Do you want to make a name for yourself? Then creating a personal brand is the direction you should take. Of course, this is more easily said than done. You’ve probably thought about million ways that can help you out, but it’s not that easy to decide which ones will be effective.
Any type of idea, plan, or achievement starts from a concept. A well-designed concept can flawlessly lead you through the process of personal branding.
Why You Need Personal Branding?
The competitive job industry demands that you stand out in the crowd. Building a strong personal brand can help you prove that you are worthy of the employer’s time and trust.
The way you present yourself is the funnel that will take you to new business opportunities.
If you are a freelancer or an entrepreneur, you are probably aware of the competition that is affecting the job possibilities.
Upwork, one of the biggest online job marketplaces, has conducted a study which showed that the freelance workforce is growing at a fast rate and it is 3x faster than the overall workforce in the U.S. By 2027, it is expected that freelancers make up the majority of the U.S. workforce.
This tells you enough about the growing competition in the world of business.
You can be a rare talent with incredible ideas, but if you don’t know how to attract the employers’ or investors’ attention, you won’t be able to show your expertise in the act.
That is where personal branding steps onto the scene. Its purpose is to help you set your goals, distinguish you from others, and make a lasting impression.
“Having a personal brand is important for an entrepreneur because now more than ever, it’s important for CEOs and founders of companies/brands to come out to the forefront and connect with their audiences. People connect with people,“ explain Kevin Stimpson, an expert in personal branding.
If you are ready to pave your way to success through personal branding, here are some essential steps you need to take.
1. Find Your Passion
When you think about all the successful people who established a personal brand like Elon Musk, Arianna Huffington, or Gary Vaynerchuck to name a few, which feature do they share? Passion for what they do.
Any person that we admire amazes us with a passion that led them to success.
Potential employers or investors value passion as one of the key elements for successful cooperation and thriving in the industry.
You need to find your passion and use it as a basis for personal branding.
2. Discover What Makes You Unique
Another basis of personal branding is authenticity. Without it, you’ll have nothing to brand.
Therefore, to create a personal brand concept you need to discover and define what makes you different.
Despite some opinions, you don’t need to create a persona. What you need is to find within your originality that you want to present to others.
Don’t try to present yourself as someone you are not. Take your skills, values, and beliefs and try to single out all characteristics and experiences that make you unique.
3. Do Some Research
Whenever you are starting some new project, such as creating a concept for your personal brand, collecting information is a necessity.
You need to be informed about your industry, changes and developments, influential people, and competitors. Absorbing all that information can give you a better representation of how you should form your personal brand.
Do some digging into different niches and try to find the one that fits you best. Adam Smiley Poswolsky, a workplace expert and an author of The Breakthrough Speaker gives some insight into how to find a specific niche: “Carve a niche and then carve a niche within your niche. The best personal brands are very specific.”
4. Define Your Message.
Personal brands demand that you have a message to spread to your target audience. The message needs to be innovative, informative, inspiring, and motivating.
This can be one of the most difficult tasks in the process of creating a personal brand concept. That is exactly why you need to pay special attention to it.
“All the important figures who are successful in personal branding know how to attract and retain people’s attention with a strong message. Your message needs to exude with leadership, trust, and authority to make an impact. Use that as the foundation and inspiration while creating your message,” states Patricia O’Connell, a marketer and personal branding expert at Best Essay Education.
5. Find Your Media
You need to find channels that can help you communicate your personal brand. The modalities you choose will depend on how you want to present yourself.
Start by thinking whose attention you want to reach. Then, identify where your target audience gets together. Is it a certain social media platform, group, podcast, or a blog?
The channels they use to get information should be your channels for promotion.
Besides using social media (which is inevitable) try to get yourself featured in relevant blogs, radio, podcasts, or even magazines.
6. Be Consistent
Whether it is your unique quality, your passion, or your message, you need to be consistent with it.
If you share one message and opinion one day and you express a completely different one another day, you’ll have your followers confused.
You need to have a focus on the whole branding process. Focus on a specific message. Focus on a specific talent. And focus on a specific target audience.
Experts agree that consistency matters. Here’s what Juan Felipe Campos (VP of tech and partner at Manos Accelerator) has to say about it: “Keep your message and content consistent to one niche topic to become memorable within a targeted community.”
7. Put It All on Paper
Once you’ve defined the elements of your personal brand, it is time to see what you’ve got.
You’ll see that some ideas might sound confusing or ridiculous when you write them down, while others can stand out as a potential key message.
A useful trick that you can apply is to perfect your concept and then get it revised. If you look at poorly written ideas you might cast away some great thoughts. What can help you out is using writing services like Trust My Paper or Studicus.
Polish up your ideas quickly and professionally, before you give it a second look and make a final decision about the direction of your personal branding.
Some Final Thoughts
There is one simple thought that you should keep in mind at all times. You can’t have a personal brand without passion, uniqueness, strong message, platforms for distribution of the message, and consistency. These are the elements that must find its place on your checklist.
Working on your personal branding concept is a road you need to take to capture who you are and what you can contribute to the community. Lastly, don’t be scared to step out of your comfort zone, because that’s the only way you can succeed.