PERSONAL BRAND IN THE ONLINE ERA
The concept of personal brand is transforming with the emergence and rise of the Internet. Previously, the way to build a personal brand and position ourselves was mainly through our closest environment: through our co-workers, our friends, or our relatives. Now that the Internet has come into play, it allows us to make our knowledge, career, and ideas known in a much easier way and, especially important, to a big audience. Anyone from their own home can specialize and position themselves as they wish and get in touch with people from all over the world.
WHY YOU NEED TO WORK ON YOUR BRAND
We often start working on our brand when we are unemployed or looking for other professional opportunities outside and inside our current company.
There are professions in which personal branding is especially relevant, such as YouTuber or influencer, and other disciplines such as journalists, politicians, actresses, models, or entrepreneurs. Working on your brand will help you to have a better professional positioning too.
It is especially relevant in the following situations:
- Starting your own business.
- Aspiring to improve your job position within or outside your current company.
- Wanting to achieve a position as an expert/specialist in a particular area.
- Wanting to have influence and a voice in your industry.
- Adding value and sharing knowledge with other professionals.
5 KEY ELEMENTS WHEN CREATING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND
1. Know yourself and position your brand
Do a personal knowledge exercise to decide how you want to approach your personal brand. It seems easy, but I think it is the most important and, at the same time, the most complex part of the process. It is essential to be clear about how we are and what we are good at (and at the same time what we are less good at).
Then decides what value I want to give and what I want my brand to be associated with.
Linked to this last point, we will have to decide how we want to position ourselves. We can, for example, position ourselves as entrepreneurs, as brand ambassadors of our company, as professionals of a company, as experts in a specific area, as businessmen, etc.
This point is closely linked to authenticity. Our brand, as we have said, has to start from our essence. It must be authentic and not based on deception or fake facades.
2. Define objectives
Without defining objectives, there is no possible strategy that we can develop. After thinking about how we want our brand to be, we must decide what we want to do with it and what we want to achieve. Our objectives must be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.
Setting goals and following a consistent and previously structured strategy will help us work on our personal brand. It is not about impressing or publishing content from time to time; it contributes by building a personal brand that adds value.
3. Define target audience
At this point, we already know what we want our brand to be like, what strengths we want to highlight, what differentiating elements it has and what objectives we set ourselves. To achieve them, we need to define our buyer persona very well and focus our efforts on directing our strategy to reach the audience we are interested in.
4. Strategy
The next step is developing an action plan to achieve visibility.
We can work on our brand in many different ways and using pile formats and platforms. We are going to explain this by dividing the possible actions into three main groups:
One-to-one contact This is the most traditional way, as we mentioned initially. But now, with the possibilities offered by the Internet, the scope increases. It can range from having a coffee with a person close to you to talking by private message on LinkedIn with someone from another country to establish the first contact.
One-to-group. You can, for example, give lectures at events, classes at universities or business schools, talks at civic centers, or similar spaces in your city.
One-to-all. Here you will find mostly Internet tools. You can publish articles in specialized media in your sector, have your website or a personal blog, write a book, or use social networks relevant to your industry or broader ones such as Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube. By the way, writing articles can sometimes be challenging. You can give this to professionals when you feel a lack of energy and use a user-friendly essay writing service https://www.wowessays.com/.
Increasingly, formats such as podcasts or videos are being used, which tend to work very well, especially in certain sectors. Surely from these examples, you can think of other actions, so we recommend trying them and seeing what approach you feel more comfortable with and what is more effective for achieving your goals.
5. Honesty, passion, and perseverance
And we add three ingredients that must always remain from start to finish: honesty, passion, and perseverance. It can be challenging, long, and exhausting. But look at this as a long-time investment to yourself. And you get your profit as quickly as possible.
