In this age of technology, the word ‘personal brand’ is thrown around a lot.
Especially on social media, the usage of the term personal brand has been gaining traction.
Emerging entrepreneurs are focusing more on building their personal brand, thanks to the saying, “people buy from people, not companies”.
As the trend intensifies, small business owners and solopreneurs also rely on personal branding to engage with their target audience and potential customers.
Personal branding is something you may often hear if you are a working professional or a freelancer.
So what is a personal brand? How do you build a personal brand? And where do you start?
Anybody who’s been asking themselves these questions has a lot of catching up to do. In this post, we’re going to discuss it all. What personal branding is and a roadmap to a successful personal brand.
What is Personal Branding?
Personal branding refers to the way in which an individual promotes themselves by defining their strengths, skills, values and goals. It is an essential part of managing your career but it is also important to set goals that are in line with the goals of your company.
According to Wikipedia,
“The process of personal branding involves finding your uniqueness, building a reputation on the things you want to be known for, and then allowing yourself to be known for them. Ultimately, the goal is to create something that conveys a message and that can be monetized”
Roadmap To A Successful Personal Brand
1. Decide Who You Are
As a working professional or solopreneur, decide the key factors that define you. It must include your personality, abilities and passions.
Let’s take Elon Musk as an example for personal branding.
If you follow him on Twitter then you know his tweets revolve around investment in cryptocurrency besides tweets of his owned brands.
In addition to what he does to promote your brand, Elon Musk has other passions. As a result, he is a perfect brand.
2. What Do You Do?
As a personal brand, you must know your core objectives, skills and experiences that make you a valuable identity in your area of expertise.
Finding out the above-mentioned values help the people around your community know what do you and why do you do it.
Objectives: Find out what are some things that you do and what are the ones that you don’t!
Experience: What are your experiences in your area of expertise. Why people should consider you an expert in your field. Have your portfolio ready to show to your audience.
Skills: Identify your skills clearly. Your skills are your true wealth.
3. What Do You Sell?
Here comes the crucial point in the roadmap of your personal branding. The product or services that you offer. What is that thing that you’re going to sell and how it will be helpful to your customers?
It is also important for you to know at what level you hold the expertise in the product or service that you offer!!
Before you start building your personal brand,
Make sure the product or service you’re going to offer will solve the problem of your customers.
4. Find Out Your Target Audience
Your brand is almost of no value if you don’t know who your target audience is and who your ideal customers are!!
Diving deep, it is crucial for you to know where your customers reside and what are their attributes, characteristics.
Ideally, your target audience could be classified into five types of demographics.
- Gender
- Age
- Occupation
- Income Level
- Family Environment
- Education
5. What is Your Competitive Advantage?
What makes you so special and stand out from your competitors!! Why should people choose you over your competitors? Figure it out.
It is possible there would be other public figures offering the same service and product as yours but there needs to be one distinguishing factor that makes you stand apart.
When you figure out your competitive advantage, take the following factors into consideration
Performance: How the performance of your product or service stands out from the competitors that make your product or service valuable.
Expertise: How your expertise in your services makes you stand out.
Reputation: Measure your reputation in the market of your industry.
Network relation: How many people know you? And where your connections reside.
6. How Can You Promote?
In today’s era of information and technology, you can utilize a plethora of channels across the internet to promote your brand.
Social media is one of the most affordable ways to spread awareness of your brand.
Website: Build your own website. Use it as a medium to reach your audience!!
If not a website, landing pages are an excellent way to provide information about your product or service.
Social Media: Decide what social media platform you can use to promote yourself. For example, LinkedIn & Twitter are the best and most professional networking sites where people can connect with you.
Blogs & Articles: Contribute to your community through blogs and articles that solve their problems and talk about your product or service.
Newsletters: Spread awareness about yourself and make people subscribe to your newsletter.
Events: Go live on social media platforms, do webinars, host conferences and interviews to spread awareness about your brand.
Videos: Videos are one of the most effective ways to connect with your audience. Reel-based social media such as Instagram is trending and a great way to build a community.
7. How Can You Grow Your Network?
In order to succeed in any field, you must master networking skills. And to grow your network, you can build a community around your target audience and collaborate with people.
To grow your network, you can plan events, collaborate with fellow connections and grow your brand awareness. The more connections you make, the more you will spread awareness of your brand.
Online communities can be created as well, it’s not just about an offline community. One great way to build your community on social media is using Facebook Groups.
Participate in events within your industry, associate with influencers & affiliates and connect with as many people as you can.
8. How Can You Improve Your Experience?
Even though you’re an expert in your field, there is always something new to learn. Trends are ever-changing and to excel in what you offer, you must innovate.
Here are three points you can focus on to improve the experience of your personal brand.
- Keep Learning & Experimenting
- Be consistent, show up regularly
- Join Forces With Fellow Connections in the Industry
- Adapt and Innovate
9. How Do You Measure Your Reputation?
So how would you measure the success of your personal brand?
Use tools to track & measure various KPIs and the performance of your personal brand.
For example, if your promotions as a personal brand revolve around LinkedIn, then LinkedIn Social Selling Index is a great tool to help you measure your brand’s performance.
Instagram Insights is also an excellent tracking tool to measure the reputation of your personal brand.
Wrapping Up:
In today’s digital world, a strong personal brand is a must for anyone looking to build a successful career. And now you have the perfect roadmap you need to build your own brand and succeed at it.
Whether you are a hustler, freelancer, or entrepreneur, having a strong personal brand will be key to your success.
If you have any questions regarding this, drop a comment below this post.