Personal brands are often developed and implemented by leaders who want to make a difference in their industry, career, and to the customer experience. Their brand’s purpose, is typically dedicated to improving sales, online engagement, and customer relationships.
Personal branding offers individuals opportunities to enhance credibility; build trust with audiences, and to reach professional goals. People who work hard to gain results are those who want their efforts to be more than that of average, they want to make a positive impact.
Having a personal brand enables individuals to showcase their strengths, work on their weaknesses, and to create meaningful connections, which helps them perform their job duties more effectively. The individual’s contributions, made through their personal branding, produces results that make their company stronger and more successful.
Designing a proper personal brand provides the power to re-shape the buying experience and change the perceptions of consumers, but is something that cannot be created overnight. Embrace the fact that building a brand takes a great deal of time, effort, evaluation, research, observation, networking, content creation, and patience.
Emphasis is to be placed on remaining relevant, appropriate, memorable, and positive. Ultimately, you want to become the customers “go-to” person who will resolve their problems through the products you sell and value you offer.
The 4 categories to creating an outstanding personal brand will assist you in standing out from the competition and keep you there.
The 4 Categories Of Personal Branding
Category 1 – Researching:
- Do a self-evaluation to find your brand’s value.
- Learn the strengths and weakness of the competition.
- Find your brand’s targeted audience based on the demographics, gender, and age group you are wanting to reach.
Category 2 – Designing:
- Create a brand identity, which defines who you are and what you stand for.
- Define your brand personality and tone of voice. Focus on how you present your brand and on how you relay information.
- Write a personal brand statement. Get a better sense of the overall goal you are trying to achieve. Write down your value, who you serve, and how you will uniquely provide your value to the ones you serve. It should sum up your brand’s unique promise of value to customers.
- Design a brand logo. This is an image that represents your brand and should be repeatedly used to gain visibility and association to your brand.
It is recommended that you use a high-quality image of yourself. Nothing better represents you, than you. - Make digital and physical deliverables. These are items where you share relevant content and place your brand’s logo.
Category 3 – Networking:
- Decide which social networks are best suited for your brand. Choose only the ones you know your targeted audience use and are easy to sustain.
- Know the purpose of creating social content. Do not post content, just to post. Everything you share is how your brand will be portrayed.
Find the “why” behind each post and decide if it will have a positive impact on your brand. - Learn about unprofessional employee actions. There is such a thing as “TMI or Too Much Information” when sharing content.
Your personal brand should show humanness, but must always be presentable and professional. - Understand social media etiquette. Users of social networks have expectations on how it should be used by others.
If you are ignorant in knowing about social media etiquette, it can result in casting a negative light on your brand.
Once you have designed your personal brand, you must maintain it. To do this, you will need to develop strategies that constantly remind your audience of your brand and will protect it from negativity.
Category 4 – Managing:
- Make a Brand Awareness Strategy – the extent of which your audiences are familiar with your brand identity.
- Make a Brand Protection Strategy – to help prevent and poorly react to the loss of revenue, reputation, and customer trust that occurs when someone else exploits your brand for their own gain.
There is no denying the fact that a lot must go into designing a personal brand, but if you do not want to be average, roll-up your sleeves and become outstanding