When you hear personal branding what comes to mind? I’m guessing you think of it as a daunting, mystical task and one of the ways you get lost in the process without knowing where to start. Well, if you let me, I’d change that narrative.
Here in this guide, I will show and convince you how building a personal brand is for everyone including the golden rules for creating an engaging, unique, and inviting personal brand. Let’s go into full detail.
Key Points
- Personal branding is simply who you are, what people perceive about you, and how your skills, talents, and personality define your professional identity.
- Building a personal brand increases trust with your target audience and opens doors for media features.
- Consistency, focus, and genuine engagement are key to creating a memorable and lasting personal brand.
- Sharing your story and living your brand authentically helps connect with your audience on a deeper level.
- A successful personal brand is one that leaves a lasting legacy and is continuously refined over time.
What is Personal Branding?
Personal branding is simply who you are. It is what people perceive about you and your personality. What are your skills, talents, or qualifications? That’s exactly what personal branding is. Once you can define yourself and know who you are then you can understand what you want to achieve in your career.
Just think of it as who you are at work, what are those work ethics and what are the professional values that make you unique to your own self.
Importance of Building a Personal Brand
Like why should you even bother? Why should you build a personal brand? Why does it matter? These are questions that might run through your mind as you get to understand the whole term called branding. Because I want you to benefit from the awesomeness of this term, I will tell you why you need to build a personal brand:
#1. Increase trust
Having a personal brand will obviously help build trust between yourself and your target audience because you are vulnerable and also tell them who you are and what you stand for.
#2. Get featured in media
A personal brand is a revenue to show off your skills and talent. It shows off your expertise and what you aim to solve in a society and with this, you are already an asset. And once you become an asset, people will seek your knowledge. Those people in this context include influential media outlets – including online publications, magazines, television, radio, podcasts, and more.
#3. Build your network
Just like I said in the previous point, unraveling who you are will only attract more people to you. You will receive tons of collaborations from people or other brands because they will be interested in connecting with you. Once you keep connecting with them, then you are steadily building your network.
#4. Attract more clients
Still in the same light, having a personal brand will only connect you to more and more people and that includes clients. Either target audience that wants your services or brands that wish to partner in any way.
#5. Create a lasting platform
Once you have established your presence in the industry over time, you might even want to explore and start up something in different industries. But then your personal brand still stays with you and even helps build up other of your extensions faster.
How to Build a Personal Brand
Since we are done with all of those intros just to get you in the mood and set the path for the main topic to come forth, let’s now go into full detail. I’m just going to start by saying that I don’t have millions of followers on LinkedIn or other social media platforms, so I will just have to rephrase the sub-section a bit and just say, “How I am Building my Personal Brand”.
#1. I developed focus
Too many people are just unfocused. Like have you ever sat down to wonder how or why people decide to just be everything to everyone? Be in everyone’s book? Be in every niche? That already gives me a migraine just writing about it. Pick your key message and stick by it.
Let that message be your guide through everything you are doing. Let it define you and what you stand for. Let it show in all ramifications of your personality and brand, your target audience will see that and it will click on them right away. It is even advised to create a niche and then carve out another niche from that niche and be flexible with it while still maintaining your brand’s tone and message. It’s that easy. Be consistent and focused and that way you are narrowing down your brand to be what people can easily remember.
#2. I am genuine
How genuine and authentic are you with your brand and yourself. Is your brand original or is it displaying what it is not. I can tell you for free that people can easily fish that out if that’s what your brand is about. I learned to be genuine and I comfortably say that it has been so much easier managing my brand daily and I also get to engage with people that love me for who I really am.
Your personal brand should be an easy daily filter that you just log into every day, create your content, and reach your audience. Once you start imitating a brand, it becomes daunting and stressful to keep up and manage.
#3. I always had a story
One point you should always have at the back of your head as a brand owner is that humans, yes those target audiences of yours, are mostly stirred out of emotions. And the only thing that gets to stir up those emotions, either negatively or positively, are stories. Have you communicated how you started your business, the inspiration behind the start-up, the days of the little beginnings, and the challenges you faced along the way? They need to hear all those to still be reminded that your brand is only a human like them.
Some of your target audience might even relate to the stories but it is only when you tell it that they will be able to hear them. Even aside from the story of your originality, share a day in your life as a business owner, what it feels like, how many businesses you own, and the rest of it. Share it in either written content or a video to create a personal connection with prospective clients.
#4. Consistency is key
If you need a reminder to tell you how much your inconsistency is costing your brand, then I am here to tell you that. Consistency and being focused work hand in hand. Come to think of it, what is the essence of even starting a business when you won’t show up, both offline and online, all the time? Just imagine you made a couple of contents, posted some of it, and then it blew up, and boom, you ghost. Do you think those followers will still stick around or even remember you once you don’t always show up? In fact, how do you even know which content will blow up or which potential clients will visit if you are not consistent?
It ain’t magic, you just have to do it. You have to demonstrate consistency across your communication, gravitas, and appearance.
#5. I was ready to fail and ready to keep pushing
It’s high time you remind yourself that hustle is real and you should be ready to meet setbacks or fail at the first attempt. Failure is tough, and all of us generally want to avoid it – that’s human nature. But you can’t prevent failure when you are building a personal brand that can make it to the top, it’s almost impossible.
Failing at something is also a good reminder that stuff can’t always be good or move swiftly. It is also a reminder to learn, pick yourself up, and be better. So get out of that comfort zone, take a step and when you fall, get back up and keep moving. This ain’t no preaching though, it’s business facts!
#6. I always gave off a positive attitude
One thing that kept me going was always giving off a positive attitude even on my bad days. I knew that keeping up with that positive attitude and helping others was only going to make my brand healthier in the long run.
Just remember that you are building a personal brand regardless of what level you might find yourself what project you happen to be working on at any one time or whatever priorities you have. You are already out there and you have a reputation to keep, you have people looking up to the brand, so it’s up to you to hop over others and burn bridges or to be helpful and awesome to one another.
#7. Live up to your model brands
As a brand owner, there is this one personal brand that you love what they do, their content, how they relate to their audience, and probably how popular they are. Well, this point is about using them to your own advantage. If you are interested in building a strong personal brand you should be ready to market yourself the way your models and these popular celebrities do it too.
You can watch these popular brands, study trends, and then recreate yours with an even more engaging and better approach. Who knows, your success story might come early.
#8. Live your brand
As I stated above, one of the ways you can make building a personal brand difficult yourself is to separate your brand from your personal life. Don’t do that because your brand should be your personal life. It should not have any difference. If they are separate, it almost feels like you are living a double life hence it will become hard to keep up with your personal brand, so it’s better you live your brand. I mean, that’s why it’s called a personal brand.
A personal brand is never meant to be a reflection of these job professions including marketing, finance, or even a doctor. It mostly has to do with professions like giving back, thoughtful leadership, or mentorship. It should be a mirror or shadow of yourself that follows you bumper to bumper everywhere you go. It should be who you are both online and offline.
#9. Let people preach about your brand
If you have gotten to the level where people speak of your brand and tell your story for you, then you have made a high impact with your personal brand because the best PR is by word of mouth. Even if you run your own personal branding online or offline, it doesn’t stop you from making this point a reality.
In fact, personal branding is the story people tell about you when you’re not in the room. Either through those lively videos and the occasional bunny co-host, they are able to remember that event and interpret it as though they own the brand. As a personal brand, you have just your name and reputation.
#10. I want to leave a legacy
If you are with me on this point please leave a smiley emoji in the comment section of this blog cause what is a personal brand without an everlasting touch. If you have built that name, reputation, and community, then leaving a legacy behind should be the next goal.
A popular tech and sports hero once said, “Building a personal brand is much bigger than building a business. The only exit strategy is legacy.” And till this day this quote still bangs for me. So to start setting the pace and leaving a legacy, ask yourself, what you want to be known for, and when everyone remembers it, your brand will come to mind.
Here is a FREE TEMPLATE/EXERCISE that will help you set a long-lasting legacy.
Personal Brand Legacy Planning Template.PDF
Conclusion
One thing you should remember through this journey is that a personal brand is a lifelong project that constantly evolves and changes. Even the most successful brands are always working on being better and advanced because the hard truth is that, there is no pattern or set of rules to building a personal brand. You just have to know who you are and use it to your full advantage. The guidelines I have listed in this blog will also help as you embark on this journey.
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References
