Business principles in personal life: #3 Branding

Published in

GlobalizeIT LTD

6 min readDec 11, 2019

The concept of a business building a brand for itself is a pretty common idea today. Most, if not all, businesses are branded, and they make money by developing those brands.

So why can’t people do the same thing?

A personal brand isn’t that much different from a business brand. Instead of marketing a product or service, you are marketing yourself. Building up a personal brand has a ton of benefits, both personally and professionally, and it can help open many doors for you in the future.

In this article, we will dive into exactly what a personal brand is as well as why it’s worth developing.

What is Branding?

Before starting with Personal branding let’s see what does Branding means in the concept of business. By definition, it is a marketing practice in which a company creates a name, symbol or design that is easily identifiable as belonging to the company. This helps to identify a product and distinguish it from other products and services. Branding is important because not only is it what makes a memorable impression on consumers but it allows your customers and clients to know what to expect from your company.

What is Personal Brand?

“Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room!” this quote by Jeff Bezos is the easiest way to describe what does personal branding means! But let’s deep dive and look what it is exactly!

A personal brand is a relationship with you, an individual who exists separately from your company. 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.

How to Start Developing a Personal Brand

Discover Your Uniqueness — make a SWOT analysis

The first step when you are starting your personal brand is to know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses and what opportunities and threats they will lead. You should do your personal SWOT analysis so you can discover your uniqueness which will help you exploit it in the service of others! If you are not yet done SWOT analysis you can learn how to do it by reading our article about Conducting a Personal SWOT Analysis.

Create SMART goals

After discovering your uniqueness you should create SMART goals, so you know where to go and how you will go. If you have not yet identified any goals, you may find it helpful to read our article about Setting Personal SMART Goals.

Clean up your social media accounts

Nowadays from social media platforms, you can learn lots of things about other people. So a good place to start is by cleaning up your social media accounts. You can control what your reputation is online, and so you don’t want anything you post on social media to negatively impact your presence. Optionally you can create a personal website so you can add additional value to your audience.

Choose the target audience

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as you build a personal brand is trying to appeal to everyone. In reality, not everyone is your ideal client. In order to attract your perfect clients, you must be willing to repel those who you do not want to work with. This means identifying a specific target audience and building a brand that is attractive to them.

“To have a strong personal brand, you have to stand for something, believe in a certain way of doing things, and proudly communicate those beliefs from your platform. Brands who don’t achieve this get lukewarm audience response and wonder why their audiences aren’t called to action by their efforts.” — Amanda Bond.

Have a content strategy

Creating and distributing free content is one of the most effective ways to build your brand and earn the trust of your target audience. Instead of trying to convince your audience that you can help them, you create content that actually helps them. This builds trust and helps to position you as an expert and an authority in your industry.

To create a content strategy for your personal brand, start by creating a list of all of the potential topics that would be helpful for your target audience. Once you have a list of topics to create content on, the next step is to decide which type of content to create and where you will publish that content.

Have a visibility strategy

Publishing content on your own website is a great way to build your audience, but it also takes a lot of time. A faster way to build your audience is via exposure to other people’s audiences, like getting interviewed as a guest expert on podcasts, event or TV, guest blogging, public speaking, partnerships, and joint ventures. Building mutually beneficial relationships with other people and companies can lead to a number of opportunities including guest blogging, interviews, joint ventures, partnerships, and customer referrals.

Create a positive impact

Personal branding is to remember you are your brand, no matter what your current job is, what project you happen to be working on at any one time or whatever the priority happens to be today. Always keep in mind the impact you leave on others and remember all we have is our own reputation and that’s our brand, so be awesome to each other! Keeping a positive attitude and helping others will only help healthily grow your brand in the long run.

4 Reasons to Create a Personal Brand

Helps you stand out from the crowd

A personal brand is a great way to demonstrate your skills and knowledge about a particular subject or field. Building a brand is your chance to show your audience what you know and why you know it, and it will help set you apart from others.

Leads to opportunities

A strong personal brand will lead to a multiple opportunities, including job interviews, internships, networking opportunities, partnerships and much more. A personal brand is the building blocks that will lead to success for your future. It can help you reach any number of goals, both personal and professional.

Inspires trust in your audience

Many people, especially these days, don’t trust larger businesses that utilize traditional advertising. That’s why there is such a big push to “shop small”, and why influencer advertising is so successful. People are much more likely to buy from, and listen to, someone who looks, talks and acts like them as opposed to a large corporation. So if you build your brand like a business, but still maintain a personal front, you are guaranteed to inspire trust amongst your audience.

Someone is always going to be screening you online

Whether you are applying for college, for a job, or for your future career, someone is going to be Googling your name. Some employers will expect you to have an online presence, whereas others just want to ensure you don’t have a poor reputation. Developing a personal brand is a great way to show potential employers that you’ve worked hard to build a positive reputation.

Conclusion

We all have a personal brand whether we think about it that way or not. Let’s be intentional about it. A strong brand means that your message is identifiable and you are creating a positive impact.

In today’s competitive job market, a strong personal brand is no longer a “like to have”, but a “must-have”, it immediately differentiates you from your competitors.