17 Aug 2024 | By - Sudha Mariappan

Personal branding is managing a personal narrative strategy to control how your audience views them. It is a reputation-building activity based on your values and your expertise, and it is all about what makes you special.

Nowadays, Social Media Platforms such as LinkedIn, X (Twitter), and Instagram are used for promoting your personal brand. It becomes a great opportunity to share your story and experience.

What is Personal Branding?

Personal branding is a catchphrase in the nowadays digital world, which is much more than that: it simply becomes a necessity in anyone's life trying to make a difference in his or her chosen niche.

Your personal brand is the difference between you as an entrepreneur, freelancer, or employee and all the other players in that field.

Personal branding is the way through which you can show your skills, experiences, values, and passions through your brand. It is like the image or identity one wants people to perceive at the very mention of their name or that of one's business.

Before the advent of the internet and social media, personal branding was a preserve of celebrities and a few high-profile business characters. In the present-day digitalized world, everybody stands a chance to successfully build their own brand, provided they use sites such as LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, which are rich in resources. This makes personal branding an important tool for career enhancement or business development in 2024.

It helps open doors to new opportunities, builds trust with the audience, and ultimately drives business success. For now, it is about revealing your distinctive line of presence and how that value will be passed on to others. It can represent online presence, creation of content, or interacting with others. All in all, your personal brand mirrors who you are and what you stand for.

A personal brand is based on a few major elements:

Authenticity: Your personal brand needs to reflect your true identity. This is what makes your brand relatable and trustworthy. If people think your brand is authentic, they are more likely to connect with you.

Consistency: also means the continuity of message, tone, and style across all platforms and experiences. This involves consistency in personal branding. Thus, be it in posting on social media, in blogs, or speaking at an event, the personal brand communication has to be consistent.

Visibility: In order to have a strong personal brand, you need to be visible. This simply means putting yourself out and engaging with your audience, by making yourself more visible.

Value Proposition: What unique traits does your brand have? Your value proposition is what makes you different from the competitors in your industry. Value proposition answers that burning question, why somebody would be willing to work with or follow your brand.

Network: Your network is a part of your personal brand. This goes to show the kind of people that one hangs out with, the type of partnerships entered into, and the kind of communities that one engages with all that resonates with your brand.

Why Personal Branding Matters:

It's not about making a good impression but creating a lasting impact. Now more than ever, personal branding becomes crucial. Some key reasons why personal branding matters for marketers are:

1. Establishes Trust and Credibility:

Personal branding helps in establishing credibility and trust among the target audience. If the people know what they can expect from you, then they will more likely be inclined to trust you. Trust is what forms the core of any successful business relationship, and personal branding happens to be one of the strongest ways through which to establish that very trust.

2. Sets You Apart from the Competition:

Differentiation in a busy marketplace can be very important. Your brand sets you apart from others engaged in similar or related work to yours. It makes you outstanding and memorable. A clearly defined personal brand communicated effectively will help one stand out and secure a niche, which in turn will pull towards one opportunity of the right kind.

3. Attracts Opportunity:

Personal branding can give one access to new opportunities, whether that be a job, a deal in business, or new clients. If you have a strong personal brand, you might get people contacting you for possibilities relevant to your expert areas and passions.

4. Builds Loyal Audience:

An effective personal brand does give you the power to build a loyal audience. Whoever is aligned with your brand is more likely to follow, engage, and even share your content, support your business, and all the rest. Over time, this audience becomes an asset in themselves, generating referrals through word of mouth and developing the business.

5. More Visibility and Recognition:

The more visibility your personal brand has, the more recognition you will attain within your industry. Therefore, increased visibility may manifest in speaking, featured spots in the media, among other opportunities to let your expertise shine. The reason a strong personal brand is needed is so that you are top of mind with the persons who could make it all happen when opportunities arise.

6. Boosts career growth:

Personal branding is the epitome of career growth for professionals. Now, a strong personal brand equates to promotions, job offers, and an upward career trajectory. It might further establish you as a thought leader in the chosen industry, where colleagues turn to you as a go-to expert.

7. Aligns with Business Goals:

In the cases of business owners and entrepreneurs, personal branding falls in line with your overall business goals. The stronger the personal brand, the more powerful the business becomes. Clients or customers are more likely to trust or deal with a company if the leader is well known and comes across as respected.

Read Also: 5 ways to take control of your small business using effective Content Marketing

Understanding Your Personal Brand:

Understanding his personal brand is the starting point. Here's a story to get a sense of it, although directly from the Indian market. This is that of Ankur Warikoo, entrepreneur, author, and content creator.

Ankur Warikoo is an Indian entrepreneur and content developer. With very many good insights on understanding personal branding, Ankur Warikoo has very strongly built over the years in his own brands.

Warikoo's personal brand is built with authenticity, transparency, and knowledge. He is known to be frank about entrepreneurship, failures, the path to personal growth, and financial literacy. His content published on platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram is not just business-oriented, it gives away the man's life lessons and experiences, to which thousands relate.

Let's see how Warikoo's personal brand uses the key elements that were mentioned above:

Authenticity: In the bloodstream of the personal brand of Ankur Warikoo, authenticity runs. He shares his failures and insecurities with everyone, and through his experiences of failures and lessons learned, his content has a relatable and genuine approach. It's his high level of transparency that enables his audience to be extremely loyal and trusting in what he says.

Consistency: He is consistent in the message and the content. Be it a YouTube video or a LinkedIn post, even an Instagram story, Warikoo has very prominently reflected his core values and areas of expertise. He is consistent, and that has served to really cement his brand and make him recognizable.

Educative Value: Warikoo doesn't really post a feed about himself but adds value to the content. He educates the audience on entrepreneurship, personal finance, and productivity. This focus on value delivery has positioned him as an intellectual leader in his field.

Engagement: Warikoo is proactive and engaging with audiences in a chit-chat manner by commenting, posting queries, creating discussions, and actively bringing in great community support for his brand, of course in a manner that brings to Warikoo, the confidence of his customers.

Visibility: Warikoo has had a regular online presence for years. Regular visibility through these channels has helped him gain a wider customer base.

5 steps to Build a Strong Personal Brand:

Now that we have covered what personal branding is and why it's important, let's dive into the five steps you can take to build a strong personal brand for your business.

Step 1: Define Your Brand Purpose and Values

First and foremost, you will have to establish a brand purpose and value for your personal brand. Your brand purpose is a reason behind why you do what you do. Your values shall be the principles that guide and instruct actions. Independently, together, your brand purpose and your values form the root of your personal brand. For instance, if you are a digital marketer, then your brand purpose might be to assist businesses in growing by using effective online strategies. Your values may include integrity, creativity, and customer-centricity. To identify your brand purpose and values, ask yourself this question:

• What wakes you up every morning to work and perform what you do?
• How do you wish to make a difference in your community or even the industry?
• What is the reason behind the way you make decisions and act when at work or communicating with people?

Once you understand what your brand purpose and values are, make sure everything aligns with it, from your online presence to how you engage with your clients and colleagues.

Step 2: Identify Your Unique Selling Proposition:

Your USP is what differentiates you from others in your field. It's the value that only you can deliver to your audience or clients. So how do you figure this out? The following may be helpful:

• What are your major strengths and skills?
• What do you give or provide that others do not?
• What problems have you solved for clients or your audience?

Your USP should be simple and not full of words; it should form a central part of your personal brand message. Strengthen this brand identity through consistent communication on all platforms regarding your USP.

Example: Content creation with graphic design experience can be a USP for a content creator since you know how to design visual content that reaches an audience.

Read Also: 5 ways to use data analytics to improve your marketing campaigns.

Step 3: Create an Online Presence:

Your online presence is today, more than ever, a major constituent of your personal brand. Your online presence includes all your social media profiles, your website, your blog, and other digital platforms you are active on. Following are a few strategies to create an influential online presence:

Create a Professional Website: Your website will serve as the central location from which all your other online activities will revolve. Your website should reflect your branding and clearly state the services you offer, your expertise, and your success.

Optimize Your Social Media Profiles: Your social media profiles must reflect the brand message. Professional photos, compelling bios, sharing of content reflecting brand values are a few of the parameters to adhere to.

Create and Share Valuable Content: The need to share valuable content means that most of the time, when you want to share your expertise with your audience, you have to create it. This includes blog posts, videos, podcasts, or social media posts. Ensure the content you make is relevant to your audience and conveys your brand message.

For example, an independent consultant may want to share industry insights or even write articles on LinkedIn, but use Instagram for peeks behind the scenes or to tell personal stories.

Step 4: Engage Your Audience:

It is in the area of engagement that you really get a solid foundation of a personal brand. It isn't about the content you share, but about engaging your audience in that process. This might take the form of responding to comments, joining discussions, or really nurturing relationships with your followers.
Tips for Engagement:

• One of the most important things to do, especially in videos, is to respond to comments and messages. This will give them a feeling that you value their input. It can further promote bonding in the community and create deeper ties.
• Join groups or forums related to your niche. Share your input in their discussions by commenting, asking questions, and engaging in conversations with others who might also be working in your line of business.
• Relations developed with others in your industry can bring about growth in the network, thereby bringing in new avenues. Consider attending webinars, seminars, or networking online sessions.

Example: The entrepreneur engages their audience through live Q&A sessions on Instagram or LinkedIn to answer and share their insights on entrepreneurship.

Step 5: Keep Testing and Evolve Your Brand:

If you think it's done, it's not. Rather, personal branding is a continuous process. Your brand should grow as you grow in your career or business. It should keep getting evaluated from time to time to always stand by what is correct for you, your audience, and its needs.

Steps to Evaluate Your Brand:

Re-view Your Online Presence: Keep checking on your website, social media profile and the content from time to time. Be sure all are in sync with the brand message.

Get Feedback: Keep asking the audience or your clientele or peer group what they think of the brand. Use those feedback to implement changes.

Stay Relevant with Industry Trends: Keep a pulse on the trends and try to refresh your brand accordingly. It could be the content strategy, new platforms, or even refreshing the brand message.

Example: A digital marketing expert could refresh his brand by adopting trends like AI-driven marketing strategies into his content and service offerings.

Conclusion: A personal brand is a journey that requires time, effort, and continuity. Personal branding is about to stay relevant for those who want to have a great impact in fields of choice in 2024 and beyond. So, get up and get started today to take charge of your brand story.

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