Personal Branding – 10 Ways to Build a Personal Brand

When you opt for personal branding, you tell your audiences who you are, what kinds of values you incorporate, what your unique identities are, and how you are different from the rest of the others.

It is a continuous process that optimizes your influence in your target niche most sustainably and constructively.

Do you know what people mean when they say they have plans for establishing their brand?

The answer lies in the below-given excerpt from one of the speeches of Tim Ferriss-

Going on a date? The chances are that your “blind” date has Googled your name. Going to a job interview? Ditto!”

In one of the interviews, Jason Hartman also says that-

“Your Personal branding is nothing but the promise that you make to your clients— And that promise will be of quality, competency, reliability, and consistency.”

So, all in all, Personal Branding is the reasonable and equally adept practice of finding your centre, loving it and striking chords with the target audiences to stir their emotions in your favour.

In this post, we will be diving deep into the world of personal branding to understand the key ways through which personal branding can be done in a result-driven manner.

So, without taking any further, let us get started right away-

Table of Contents

Introduction to Personal Branding

Have you ever thought about having a brand for yourself?

This is precisely what we mean when we say personal brand.

Now, this might be a concept that is alien to you, but we shall discuss it right now and here. In the world online, personal branding is vital.

You run a business, or you are an entrepreneur, a celebrity, or a new-age influencer, you need to convert your reach, influence, and identity into a brand so that you can have the sustainable, longlasting, engaging and profitable presence.

When you Google your name, there are so many results. That is because people can share names all over the world. However, when you find some information regarding yourself, do you know this is what people are seeing?

You can never be sure, right? This is where the branding thing comes to your assistance in the best way.

What is Personal Brand?

A company or an individual’s personal brand refers to the way that uses to promote itself.

It is a one-of-a-kind combination of your individuality, proficiency, and experience, which you want everyone to see and understand. In short, the personal brand of yours will tell people a story that they did not know about you.

Most people generally use personal branding to differentiate themselves from others.

If you do it properly, then you can use your personal branding to promote your company, which may further lead to its success.

During the era when the internet was not so prevalent, personal branding was almost a myth.

Most people, then, used their business cards to promote themselves.

So, as you can already understand, if you were not a celebrity or had a high profile in the world of media, then most people would never have known you.

However, these days, due to the availability of the internet, promoting someone’s personal brand has become a lot easier. Now, to help yourself, you would have just to share a post on any of the social media platforms.

Importance of Building a Personal Brand

With the proper use of personal branding, you can easily tell people more about your skills and knowledge in a specific field in only one line. If you want to be influential in the eyes of the public, then you would require a reliable and proper personal brand. It would help you to stand out from everyone else out in the market.

Besides yourself, with a strong personal brand, you can also promote your company too. It can be beneficial for those who are starting a small business. So, if you are thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, then creating a prominent personal brand, first, can be a great idea.

Personal branding revolves around Authenticity, Self-Definition, Transparency & Accountability

Your personal brand is how you promote yourself.

It’s the unique combination of skills, experience, and personality that you want your audiences to relate with you only in your target niche.

In other terms, personal branding can also be understood as the telling of your story, and therefore the way it reflects your conduct, behaviour, spoken and unspoken words, attitudes and market presence.

So, when it comes to the definition of personal branding, it can be said that you use your personal branding to differentiate yourself from your competitors. If it is done well, you can use your personal branding alongside your business in ways that no other forms of branding will ever offer the benefits.

All in all, your personal branding is a combination of your self-definition, authenticity and the image that people recognize you. It is often a mix of how they seem at you in the world, how the media portrays you, and thus the impression that people gain from the knowledge about you available online.

Most people consider personal branding to be an almost impossible task. It can be somewhat true for a few people, especially if you do not know how or where to start. However, once you have found the exact thing you have been looking for, you can create a personal brand and make it famous quite comfortably.

Thus, here, to help you to understand everything, we will be talking about different aspects of personal branding in an informative manner. So, keep reading if you want to know all about them.

How to Build a Strong Personal Brand? 

As mentioned before, building a personal brand can be quite challenging if you do not know how to start. So, the very first thing, which you need to do is to plan on how should start your journey. Here are some tips that can help you with it.

1) Staying Focused is very crucial for Personal Branding

Almost everyone who wishes to be a successful entrepreneur, dreams of making a proper personal brand. However, when it comes to working on it, most of them generally lose their focus and give up.

So, like everything, if you want to start your personal brand, then you would have to stay focused. You can start this by finding out the aspects in which you generally excel. For that, you can try to search for the characteristics that most people usually compliment you on.

Besides that, you would also have to find and decide a key message, which you want to deliver through your personal brand and stick to it. Moreover, you would also have to find the subjects or projects that do not make you feel tired at all. Most importantly, you would also need to find the exact thing that motivates you to keep ongoing.

Most times, like everyone else, you would too face difficulties while finding all of these pointers mentioned above. So, in that case, make sure to take the help of your friends, family members, or even your colleagues. Once you are perfectly aware of your qualities, then you can start deciding on how to include in your personal branding.

However, it is quite evident that most people generally struggle to select a particular niche for restricting themselves from being limited. However, this is wrong. When you are starting, you should always stick to only one aspect or field. Once you have succeeded with it, then you can evolve yourself and begin conquering the other areas of business.

2) Be Authentic and Genuine for effective Personal Branding

One of the best ways to improve your personal brand is to be genuine and authentic.

You would have to follow this no matter what you do or wherever you go. This suggestion will be most applicable for you if you are thinking about improving your personal brand through the means of social media.

In social media platforms, most people will judge you through your posts. So, if you are not being authentic or exhibiting dualism, then they will see right through your act.

This might affect your personal brand and also might make you lose your potential audience.

3) Trying to Narrate a Story is essential for Personal Branding

Your personal brand would tell everyone about your personality and narrate a unique story about yourself.

If your personal branding is not telling a story about yourself, then it would be quite difficult for you to keep your audience engaged yourself.

However, these days, the old-age monologues do not work anymore.

Therefore, if you use them in your personal branding, then it would look quite dull, which, in turn, can make you lose your potential audience.

4) Determine Your Strengths and Weaknesses for solid Personal Branding

Your personal brand would not only determine the reflection of your personality but will also define your future.

Therefore, besides understanding your capabilities and skills, you would also have to assess strengths as well as your weaknesses. Only after you have found out these, then you will be able to understand which sector or industry is perfect for your cause.

Furthermore, if you know your weaknesses, then you would also understand which areas you do still need to work. It will not only enhance your overall efficiency but will also help you to assess yourself in a better way.

Besides these, you would also have to make a habit of forecasting your future. For that, you can start by thinking about what you want to achieve within the next ten years. It can help you to understand and determine the steps that you have to take to get there.

5) Identify Your Audience for effective Personal Branding

Once you are done with the previous two steps, then you would have to identify the audience that you need to reach to enhance your personal brand.

If you want to reach people of other larger companies, especially their leaders, then you need to create a stronger and well-defined personal brand.

On the other hand, if you want to attract a famous individual through your personal brand, then you would have to work in another way.

If you can determine your audience quickly, then it will be a lot easier for you to craft your story and build up your personal brand.

6) Do Thorough Research on the Desired Industry to do Personal Branding

Once you have found out about the industry or field you want to opt for, you would have to, then, do thorough research on it.

For that, you would, first, have to find out the leaders of the field. After that, you would have to go online and start following them. This would help you to know more about them and examine what they are doing to improve themselves.

Apart from following their daily schedule, you should also read their blogs to know on the way, which helped them to strengthen their personal brand. When you are starting, you would first have to imitate them to understand how they think or work. Once you have become a little bit adept with it, then you can try to do something better by yourself.

To build your personal brand, you would have to stand out from others. However, it will be quite difficult for you to rise to the top if you do not know what the other toppers are doing.

7) Preparing for failure plays a crucial role in Personal Branding

Like everything, if you are entering the world of personal branding for the first time, then you would inevitably fail at least once.

So, with every step you take, always expect to encounter failure. However, do not let the sense of defeat get over your head.

You should always keep your head high, be confident, and learn from your mistakes. It would help you always to be aware of what might happen to you while taking a different step.

8) Do Not Create a Negative Impact to ensure Personal Branding

Personal branding should always be positive.

A negative personal brand would impact your profile and drive your audience away from you.

So, always try to keep a positive attitude about everything and spread positivity through your posts on social media platforms to strengthen your personal brand.

9) Optimize your Online Presence for quick and sustainable Personal Branding

To ensure effective personal branding around you, you must use the online channels quite effectively.

Being aware of the Social Media Platforms and types of Websites that best fit well with your industry, niche and target audiences, and using that for optimizing online presence is essential for impactful personal branding.

Your audiences, co-workers, HR managers, etc. should be aware of your key features, and online platforms are instrumental in that.

10) Your presence should create a Legacy behind you for longlasting Personal Branding

Now, at the last spot comes to the efforts, endeavours, strategies, and characteristics that leave a legacy behind you as a brand.

There should be a kind of presence in the market so that people can remind you just with some key features, names, slogans, etc. associated with you.

So, creating a presence that empowers you to make a permanent place in the heart and mind of your users even at those times when you are not very active is one of the most critical practices for effective Personal Branding.

Personal Branding Wrap Up!

A personal brand is a type of lifelong project that keeps changing and evolving throughout the year, so the people (mainly the target audiences) keep on remembering the person.

Even the people with high profiles know that making a personal brand and keeping it at a prominent level is quite severe. Therefore, making a positive and proficient brand would not be enough for you. You would also have to keep working it continuously.

We hope that the tips, as mentioned above, will help you in ensuring effective personal branding for you.

While talking about branding, Seth Godin says-

“Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.”

So, pay heed upon these tips to do effective personal branding around you.