What’s Your Personal Brand? So, with that said, what is a personal brand? Much like people trust McDonald’s to provide a product that’s cheap and filling, your brand is an attempt to get people to associate you with certain qualities. Everyone should have a brand. What Can Personal Branding Do for You? The result at the end of 12 months was astonishing: millions of dollars of sales had closed directly from their social network (in this case it was on LinkedIn.) You already have a personal brand. Your audience will appreciate you sharing great content from other people even more than they appreciate your unique point of view. It usually takes me about an hour a week to write an article, so it’s not a huge time commitment but the results speak for themselves. But make it consistent And if you do this, you will: Make Yourself Visible (SEO) Let’s return to the scenario where someone else is searching for you online, but this time, imagine they don’t know your name.
At one point, there was such a thing as separation between your work life and your social life. For many professionals, this is no longer true. This is why more and more thought leaders, business consultants, and influencers are choosing to focus on personal branding: it’s not enough to be a nameless part of a larger, corporate brand anymore.
Here we’ll answer some of the most pressing questions about building a personal brand: what is personal branding, how does it benefit you as an individual, and how can you do it effectively?
What’s Your Personal Brand?
Business-level branding has been a key part of the economy since the Industrial Revolution. Today, children who are not yet old enough to read can recognize popular brands like McDonald’s and Nike.
The rise of branding on a personal level has been more recent. For a long time, personal branding was better left to athletes, models, and Hollywood celebrities. Today, personal branding is a key to succeeding in many different parts of life.
So, with that said, what is a personal brand?
Much like people trust McDonald’s to provide a product that’s cheap and filling, your brand is an attempt to get people to associate you with certain qualities.
At its core, your brand is your reputation; how people think of you. Everyone has a brand, but not everyone’s personal brand is developed to be a strength.
Think of a celebrity that everyone knows: let’s use LeBron James, one of the most widely known athletes of the modern era. His personal brand for some might be as a dominant athlete and a person known for giving back to his community. For others it might something else, but most people know something about LeBron James.
Now, think about someone less notable, say, your friend Steve. Steve might be a pretty good guy, but it takes a while to get to know him. A stranger isn’t going to come to Steve for help, even if Steve is the kind of person who would help a stranger.
Basically, Steve’s reputation doesn’t precede him. His personal brand isn’t an asset, but it can be.
Your personal brand is primarily digital.
Part of the reason the importance of personal branding has increased so much in the past decade or so is because suddenly, everyone has access to some degree of information about everyone else. Want to learn about a new doctor who you’ve just made an appointment with? You can see where he or she got their medical degree and what other patients are saying about them with a few taps on the screen of your phone.
This puts a huge burden on controlling what people see when they look you up (more on this shortly).
Aside from celebrities and athletes, people thought to have a curated personal brand tend to be thought leaders and business consultants â people with professional notoriety. That example shows that this is far from true. Everyone should have a brand.
Effective personal branding can open countless doors for you in life. Basically, it would be a mistake to disregard it completely.
What Can Personal Branding Do for You?
I worked with one company on building the personal brands of 10 consultants. We identified their areas of expertise. We cleaned up their LinkedIn profiles and added examples of their work (videos, articles, recommendations from clients they had worked with).
Most importantly, we built a daily, weekly and monthly plan for them that took no more than 2 hours per month: we asked them to share one article relevant to their industry or expertise every day. They spent a few minutes every week connecting with other experts in their industry. And the wrote and published one article every month.
The result at the end of 12 months was astonishing: millions of dollars of sales had closed directly from their social network (in this case it was on LinkedIn.) By the second year, the sales deals they were getting via this approach became the largest source of new business for the firm.
But this didn’t happen overnight. These people carefully built and developed their personal brand. They became known as experts. They shared the expertise of others. They built the size (and quality!) of their network. And they shared their own expertise. This combination, applied consistently is what delivered…
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