Personal Branding – As an entrepreneur and CEO of your business, you get a lot of traction, but have you ever thought about building and leveraging your brand?
Personal branding can be defined according to PersonalBrand.com as:
“The conscious and intentional effort to create and influence public perception of an individual by positioning them as an authority in their industry, elevating their credibility, and differentiating themselves from the competition, to ultimately advance their career, increase their circle of influence, and have a larger impact.”
Here’s what to realize if you want to be wiser than many other business leaders and influencers. Branding is not a one-time activity but an ongoing process.
It can start with personal branding design, but then you need to:
– Introduce this to your audience
– Make people notice it
– Get consumers used to seeing it, which leads to trust
– Make it the brand of choice in your niche
How do you do this exactly? We’ll share the strategies below, but you can’t just pick one or all systems. It is important to note that your methods should suit your style and goals.
Each strategy has a specific outcome, engages a unique audience, and builds some aspect of your public reputation. With personal branding, you have an extra challenge: the strategy must suit you personally, not just to your company.
Your first step: Identity which aspect you need the most help with managing what others know about you and thinking about your brand. Now choose your strategies accordingly.
Important to All: Know Yourself
This is a strategy anyone can try, even before trying any of the following approaches. If you want your system to look clear, professional, and powerful, you need to know precisely what you want to communicate.
This strategy requires you to consider:
– What values you want to communicate through your brand
– The amount you think you will add to your industry, community, or online network
– The personality and tone you want others to know about you
– What your brand identity should look like, including logo, images, and other aspects of the brand
Without knowing what you want to market about yourself and your brand, your campaign can feel haphazard, disorganized, or even send conflicting messages. Since trust is an essential aspect of being a recognized, famous brand, your audience shouldn’t question you.
Using other methods and strategies, you should now make sure that the advertisements, communication, and images will present the aspects mentioned above.
Go online
Personal branding in the modern age requires an online business. But it’s not just about BEING online, it’s about making the most of all the tools available to you:
– Are you blogging to showcase your expertise?
– Are your different platforms connecting like adding social media, forums, listings, websites, etc.?
– Do you share your views instead of just sharing news stories (which could be fake news)?
Perfecting an online social media strategy for your brand will impact a broad audience in a short amount of time as people are online 24/7. You can also consider what kind of personal brand presence you want to have for audiences online and offline.
Become a networker
Without an audience, you won’t get word of mouth about your brand, so it’s a strategy that many demands. But how good are you at networking? Guess what, it’s not just about telling others about you. Some networking events hosted by Eventbrite, local community networking groups, and during Covid-19 online networking events are significant for showcasing your brand.
But don’t just shout out your brand again. People want to be heard. Merely adjusting to listening to others and realizing what they need from you is far more effective than just communicating your ideas. Taking the time to interact with your audience this way will keep them coming back for more and bringing others with them.
Send One Message Only
The reason you aren’t getting the traction you want maybe because your audience isn’t sure what you’re talking about. When your Facebook page and LinkedIn profile don’t match, they won’t know which aspect to trust you. And as mentioned earlier, trust is essential in the branding process.
Examine all aspects of your brand and make sure they have a similar tone, message, visuals, and even the audience they are created for. Each will be unique because your LinkedIn audience has a different reason to view your page than your Instagram network or someone downloading your eBook. Still, your brand should always be instantly recognizable regardless of the scenario.
