What is Personal Branding?
Personal branding refers to the process of defining all those aspects that make you unique and sharing it (either online or via a face to face interaction) with your key stakeholders. Your ability to create a genuine connect with stakeholders via your unique personality is what will give you an edge over your competitors. Personal branding works for you whether you are a professional or an entrepreneur, let us take a look at how.
Personal Branding as a Professional
As a working professional personal branding is about defining your professional and personal achievements that sets you apart from your peers. It is also about clearly communicating your ethics, belief system and career goals to those within your organisation and prospective employers. A couple of ways you can go about it is:
- Face to Face Interactions – Being more proactive in meetings and putting across your views (without being overbearing) and concerns based on your specialised knowledge.
- Online Visibility – Being more active on social media sites like LinkedIn etc, maybe even writing a blog drawing on your expertise.
Why Personal Branding Works:
- You get to take ownership of defining your career growth rather than going with the flow.
- You gain credibility based on your specialised knowledge both within your organisation and with others in your professional field.
- Gives you that edge in your career advancement
Personal Branding as an Entrepreneur
As an entrepreneur looking to build your business it is essential to create a personal connect with your customers and personal branding helps you achieve this. Remember to always be genuine and true to your beliefs in all your interactions.
Offline and online ways to go about creating a personal brand:
Offline Interactions:
- Organise business meetups, impromptu events like pop up workshops, seminars etc where you get to interact on a one on one basis with customers and other business leaders.
- Actively participate in conferences, trade shows, industry workshops etc.
Online Interactions:
- Maintain a website highlighting your organisation’s beliefs and core values which will help create a personal connect with your existing and potential customers.
- Also maintain numerous social media accounts where you interact with customers on a range of topics not restricted to your core business. Give them helpful information and tips on even those topics which may not necessarily translate into sales.
Why Personal Branding Works:
- Reaching out to existing and potential customers via various online and offline mediums helps increase your visibility.
- Your honesty and genuineness in your interactions will hold you in good stead and help build relationships based on trust.
- This will translate into increased sales and loyalty from your customer base.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Get started on personal branding to realise the many benefits it offers in terms of both professional and personal growth.
