7 Step Guide for Building Personal Brand

Personal branding is the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands. While previous self-help management techniques were about self-improvement, the personal branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging.

Personal branding offers numerous benefits to a person’s life and career. Also, it helps in building confidence while gaining trusts, authenticity, and credibility. It is important that people know that building their branding is important and helpful. For freelancers and entrepreneurs, building a personal brand has never been more important than it is today.

Anyone with access to the internet and social media can build an audience, position themselves as an expert, and start attracting clients for their business

See More: What is Branding?

Building Your Personal Brand

Creating a personal brand requires extensive self-reflection and introspection. It helps if you know yourself — which surprisingly few people do. Most people find it extremely difficult to describe themselves, although they often find it easier to explain how they want to be. If your ultimate aim for personal branding is to improve the performance of your business, you first need to ensure that you know who your target customers are. You want your personal branding to match your targeted clientele.

This isn’t new. Business people have been doing this for many years, long before the internet. Think about the image that Hugh Hefner portrayed for virtually all of his adult life. He probably never heard of personal branding, yet he let himself become the face of the Playboy empire and lived the lifestyle that the readers of his magazine envied. He could not have lived his type of lifestyle, however, if he helmed a more conservative company, targeting more politically correct customers.

A crucial part of your personal branding is to make sure you come across as being human, with the same issues and problems as your target market. The only difference is that you can show that you have found a solution to some of these problems — which you are willing to share with others. You don’t want to come across as being like a stereotypical used car salesman — even if you are in the automobile sales business.

Cynical consumers see businesses as being all about selling. The whole purpose of personal branding is to step back and deemphasize selling. Nowadays, you can’t ignore the importance of social media. Part of your personal branding should include having social media accounts on all of the social networks where your audience spends their time. And you will want to accept friend requests freely — you won’t want to set your accounts to private.

If you really want to run a facebook account just for your friends and family, you should consider setting up a separate one in a different name for this.

See More: How to Get High Engagement on your LinkedIn Posts.

A Few Techniques for Building Personal Brand

Don’t forget the offline world. Your personal brand needs to encompass all the places where your customers could encounter you. Old-style business cards are just as crucial to your branding, as your social pages are.

Carry business cards with you wherever you go. This is as relevant now as it was forty years ago. Take out a card whenever you see the opportunity to network with somebody new who matches your target audience. So this even covers how you dress whenever you are in a public situation. I couldn’t imagine Donald Trump wandering down the street in old jeans and a tee-shirt, any more than I would expect a rock star to go shopping in a fancy suit. You want your whole public image to match the persona of your personal brand.

1. Identify Your Target Audience.
2. Know Your ‘Why’.
3. Understand How Others Perceive You.
4. Be Sincere.
5. Understand How To Clearly Articulate Your Value
6. Have A Powerful Brand Promise.
7. Choose Your Medium And Have A Consistent Content Strategy.

See More: $1.80 Strategy for LinkedIn by Gary Vaynerchuk.

We help professionals in building their brand on LinkedIn.

We have a product called Leverage LinkedIn Program which 4-Month long program where we help professionals in:

1. Goals & Objectives setting for your Personal Branding.
2. Keyword research to keep your profile relevant.
3. Building a Compelling Linkedin Profile.
4. Regular Improvements and Updations for 4 months.
5. Free Online Coaching Sessions for 4 months.

To Enroll in the program, You can click here.