Personal Branding
Today I am going to talk about a method which is a part of Digital Market. In this Article, I am going to write about personal branding which has so many confusions, myths and misinformation. I am going to put some light on Personal Branding today from my personal experience in Digital Marketing. In this post we will learn about following topics.
- What is Personal Branding?
- Myths about Personal Branding
- How to build your personal brand and Personal Branding Strategies
- Importance of Personal Branding
- Who Needs Personal Branding
What is personal Branding
Personal branding is all about how you represent yourself and showing your understanding of skills and talent to people over digital platforms. It is a method of creating an image or persona of you on internet platforms. It is a method of developing an image between people’s mind about you by using different internet channels. I would like to explain this with an example.
In above image, you could see 1 person in two different personas. There are two different perceptions which come in people’s mind when they see both the images separately. He is very famous Rapper Snoop Dogg who has millions of followers. Not every got a chance to meet him but everyone has his or her own brand image for him.
Your personal brand is a combination of your unique talent, skills and experiences which express about you only.
Myths about Personal Branding
Let’s understand few common myths about personal branding. There are misconceptions between people about personal branding and often they get confused between company branding and personal branding. Let’s burst the bubble and understand the difference.
Personal Branding can help in building an identity from scratch
Personal identity is more about what you actually do and who you actually are. It helps you to create an identity based on your skills and talent. You simply cannot build fake identity by using this method. You have to rely on true facts and use the right information while working on building a personal brand for yourself.
Personal Branding is a Short Term Strategy
It is a common misconception that personal brands stay for shorter span of time. But in reality it doesn’t work this way. A brand image stays for a longer time and we should focus on building personal brand with positive approach and future focus mind. Once you build a successful personal brand, it stays forever.
Personal Image is good but not necessary
We are living in a century in which all the information about person or any particular brand is available on internet. One single click could reveal all of such information within seconds. If you believe it is not necessary, then you need to rethink about this. Internet revolution has brought a big change in digital space and people have multiple resources to find information.
It’s impossible to fix a personal brand once it’s broken
It doesn’t matter what goes wrong and how it goes wrong, there’s always a way to fix it. There is always something which you could do in order to improve your personal brand. It require professional consultancy. All you need is a Digital Marketing Expert who could help you in this task.
There’s no option of changing Personal Brand
It’s a common belief that once the personal brand image is built, none has an option to change it. But in reality, it is possible to adapt the change and re-brand or rebuilt your personal brand. Let’s take an example of a guy who did it successfully Mr. Alfred Nobel . He was a Swedish who did multiple things. He was a businessman, a chemist, an engineer, an inventor and a philanthropist. But he was named as “merchant of death” by the media because of his invention of dynamites. In order to change this, he decided to invent Nobel Prize which recognizes those who benefit humankind.
According to Carmen Nobel these are Brand Lessons From the Nobel Prize
Strategies to build your personal brand
In order to build a successful personal brand, you could try the suggestions given below.
Define your Audience
You have to define your audience first and understand what they really want to hear about you. Prepare a list of your talents and skills which could help you in setting up your personal brand. If you are a job seeker or freelancer, then it’s important for you to showcase your talent. In order to do that you need to focus on audience type because every personal brand attracts a targeted audience type. According to your personal brand image, you could attract audience.
Create a vision for brand image
Your vision should be clear while working on your personal brand image. Focus on skills what you really have. Don’t be the Jack of all and master of none. Instead of getting into quantity, focus on quality and use the skills which suit your persona. A digital identity should not be based on fake information.
Learn to accept
Test your skills on internet platforms by taking part in conversation and accept the critic responses on your talent or skills. Work hard to make yourself perfect by accepting all feedback and suggestions. You could only stand out from the queue if you have extra ordinary talent. So work on your skills and those critic responses would definitely help you out in this.
Optimize your profiles on social and other digital platforms
It is most important to keep your social and other digital media profiles updated. Optimize all your profiles, handles and pages and list your original information. Always use the correct information on your profiles. A Personal Identity could be much more than just self-promotions. It helps in increasing your credibility on internet.
Showcase your achievements
Internet is a place where it’s very hard to lie because every piece of information is available easily. In order to build a successful brand image, you need to showcase your achievements by telling the success stories. These success stories play an important role in self-branding. Number of case studies, achievements and milestones built a trust between you and people who follow you.
Importance of Personal Branding
When it comes to self-branding, I could say from experience that people don’t invest in product but they invest in brands. Similarly investors don’t invest in your company they invest in you. And you could only gain this much of credibility by doing self-branding. If you are looking for growth in career or business, you should take personal branding seriously and start working out on it. Let’s take few examples here.
Athletes got endorsement projects not because of playing particular sport, but they got it based out on their talent and how they played.
Actors, politicians, company CEO’s and every person who got some talent could built a self-brand and showcase the talent he/she has. Digital platforms allow each of us to publish what we have and share our story. Your personal brand is not just what you think or share about you but it is about what other people think, share and talk about you. Your brand identity is the totality of what people perceive about you and is defined by everything you do, based on what they find when they search about you on different search engines.
Who needs Personal Branding
Self-Branding is something which everyone deserves. If you have talent and skills then you definitely need personal branding. You could achieve more in terms of profession and career if you work on self-branding.
You could be any person or professional such as athlete, sportsman, sportswoman, lawyer, doctor, engineer, Digital marketer, entrepreneur, Teacher, working professional, Actor, Politician, Actress, Writer, Dancer, Singer, personal coach, trainer, an expert or anyone who gained more than average skills. Self-Branding is for everyone.
Conclusion
Personal Branding is not a niche, but it’s a right for everyone. Self-Branding is not restricted any specified category. It belongs to everyone who want to show his or her talent.