Hugh Macleod’s excellent blog about ‘Global Microbrands’ led to an incredibly insightful and informative exercise in evaluating my personal microbrand, ‘Dr.Mani’.

Now, as an extension of this exercise, I’m doing some things that are designed to:

• - study the strength and nature of my microbrand
• - explore ways to spread it and focus it better
• - spin-off ‘non-core’ components into separate microbrands

What have I done thus far?

First, I calculated my ‘Google quotient’.

My online identity score was 8 out of a possible 10, making ‘Dr.Mani’ digitally distinct (the “nirvana of online identity”, according to the tool!)

Next, I took the personal branding quiz. My report delivered by email says:

“Your score on the personal branding quiz is 23.

Congratulations! You scored in the top 20%. You are a Super Brand! But
there is still room for improvement.”

Now, all of this sounds nice… but is it applicable to my audience?

To answer that question, I sent around 1,250 people on my list a short questionnaire. The results are still trickling in, but early response is VERY encouraging.

Over 70% of people who answered the 5 questions said they had spoken about ‘Dr.Mani’ to others.

Of them, the overwhelming majority spread the message I think is core to the brand, ‘Dr.Mani’ - and articulated it in a way that even clarified it in my own mind!

Here are ten random choices from the survey results, answers to the question:

 1. That there was this Dr from India that works with Heart Patients, children with congenital heart defects and he uses the internet to help fund these surgeries for these children in India

2. Dr Mani’s a children’s Heart Surgeon who raises money to offset the high cost of this type of surgery for those who cannot pay. His main fund raising mechanism is done through Internet Marketing selling, teaching (been doing it for over a decade), mentoring, etc

3. Dr. Mani is a marketer with heart. He works tirelessly as a marketer so that he can help children who need heart surgery - and then he performs the surgeries himself!

4. He is a great in Making Money from Blogging. At the same time he is doing it with a dual goal of helping heart patients from his ebiz

5. That he is using his internet marketing business to fund heart surgery for children.

6. Cardiac surgeon that is involved in correcting congenital heart defects in children. Highly recognized internet marketer that creates and provides useful information products and services. He also utilizes this as an avenue to help raise money to provide the healthcare resources needed by families with children needing surgical and medical intervention for their congenital cardiac complications.

7. Dr. Mani is a heart surgeon who is also an internet marketer. He raises a lot of funds to sponsor heart surgeries for underprivileged children.

8. Here is a man who is dedicated to helping kids with heart defects and yet finds the time to share his growing expertise in Internet Marketing.

9. Dr Mani is using his activities as an internet marketer to help fund assistance to children in third world countries and by purchasing his products or services you help further his work. He is also is developing a method using internet marketing and digital products for those in third world countries to create an income and improve their lot in life.

10. That Dr Mani knows what he is talking about when it comes to Blogging and that he is a wonderful caring man who is a heart surgeon who is raising funds for those less fortunate but that need heart care

What next?

I’ve planned out a sequence of activities and processes that I will be executing over the coming weeks. It will aim to further refine and separate the distinct components that make up my online activities.

Hopefully, this will further hone down and focus the brand ‘Dr.Mani’, leaving other ‘non-core’ components out of the definition - to be spun out into separate microbrands.

As an experiment in strategy and tactical effort, this is going to be interesting - and fun. I’m even thinking about turning it into a PRODUCT… a ‘live experiment’ that others can observe, study and learn from - by creating a series of classes detailing very specifically the actions I’m taking, along with the reasons for doing each thing.

Surely that should be worth a price tag of $47.00 - or won’t it? There’s only one way to know for sure - testing.

Click this link and see what I’m doing to test the hypothesis!