Personal Brand: What It Is and How to Build It
Why You Need a Personal Brand
Developing a personal brand is crucial not only for businesses; it is also extremely beneficial for freelancers, marketers, photographers, and others.
Here's why it's hard to get by without a personal brand nowadays:
- It connects you with the right audience, helps build close relationships, and earns trust.
- Only with a personal brand will you become a major player in your field.
- It is beneficial for your business — more people will learn about it, and you increase sales.
- You showcase your skills to clients, employers, and potential partners.
- If you have a strong personal brand, you will be recommended not only by your clients.
- This way, you expand your professional influence, build connections, and find like-minded individuals.
- A strong personal brand automatically addresses objections or questions from potential clients.
- Most people prefer companies whose leaders or owners often share information on social media.
Nowadays, creating a personal brand is one of the prerequisites for successful promotion on social media. If people cannot find you online, no one will know about your skills or experience. So, if you are looking for investors, partners, and clients, having a personal brand plays a key role.
Components of a Personal Brand
Your professional image encompasses various important elements that collectively shape how society perceives you. Let's take a closer look at these aspects:
When to and When NOT to Build a Personal Brand Online
While personal branding is popular, in some cases it won't help or could even harm. It's not worth relying on it just because others do. A personal brand doesn't appear out of nowhere; it requires achievements, presentation skills, time, and a significant budget for promotion.
- You don't have many professional successes or have no plans for major career changes.
- You're not willing to dedicate too much time to it.
- You don't fully understand why you need a personal brand (or if you need one at all).
- You lack experience in building a personal brand and have no desire to invest resources in learning.
- You tend to make impulsive statements.
- You are knowledgeable in your field and ready to demonstrate it.
- You understand that building a personal brand takes time, possibly more than two years.
- You have clear goals.
- You know what you need to learn and improve.
- You can politely and reasonably explain your thoughts. Plus, you always fact-check before saying anything.
Creating a Personal Brand
Creating a personal brand requires more than just regular posting on social media. Start by developing a strategy based on your unique qualities and experiences. Let's break down step by step how to create your brand.
To understand your worldview and values, reflect on what motivates you each morning, what you're proud of, how you help others, what tasks inspire you, and how you want to change the world. Gather opinions from those around you to gain a fresh perspective on yourself.
Whether it's finding your dream job, advancing your career, or attracting clients or investors for your business, having a clear goal directs your efforts in the right direction.
Highlight the professional qualities and experiences that set you apart. Instead of talking about how creative you are, tell in detail how this quality has led to exceptional results in projects under your leadership. Focus on a specific niche in your field to stand out.
Use your goal, audience, strengths, and uniqueness to create a promotion plan. Choose several platforms and determine what content you will post. Understand how promotion works: for example, optimizing your website, posting articles on third-party resources, and collaborating with other experts. Decide how much you are willing to pay for promotion.
Periodically review both the plan itself and its foundation — what you believe in, your goals, your format, your motivation. If anything changes, the personal brand strategy will require adjustments.
Where to Promote Your Personal Brand
In order to get recognized, spread your content around. Use the same username and style on all platforms so people remember you easily.
What You Can't Do Without in Personal Branding
Conclusion
A personal brand is your image, strategically crafted to achieve career goals, including attracting clients and receiving favorable job offers. A personal brand develops through distribution of diverse and valuable content on platforms like websites, social media, messengers, podcasts, videos, and email newsletters. In addition to content creation, active participation in professional communities, forums, and events is important, where you can share your experience and opinions.
The development of branding is impossible without maintaining consistency and authenticity in your communication. This includes not only visual elements but also your writing style, tone of voice, and choice of topics for discussion.