Personal branding is a trending topic these days and this article will help you gain momentum as you craft a successful brand that is all YOU!
Essentially, a personal brand is all the qualities that sum up everything about you: your goals, principles, and missions. It is an established personality that other people can see and why they understand why you do what you do and why you have such preferences, traits, and mindset.
Building a personal brand is crucial because it serves as a representation of who you want to become professionally. It allows you to market yourself and paint an accurate picture of your strengths. By crafting the image that you present, the public will see a genuine depiction of your expertise.
You need to “live and breathe” your personal branding in order to attract your target audience. Strategic branding in business is a challenging feat and it is the same with personal branding. It requires a brand strategy that is compelling in order for it to be profitable for you.
Why Should You Build Your Own Personal Brand?
Your brand is what will distinguish you from your competitors. Aside from this, many other benefits are in store for those who are successful in personal branding, including:
- Achieving Trust and Authority. Creating your personal brand is the first step to building trust with a target audience. It serves as your promise of everything you can do for them.
- Build your network. Having a brand that speaks of you are makes it easier for people to see the value of getting associated with you. Your personal branding is what will leverage you in building an online and offline network that would be beneficial at any point in your career.
- Attract more clients. The beauty of working on your personal brand is that it will be easier for you to shift the attention towards your business ventures. You become positioned as an expert so you will be able to gain more clients by simply getting referred to them by the people who have acknowledged your personal brand.
- Premium pricing. Without a brand, you are simply someone who does the same things as other professionals do. Having a personal brand elevates your value and charging premium prices for your products and services will be justified.
- Career evolution. Over the course of your career, you will find yourself being with new companies and organizations. What stays as you move on from venture to venture is your personal brand. it will even be easier for you to build a new business that is centered on your personal branding.
What Makes a Personal Brand Successful?
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Authenticity
Authenticity is the foundation of personal branding. It should purposely show the reflection of who you are, your skills, beliefs, passions, and values. You must be able to piece together these elements to make up your personal brand. People should be able to tell your position on certain issues and attribute it to your kind of branding. They must be able to perceive your brand because what they see is a genuine persona that is built upon a strong and authentic foundation that is yourself.
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Having Influence and Authority.
Personal brand marketing is effective once the audience considers you as a person of influence and authority in your niche. If they see you as a brand, it simply means that you were able to successfully communicate to them your personal branding. The audience believes in you because they thoroughly understood your branding. There is no confusion but instead only a clear perception that you are the expert in your field.
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Competence.
When people search for you because of your products and services, that is when you can confidently say that your branding is a huge success. You were able to create so much impact that the audiences instinctively search your details for something that you do.
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A Huge Following.
Social media is everything in today’s brand marketing standards. Millions of people are using different social media networking sites and it is not a surprise why companies and personal brands have their social profiles to maintain. You must have done something right in your social media branding strategy if you are able to grow a huge following. The number of followers that you have is more than just statistics. It is a literal embodiment of your success at branding yourself.
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Engagement.
Aside from the number of followers, what counts the most when evaluating success at personal branding is the engagement on your social media. Although a huge following typically speaks of your success at getting your personal brand out there, how engaged your followers are will tell about your influence.
A highly engaged audience means that you have made a huge impact that they cannot stop responding to your content. Personal branding is also about how you present content on social media. It should be in your power to give them something to be excited about.
10 Successful Personal Brands to Inspire You
An excellent way to get inspired into building an effective personal brand is by following people who are successful at it. You can gain some great insight and channel their success into your own branding game.
Personal brands that made a massive impact are the following:
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Elon Musk.
As an entrepreneur and business magnate, it is hard to picture the advancements of technology without thinking about Elon Musk. He has a net worth of around $266 billion, making him the richest person in the world. It is sufficient to say that he has built a fortune with his name and his willpower to make an impact using his intelligence.
Those who want to achieve success in marketing have probably heard about Neil Patel. As a co-founder of multiple companies, Patel effectively markets himself using his personal brand. His face is everywhere he is working on, especially on his blog posts and website. He built a strong brand presence by being consistent on the colors that he use, logos, and even icons.
Manson’s success was slow and steady. It took him years to establish his name as a self-help entrepreneur. He authored two New York Times bestsellers books and has sold over 13 million copies of his books worldwide.
Considered to be the ultimate entrepreneur, Godin is an American author, public speaker, marketer, and businessman. His books are about exploring all areas of marketing, advertising, leadership, and business venturing. His revolutionary ideas to reach audiences are popular among business owners. His firm became so popular that it is associated with big companies, such as Volvo, Sony Music, and Microsoft, to name a few.
This person is got to be the real deal if you are looking for a legit Google SEO expert. He develops well-thought content, gets recommended by people, and does not allow sketchy ads on his website. He built his personal brand with trust as the foundation and it is what put him in the position as a credible expert.
Nature photographer, Paul Nicklen, is a Canadian filmmaker and also marine biologist. He has a global audience, thanks to his work with National Geographic magazine as an assignment photographer. He is also recognized for his efforts in educating the public about marine life conservation.
Daskal is a popular leadership coach who gives advice to Fortune 500 CEOs and boards. This goes to show her influence as a successful leader and why her firm is the bomb when it comes to organizational development and custom-made leadership programs. She is a strong advocate of personal and professional growth and specializes in helping people to reach their full potential across a wide range of industries.
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Oprah Winfrey
More than being a popular television personality, Winfrey is an established entrepreneur and billionaire philanthropist. Her compassionate branding is so strong that is believed to be the most influential woman in the world.
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David Schwen
As the Senior Design Manager at Pepsico, all would agree that Schwen has a commanding personality that made him achieve various accolades in the industry. He has made award-winning designs in different mediums across almost 20 years of experience.
With A-list clients like Jay-Z and Levis, you can definitely consider Walsh as one of the best out there in terms of famous graphic designers. Her style is distinctively retro with heavy influences from the vibrant ‘50s.
One thing that is common among these personalities is that they were able to capitalize on their expertise, in whatever fields they are in. There are plenty of people who work in the same industries they are in but no one can replicate their massive success. One of the reasons is that each person is unique and these people have gone through many obstacles just to show that they are more than different. They excel in what they do and they proved it to the world.
Quick Tips on Building an Awesome Personal Brand
To ensure that you are on the right path, here are simple ways to build an awesome personal brand:
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Show up consistently.
Consistency is common among successful brands. In today’s marketing era where a strong online presence is a must, you have to build name recognition by maintaining a consistent personal brand all over your social media pages. Keep the same cover photos and profile pictures, for example, to let the audience become familiar with your identity.
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Have a well-crafted brand story.
Storytelling is an important aspect of personal branding. People buy from brands they know, like, and trust. You need to set the right tone at the start or upon the introduction of your personal brand. By being meticulous in your storytelling, your followers will understand and forge an emotional connection with your brand.
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Be the expert.
By having a strong and confident stance, you get the audience into thinking that you are an expert in your field. You have to be authentic in doing this so you must do your best to master your niche. Build your expertise so that you can share it with your audience.
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Share your point of view
Among the unique things that you can offer to your audience is a point of view that is different from everyone else. It is easy to fall into the trap of sounding like your competition. It will be such a refreshing sight to see someone who is not afraid to air out his own views, regardless of how the audience would react.
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Be honest
What makes you relatable to people is your authenticity. Share what you truly care about and always do what you promise. Take every opportunity to let people see that you are true to your goals and purposes.
Be the Next Successful Personal Brand
People connect with people. Now, more than ever, it is time for you to build your personal brand so that you can fully connect with your audience. It is the only way to stay ahead of the pact and position yourself as an expert that anyone can trust.
If you are new to personal branding, we hope that everything you read would propel you towards building a strong brand and would make you ready for next-level growth and eventually to success.
Want to learn about developing your personal brand? Follow us for more resources about starting, running, and growing your personal branding.
Author’s Bio: |
| Miguel Davao is a graduate of literature and linguistics and has been writing content for about 5 years now. He particularly writes content on social media, design, photo-editing tools, and content writing tips. Currently, he works as a full-time writer at Removal.AI – a fast-growing start-up that offers image processing and AI background remover for marketing, web, app development, and marketing automation. |