THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO PERSONAL BRANDING

 

WHAT IS PERSONAL BRANDING?

 

Personal branding is how you decide to present yourself to a specific audience online.

 It is the way you represent your own story, your voice, and your unique self and skills, to form an impression and gain a credibility online.

                               Medium.com (2018), The importance of personal branding.

 

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO HAVE A PERSONAL BRANDING?

 

An effective personal branding can guarantee you many benefits, both personally and professionally.

If you have a business, setting up a successful personal branding is vital nowadays. More than 50% of GenZ and Millenials stated that they don’t trust messages coming from direct ads or big companies (Petrock, 2021)

That is one of the main reasons why the personal branding phenomenon is rising exponentially. Consumers choose to follow people they trust, and it is more likely to get them into buying products/services when they built a trustworthy relationship with the seller. If a personal brand provides real value to consumers, you will differentiate yourself from others and become the most important selling point for your business.

Professionally, an effective personal branding can make you stand out from a potential crowd of candidates. 

A survey conducted by Career Survey demonstrated that 70% of employers use social media to screen their candidates before taking a decision. (Working Solutions, 2020) . Having a strong presence online will therefore increase your chances to be found and to let recruiters understand what you’re really made of.

 

 

YouTube (2019) What ispersonal branding and why is it important?

 

6 STEPS GUIDE: HOW DO I BUILD MY PERSONAL BRANDING?

 

• SET UP YOUR CONTENT PILLARS                                    

 "The content pillars are a set of themes and topics that your brand can use to create posts" (Scott, 2021).

The pillars will have to be chosen according to your brand’s products, goals and audience. Once the pillars are established, the posts will therefore be a sub-genre of those.

•   ESTABLISH YOUR PRESENCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS.

 Ideally, you should be present and consistent on each social media platform. You can propose the same content for all social media platforms, but you’ve got to figure out what is the best way to do it according to the platform chosen.

Every platform has its specific audience and language, what you do on Instagram might not work, or might have to be re-adapted, for another social media platform.

If you’re a one-person team, keeping consistency on each social media account can be quite overwhelming. With time, depending on your target audience, you will get to know which platform works best for you and your brand. But don’t disappear from the others, you never know where a sales lead can hide.

• TARGET A SPECIFIC AUDIENC

 
You cannot be everyone’s cup of tea. Targeting a specific audience makes your message clearer and more understandable. Also, it is easier to stick with the content pillars if you know your audience will be interested.
 

•     BE CONSITENT. 

Consistency doesn’t equal frequency in posting. The term consistency needs to be associated with your brand voice and aesthetic. Being consistent will bring customers to recognise you and to start a trustworthy relation with you and your brand. 
 

•  CREATE A NETWORK OR COMMUNITY

 You cannot post and ghost. You’ve got to engage with your audience, so that they can get to know the real you. Engaging  with the audience is also a good way for you to get to know them and what they’re really looking for.
 

•  BE AUTHETIC. 

      Faking until you make it will not work. You’ve got to show your audience who you really are. Once you’ve created an authority for yourself, the audience will start to recognise you as the go to person for that specific industry.

SOME EXAMPLES OF PERSONAL BRANDING 

The personal branding phenomenon is still quite new, and very often it does not get the recognition and the importance that it should receive.

Nonetheless, there are some people that can be considered personal branding pioneers or masters. Here’s a quick overview of 3 powerful personalities.

 

GARY VAYNERCHUK

 

                                   AZ Quote (n.d.): Gary Vaynerchuck quote

Gary is a multimillionaire entrepreneur, who build up his fortune from scratch. Gary started to show up online with a mission:  helping other people with their business and marketing career.

 From the very beginning, he positioned himself as an expert in business and marketing. It is impressive how his message is consistent on each online channel you tune in. Doesn’t matter with social platform are you in, you will easily recognise his brand voice and his messages.

 “I think it’s the best piece of advice I can give right now to a bunch of 20 to 30 year olds who feel that they should be talking to the world and bringing value. Talk about your journey of trying to find that voice and synthesize it properly.” This is just a bit coming from one of Gary’s blog posts. 

At 20 or 30 years old, it’s most likely that you won’t have everything figured out yet and, according to Gary, that doesn’t matter. Even if you don’t feel ready, you can get out there and show your journey to find that value.

 Gary is surely capitalising his business; however he is doing in a way that doesn’t make you feel like he’s simply trying to sell that out. He is providing support to his audience, listening to their needs and speaking a language that is familiar and direct for young people.

 

 

RICHARD BRANSON

 

                                           Inc.com (nd.) Richard Branson 

Richard is a billionaire business magnate. He is famous for his adventurous and unconventional spirit.

He owns around 400 hundred companies in the United Kingdom. And once again, what really makes him and his companies stand out is his brilliant, and often criticisable, personality and personal branding.

 Branson himself admitted that the real secret to succeed is being authentic and unique, not afraid of showing who you really are.

 “Too many companies want their brands to reflect some idealized, perfected image of themselves. As a consequence, their brands acquire no texture, no character and no public trust. Keeping it real, don’t try to pretend someone you’re not and you will differentiate yourself from others”. (Castrillon,2019)

 

CHIARA FERRAGNI

 

                                                IZ quotes (nd.) Chiara Ferragni 

Chiara is an Italian fashion blogger and  digital entrepreneur. Within the fashion industry, she he was one of the first, in Italy but also in Europe, to take this phenomenon really seriously.

 She also started a blog in 2009 from scratch, and slightly after that she opened her social media accounts. "I have always had a thing about sharing my everyday life," she told Hypebae in 2019. "I've always thought that taking pictures of my outfits, travels around the world and experiences with friends and family could one day evolve into something bigger and more important." (Goldstajnz, 2021)

 And she was totally right on that. Showing her real life to the consumers, keeping up with a consistent brand image, is what differentiated her from the others. 

Chiara has now become an international public figure, and despite having 26M followers on Instagram, young women and men still have a feeling of connection with her that goes far above many other fashion businesses. 

The power of an effective personal branding can really open the doors to success.