Everybody keeps talking about the importance of personal branding but the truth is that there are not many articles written out there for people that did not already start building one. Whether we like this or not everyone around us has an opinion about us. While most people do not care and do not actually need to care, when you build your career, your personal branding is something that is incredibly important.
To put it as simple as possible, personal branding is all about influencing the way in which people see you. You package a new brand, YOU! This brings in obvious advantages. The better your personal brand, the more interested others will be in doing business or hiring you. That is why we need a brand in our career.
How Can We Create Our Personal Brand?
When we have problems with money, we learn about financial planning. In a similar way, when we want to create our brand, we have to take it one step at a time and start with personal development. You want to be seen as a brand and you need to be practical. The truth is that personal branding is in itself a concept that is quite vague. Here is what you have to remember!
Choosing Personal Branding Qualities
All branding is made out of some qualities that will be the pillars of future promotion. In personal branding, we talk about personal qualities. What do you want to be known for around the world?
As an example, let us say that you are a copywriter. Do you want to be known as one of the best? That is great but maybe you also want to highlight the fact that you are really fast and that you are great as a part of a team. Never choose just one quality. Think about what makes you stand out and focus on that. Your brand should be fresh.
Prioritizing Branding Elements
Out of the qualities you choose (preferably 4-5), you will need to choose the most important one. That is because people will easily remember one of them in the beginning. If you focus on building a brand on all elements, you will have huge problems.
In marketing and business we learn that when we have many leads there is a guarantee that inaction will appear. The same rule applies here and in many other aspects of life. If you want to promote yourself as a brand, you have to showcase just 1 or two elements. In the copywriting example above, you can promote yourself as the fastest copywriter or one that offers really high quality in the work done. Besides the main characteristic, the others should be seen as secondary. Rank all the elements you found before and see which is the most important.
The Elevator Statement
An elevator statement can be seen as building something so that it makes sense, taking you from one point to the next. Let’s think about an example so that you understand what we say. Let’s say that you are in a bar and you meet someone that you like. That person says that they want to hear a funny story of something that happened to you. Since you are not prepared, you do remember all that happened but telling the story can be tough and uninteresting.
The same thing happens with personal branding. It is vital that you plan how you are about to communicate it. If you do not do this it will be of no real use.
- Record yourself on the phone or on the computer. Talk about every single one of those qualities. Talk about why people should see them as important and highlight any example you would like to showcase.
- Keep talking until your ideas are solid and until you are comfortable.
- As soon as you start to feel comfortable stop the recording.
- Listen to what you said and write down what you find compelling.
- The best stuff should be condensed into just a few sentences. Now you have the elevator statement.
Change Your Online Identity
You have to make sure that every single online profile you have showcases the elevator statement. This includes LinkedIn, Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook and your blog (if you have one). If you just use a couple of the networks, you do not need all but as time passes, you have to stay focused on establishing a strong online editing.
Eliminate absolutely all statements in which you say negative remarks. People want to see a brand that is positive. You have to basically audit the online profiles and adjust them properly.
Time To Control The Online Brand
Companies do have social media but the center of the online campaigns is a website. You should practically have the same approach. Modify the social profiles but do built a site for yourself. Contrary to what many think, this is extremely easy and quite cheap. If you do not have much technical knowledge, just use WordPress. Consider your site as being your own online real estate property and treat it as such. Invest in it so it grows and you will grow with it.
Living The Personal Brand
This is a lot easier said than done. You have to be sure that the brand you create for yourself is the one that you live. For instance, if your elevator statement says that you are always upbeat, you have to be upbeat. If it says that you are serious, you need to be serious.
The way in which you act says a lot about you. It is easy to think that we are really nice when the truth is that we constantly gossip. Remember that when you build your personal brand, you have to influence what others believe about you. This includes your actions, not just your words! The rule applies with almost everything that we do. For instance, we might believe that we know how to save money when the truth is that we never read a financial blog till now and we just say things that are not true.
Whenever you have some free time read more about personal branding. You will thank yourself in the future for doing this. When you start what was written above is enough. As you grow, you will need to learn more.