Now more than ever it is crucially important to understand what you stand for, identify the values you hold, acknowledge your real strengths and the attributes that make you unique and differentiate yourself from your competition. In a crowded noisy marketplace, it is essential to demonstrate your credibility through your personal brand as well as connecting and engaging with the right people and in relevant places, consistently.
What is a Personal Brand?
We are all familiar with companies having their own individual branding and making a big noise to market these brands and attract their target audience. However, we may not be overly familiar with considering our own personal brand. Similar to any company, we all have a brand, we all have values, strengths and attributes which make us unique, but how refined is our personal brand, how are we perceived off and online and how are we promoting ourselves?
Why should you develop your Personal Brand?
Having a personal brand is an identifier, it makes you distinctive and can allow you to shine as a real authority in your market. Being known as a thought-leader and being seen as present within your specialism can lead to increased opportunities, promotions, speaking events, collaborations and being made aware of relevant job opportunities. Those with a strong and engaged network will understand well the power that can come from being prolific in their sector and as a result, can see fantastic personal growth and success from leveraging their unique power of influence.
In today’s society this has never been so acutely represented than by the rise of the social-media “influencer”. Their knowledge or expertise can generate large, engaged followings and can have the power to directly affect people’s buying decisions. However, this methodology can also translate across into any other industry sector, where building out your own credentials and authority in your specialist subject area can be incredibly powerful and potentially lead to becoming a real “one-to-watch” or potentially even “top-of-your-game” in your particular specialism.
Where to start with growing your Personal Brand?
Whether you realise or not, you do already have a personal brand! However, if you hadn’t already appreciated this, the chances are you probably haven’t spent much time understanding your own personal brand, let alone put a plan into place for growing it. The great news is, developing your brand can be done at any point in your career, the key is not to put it off and to just get cracking! Your personal brand can become your biggest asset, it will represent everything about you, however, it will take time to cultivate and you will need to adopt a fairly strategic approach in defining and building your brand.
Fundamentally your personal brand must be authentic. For people to buy into you, it must be a sincere and accurate representation of you and not a fabricated personality or character of who you feel you need to be. It is also essential that you understand and take time to establish your key strengths, where your passions lie and have worked through and gained clarity on your career goals. Thereafter, in building out your personal brand, the key areas you will need to define will be:
What is it you stand for?
What makes you different from others who may be similar to you?
What benefits do you offer?
What is your unique style or personality, which will enable you to be remembered?
Working through these points and identifying your niche will lead you to establishing your key message or real value proposition which you want to represent you and to be known for.
Promoting your Personal Brand
It is all well and good knowing what you stand for, but what does everyone else know you as and how widely are you known? It’s time to start working on getting your personal brand out there and building it both off and online. It is all about making real connections, with relevant industry professionals across all levels. Taking the opportunity to make contacts and build out your network at every opportunity is crucial, as is adding value to these individuals. Producing content, sharing relevant industry news, commenting on their work, content and articles and taking time to stay in touch is essential to be seen as knowledgeable, highly relevant and ensuring you remain front of mind.
The key to greater impact is consistency. Consistency in ensuring your message and profiles are aligned across different platforms. Consistency in creating opportunities for yourself, attending events, giving your opinion, providing advice and guidance and building on your digital and offline footprint. By consistently adding value to the right people and providing a clear message of who you are through relevant content as well as showcasing how your skills and expertise can help others will all be distinguishing you from the competition, ensuring you are more visible and ultimately be growing your personal brand.
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