Table of Content
What is personal branding?
Importance of Personal Branding
How to Build a Powerful Personal Brand
Introduction
Have you ever randomly seen something, maybe a logo, colour, post, or something else, that immediately reminds you of someone you know or follow online? Chances are, you’ve probably experienced this before. That’s one of the effects a strong personal brand can have on your target audience. People are beginning to pay attention to building a personal brand, and the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages - if there are any.
Entrepreneurs, creators, freelancers, professionals, etc, can all benefit from building a strong personal brand that will distinguish them from their competitors and showcase their unique value and voice.
In this article, we’ll talk about what a personal brand is, its importance, and how to build a strong personal brand.
A personal brand is your unique value, experience, or skills that set you apart from other people. Your personal brand is what gives you an edge over others, and if done well, can be used to promote your business or career.
People build a personal brand for different reasons. Some do it to attract prospective clients or customers, others do it to show thought leadership. And some just want to network and collaborate with other professionals in their industry. Whichever reason you choose to build yours, you should know that there are certain things you need to do and steps to take to solidify your brand and communicate your unique perspective to people.
Before we dive into more details on how to build a powerful personal brand, let’s talk about the importance of building a personal brand.
Why should you build a personal brand? Is it really necessary? And what are the perks you enjoy for building a strong personal brand?
Let’s discuss some of them.
1. Increased visibility: Showcasing your skill, experience, and thought leadership allows you to gain more exposure in your industry. When people resonate with your content and message, they can share with their network, thereby giving you more visibility.
2. Credibility: When you constantly share valuable messages that help people or you give a refreshing perspective on a topic, it boosts your credibility and increases the chances of people coming to your page or profile for information.
3. Networking opportunities: It’s basic human psychology to want to associate with people who are doing well. When you build a strong personal brand, don't be shocked when you start receiving invites or messages from people wanting to connect and be a part of your circle. Your personal brand will also make it easy for you to network with other industry leaders and professionals.
4. Positioning: A very effective way to stand out and stay ahead of your competitors is to build a strong personal brand. Your online presence, personal statement, and messaging will make it easy for your target audience to make decisions and work with you.
5. Personal growth: Building a personal brand requires some level of intentionality, consistency, and determination. This will ensure that you work on your personal development to keep up with building your personal brand online.
There are a lot of people building a personal brand online, but not many are doing it the right way or to the highest level, where they get the recognition and visibility they want. In this section, we’ll discuss how you can build a powerful personal brand online.
1. Define your WHY: People build a personal brand for different reasons. To attract potential clients and employers, to share their viewpoints and experience, or to connect with other industry professionals. The first step in building a strong personal brand is to figure out why you’re doing it in the first place. Then identify your value and what makes you unique. These are the things that will help you stand out and position yourself as a good fit to work or connect with.
When you nail down why you want to build a personal brand, you have done about half of the job, the remaining half is to figure out a strategy to position yourself and talk about the things you’re passionate about with your target audience.
2. Research your target audience: There’s no brand when you don’t have people to appeal to or send your messages to. This is why the next important step in your personal branding journey is to identify the people you want to reach, their favourite channel, how you’ll craft your messaging to resonate with them, and most importantly, what they care to hear about.
All these will ensure your messages get the reception they need and help you build a loyal community of people who are always ready to engage your content or do whatever you want them to.
3. Engage with your audience: It’s almost impossible to build a strong personal brand without engaging with your audience. They have to feel a sense of connection with you, and know that there’s a human behind the brand. You can do this by responding to their messages, replying to their comments on your posts, planning a hangout with them, etc.
This is also a way of showing your audience you care about them and you’re very much interested in their feedback, comments, or success.
4. Be authentic: Talking about your experience, failures, processes, and unique viewpoints boosts your authenticity. It’s called personal branding for a reason. Your messaging should be about your skills, experience, and ideas. Once you go out of your way to model other people’s messages, you begin to water down your brand and promote theirs. Ensure you give people a unique perspective and not something they can see in any other place.
5. Network and collaborate: One of the fastest ways to grow your personal brand is to collaborate and network with other people, either in your industry or outside of it. Collaborating with other people is like sharing your message or content with their already established audience, just as they’re sharing with your audience too. It’s a simple, but effective way to grow your brand and reach a wider audience.
However, you must ensure that whoever you’re collaborating with has the same values that align with yours, to prevent conflict of ideas.
6. Be consistent: Out of sight, they say, is out of mind. If you want to be remembered, then you have to be consistent with your personal brand. Be consistent with your message and tone, so you don’t come off as unauthentic. This way, you also give your audience enough time to accept your message, know you, like you, and trust you.
Conclusion
Building a personal brand is a long-term game. It takes careful planning, research of your target audience, authenticity, and consistency to build a strong one. How long it takes can also depend on several reasons. It can be your posting consistency, audience, content distribution channel, etc. A lot of people, especially professionals and creators build their personal brand on LinkedIn because it is a fertile ground to look for potential employees or clients.
The bottom line is that whatever platform you choose to build your personal brand on, make sure you’re consistent and show authenticity. Take account of the things we’ve talked about in this article and that should be enough to get you started on building a strong personal brand.
