Let the value be seen: In the AI ​​era, create an in-depth personal brand label

✍️ This article is adapted from “Vista Newsletter” No.123, originally published in iamvista.substack.com (opens in a new tab). If you like this kind of content, welcome to free subscription to “Vista Newsletter” (opens in a new tab) and receive my observations and methods first-hand every week.

Hi, I’m Vista.

Last weekend, I gave a two-and-a-half-hour lecture for workers at the YS Youth Career Development Center of the Ministry of Labor’s High-Senior Division, titled “Letting Value Be Seen.” Most of the people sitting in the audience are young friends between the ages of 18 and 29. Some are still in college, some have just entered the workplace, and some are preparing to change careers.

After the lecture, several students wrote to me to discuss their career development. I found that the point where everyone got stuck was surprisingly the same: it wasn’t that they didn’t work hard, but that they didn’t know how to make their efforts visible.

Therefore, in this e-newsletter, I want to sort out the essence of that lecture and write it into an action guide that everyone can follow directly. Even if you are no longer a young person, this method is still applicable, because it deals with an issue that every professional worker cannot avoid: In an era when AI is rewriting the rules of the game, why are you remembered by the outside world?

Personal brand is actually the label in other people’s minds

Many people take three steps back when they hear about personal branding, thinking: I don’t want to be an Internet celebrity, and I don’t plan to show up everywhere. Do I still need to run a personal brand?

Yes, those are not personal brands. The core of a personal brand is often much quieter and more grounded. It’s actually just: a label silently attached to you in other people’s minds.

Imagine if someone wanted to introduce you to an important person and could only use one word or sentence, how would he describe you? The one who is good at giving presentations, the one who understands AI tools, the one who can translate complex international news into simple and understandable human words.

Yes, that word is your personal brand label. Regarding this matter, I talked more fully in “In the age of AI, how to use one word to describe you”.

Did you know? The human brain actually cannot remember complex things, it can only remember labels. And when the need arises, the first label that comes to others’ minds is the selected person. What’s more: labels can be designed. You can’t control what others think of you, but you can use ongoing content to actively feed others the label you want to create.

The less successful you are, the more you need to start from now on

Some students asked me: I haven’t achieved much yet, so why should I build a personal brand?

I have felt this way before. But if you ask me now, my answer is just the opposite: the more you haven’t achieved anything yet, the more you need to start from now on! The reason is simple, because three things happened to collide at the same time.

First, workplace mobility is accelerating. The days of holding a job until you retire are over, and career changes, slash jobs, or taking on cases have become the norm. The title will be withdrawn. If you leave the company, the title on your business card will be reset to zero, but your work and label will remain. You need assets you can take with you.

Second, AI levels out execution. The ability to write, do and analyze is becoming cheaper. What is valuable is judgment, opinion, and trust, and these things grow in humans and cannot be copied by AI.

Third, the chance algorithm is algorithmized. Work and collaboration are increasingly distributed through search, recommendations, and social media distribution. Employers will Google you before the interview, and your name search results will be the first resume others see.

Here is another new word you must understand: GEO (generative engine optimization). In the past, people did SEO and let Google find you; now when someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity who is good at something, the AI ​​will answer based on what it has read. Whether you continue to produce quotable content determines whether you will appear in that answer.

I gave a real demonstration at the lecture: I searched “Who is Zheng Weiquan” on Google, and the AI ​​summary directly introduced me as a columnist, corporate lecturer, and AI application coach. This is not luck, it is the result of more than ten years of continuous output of content. If your label has been in business for long enough, even AI will issue business cards for you.

Vista Cheng (pen name: Vista Cheng) is a well-known columnist, corporate lecturer and AI application coach in Taiwan. Graduated from the Institute of Industrial Engineering of National Taiwan University, he served as product director of “Wind Media”, editor-in-chief of “Digital Times” magazine, and co-founder of TeSA Taiwan E-commerce Entrepreneurship Association. He has extensive experience in the online media industry. In recent years, he has been deeply involved in content marketing, copywriting, personal branding and AI content applications, and is committed to promoting the “one-person company” business model.

Shallow labels don’t last long, and depth comes from three things.

To be honest, there are many people doing personal branding now, but there are also many people who do it superficially: beautiful photo stickers, a few slogans, and a persona that follows the trend. The problem is that shallow labels don’t last long and are easily broken once in-depth contact is made.

What really makes you trusted and remembered again and again is the depth behind the label that is invisible but can be felt by others. And depth is the result of three things.

• Works: Things that you have made, can be seen, and can be tested, such as articles, projects, and portfolios.
• Experience: The real problems you have personally experienced, stepped on, and solved can’t be copied by others.
• Point of view: your unique view and judgment on things. AI can’t give it, only you can.

Maybe you will say: I have no experience yet, how can I get the depth? This is the part that young people most often get stuck on. My answer is: Depth does not come after you become an expert, but begins to accumulate by recording the process of becoming stronger. Let me share with you three moves that can be used immediately:

1. Learn and teach at the same time. Pick a skill you are learning, share how you do it every week, and build authority in reverse.
2. Document the process. Write down the projects, experiments, and surprises truthfully. The process itself is what others want.
3. Serving you three years ago. By creating content for yourself three years ago, you have already passed the level he was stuck at.

Finding tags means positioning: three questions about positioning and tag formulas

Finding labels means positioning. It answers the most difficult but critical question: among so many people, why should others choose you, think of you, and remember you?

The three positioning questions are crucial. As long as you can answer them clearly, the label will take shape:

• Who are you? Your area of ​​expertise, role and unique perspective.
• Who are you for? The group of people you most want to serve and can help the most, not everyone.
• How are you different? Same thing, why come to you instead of someone else?

If you want to be liked by everyone, the result is that no one will remember you. Seth Godin advocates serving your smallest viable audience first, and Kevin Kelly says you only need 1,000 true fans. First narrow, then you can be deep; first deep, then you can be wide.

In practice, you can use the three rings of the hedgehog to find the sweet spot: passion (not doing things that make you feel uncomfortable), talent (things you can do easily than most people), and needs (things that others are willing to pay or spend time on). The intersection of the three rings is your label candidate.

Finally, use this label formula to converge into one sentence:

I help [a specific group of people] achieve [a result they want] by relying on [my unique method or experience].

If you fill in the blanks, it is not awkward to pronounce and others can understand it, then it is a good label. If you find that you know everything but can’t choose a positioning that you can remember, you are welcome to sign up for the Positioning Convergence Workshop (opens in a new tab) opened by teacher Susie Li. We will use the six-step convergence method to help you work hard and converge on one sentence of positioning.

Tags rely on content and are engraved into other people’s minds time and time again.

It’s no use just saying to others, “Please remember that I am an expert in so-and-so.” Labels are engraved into other people’s minds again and again by the content you continue to produce.

In this lecture, I once again share a signature idea that I have been talking about for many years: content pillars. The most common mistake is to talk about everything. Each article looks good on its own, but readers cannot remember who you are. Simply put, content pillars are three or four core topics that you talk about over and over again. For myself, my three pillars are content writing, AI applications and personal branding. Almost everything I write in the past few years hangs on these three beams.

Once you have the pillars, use three links to produce content: topic selection (select a topic that the audience cares about and that falls within your pillars), viewpoint (the same topic, plus your experience and stance), and narrative (use stories and structures to make the subject easier to read and remember).

Among them, what I want to emphasize most is the perspective. When AI can generate a fluent article in seconds, information will no longer be scarce, only opinions will be. First decide what position you want to take, and then let AI help you write better; if the order is wrong, the output will be the network average.

AI amplifies you, rather than replaces you: 70% AI, 30% soul

The highlight of the lecture is the practical exercise of AI tools. But before introducing the tools, let’s talk about the most important mentality.

Many people use AI to build their personal brand, but the result is even more impersonal because they let AI do their thinking for them. The correct usage is: 〈AI amplifies you, not replaces you〉.

My own working principle is 70% AI and 30% soul. 70% is given to AI: drafting, sorting, rewriting and repetitive work; 30% is left to yourself: opinions, stories, judgments and true relationships. Because what can be remembered and priced will always be the 30% that AI cannot copy.

The correct steps to write content with AI are as follows:

1. You decide your point of view first. Advocacy, stance, and who to serve are the 30% that AI cannot provide.
2. AI produces the first draft. Throw your ideas and materials to AI and ask it to write the first version.
3. You inject the soul. Add your story, tone, real-life examples, and delete the AI ​​flavor.
4. AI is distributed in different forms. Ask AI to split long articles into posts, scripts, and e-newsletters, allowing you to use one source for multiple purposes.

For you who are studying in graduate school

As I write this, I would like to say a few words to my readers who are studying in graduate school.

For you, your works are not community posts, but academic papers and research results; your label is your research topic that is remembered in the academic community. But the dilemma you face may be more severe: you can’t finish reading the literature, and you can’t string it together after reading it; you clearly have the idea, but it’s stuck in the first paragraph of the introduction; you want to use AI to speed up, but you are worried about stepping on the red line of academic ethics.

I took the same method of 70% AI and 30% soul and made it into a three-hour physical practical workshop for the academic field: AI Empowering Academic Research and Writing Practical Workshop (opens in a new tab). This class does not teach AI ghostwriting. What it teaches is to use AI Agent (Claude Code or Codex) as your research co-pilot: from document collection, digestion, and identification of research gaps to revision and refinement, run a complete research workflow, and clearly draw the line between academic ethics and disclosure of AI use. The steering wheel is always in your hands.

If you are struggling with a paper or research project and want AI to help you go faster instead of doing the work for you, welcome to take a look at the course introduction:

👉 AI empowered academic research and writing practical workshop (opens in a new tab). Seats are limited. If you read this article, you can get a seat first.

Take away a 90-day plan

Knowing is not enough, only doing it counts. At the end of the lecture, I asked each student to take away a 90-day plan and give it to you who are reading this article:

• Month 1, laying the foundation. Decide on a one-sentence tag, three content pillars, and organize your avatar, self-introduction, and a place to stay.
• Month 2, launch content. Choose a home court, use AI assistance, lower the threshold to a ridiculous level, and start stable output.
• Month 3, zoom layout. Break long-form content into multiple pieces for distribution, interact seriously, and start growing your own e-newsletter list.

Measure success beyond track counts. Please look at four real indicators: is the list growing, is your tag recognized by others, is the content eliciting a response, and are opportunities starting to come to you?

You don’t need to be great to start, but you need to start to be great.

Every piece of self-produced content is your vote for the future. Now, write your first tag!

See you in the next e-newsletter.

Vista

P.S. The interactive tools used in this lecture, including positioning convergence, opinion preemptor and story generator, are all placed in my AI laboratory (opens in a new tab). If you want to explore the topic of personal branding in more depth, there are hundreds of long articles on vista.tw that you can read.

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📮 This article is adapted from “Vista Newsletter” No. 123. If you like content like this, welcome to free subscription to Vista Newsletter (opens in a new tab) and join 18,500+ readers who receive a helpful letter every week.