Tom Peters, a personal branding guru, said, “We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You – it’s that simple and that hard. And that inescapable.”
Personal branding is important to define your leadership style and embody a keen awareness of what you are doing, why, and its real impact for the environment. People, especially leaders, who actively design their personal image are likely to succeed in managing their career progressions and maximising opportunities that align with their purposes. Ryan Erskine, a brand strategist at BrandYourself, in his article talked about the importance of personal branding, including to help boost sales and marketing.
As important as it is, building a solid personal brand of yourself might not be an easy task to accomplish. There are some basic steps you should follow, otherwise all your efforts will not work. Here are 3 basic ways from Sestyle you can adapt in order to boost your personal image.
See also: The Way Millennial & Gen Z Achieve Their Success in the Workplace
Ask yourself who you truly are. By knowing yourself, you are one way closer to your success. Therefore, you should be able to identify your key skills such as abilities, education, and professional experiences. Your passions and personality are also keys to a strong personal brand. The key to success in specialisation is your unique selling point (USP). Remember – the nicher, the richer.
Tell yourself how you want to perceive your success. There are 3 ways: (1) personal relationship – asking your friends about their opinion about you; (2) professional relations – asking your colleagues and customers their opinion about you; (3) online reputation – searching yourself on Google and knowing what search results say about you.
Know what you want to achieve. For example, your sector – by creating personal products or service in your business field. Your market – by identifying the right target audience for your brand. Your style – by planning your communication to be clear and consistent.
First, you need to create your own brand. There are three steps in creating your brand: (a) Emotions and words – choose a name and slogan that will characterise you and is easy to remember. (b) Emotions and images – choose your company colours, a logo that represents you and your corporation identity. (c) Emotions and storytelling – engage with your own story using your bio.
Then, you should create your ecosystem. For example, you should be able to make your blog the centre of your online communications. Using social networks as places to socialise, share, and interact can also be good in this vast tech. Also, you can use social media to enjoy and share entertainment content.
Lastly, create your own network. Be influencers – follow experts in your field, learn from them, and connect to them. Join communities and actively participate in groups and forums in your field. Offline networking – visit networking events related to your field.
Branding your personal self does not end in launching step only, but you need to maintain your personal brand – if possible make it bigger. To maintain your personal image, you should be able:
to create original content. (1) Blog can be your number one tool to post valuable content and useful to your users as long as you update the blog frequently. (2) Social media give a chance for you to get yourself popular as you can create and share multimedia contents (audio and video) that are likely to go viral. (3) To leverage your network and knowledge, you should change your tone of voice according to the platforms.
to get involved and sharing your experience. (a) Get involve in a conversation – actively engage in other user’s conversations on Social Networks to leverage your personal brand. (b) Give valuable comments – leave meaningful comments on blogs in your field. (c) Share people’s opinion – share valuable content and posts created by others.
and, to listen and monitor. News will make you stay updated on what is said about your brand and field. Listening to criticism and dealing with criticism in a professional manner will make your brand stronger. Additionally, monitoring your brand activity using the right tools such as buzz, sentiment, and analytics can give you insight on your growing.
Read also: Will This Prediction Happen? – Pragmatics Transformation for HR to Know
