When it comes to personal branding , we imagine the advertising and marketing aspects of your personality, personality, and self. Let’s explore with Malu the essence of what personal branding is, the importance of Personal Branding, and the steps to build a solid personal brand.
What is your personal brand?
Your personal brand is the sum total of the unique skills and experiences that make you who you are. An effective personal branding will make you stand out from everyone else out there in the same field you are working in.
We often think, “brand” is something very big, like Apple or Microsoft. Now, our thinking is more open, brand can be anything , anyone . Each individual can be thought of as a unique brand.
The idea of flaunting your brand can make some people uncomfortable. But if you pass up the opportunity to prove and express yourself, you are missing out on a potential, something that can help you stand out and separate yourself from the monotonous, lineless crowd out there.
Personal branding goals may vary from person to person, but the branding process needs consistency.
>>> How to design a personal brand logo for beauty?
With us, we believe that everyone, everyone needs to be equipped and have access to their own branding skills. That is why Malu sends you the article “ Personal Branding ”.
Why is Personal Branding important?
When it comes to setting up a personal branding process, many people dismiss this idea immediately, as they consider it a useless and time-consuming task.
Obviously, you have to invest a lot of time and effort to build up your personal brand. But I can say that building personal branding is paramount for anyone. Why?
1. Everyone will search for information on Google
Whether you’re still a novice, or an industry veteran, businesses will find out about you in advance through different ways. If you have a bit of reputation related to your industry, they will greatly help your career and advancement.
According to CareerBuilder, more than half of employers will not consider hiring potential candidates, if they do not build their personal brand online.
Obviously, you can completely build and give yourself a competitive advantage early, right from the parking round. There’s no need to leave fate entirely to stressful and harsh interviews.
If you shake your hands and think: Personal branding is only for people running around looking for work, you are wrong. The number below may startle you:
According to CareerBuilder, more than half of customers decide to work with a freelancer because of the reputation and personal brand they have built.
Between now and 2020, up to 40% of the world’s workforce will work in a free-flowing, independent stream. Therefore, a strong personal brand has never been so important and decisive. In fact, the more successful you are at work, the stronger your personal brand will be.
According to another study by Weber Shandwick:
- Senior leaders in global brands contribute to 45% of corporate reputation. Thus, more than half of the reputation of the business comes from these leaders.
- More importantly, the CEO’s reputation plays an extremely important role in attracting the attention of employees in the company (77%), and is a big motivator to keep them at work (70%).
That is the importance of Personal Branding in the business. The way the CEO builds his brand also has a significant impact on the success of the business.
2. Personal Branding helps you prepare for the future
Focusing on Personal Branding is the way to help you grow in the future. Think about how much your network of relationships grows when you focus on developing your personal brand.
Building a personal brand is the least difficult step towards your goals. Whatever your industry, or where you stand, your personal brand has great power, helping you achieve all the goals you have set before. Of course, keep in mind that, in order to enhance your brand, you have to invest a lot of time, effort and potential up front.
Building and developing a description of you, building on your experiences and work and what you’ve done, identifying goals, building a strategy to develop your personal brand – these jobs can may surprise you. But once you’ve established yourself with a solid foundation, the road ahead is clearer, and the rest of the work you have to do will be much lighter and simpler.
In the end, set yourself apart from the competition, and take the initiative to build your personal brand.
>>> Simplify your brand for success
3 steps to build Personal Branding – personal brand
To build a personal brand, you need to make yourself an “expensive” brand. The first few steps can be overwhelming, but once you’re on the wheel, you’ll find it much simpler.
Think of the process of growing your personal brand as a long, ongoing journey that can be broken down into smaller steps. You don’t need a fancy Facebook or Snapchat account with lots of followers. Depending on the individual, the construction process also has many differences.
In general, the process of building Personal Branding includes 3 steps:
- Step 1: Basic steps to build a personal brand
- Step 2: Build credibility and form a group of people who love it
- Step 3: Focus and take advantage of opportunities
Step 1: Basic steps to build a personal brand
To build a personal brand, you need to develop and strengthen your qualifications and skills. So that when they search for you, there will be nothing but fame and good words for you. You need to prepare the following:
- Check the search results about you.
- “Clean up” irrelevant information / affect your image.
- Define yourself and your personal brand.
- Show off your skills and achievements.
- Build a brand image that speaks to who you are.
- Adhere to and stick to your personal branding strategy.
1.1. Check the search results about you
Before you really start building your personal brand, you need to know what the internet is saying about you right now. Surely Google will know best about this. Could it be the achievement of a student competition you entered 4-5 years ago? Or a trip with friends, for example?
Don’t worry about these search results. And even if there’s negative information, you can already figure out what you need to deal with. Instantly identify results that can affect your image.
1.2. Clean up negative information
Once you are aware of the search information about yourself, it is time to begin the process of “cleaning up” information that may be damaging to your self-image.
With the information you upload yourself, the simple task is to delete them, or switch them back to private mode. Maybe this job will take a lot of your time.
1.3. Define yourself and your personal brand
Once you have cleaned up the “dangerous” information, you need to define for yourself the style of the brand you want to build. They need to be based on the most outstanding, unique characteristics that make you who you are.
So what makes you who you are? Find answers to the questions below:
- Who are you?
- What makes you really stand out?
- What is your vision for your personal brand?
- What are your goals for your personal brand?
- What is your career goal?
- Who is the audience (your favorite person)? (Or with your expertise and knowledge, who can you help?)
- How do you help them? What makes you different?
- What is your mystery factor? What makes you trustworthy?
- Is there any way you can prove your trustworthiness? What evidence do you have to prove that?
To support the above questions, you need to identify your past accomplishments (and evidence of those accomplishments, like certificates of merit, competition photos, etc.). You also need to define the short and long term goals of your personal branding strategy.
1.4. Show off your skills and achievements
Now it’s time to show what you have to develop the personal brand you want to build.
To do this step, you need:
- Write down achievements that you are proud of.
- Make a list of the “moments” where your accomplishments are recognized.
- Think about how many times you’ve been recognized for your achievements
Think holistically what you want to show people, the strategy and the brand image you want to build later.
Take the time to define who you are, what you want people to think of you. Note, the two factors above must have an interaction relationship with each other.
1.5. Building brand image online
After completing all the steps above, it’s time to write them down so that everyone can know about you (maybe on blogs, social networks, …). In it, you should include the following aspects:
- A clear layout of your personal brand (full of elements, presented clearly and coherently, …)
- Your short and long term goals.
- Your own qualities, talents, skills.
- Achievements you have achieved.
Once you’re confident enough to “show off” your personal brand image, it’s time to let the world know about it, including building a solid foundation for your Web/blog (with content you create and your own). outstanding and distinctive); optimize them on search engines; and maintain the content quality of the aforementioned Web/blog.
Here is the 3-part process for you to do the above tasks:
#1: Build a solid foundation for your Web/blog
In order for your image to be widely covered, the Web site / blog (or any other platform) with information about you must be widely available on the Internet, easily searchable.
This requires your Website to be professional, as well as the content on other platforms (with content created by you) to stand out.
- 1 Professional website.
- 10 – 12 most prominent articles on the Website.
You can totally use the below platforms to participate as recommended by brandyourself:
Your personal website / personal blog
- Google+
- YouTube
- BrandYourself
- Vimeo
- Tumblr
- SlideShare
- Medium
- About.me
- CrunchBase
- Quora
- Instagram (although it doesn’t make much sense on Google, it’s also a useful tool for expressing who you are and what you are).
And 2-4 other platforms related to your major.
#2: Optimize your brand presence on search engines
To optimize them, you need to do the following:
- Use your full name on the platforms you contribute to creatively (and be consistent with your last name across all of the platforms above).
- Write in the third person (if you can).
- Write a full article on all the platforms you participate in to contribute articles
- Include the location of the article (if possible).
- Pay attention to using relevant keywords and SEO support tools.
- Take advantage of H1 (Heading 1) tags in articles.
You’ve got yourself an impressive personal brand, but no one has access to it yet. Now is the time to apply effective personal branding strategies.
#3: Apply a Personal Branding Strategy
Usually it takes 2 – 6 weeks for your brand to be widely known and known to many people. But even after that, your efforts above won’t necessarily climb to #1 in Google’s search rankings.
You need to understand that: Developing and optimizing your personal brand is a long process, and depends a lot on your ability to maintain and preserve your image.
You will see your brand value go up and down continuously over time. It can be tiring to maintain at first, but with a good strategy, with the help of the community, you will succeed.
Step 2: Build credibility for personal branding
To build credibility in your personal brand, you need positive reviews from third-party information sources (also reputable and trustworthy). Besides, you need to create quality articles (from the Website itself and the platforms you control).
Another very important thing is that you need to show the world that you are a knowledgeable person and an expert in your field by providing quality content on social networking sites or websites. individual.
2.1 Write quality content in the right place
If you often write creative content (like blogs, photos, infographics, videos, etc.), you need to know how to publish them where they are frequented by academia, experts, and in your field.
From there, you can source your own “audience”, establish yourself an opportunity to reach a premium audience, build a solid reputation for yourself, and build your own credibility step by step. .
(And don’t be shy if senior leaders in your field, or your own business, read and access the content you create. That’s a 1-0-2 chance for you. promote yourself).
- Understand the audience, and the right content on the above blog site.
- Read and analyze the most prominent content on that blog page.
- Apply the aspects that made the other content successful to the very content you intend to create.
Consider what day and time of day it is reasonable to post. Use complementary tools to create an effective, standard creative product.
2.2 Build yourself a loyal audience
As you probably already know, you need to build yourself a loyal audience for your creative products.
Set up your target audience
You need to pay attention to the following aspects:
- Who is the target audience you want to target?
- What is the best platform for you to reach them?
- What creative content might appeal to them?
Once you have identified the above factors, you can completely determine the exact target audience for your innovative product.
You can reach a well-known, established audience in the industry. What else enhances your brand value with referrals, or relationships with influencers in the industry? And also don’t forget to find the right platform for your creative work.
Start with your acquaintances
Starting from the simplest and easiest things, you can completely ask for the help of people you know in the profession. Gradually, you will build yourself a wider relationship, reach many people at a higher level. Your brand value will gradually improve and enhance.
Reach out to influencers through social media and strategic resources
Connecting with industry influencers is an effective way to build relationships, and have them connect you to a broader audience (who are influenced by the other influencers).
Besides connecting with influencers, you also need to connect with reliable media sources (such as newspapers, industry TV channels, …). Who knows, maybe you will see them in the “green eyes” of specialized newspapers, and on the front page in a day not far.
Step 3: Focus and take advantage of personal brand development opportunities
Create unique, high-quality content to stay connected with your target audience. You will never know on a fine day that a remarkable quote from your article will appear in a reputable specialized newspaper.
By promoting yourself effectively, you unknowingly open yourself up to various doors of opportunity, including:
- Attend lectures.
- Job opportunity.
- Become a business partner (for a powerful person in the industry – who has been and is a loyal reader of your innovative product).
- Exchange blog content (with other bloggers).
- Interview with the press.
- Become a mentor.
If you have the talent, the above opportunities will come incessantly (and without limit). Why don’t you open more doors to success yourself? This also helps to improve and enhance the value of your personal brand.
Want to get the opportunity to eat delicious food above. You need to start with your own personal brand, regularly reach out and actively build a focus audience for your creative products.
3.1 Attraction techniques
By using the specialized techniques below, you can completely build, reach and engage an audience, including:
- Approach
- Link
- Increase interactivity
- Constantly creating new content
- Link building to optimize SEO
- Optimize keyword strategy (in creative content)
Another way to expand your network is to attend industry events, or join groups/communities online. They may include:
- Chat with senior industry leaders.
- Charity events (hosted by your colleagues).
- An event relevant to the industry/field you are working in.
- Online forum.
- Join the social networking community.
Networking does not necessarily happen only in a serious work environment, they can occur in online environments (such as social networks), informal ceremonies and meetings between people. It is these informal activities that can make your relationship with those in the industry more comfortable and closer.
Creating quality content is not enough to elevate your personal brand. To capture the attention of your audience, you need to regularly interact with them on different platforms.
Regularly responding to comments and questions is a smart way to keep your audience engaged with your creative content.
Tips in building Personal Branding – Personal Branding
Here are a few useful tips just for you, in building Personal Branding in the future:
1. Focus on a single message
The mistake many people make when building a personal brand is to be someone who can please everyone. This only makes you pale and lacking in identity.
You should spend time researching: Who you need to target is, what are the anthropological characteristics. Then focus all your energy on this object, and be consistent in delivering a single message.
2. Honesty, Sincerity
If you want your personal brand to be different, be honest, sincere and live up to your personality.
“Imitating” a certain personality out there only makes you appear fake, unnatural, uncomfortable and faded. And the public is very good at recognizing what is genuine and what is false.
3. Tell a story about your Personal Branding
People always want to hear stories, so why not build your personal brand a compelling story?
Even the brands of big businesses themselves have created their own fascinating stories , such as Apple recalling the days of overcoming difficulties with CEO Steve Jobs, Bill Gates steered the Microsoft boat to become a technology giant today. how is it now…
4. Be consistent when building Personal Branding
No matter how compelling your story is, or how you want to build your personal brand personality, everything has to be consistent.
Consistency not only makes the story more logical, but also makes the listener really believe in the details in it. In today’s modern society, trust is paramount, an important factor to help customers make closing decisions.
Conclusion
We hope that our above sharing will be of great help to you in the process of building and developing Personal Branding – a personal brand.
