What Is A Personal Brand?

Maybe you want to be famous. Perhaps you want a high-paying job, or maybe a promotion. Possibly you just want more opportunities available to you in a given area of life. Often times to get where you want you hear the importance of networking with others. Well, personal branding is presenting yourself in a way where others want to network with you.

Wikipedia describes personal branding as:

Personal branding is the conscious and intentional effort to create and influence public perception of an individual by positioning them as an authority in their industry, elevating their credibility, and differentiating themselves from the competition, to ultimately advance their career, increase their circle of influence, and have a larger impact. If you want to stand out from the crowd and build your personal brand, here are some steps you should take to start.

Define brand Photo by David Lezcano [https://unsplash.com/@_thedl?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] / Unsplash [https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] A literal brand is a defining mark. Consider this: you’re on a farm, or rather, a ranch, and you own some animals (sorry vegetarians, vegans, and PETA). You let your animals roam free, but in case one gets lost or stolen, you brand them. When branding animals, you’re giving them a unique mark that associates that animal to your ranch. Animals with that brand are associated with you, and neighboring fields can see those animals. People see how the animals look, how they’re fed, all the way down to when the food is put on your plate (again, if you’re pro animal rights, assume the food is milk and cheese or something). The food provided is the end result of your brand, so when people see that brand, they have a mental association to the animal, the owner, and the ranch.

Your personal brand can best be considered a promise, one that you give to consumers and companies alike that work with you. Based on how you portray yourself online, whether it’s social media, online meetups and conferences, content creation, even your personality and personal beliefs, whatever you share becomes a representation of you as a person, and you promise to be that same person when someone wants to work with you.

Brand Significance Photo by Lukas Blazek [https://unsplash.com/@goumbik?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] / Unsplash [https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] When you have a strong brand, it creates customer loyalty, and that increases your marketability. People associate higher quality to branded products, allowing you to sell yourself, your services, or your products for more money. Your loyalty to your personal brand makes people in turn loyal to you, and they don’t have to be marketed as much. If you’re a web developer, marketer, or anyone in a service based industry that requires repeat business, a good brand is a surefire way to keep you in business.

Outline the steps of the branding process Photo by NEW DATA SERVICES [https://unsplash.com/@new_data_services?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] / Unsplash [https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] To build your brand takes time or money, usually both. So to be patient and follow these steps for brand success.

• Define your brand and everything that goes into it
• Position your brand and identify who you want your target audience to be
• Express your brand and give it an identity as far as what you’ll be remembered for
• Build brand awareness through online advertising and content marketing
• Determine brand equity by measuring the results of your efforts

Identify your core values and purpose Photo by Riccardo Annandale [https://unsplash.com/@pavement_special?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] / Unsplash [https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] To keep your brand strong, consider it as your key virtues or behaviors that you choose to abide by. When you understand your personal values, your purpose in society, you need to portray and demonstrate those values across social media. The more genuine you are in your branding, the better. If you’re not sure what your values are, ask your friends and family to see what they say about you.

Create brand drivers Brand drivers are descriptive aspects of your brand. It’s what your audience feels after interacting with you. To help with this, create a list of phrases and words that describe what you want to accomplish. For example: I personally as a developer want to come across as an expert in my field. I want to speak at meetups and conferences as a thought leader. I want job security as a developer who’s multi-talented, and I don’t want to have to worry about work again by creating a vast network and multiple streams of income through my branding and encourage others to do the same.

Photo by bruce mars [https://unsplash.com/@brucemars?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] / Unsplash [https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] You don’t have to be this personal, specific, or selfish. But focus on what you want to accomplish, and from there you know what work you need to do.

Design your brand architecture Photo by Estée Janssens [https://unsplash.com/@esteejanssens?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] / Unsplash [https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] For a personal brand, this may or may not be a personal issue, as the brand should be based around yourself. But for others, they may have vastly different interests. In cases like this, you may want to create separate personal brands. For example, you may want separate youtube channels and social media to hows two completely unrelated interests. The work is twice as hard because you have to build two brands from scratch, but you can then branch off into numerous avenues once each brand is built.

Identify and understand audience Photo by Wan San Yip [https://unsplash.com/@wansan_99?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] / Unsplash [https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] The next step is to understand who you’re talking to. In marketing, this is called segmentation. You want to find out what kind of audience aligns with your values. To make it personal again, as a developer, I want my brand to impress both other developers, recruiters, and hiring managers with my knowledge of development topics. Even with articles like this which have nothing to do with code, I show understanding of other business verticals like marketing and can potentially show myself as a better communicator.

For you, your audience may be people into fishing, chess players, fitness enthusiasts, the list goes on. Understand what you want to focus your branding efforts on, and learn how to target people who would benefit from what you have to offer.

Link brand to product and service Photo by Rachit Tank [https://unsplash.com/@rachitank?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] / Unsplash [https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit] To help support your brand efforts, you should also offer products and services that align with your goals and values.

From a developer standpoint, you’d perhaps want to sell a tutorial based on something you’re very knowledgable about, or a book about code, or sell a theme that you created for a platform like WordPress [https://wordpress.org] or Ghost [https://ghost.org] in a popular marketplace.

As a personal trainer, your products may include workout gear, exercise videos, personalized equipment, or maybe selling supplements as an affiliate.

Whatever your brand is about, try figuring out what you like to use in your given niche, and create that product. Be the change you want to see and be the product you want to sell in the world.

Manage brand equity For a healthy brand to continue growing, you have to continually manage it. Things change constantly. Social platforms come and go, new mediums of engagement popup. Circumstances change for a variety of reasons. It’s up to you to stay current on what’s trending and understand how to move forward. You have to monitor your brand to see what’s working and what’s not. It’s an ongoing process, but keeping it going is easier than starting it.

Summary Personal branding is a key that opens the doors for many opportunities. You have to know yourself, know your audience, and know what you have to offer. Don’t be afraid to try new things in order to see what works. Be yourself, because at the end of the day it’s your brand. Keep improving every day and you’ll see the benefits of your brand before you know it.