Your Quick Guide to Developing a Personal Brand
Personal branding is the ideal way for you to show people who you are and what you're all about. Once you establish a personal brand, it helps others understand the type of person you are, your approach to work and life, and what you have to offer. It also provides a compelling way to showcase what sets you apart from others in your industry.
You can design a personal brand at any stage in your career, regardless of your career path or industry. Building an authentic personal brand takes time, but crafting a genuine and accurate depiction of who you are and your goals will help you be successful.
In this ‘Personal Branding 101,’ we talk about defining your brand vision with actionable steps, how to build your brand, finding your "uniqueness," and how to deploy your brand once you've taken the time to craft it.
Step 1: What is your personal brand vision?
Your brand is a projection of what you believe about yourself and your work and the ‘why’ you do what you do. It includes your personality, skills, experience, and behaviors. By telling your story, you set yourself apart by sharing your unique self and connecting with individuals who resonate with your vision.
Discover Your Uniqueness
Stand out! Don't just say and look like everyone else in your industry. Have you ever been to a dinner party where everyone has the exact same outfit on? Same perfume and cologne? Brought the same dish? Said the same thing? No. Who you are is unique; hone in on what makes you, you.
The idea of personal branding is to create a unique and consistent experience for others who work with you by highlighting who you are in everything you say and do, thus defining your personal brand.
When you've found your uniqueness, exploit it in the service of others.
"What does that mean?" you might ask. It has everything to do with understanding what value you bring that solves a problem or pinch point for your clients, customers, employers, and colleagues. Then becoming known for that singular uniqueness and value.
Define Your Visual Identity
Have you admired or noticed some other personal brands? Who do you look up to on social media? Who stands out in your mind? Usually, they stand out because of their consistent visual identity or consistent theme across all of their platforms. If you plan to have a logo representing your personal brand, take the extra time to craft your visual identity and stick with it from your brand font, colors, and logo. If you don't plan to use a logo, use similar, professional headshots and cover photos from platform to platform. For your resume or website, pull colors from those headshots and cover photos. When in doubt, choose simple and memorable.
Ask Yourself These Discovery Questions
You may wonder, "How do I begin mapping out my brand vision?" Don’t worry, we’ve got the guide. Take some time to reflect on the following questions and answer them honestly. Try a mindmap or a brain dump. Avoid answering them in a way you wish or hope to be portrayed, but really reflect on how you do come across. Ask a close friend or partner to help you uncover the truth.
How would I describe myself in less than five words?
Your mission is your driving force, and it should guide you in every aspect of what and why you do what you do, ask yourself, What mission am I driving or messaging?
What problem do you solve in one word?
What do you do better than anyone else?
What do you study? What have you DONE with what you've learned?
What is your reputation?
What is it that makes you unique?
Share your unique point of view to build your personal brand; share your perspective on what you do. Think of your own strengths, approach, and process to position yourself in a way that makes you different from others.
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Write down three to five goals you hope to achieve by having a personal brand. Reputation speaks for itself and is often forged through years of hard work and dedication, so remember that those goals may take some time to reach.
Step 2: How to Build Your Brand
Now it's time to develop your personal brand strategy, otherwise known as how to build your brand. Let's start with some essentials. Since your brand will primarily be digital in our increasingly remote-first world, it’s essential for you to create a comprehensively developed LinkedIn profile and get some professional photos of yourself — this is critical.
Craft Your Positioning Statement
Your positioning statement should answer the simple question, "So, what are you about anyway?" Keep your target audience (i.e. future clients or employers) and goals (e.g. be seen as an expert) in mind when crafting your positioning statement.
You want to express what distinguishes you from others in your field or industry and why they should care. Remember, you always want to answer the "What's in it for me?" for your clients, audience, and network before they even have a chance to ask.
Use your positioning statement as your profile headline. Avoid listing out just your title and company name only. Emphasize proven results you've helped drive — people love numbers! Other helpful items are what separates you from others in your industry or field. People love connecting and engaging with people, not companies, so it is a good idea also to add things you're passionate about or a hobby.
Optimize Keywords to Search for You
Define keywords that clients or employers might type into a search bar to find someone like you and add them to all of your profile and website bios, including your resume. Think of keywords relating to your:
Industry: Global and Local
Role: Current and Aspirational
Results: Quantifiable and Human
A good rule of thumb is to add a core keyword in your header or introductory bio sections and two to three additional keywords in your "About" section. Avoid randomly adding a bunch of keywords as it's not authentic and can look spammy to your network.
How to Write Out Your Bio
Keep it short in length, just a few concise sentences.
Avoid overused and jargon words such as: "Strategic," "Motivated," "Driven," or "Best practice."
Use humor to show personality, like this: "Has been known to have been kicked out of Slack channels for using the word y'all too much."
Show credibility by adding years of experience and other analytics or quantifiable data.
Show humility by inserting self-deprecating jokes and personal experiences, not in a bragging way, for example: "His work has been featured in Forbes, Time, and his grandma's fridge."
Demonstrate character and a belief system by describing your process of how you do what you do and the results you are looking for in doing so. For example, "We believe in conducting comprehensive research and creative briefs with a double shot of espresso and then using that research to help our clients solve their specific challenges."
After establishing your character and belief system, show a unique point of view by embellishing your process further and what makes yours unique to you versus others in your industry.
Add your accolades, awards, or in other words, your "street cred" that shows you've got skin in the game.
Your Personal Website and Social Media Channels
Individuals want to engage with people, not a company; for this reason, you want to map out your content into categories to break up posts and add variety. Don’t rely on your personal brand as a mask. Avoid only posting buttoned-up brand or promotional posts. Aim to have 80% of your content provide value while 20% focused on your service, skill, or career wins.
Develop consistent posting and engagement habits that you can maintain to build credibility. It’s never too early to start but commit to small, consistent efforts rather than a huge marketing campaign. Refer to the goals you wrote down for achieving a personal brand to help develop your content strategy.
Step 3: Ready, Set, Action — the Implementation Phase
Now here is the fun part! You get to deploy all of that hard work you've done. Update your headshots across all your platforms, choose a well-designed or well-selected photo for your cover images, add your newly crafted bio, and keep your personal brand goals top of mind.
When implementing your personal brand strategy, maintain a conscious consideration of creating all of your content:
Digital: Meet people where they are, scrolling on their phones, inundated by countless other posts and pieces of content.
Automated: Eliminate the burden of remembering to post and look into automatic posting tools.
Recurring: Get on a consistent schedule so your audience and network knows what content to expect.
Evergreen: Keep it general, so if it gets picked up months later, it still resonates.
Next, try this out.
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Create a post on LinkedIn about a recent project you did and how you approached it.
Tag four friends from a group of other professionals or who you worked with.
Comment on their posts, if possible.
Include a personal image, drawing, or illustration.
Use up to three hashtags.
“But should I post that?”
There is a concept called Sheehan's Wall developed by Rory Vaden and his team at Brand Builders Group. This concept refers to people who have built strong brands have a tendency to focus microscopically on their area of expertise and the channels to promote that, becoming an expert in their field.
All the topics could be talked about, and all the products could be sold, but people tend to be overly influenced by the shoulds, thus diluting the unique value proposition. Don't dilute. Diluted focus begets diluted results.
"You are always most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were."
— Rory Vaden
Building your personal brand will take some time, but it is well worth it in the long run. If done correctly, you will be able to elevate yourself from others in your industry and make a difference to those around you.
