How To Create Your Own Personal Brand Foundations
The key to influencing people’s perception of you
Your most unique asset as a business owner or a creative entrepreneur is your personal brand. It’s a very powerful marketing tool that can work to your advantage, provided you know how to wield it. Let’s get started by learning how to create your own personal brand foundations.
Personal branding is a conscious effort to influence public perception about your person by being deliberate about the activities that you get involved in both online and offline. It involves differentiating yourself from other people and positioning yourself properly, elevating your credibility and advancing your career.
Your personal brand is an extension of who you really are to create how you want people to see you. Don’t get it twisted, it’s not promoting yourself all the time neither is it about making people think you’re what you are not.
Before creating your personal brand foundations, I want you to check out this post on things you need to know before getting started.
A strong personal brand can act as a huge catalyst for your business, if you are well known in your field, for instance, you can develop a business and leverage your personal brand to create awareness around that business. Many celebrities use this tactic very well.
Beats by Dre, owned by the famous musician Dr Dre. and co-owned by Jimmy Iovine was recently acquired by Apple for a total of $3 billion dollars. It was simply a pivoting strategy for Apple. Apple needed an on-demand subscription service and rather than building one, they bought Beats.
Dr Dre is one of the world’s well-known music producers, he signed 2 successful artistes at that time; Eminem and 50 Cents. He leveraged on his brand appeal to create a product, not just any product, but one that fit into his profession- Music.
I can’t dwell on that, but if you want to learn more about Dre’s success, check out this article here.
As an employee, building a personal brand can also work well for you in your organization. It can be a launchpad for your career, helping you grow exponentially, provided you are genuine about it.
In fact, many companies give their employees free rein to use social media to build their personal brands. They have realized that not only top executives need proper branding, but regular employees also do as well.
Since your personal brand is about the way people perceive you, there are so many things you need to start doing differently if you want to influence that perception. Here are some of them:
- Improving your walking style, especially how you walk into a room.
- Talking to service staff, like drivers, waiters, cashiers, employees, etc. politely
- Relating or communicating with people politely and in a friendly way
- Showing up on time, not being tardy and unprofessional about meetings
- Dressing appropriately for every occasion
- Spending your money on things that matter
- Eating right and being intentional about your health
- Investing your time and money in meaningful things
- Carefully choosing your circle of friends
- Posting and engaging with reasonable content on social media
Your personal brand is really rooted in who you are and what people say about you when you are not in the room. People get cues about how to treat you from the way you treat yourself.
5 Personal Brand Foundations To Help You Get Started
Before you get started, ask yourself these following questions, they are sort of the foundations that you will build your brand on
1. What Am I Passionate About?
You need to really think deep down about what you are passionate about, Dr Dre was and still is passionate about music, that’s why he was able to create headphones “so that people could enjoy music the way it was meant to be heard” Don’t let people deceive you to thinking that you don’t need passion to succeed, you do. When you have identified what you are passionate about, you can then look for a niche to serve within that space.
2. What Are My Strengths?
Know what your strengths are and pursue them. If you are not a social person, there’s no point going into a career or business that will require you to interact socially with other people. If you find out that you are musically inclined, that’s where your focus should be. Don’t even try to copy other people, you can’t succeed if you are not yourself.
3. What Gives Me Credibility?
I have heard this word many times “Brand Yourself Before Others Do” If there is something you want to be known for, it’s best you start speaking about it at any chance you get. What skills and certifications have you acquired? Let people know about it. Figure out what you want to be known for and build expertise around it.
4. Who Am I Called To Help?
This question is very important, but surprisingly, many people ignore it and run around trying to build a profitable brand which leads to nowhere. If you do not know who you’re serving, you’ll try to serve everyone and then run out of business. You have to figure out who you are called to, these are your target audience, and they are the people that will buy what you have to offer in the future.
5. What Are My Personal Brand Goals?
Here, you need to determine the goals for creating your personal brand. Once you have determined your goals, you will be able to put strategies and tactics in place, create action plans that will help you achieve them.
Personal Brand Goals
Some examples of personal brand goals include
- To become the go-to person in your industry
- To increase your business brand awareness
- To generate more leads for your business
- To grow your network’
- To leverage media and collaborations
- To monetize your digital presence
And many others.
Bottom line, your personal brand is you. It is something you get to take with you no matter where you work, live or play. It travels with you throughout your career even if you fully pivot into another role or industry. It is an investment you make in yourself.
When done right, personal branding not only builds the brand of you, but also helps you achieve many personal, life and business goals.
You have one chance to make a first, second and third impression. Although you can’t control the perceptions of your personal brand. You certainly can influence them more than you probably realize.
Here are few tips on how to get started with your personal brand
1 Identify What Makes You different
Think deep and identify what you have that differentiates you from every other person and capitalize on that. It could be your turning point, an event that happened in your life, etc. Weave it into a story and tell it to your audience.
2 Become An Expert
Become an expert at something, the worst thing you can ever do is to label yourself as a thought leader without really having any experience in the field. Spend your time getting well versed in your field and getting better at your craft. The result will pay off.
3 Share Your Expertise Freely
You see before people can pay you for your work or your expertise, they need to know you first and recognize you. If you are looking for paying clients without sharing your expertise for free at the first stages to get people to know you, you won’t go far. write books, create relevant content for your audience on social media, share your blog posts, attend speaking engagements, etc.
4 Build Your Audience
As you do all these things I’ve explained above, make sure that you are deliberately building an audience. On your social media, on your email list and even in person. The best way to grow your audience quickly is to focus on serving a particular niche. Don’t try to reach everybody.
Conclusion
I posted something on my Instagram recently, one vital characteristic that will help take your brand to the next level is your determination to see it through. Just because you face obstacles doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
There’s always adversity for every level, you just need to understand what level you are in at that point in time. If you are looking for a community to motivate you to keep at it, then join our Facebook group.
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