Personal Branding

Personal branding is a way of creating a brand around an individual rather than a business entity. It is the best way to show a person’s uniqueness, specialities, and selling points. It includes showcasing a person’s skills, personality, experience, behaviour, and attitude to build recognition and become a personal brand.

Personal branding encompasses how a person promotes himself/herself and creates a public persona for his/her business. It is also referred to as charisma that helps people turn their name into a visionary brand. It helps to advance the career or business of an individual by gaining recognition and popularity as an expert within the industry. 

Examples of Personal Branding – Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Ratan Tata, etc.

Whenever you hear the names of the personalities mentioned above, you remember their business. The name Steve Jobs acts as a synonym for the brand Apple. Similarly, the name Bill Gates reminds a person of Microsoft, Elon Musk is identified with Tesla, and Ratan Tata is well recognised for his Tata Group of Industries. When an individual is recognised as a brand for his/her business or work, it’s called personal branding.

Importance of Personal Branding

Personal branding is beneficial for both the personal and professional aspects of a person’s life. The importance of personal branding are as follows:

Helps build trust – Customers trust people more than business entities or corporations. Personal branding helps to build the trust of the customers. It allows people/customers to get to know who an individual really is and how much value he/she bring to the business. 

Personal branding helps people feel like they know the individual, especially before spending money on his/her business or products. It can lead to better customer relationships and business. It helps to build relationships with people throughout the world. 

Helps to distinguish the business from others – Personal branding builds credibility and helps to distinguish your business from other competitors in the industry. As people identify with you and build trust in you, it gives a competitive advantage over others.

It instils credibility in your knowledge and your abilities, thus improving the brand of your business. Branding helps to show your personality in an excellent way, which helps differentiate yourself from others in your industry and develop your personal brand. 

Increases revenue of your business – Personal branding helps increase the sales, revenue and growth of your business or products. It assists to manifest you as an authority in your industry.

It can also help get new opportunities like business deals or marketing partnerships as people of your industry recognise you and your business. Customers will identify with you, and they will purchase your products, thus helping the growth of your business. 

Building A Personal Brand

The following steps will help to build and improve your personal brand:

Find your niche: Personal branding yourself is hard when you don’t have an area of expertise. Thus, you need to find a niche. A niche is the area of your expertise. You should build your personal brand in the area of your expertise. You need to know the agenda behind creating your personal brand and understanding your vision for personal branding yourself.

Identify your personal branding audience: Define your audience and identify your competitors. You cannot create a personal brand unless you know to whom you are catering. Once you get to know your audience, you will learn how to appeal to them. Identify the personalities or leaders in the same industry and identify an aspect that sets you apart. 

Build a personal branding strategy: Create a plan on how to engage with your target audience. Respond to your audience regularly. Communicate with your audience and promote positive participation of your audiences. Have a plan to tackle negative reviews and set goals for your future business. 

Develop your personal brand: You can build your personal branding when you share your thoughts through social media, networking, speaking opportunities, and other ways to promote your personal brand so that your audience will develop trust in you. You can develop your personal brand through content marketing. You can create personal websites and social media strategies to market yourself and grow your personal brand. 

Measure your success regularly: Set goals and achievements for your personal brand so that you know you are heading in the right direction. Measure your success when you reach your goals and achievements. Create new goals to remain motivated to achieve more once you reach your set goals. 

Personal Branding Tips

Following are some tips that will help you improve and establish a successful personal brand:

Blogging

A simple and effective way to build a personal brand is by starting a blog. A blog helps you to share your thoughts, engage with other influencers online and showcase your portfolio. You can build your own blog or write guest posts on top blogs to grow personal branding. Creating a blog is a personal branding strategy that requires work but will ultimately be most rewarding. Writing posts on top blogs will allow you to build an audience faster.

Networking 

Networking and being active socially will help to develop your personal brand. Build your network by mingling with people at conferences, arranging meetup events, and frequently posting on social media. Your network grows as you interact with people. As your network grows, you may even collaborate with an expert in your industry and get more recognition and audience.

Social Media Presence 

Social media plays a crucial role in building your personal brand. Keep your social media accounts up-to-date and relevant. Personal branding cannot be built without interaction with your audience. Respond to the messages you receive in your social media accounts. Take out time to interact with your followers on social media. It’s important to humanise your personal brand.

Provide Value 

Offer your expertise to build your personal brand. Giving knowledge to your audiences and educating them will develop personal branding. Post good, relevant and engaging content that provides valuable information. By doing so, the pertinent people in your industry will recognise you and help your brand grow. 

Be Authentic 

Being authentic is essential when it comes to self-branding. Be honest and be yourself. Honest personalities will get more recognition and trust from the people. Your unique quirks are what makes you stand out and gain an audience.  Showing your true self helps you to stand out amongst your competitors and business community members. 

Be Consistent 

Being consistent is the easiest way to grow a following. It is important to be consistent across your social media channels and all platforms to build a personal brand. Your audiences may even stop following you if you change your content too much. Strict to your niche to be consistent. Being consistent will help you to be recognised as an authoritative figure in your industry. 

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