The Hustler's Digest StaffThis article provides an overview of what personal branding is and how it helps to build your own brand and run a successful business.
There are two separate groups of individuals in the world today: those who grasp the power of personal branding and apply it to all aspects of their life and those who are not even aware that it exists as a force influencing their lives on a minute by minute basis.
We are all familiar with how we alter our personal appearance to fit the occasion, whether it is a wedding, a night out with friends or a job interview.
We adjust our physical presence to be viewed in a specific way that is acceptable for the situation, and we do so without consciously thinking of it as personal branding.
Personal branding entails paying more attention to the aspects of your look, attitude, and demeanor that come into contact with others. We can generate a whole different perception of ourselves by studying how we are likely to be regarded in detail and then changing particular qualities.
You must understand the power of branding in order to run a successful business. Your personal brand is made up of the qualities and distinguishing characteristics you promote about yourself, and it represents how you want others to see you.
Individuals seeking to identify themselves by building a unique brand that would boost career and job chances are increasingly talking about personal branding. Many people mistakenly believe that personal branding is exclusive for celebrities like Lady Gaga or Lance Armstrong, but everyone is a brand.
Personal branding is defined as the process of identifying people and their careers as brands. If you want to advance in your job, personal branding is the way to go.
You may use the same methods that celebrities and big brands use to appeal to your target audience as a brand. Unique competencies, positioning, values, and brand promise are the four core characteristics of personal branding. You must establish and project what makes you distinctive, and why people should come to you rather than the next person, just like a corporate brand.
The single biggest error people make is branding themselves simply for the sake of branding themselves or failing to realize the benefit of investing in a strong brand foundation before jumping into marketing and advertising. You will attract the correct prospects if you spend the time and energy to properly and effectively market yourself.
Brilliant brand positioning considers your competitors’ flaws, inadequacies, and everyday characteristics.
Finding a way to be truthful while also maintaining your professional reputation and marketing ability is important. Avoid coming out as fake, dishonest, or only looking out for yourself.
You must also be open. Marketing is a two-way interaction in today’s environment, so you must be open to comments, criticism, and most importantly, your content.
While transparency is crucial, be mindful of the impact of anything you post about yourself online, and evaluate the possible cost to your business. Transparency does not have to imply letting everything hang out.
It is time to show the world who you are and why you are different once you have developed your brand identity and are secure in who you are.
Don’t be fooled by the myth that if you build it, they will come. Be aware of your personal brand both offline and online, develop a social media strategy, set goals, and be dedicated. You will have to spend time communicating your brand to others unless you are exceptionally blessed.
To be successful in today’s marketing of your brand, consider the 4 C’s.
- Content
- Connection
- Communication
- Conversion
Content
Producing a continual supply of interesting content.
Connection
Make a connection with the audience you want to reach.
Communication
Maintaining constant interaction with them.
Conversion
Converting them when the necessity arises.
There is nothing wrong with self-promotion to promote your brand, but that is not what social media is all about these days. If you really want people to pay attention to what you are saying or the service you provide, focus on delivering relevant information and highlighting others in your community. People will need more information than your contact information to pre-qualify you before moving on to the next step.
One can lay the groundwork and map out the path to becoming a successful personal brand with concentration and a well-developed brand strategy.
How to promote personal branding?
Here are five fundamental reasons why individual CEOs, like large corporations, must discover and market their own personal brands.
Today’s success necessitates a powerful brand
Our job landscape has been significantly affected by the global economy, and new norms now apply. Even the most prestigious professional positions are insecure, therefore great performers must stay on the cutting edge of employment chances. Layoffs, downsizing, or the desire to work in a different, more exciting, and fulfilling environment are all common reasons for executives to shift jobs every few years, rather than every few decades.
Highly successful leaders and achievers are now in charge of their own careers, identifying and exploiting a personal brand to attract more business prospects and advance their careers.
Those that master this cutting-edge business tool become the hunted, rather than the hunter, as they are actively sought out and courted for coveted positions and leadership responsibilities.
Why personal branding is effective
Starbucks, for example, spends millions of dollars to establish and foster strong brand loyalty through clear, succinct, and consistent advertising messaging about its unique promise of value. Otherwise, why would we pay top dollar for a cup of coffee at Starbucks when we could get a caffeine rush for a fraction of the price at Mcdonald’s?
It’s because we’ll pay a premium to be associated with their brand, which includes a welcoming and innovative cultural and social space where we can connect and mingle.
We spend more to get more, which means we want to be offered more than simply a cup of coffee, but also the emotional sensation and experience evoked by their well-constructed brand.
Personal branding employs brand marketing ideas to assist professionals in discovering their authenticity and unique promise of value.
The mirror principle: recognize and understand yourself
It’s crucial to uncover your own self, but it’s also important to recognize and know how you’re perceived by others. Your reputation and brand are identical.
Do you communicate your brand message in a clear manner so that others see you in the same light as you see yourself? You’ll learn new strategies to advertise yourself in this new decade if you take part in a 360 Reach Assessment with a skilled brand and image strategist.
Unlike other corporate 360 assessments, this branding tool allows you to collect anonymous feedback from friends, family, coworkers, and peers, giving you a true picture of how people see your brand attributes.
Brands that are strong are never stagnant
Once you’ve identified your personal brand, it may evolve and change as you progress in your job or change professional paths. Over time, the best brands take on a life of their own.
Perhaps the three to five brand traits you promoted for a specific role in one company need to be tweaked slightly to appeal to a new position in a different industry.
Always customize your own brand to the “tailored” messages that your new audience could require.
A trained brand strategist can help you choose the proper brand attributes to generate the message you want to send.
Personal branding’s exponential benefits
When great achievers and executives identify and grasp their distinctive brand promise of value – and begin to radiate it – they begin to differentiate themselves from their peers and competition.
Because they recognize and value what makes them distinctive, they also understand and respect what they can give a company in terms of leveraging their employment status.
The following are some of the advantages of implementing personal branding in the workplace:
- As a valued addition to the company, be memorable and command greater wages.
- Accept new developmental experiences to promote personal growth and stretch your brand traits, providing you a competitive advantage over your peers as you become more conceptual in your decision-making and skill acquisition.
- Survive a downsizing by effectively selling your brand attributes to important people to ensure that you are on the new “must-have” list.
- As people learn to grasp your strengths, values, and leadership vision, you’ll be able to attract great talent to join your team.
- Use your strengths to become more adaptable and open to change, which will help you survive a difficult job environment.
- Improve the grasp of your long-term goals and vision so that you may make better long-term career decisions.
It is absolutely essential to learn to recognize your own brand identity so that you can direct your own future.
How to create brand personality?
All of your behaviors define your personal brand. The attire you wear, your body language, the way you conduct yourself in work and in personal activities, and your personal style (grooming, hairstyle, etc.) all contribute to your personal brand.
There are a few crucial steps to building a great personal brand.
Research
The first step is to conduct research and reflection. You must first determine your basic beliefs, mission, and goals before you can design your brand. You must assess your audience and competitors to determine your uniqueness, or what sets you apart from the competition. A strong brand will make you stand out from the crowd, providing you an edge over the competitors. While this is a slight advantage, it is one nonetheless.
All of your behaviors define your personal brand. It is the result of a combination of elements including the clothes you wear, your body language, how you conduct yourself in work and in personal activities, your personal style (grooming, hairstyle, etc.), and the people you associate with. This is an important step since it establishes the foundation of your brand. Keep in mind that your personal brand is essentially how you advertise yourself to the rest of the world.
To summarise, establishing who you are and what message you want to send is the first stage in developing a personal brand.
Create a logo and a tagline for your business
Define your tagline and logo after you’ve established your personal brand, which includes your unique selling proposition. Your logo should be simple and understated, ideally your initials or a geometric design. Regardless of the type of logo you create, utilize it everywhere once it’s completed. Use it on your letterhead, business cards (get high-quality personal business cards), email signatures, and any press releases, among other places. Your goal is for people to recognize your logo, which will lead to the creation of a brand and a name.
Developing your internet reputation
Create a personal website with your first and last names as the domain name. Make use of your company’s logo and branding here. This is a requirement if you do not already have a personal website. Many people believe it is more expensive and difficult than it is. Keep an eye out for future newsletters that will explain how to make a personal website.
The potential clients and employers will search your name as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow to learn more about you, your personality, your professional history, education, and personal life, among other things.
After all, we all “Google” the individuals we meet or speak with during the day, particularly those we wish to impress or learn more about.
Make a blog
Find something you’re passionate about and write about it. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece instead, it should be a quick and to-the-point post that teaches the reader something you know but they don’t. This is your chance to show off your personality so that potential employers can see a different side of you. To reduce the risk of offending potential employers, avoid controversial topics in your blog.
Writing a blog creates numerous goals: it serves as a source of information for your contacts, establishes you as an educated and well-rounded individual, and keeps you in the public eye. Do not undervalue the impact of a one-page article.
Writing a blog, in addition to the external rewards, keeps you interested in current events, improves your updating abilities, and provides discipline, providing you commit to writing your blog several times per week (which is highly recommended). Post your blog wherever you can now that you’ve finished it. It should be posted on your website, and your social media activity pages (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter).
Influencing
You’ve completed the initial steps in building a brand by defining your brand, establishing a logo and personal statement, and having an active website. Consider everything you do in the future as shaping your brand.
Importance of brand personality
Steve Jobs was returned as CEO of Apple in 1996 when the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. As they say, the rest is history. Not only did he save the company from bankruptcy, but he also made it one of the top ten best companies in the world. What is even more fascinating about Steve Jobs is that the Steve Jobs brand was stronger than the Apple brand.
In fact, many people were spotted conversing in low tones about Apple’s future after his untimely death. Will the corporation be able to survive without its caption, or will it crash once more? Personal branding has this kind of power. If you have a strong personal brand, whether you are the CEO of a firm or an employee in a major corporation, it provides enormous value to the company you work for.
Personality branding is both an easy and a challenging undertaking in today’s globalized society, where nearly everything is on the internet. It is simply because you have many options for projecting yourself as an expert in your subject; it is challenging because you can quickly be found out there, and even minor errors can smear your brand. When it comes to internet outlets, there are a few key ones that can make or destroy your personal brand in today’s hyper-competitive market.
Facebook is the new internet. Today, practically everyone with an internet connection is a Facebook user, with 800 million users, and is growing. Facebook introduced the subscribe tool, which allows users to follow interesting pages and people without having to be friends. That means that if you are the CEO of a firm or in charge of something, people will undoubtedly look at your Facebook profile.
The worth of a brand in the eyes of customers is determined by the organization’s CEO. As a result, you must ensure that your Facebook profile portrays a positive personal picture.
Your Facebook profile is really important, even if you are not the leader of an organization. According to a recent study, social media is influencing the way HR professionals hire all across the world.
Personal web page
While Facebook is all about interacting with the rest of the world, a personal website is all about you. A personal website not only allows visitors to get to know the real you, but it also improves your search engine presence. Unless you are Steve Jobs, whose life has been an open book, good exposure is required to generate discussion around your personal brand. A personal website might assist you in that.
You are mistaken if you believe that only celebrities are followed on Twitter. People’s effort of discovering new items has become considerably easier since the arrival of Twitter. Twitter users follow a variety of intriguing people, including boggers, specialists in many fields, and even the sarcastically funny ones. Twitter is an example of viral marketing. You may easily become popular on Twitter if you have engaging information to contribute. Even if you make a humiliating error, you can still become famous on Twitter but in the wrong way. So, Twitter is important for personality branding too.
For top corporate executives, Twitter is also quite important. People are curious about the brands in which they are involved. CEOs can use Twitter to directly communicate with their customers and maintain a positive brand image for their company.
LinkedIn is a professional social networking site. Trust your business acquaintances, partners, and coworkers to look at your LinkedIn page at some time, whether you are a freelancer, an executive or head. Make sure you take the time to create a professional-looking LinkedIn profile if you want to use it as a personality branding tool.
Make your strengths stand out, and make sure your LinkedIn profile is optimized for search engines. Also, avoid making a typical mistake with LinkedIn profiles: linking them to their Twitter accounts and tweeting random things.
If you have linked your LinkedIn page to Twitter, make sure you are only tweeting valuable data that portrays you in a positive light. Linking your Twitter account to your LinkedIn page is never a good idea if you use Twitter for personal use.
YouTube
One of the most effective methods for viral marketing is video. There is no better online platform than YouTube for making your personality brand go viral. People enjoy watching YouTube channels that are both informative and entertaining. As an individual, you can use the power of YouTube to boost the reach of your personal brand.
E-mails
In today’s world, almost everyone has a Yahoo or Gmail account. Personal branding like any branding is about standing out from the crowd. If you want to come across as a dedicated person with the necessary professionalism, a personalized email address will help. Google Apps make it simple to create a personalized email address, and it’s completely free. A customized email address guarantees that you have a one-of-a-kind email address with a high recall value.
Dimensions of brand personality
Human personality traits connected with a brand are referred to as brand personality. The product manager or brand manager must have a thorough awareness of the dimensions of brand personality when branding a product, especially if it is new or being launched in a new market.
Consumers frequently use descriptors of personality qualities to describe brands (at least on a subconscious level). With their positioning tactics, marketers try to exploit customer behavior to establish or reinforce these perceptions. To successfully place a product’s or a service’s personality inside a product category, several measurement models must be used.
Aaker (1997) proposed the aspects of brand personality in his famous and often cited work on the brand personality framework, which consists of five factors of every brand that influence branding, branding association, and brand remembrance. The brand association appears to partially mediate the influence of brand personality’s competence dimension on brand appeal once more.
Sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and high efficiency are the five primary elements of this system. Sincere brands are perceived as being down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, and joyful by consumers. Consumers associate interesting brands with being brave, passionate, inventive, and cutting edge in some way. Competence is perceived by consumers as a result of a brand’s reliability, intellect, and success symbols. A sophisticated brand is regarded as pleasant and has a greater snob value, making it appropriate for the upper classes. Rugged brands are also associated with being rough and outdoorsy.
Since customers generate high branding equity when they have several positive and powerful associations with a brand. One of the most important aspects of brand equity is brand association, which is described as something tied in memory to a brand. Because it can symbolize brand excellence and dedication, brand association, which leads to increased brand awareness and recall, has a positive correlation with brand equity. As a result, the basic foundation for the product or service to harness strength to pull consumers is created i.e., the marketing manager implements a pull strategy.
Only a rigorous long-term marketing plan, which includes promotion, price, and product development, can now successfully manage distinctive recognition of the product or service by the potential target segment with a strong association. It’s no surprise that advertising and other forms of marketing now cost millions and billions of dollars.
With the increased focus on building a distinctive marketing mix, whether for products or services, managers managing a product, service, or category of the same must understand this framework to create a big difference.
Brand personality framework
Brand personality framework includes:-
- Aaker’s Brand Personality Dimension Framework
- Brand Archetypes Framework
- Combo of Personality Dimensions and Archetypes Frameworks
Conclusion
Personal branding is the process of influencing how the public perceives a person. Building your reputation, developing a picture of yourself for the outside world, and marketing yourself as an individual is all part of personal branding. Your personal brand is essentially the biography that is told about you while you are not present.
Building a personal brand consciously allows you to tell your story in a way you want it to be told, establish yourself as an expert and thought leader in your area, and engage with your consumers and clients in ways that go beyond your products and services.
