professional space I want to occupy?

Positive: Do People See Meaningful Value?

Next, consider the impression your brand creates. Are you consistently communicating something useful, relevant, interesting, or valuable to the people you want to attract?

This does not mean asking whether everyone likes you. Instead, ask: What value do the right people associate with my name, and is that the kind of value I want to be known for?

Promise: What Can People Count on You For?

Your next question should be about expectations. When someone sees your name or encounters your work repeatedly, what do they expect from you?

If you cannot answer this clearly, your audience may not have a clear answer either. Try completing this sentence: “People come to me when they need ______.” Your answer can reveal whether your personal brand has a recognizable promise.

Person-Centric: Does Your Brand Actually Reflect You?

Look beyond your professional title and consider whether your brand reflects your genuine strengths, experiences, perspective, and personality. Are you building around something you can realistically sustain, or have you adopted a positioning simply because you have seen someone else succeed with it?

Then ask: What combination of experiences, skills, knowledge, or perspectives makes my approach distinct? Your differentiation does not need to be dramatic; it simply needs to be meaningful and relevant to the audience you want to serve.

Artifactual: Where Is the Evidence?

Finally, look at the visible evidence supporting your brand. If someone discovered you today without knowing anything about you, would your LinkedIn profile, website, portfolio, content, projects, and other digital touchpoints support the story you want them to understand?

This is where many personal brands have a gap between claim and proof. You may describe yourself as an expert, strategist, leader, writer, coach, or consultant, but your artifacts should give people enough evidence to understand why that description is credible.

A Simple Personal Branding Audit

You can turn these questions into a quick exercise by rating yourself from 1 to 5 on each attribute:

• Strategic: Do I have a clear audience, direction, and purpose?
• Positive: Do I create value that my intended audience actually appreciates?
• Promise: Do people know what they can consistently expect from me?
• Person-Centric: Does my brand reflect who I genuinely am and what makes me distinct?
• Artifactual: Do I have visible evidence that supports what I claim?

Your lowest score is not a failure; it is a starting point. If your strategy is strong but your artifacts are weak, for example, your next step may not be another strategy session—it may be creating the evidence that allows people to see what you already know you can do.

The Goal Is Not to Look Like a Brand—It Is to Build a Recognizable One

One of the biggest misconceptions about personal branding is that you have to become a polished, carefully packaged version of yourself. You do not need to manufacture a personality, copy someone else’s content style, or turn every part of your life into marketing material to build a strong personal brand.

At the same time, authenticity does not mean being completely unintentional. You can be genuine while still making deliberate decisions about what you want to communicate, who you want to reach, and which parts of your expertise and personality you want to make more visible.

This is where the five attributes become particularly useful. Strategic keeps your brand from becoming directionless, positive ensures you are creating meaningful value, promise gives people a reason to know what to expect, person-centric keeps the brand rooted in who you actually are, and artifactual turns all of that into visible evidence.

Think of personal branding like opening the front door to your professional world. You do not need to display everything inside the house, but you should make it easy for the right people to understand what kind of place they have entered and what they can expect to find there.

This also means that personal branding is not about creating a perfect image. In fact, trying too hard to appear perfect can make a brand feel distant and difficult to trust because people cannot see the person behind the presentation.

Instead, the goal is clarity with character. You simplify what you want to be known for without shrinking yourself into a narrow identity, and you communicate your value without pretending to be someone you are not.

That distinction matters because your personal brand has to be sustainable. If you build a brand around an identity you cannot genuinely maintain, eventually the gap between the person you are presenting and the person you actually are will become difficult to manage.

A strong personal brand should therefore feel intentional without feeling artificial, consistent without becoming repetitive, and differentiated without becoming performative. The objective is not to make everyone notice you; it is to make the right people understand why you matter.