Personal branding for beginners

We may have come across this term "personal branding". And we might have certain questions:

• Is personal branding for me?
• Is it important to invest in a personal brand for career / business development?
• I am a freelancer / consultant / small business owner / employee - how is personal branding going to help me?
• How much investment in time / efforts are necessary for a strong personal brand?

Let’s have a look at what is personal branding and how it can help us - to create a unique identity for ourselves, to have access to the best opportunities in terms of clients and business, and to develop top of the mind recall amongst our target audience.

But how do we go about building a strong, unique personal brand? What are the specific actions that can be taken to kick-start our journey towards a memorable, distinct identity? Let's begin by having a look at what is a personal brand and why is personal branding so very important in this era of cluttered, overwhelming stream of communications.

Part A: Personal branding basics

I. What is a personal brand

A personal brand is the difference between “Who are you?” and “Thank you for being here” in your career.

Your personal brand is your own unique concoction of your knowledge, skills, experience, and personality that you offer to the world. It is your story, your values and your perspective that helps you differentiate yourself from others.

Individuals can develop their personal brands which can lead to increased business opportunities, networking, visibility and recognition.

Examples of strong personal brands in recent times are: Oprah Winfrey, Gary Vaynerchuk, the Kardashians, Lady Gaga and many more.

Even if you are not aspiring to be the next TV celebrity /music industry star / marketing mogul, a strong personal brand can still lead to promotions, partnerships, speaking engagements, job opportunities and lots more.

II. Why is personal branding important?

1. Building visibility: Having a strong personal brand will help you have visibility amongst your target audience. If you are a graphic designer, having a strong personal brand will enable you to have top recall amongst your target audience: marketers, brand managers, product managers and the like. Your strong personal brand will enable you to acquire new business opportunities (if you are a freelancer) or highly valuable projects (if you are an employee). Your personal brand is your unique calling card in the outside world - letting people know about you, even in your absence.

2. Professional positioning: Do you want to be known as a professional who always delivers on time? Or someone who is renowned for presenting and delivering the most unique, innovative ideas? Or as someone who consistently delivers high octane campaigns? Your personal brand can communicate that for you. A unique personal brand is your communication to the outside world about your professional accomplishments.

3. Inbound opportunities: For a small business owner, or a large conglomerate employee, a freelancer or a consultant, having a strongly identifiable personal brand can be a source of inbound opportunities: new lucrative projects within your organisation or new clients, it all starts from a recognisable personal brand.

4. Brand creation: Ultimately, here is where we all want to be. Recognised, acknowledged and appreciated. A personal brand can help you in creating your own unique value proposition as a professional.

III. Benefits of a strong personal brand

A strong personal brand enables you to have:

1. A steady stream of “ideal” clients

Would you like it if you got most of your businesses because of your reputation / image? Or because of referrals / recommendations? Of course, we all would. It is almost as if our recommendation engine is generating all our new business, and any business owner would like it. But that would happen only if your brand message is consistently communicating your brand values to the outside world.

2. Greater mindshare

Imagine you having to invest in Adwords for getting new leads. Now do a back of the envelope calculation into how much you would have to invest in getting those leads and how many would convert for you. Now imagine the same number of leads getting generated organically, through your personal brand. Of course, you'd have to invest in developing and nurturing your personal brand, financial commitments included, but investing in your personal brand will have much deeper returns than that one off, keyword centric Adwords campaign.

3. Association with a market niche

If you are a content writer, you probably have a few favourite genres: scientific writing, financial articles or perhaps fiction. You probably don't dabble in all. Specialisation helps you in narrowing down your target audience and positioning yourself as an expert - otherwise you will be fighting with a sea of competitors if you are generic. Personal branding can help you position yourself as an expert, and create a strong association with a market niche.

4. Greater credibility

Having social validation helps. How many times have you reached out to a friend / colleague for a recommendation / referral - and how many times they have recommended someone instantly, citing them to be a great worker? It happens all the time - and it happens because someone has worked very hard in creating and developing a unique value proposition for themselves for their target audience.

5. Recognition and prestige

How would you feel if you were called on to share your advice on a topic? Or were sought out to share your experiences? Personal branding can offer you recognition and prestige. Of course, this would come after you have invested considerably in building a personal brand - in terms of time, efforts and financial commitments, if any.

6. Higher perceived value

Having a distinct personal brand will also enable you to have a higher perceived value - clients / projects are coming to you, you are not chasing them. So you get to choose (yaay!) and that means, you can be picky - you can choose your clients - you can choose the ones with the best terms and conditions, the ones with best workflows. And you can charge a premium doing so. 

7. Rewarding partnerships

Want to work with some of the best agencies? Best companies? Best co-workers? Your personal brand can help you leverage some of these opportunities. It can help you build a network of the best people in each of these areas, thereby strengthening your own credentials.

Part B: How to build a personal brand?

I. Personal branding basics

1. Brand “You” 

What is your personal brand?

What is your own personal branding statement?

For example, a personal branding statement can have the following broad format:

I help (target market) with (skill) so that they get (results)

In action, this would mean,

I help young professionals understand their financial planning requirements so that they can plan their retirement better.

I help senior individuals understand everyday technology better so that they can be independent & live a much fulfilling life.

2. Your audience: Who you are relevant to/for?

The first and foremost question is who is your target audience? Who are you relevant for? Target audience is the set of people who are your customers / clients. In case you are a fitness instructor, your target audience may comprise of urban professionals in the age group 25-45 of a certain income demographic and lifestyle.

Understanding your target audience is important as all your communication (messaging + channel) will depend on your target audience: what language do they prefer their communication in, what channels are favoured by them, what content appeals to them and so on. In case you'd like to know how to identify your target audience, read more about identifying target audiences here

If you are solving a persistent problem for your target group with a clear compelling value proposition for yourself delivering clearly identifiable brand values, then you are well on your way to creating a strong personal brand.

3. Objectives: What would you like to achieve as a brand?

You need to be laser clear about your objectives - what do you want to achieve as a brand out there? Are you investing in personal branding to get more top of mind recall? Or are you looking to start something in a niche area and a personal brand will help you get there. Ultimately, the goal is usually financial - more clients, better projects, more revenue, higher business, whether you are a freelancer, consultant or an employee

4. Values: What are your brand values?

This is the most important tenet of a brand - what are your brand values. What do you stand for? Needless to say, having functional level expertise is mandatory - whether you offer design services, beauty advice, home interiors service, or branding advice. Brand values means the extra that having you on board ensures.

It could be:

Timeliness: Always on time deliveries

High quality work: Absolutely zero error deliveries

Innovative: You always deliver the most unique and creative ideas.

Write down five values that you would like your personal brand to stand for.

5. Area of expertise: What is it that you are uniquely positioned to deliver?

Finally and the most important thing, what area of expertise are you offering? Is it unique? If yes, then your communication in personal branding is different. If you are competing in a cluttered market, then the communication needs to be geared accordingly.

Then, write down your unique personal branding statement

Examples

I develop sustainable business models and marketing strategies to fuel small business growth.

I help individuals reassess their life choices to discover their true paths to success.

II. Pillars of Personal Branding

The following can be considered as pillars of a strong personal brand: 

1. A clear vision

Without a clear vision of your personal branding journey, it will remain just an exercise. You should have a very clear vision of what are the expected outcomes from your personal branding strategy.

2. A personal branding statement / recognised image

Your own unique calling card in the world - your personal branding statement. You should be able to craft your unique personal branding statement from the examples cited above.

3. Trust and loyalty

For personal branding to work, you have to deliver the goods. Only that can help build trust and loyalty. You'd like to believe that you are timely and punctual, but if your clients don't think so, then it is pointless to have that as a personal branding element.

4. Consistent delivery

You cannot have inconsistencies in your personal brand outcomes. You have to consistently deliver on your brand values - if it is timeliness, it has to be timeliness, day in and day out. If it is innovation, you must strive to achieve that in every single interaction. Be consistent to achieve recognition with the brand value you choose for yourself.

III. Social media & personal branding

1. How to leverage social media?

One of the most difficult questions for personal branding is where all should you be present? Developing functional expertise is already overwhelming. Professionals have to keep up with the various updates and latest events happening in their industry. Couple this with the demands of personal branding and sometimes it is overwhelming. Questions like which all channels should I be present in? What should be the content that I should post? How many times should I post per day? All of this can appear to be intimidating. But worry not, always begin with the target audience and ask yourself:

• Where all is my target audience present?
• What content format do they enjoy reading? Infographics, long form content or short form content?
• What information type do they prefer? Educational, entertainment or informative?
• How often do they browse and for how long?

You may not have all the data in the form of structured reports and graphs but you can extrapolate some of the data based on research, interviews and experience. The idea is to be close to accuracy if not 100% accurate. You will be anyway refining all this along the way, so don't worry about getting everything right the first time around.

2. Objectives for each channel

Once you shortlist the channels, you need to decide the objectives for each channel. For example, if you are an education consultant, and you choose LinkedIn for your personal branding, you will need to draft your content strategy. That will include your 

Part C: Personal branding strategy

In this section, we will discuss a bit about the execution techniques for personal branding. You need to hone and refine your technical You have to put together an engagement strategy for highlighting your personal brand. Whether it is events, conferences, networking meetings or face-to-face interactions, you need to create a powerful content marketing strategy for showcasing your personal brand.

You might need to answer questions such as these:

• How frequently will you post? Everyday? Or once every two days?
• What content will you post?
• How to build your audience?

Who?

The most important task is identifying the "who". Once you have done that, keep on expanding the circle to include "like" audiences. You can do that by expanding / adding:

New geographies: If you were only promoting in say one state, expand to a few others. This will give you geographic expansion in your target audience.

You can also up-level your target audience. That is, target +5/-5 in the age demographic. Assuming that you will also appeal to the younger, aspirational target audience and a slightly older but relevant target audience.

Shadow your target audience: What publications do they read? Which websites do they visit? Most importantly, what problem are you solving for them?

Identify the gatekeepers: Who are the gatekeepers between you and your target audience?

Identify the consumers: How many steps is the consumer taking to reach your content? For example, is your content enabled by an institutional subscription? How many steps are in between you and your target audience?

I. How to build your content strategy

The types of content that you most definitely need for a rock solid personal brand are:

1. Outreach content

This content is 100% target audience problem centric. This is the core content piece that you need to be working on. This content talks about the problem that the target audience faces and how you are uniquely positioned to solve this problem. For example, if you are a financial advisor, and you want to focus on women as a target audience, you might be creating content around the following lines:

• 10 financial planning tips for women
• Wrong financial decisions for young women professionals
• Financial planning for older women

2. Continuous engagement content

This type of content is purely for ensuring that you are connected to your target audience. This could be slightly fun / entertaining / thought provoking in nature

• 5 movies that you must watch to learn how to invest better
• Ten financial mistakes that I wish I hadn't made.
• 5 tips I would give to my younger self

3.  Link building content

This content type will help you build outbound and inbound links. Outbound links provide links to outside credentialed sources and inbound links could direct readers to other resources [within your website] authored by you. Both are designed to ensure readers read your primary content piece and are able to delve further to learn more.

4. Positioning content

This content type helps you to build your credibility as an expert. This expert positioning technique could be leveraged in form of Q&A sessions [Ask me anything Fridays, webinars] and the like.

All these four content pieces anchor a carefully crafted content strategy for personal branding.

II. How to build your platform strategy

Once you have identified your primary platform, you may want to choose another supporting platform. I recommend having a website / blog as your primary platform and one / two social media channels as your supporting platform. And to use social media to drive traffic to your website / blog. It is tempting to have presence on an array of social media channels, and if you can swing it, nothing like it. But each social media channel is a monster of its own - what flies on Twitter won't run on Instagram, so choose your battles wisely. It is better to have one current, updated social media channel instead of five poorly maintained ones.

1. Map your content to your platform

It helps to structure your content in three parts: Hub, help, and hero. And cascade it to the relevant platforms.

Hero content typically revolves around a major flagship event such as a product launch, or a custom campaign. This is high quality, highly valuable content that has high production value, takes longer to produce and is more in-depth and insightful. You may choose a video publishing platform for this type of content such as YouTube.

The purpose of hub content is to keep customers engaged. It helps maintain brand awareness, and provides informative, entertaining content to the audience. Examples are podcasts, vlogs, behind the scenes content. For hub content, it is best to anchor it around your social media channel.

Help is evergreen content that customers are constantly seeking information about, aka “pull” content. As the name suggests, it’s there to help your customers. Help content comprises of how-to videos, tutorials, tips, testimonials and product demos. This content demonstrates the expertise of the author. Since help content is evergreen, it is advised to keep it on your blog, so that whenever a user pops by, s/he can view how useful your tips are, how detailed and in-depth your recommendations are, all in once place.

If you are a fitness consultant, you can post informative articles around home fitness tips for young professionals who can't visit gyms [help content] This can be in the form of videos, long form articles, infographics and short posts. You can have a whole series around micro topics on fitness and start a weekly series [Tuesday Tip] and so on [Hub]. Finally, you can launch a major content marketing push for the launch of your fitness app [Hero content].

2. Create a content & distribution calendar

You cannot run something as demanding and intense as a personal branding strategy yourself. You need automation. Create as much content as you can in advance and automate. Your time should be spent on creation (60%), promotion (40%) and automation (10%).

3. Stick to a scheduling frequency

Audience loves when they know what to expect. Don't post on a Monday and then disappear from the face of earth for 2 months. Respect your audience's time and post regularly. Struggling with establishing a schedule? Read this article on how to write more in less time 

4. Balance both short and long form content

You should have a mixture of content types - long form and short form, informative and entertainment. This will ensure that your content is not boring and drab.

Part D: Reputation Management & Brand Audit

I. Reputation Management 

Just like with any product brand, your brand reputation will signal you about the health of your personal brand. 

What is reputation management?

Imagine if all your clients (or employers or colleagues) were to sit in a room together - talking about you. What would they say about you & your brand in your absence? Would they cite your strong work ethic? What would be the negative points that they would bring up? Reputation management consists of knowing what your clients / customers / colleagues say about you, acknowledging the feedback and then managing it (either addressing it through remedial measures or ignoring it).

1. What are your clients saying about you?

How are you tracking the effect your personal branding has on your reputation? It is important to know this to understand the wider impact that your personal brand has on your sphere of work. For this, you many want to jump to the section on brand maintenance.

2. Pitfalls of a poorly maintained brand

There are many individuals who have launched a personal branding strategy without much research and much thought. Having reached out to an external audience without conducting the necessary background evaluation and preparation, their brand collapses when subjected to external stressors. Sometimes, individuals despite their well meaning intentions may take steps which compromise their brand integrity (for example, an undeclared sponsorship which may affect the perception of the content shared by them on social media). Negative associations with your personal brand can result in diminished opportunities, unfavourable word of mouth, and reduced scope of engagements, cancelled projects and much severe long term impact.

II. Brand Maintenance

Any brand which is conscious of its long term impact will conduct a brand audit - an exercise that will indicate if it is still resonating with its target audience and having the intended impact. As a personal brand, you should also conduct a brand audit from time to time.

So how will you conduct a brand audit? Here are few simple steps to guide you.

One of the easiest indicators is how many referrals / recommendations / inbound calls / enquiries are you getting? If you are getting a fair share, then it is an indication that your personal brand engine is at work - generating those queries, word of mouth content about you. Alternatively, you can also track the following

1. Awareness [Mentions, branded search]

Awareness will track how many new people did you manage to reach? Did you get to speak at a conference? That's great - if it was outside your city / selected demographic, then probably you managed to reach a new target audience, increasing your awareness, which should reflect in mentions [newspaper citations, google search alerts] and so on.

2. Consideration [site visits, engagement]

Is your website traffic going up? Are you getting requests for speaking opportunities? Are you getting more downloads on your branded materials present on your website? You can set up a tracker for this to know the month-on-month trends for these metrics

3. Commercials: Queries, RFPs

How many of the queries that you receive are getting converted (conversion rate), how many request for quotes are you receiving?

4. Loyalty: Returning customers

How many of your customers are repeat customers? How many of them have increased their volume of work being directed towards you? This itself is an indication of a strong personal brand.

5. Evangelism: Recommendations & referrals

How many of your present customer provide you referrals or write recommendations? How many of those referrals / recommendations have converted for you? 

Conclusion

Just like any product brand, building and nurturing a personal brand requires time, effort, patience and hard work. Don't expect results straight-away. 

Also, please remember your personal brand can only supplement your already existing work ethic, adding to your already existing set of skills, knowledge and experience. It is not a panacea that can compensate for your core technical skills and know-how. That being said, don't let anything or anyone deter you from starting your personal branding journey today.