Use a Personal USP to Help Shape Your Future

In the wonderful world of marketing, every product must have a USP — a unique selling proposition that explains what the product is, what it does, and who it does it for.

In the wonderful world of web work, creating a USP for yourself can be a great idea. I’m not talking about creating a USP for your product or service here. I’m talking about yourself: you, the person, the professional.

Rather than reducing yourself or your capabilities to a single sentence, creating a USP can boost your self-awareness and expand your possibilities. And creating your own USP doesn’t mean you’re commoditizing yourself — on the contrary, it can give you a sense of where your professional self stops and your personal or social self begins.

Why USPs Matter for the Web Worker

In a world of constant connectivity, where social and professional networking services routinely cross paths and purposes, company web sites boast personal blogs, and the photos or video you took of an event today may well feature as part of tomorrow’s news report, the definitions of concepts like “personal” and “public” are most certainly blurred. Today, you’re a web developer. Tomorrow, a movie reviewer. The day after, who knows?

Beyond these obvious questions, additional issues can abound for remote workers who rarely, if ever, visit company offices. Without easy, casual, face-to-face opportunities for communication on professional or personal levels, your colleagues can begin to see you as “the stats guy” or “the monthly report girl”, rather than a well-rounded, engaging individual with a complex, extensive skill set, career ambitions and a hunger for new professional challenges.

Creating a USP for yourself can remind you of how you see yourself — within a given setting, such as the workplace, if you wish — and what you believe you’re about. It can then help you clearly communicate who you are, what you do, and what you want, in a forum that’s at once noisy, complex, disparate, and all-pervading.

Benefits of a USP

I think it’s the process of creating a USP that’s most important, although the USP itself can help you keep your boat steady through the unpredictable waters ahead. Here are the kinds of benefits creating a USP can deliver:

1. It lets you focus on the thing you’re best at.


2. It helps you to define what you want.


3. It lets you identify the people who will value what you offer.


4. It can help you focus your efforts, choose appropriate projects, goals, and communications channels.


5. It can help you secure more or better-paid roles.


6. It can make your professional and/or personal life more rewarding.

How can a USP do all these things? You’ll see, once you understand how to create one for yourself.