What is the Importance of your Personal Brand

It doesn’t matter who you think you are. It only matters who others think you are.

And what people say about you when you’re not around, ends up being your personal brand.

The word “brand” is no longer only used for companies. We live in a time that every person with access to the internet has a brand.

Whether you care or not, people have an image of you in their head.

And THAT image is your personal brand.

You may think you don’t have control over what people think and I’m here to tell you that you 100% do.

It all starts by how you make people feel with every interaction you have with them.

If there’s one thing people will remember is how you make them feel and your personal brand depends on that.

So how do you protect and nurture your personal brand?

There are many things you can do to take care of your personal brand both online and offline but here’s a few you can start with:

- Look in people’s eyes, smile and be present during a conversation.

There’s no point of having a conversation with people if you are not going to be paying attention. And the best way to show that you care is when instead of checking your phone, you listen, look in their eyes and smile from time to time. Do more of that.

- Don’t take on work that you won’t be able to deliver.

This one applies to both paid work and volunteer work. People are smart enough to find out when you’re just taking on something so you can update your LinkedIn profile or resume. You will soon prove it to them when you end up not having the time to do what you said you were going to do.

- Always deliver more than expected.

This one is my most favorite quote of all times from Larry Page and it works the opposite way of the one above. When you end up doing more than what you said you were going to do, people notice and you stand out from the rest. That’s the best personal brand tip ever!

Word of mouth is everything.

People talk all the time and ask each other about the people they want to work with. And your job is to make sure when they are talking about you, only positive words are spoken.

It takes a lot of time to build a solid personal brand and it’s a job that never ends.

To improve how people talk about you, you need to always be working on improving yourself.

Your reputation starts by you and ends by you.

The more connected our world becomes the more important it becomes to have a good reputation and personal brand.

In a world where everyone can reach everyone, the only thing that will matter is what people communicate.

We may not be present in every communication but your image is always present when people talk about you. And that images needs to be protected and nurtured in a positive way so you can achieve your goals.

Your personal brand is super important and should remain your number one priority if you want to get anything done in the future ahead of us.

I hope this has inspired you to think more about this topic.

What are you going to do next to improve your personal brand? I’d love to hear about your learnings.

I wrote this piece as part of a 90-day challenge I took on to get better at this type of writing. To learn more about me you can visit my website here.