First and foremost, what is personal branding?
Personal branding is the process of defining and promoting what you stand for as an individual. That is, you market yourself, build a name recognition for yourself and create a relationship with other customers. Your personal brand is a culmination of the experiences, skills and values that differentiate you from others.
For social media influencers, freelancers and keynote speakers, building an effective personal brand is part of “selling” themselves to clients. For everyday people, a personal brand improves confidence, opens the door to new opportunities and helps you better understand yourself.
HOW DO YOU CREATE A BRAND?
Every individual has their own personal brand. The way it is as seen or perceived with the corporate brand, when you take charge of it. Here, you determine and assume real perception of how they feel when they interact with you.
For instance, Nigerian indigenous companies like House of Tara have put a lot of time and effort into cultivating an image as a company for fashion and beauty make up enthusiasts. House of Tara carries this identity in everything it sells, its marketing techniques. You hardly enter a beauty spa or cosmetics palace without seeing Tara’s product.
Again, some business leaders cultivate personal brands to improve their chances of sales. Tony Elumelu, a high-profile leader in the world of business, is one of them and because he’s a brand already, over 90 % of people have genuine trust in his brand and easily get recommendations for him and from individuals to other personal or corporate brands.
The question here is, how do you create a personal brand?
Of course, the answer is not far-fetched in that this era of social media, personal brand exists intentionally. It sparks with your behaviour, what people identify with you… It is what you dispose of your behaviour – both online and offline. However, there are steps that can make your personal brand more reputably marketable or saleable.
The Steps are as follows:
- Your goals for personal branding must be thoroughly figured out. You have to decide what you want to be known for, how to be known for and what you will need to do to establish your identity.
- Most times, make it a habit to search for yourself online and find out people’s reviews about you. This will possibly call for some adjustments if you are not pleased by the reviews.
- Consistently strategize on how to showcase your identity through interviews, blogging or social media. I beg you stick to whichever you have chosen. Remember consistency is key.
- Impersonation or fake identify will never give you a desired character of a meaningful personal brand you want to be. Be original and genuine.
ITS BENEFITS
Personal branding strategy is mostly associated with ambitious people so as to improve their reputation. However, personal branding also leads to:
- Improved credibility as you showcase your skills to potential clients.
- As they say, separate the real grain from the chat, in like manner set a standard for your brand and showcase your area of specialization.
- Image building and good impression matters here. Show off your personal brand often, it sticks and will win the hearts of people.
- This is very important, always have a strong connection to your target audience. See them as friends, for this will make them to embrace your brand and ever ready to work with you. Remember that it often involves communicating your identity to the right people. Not everyone will embrace it remind with your personal brand. You have the choice to choose who you want to connect with
Why you need to be a Personal Brand.
1. For Influence
2. For Business
3. For Career Growth
For Influence,
Personal Branding is about building image and authority that will make people to pay attention to what you pass across to them, share it and recommend it to others.
For Entrepreneur,
It guarantees unique value and assured credibility. This thereby increase your potential clients or customers. They will stick to you as their one and only solution to whatever they want or need.
For Career Growth,
As a personal brand, you have to be a brand for the kind of career you dream of and it’s not for what you do. When our give your all to your personal brand you become gainfully employed all courtesy of your personal branding. It gives you a satisfied job. yourself for the career you want, not the job you have.
Most importantly, to be in business these days, develop or build your personal brand whether we are CEOs, heads of our various companies, one thing still stands, the image maker is no other person but lies inside of YOU. You become marketably saleable for clients to recommend. That’s the brand in YOU!
In conclusion, brand building is not easy at all. It’s like giving birth to a child, whereby you have the various trimesters to pass, the 9-month pregnant journey, the birth of the baby, you nurture her, from diapers changing, making sure she’s healthy, done with her medical section’s immunization and stuffs, the sleepless nights if her incessant cries and eventually grows to a toddler. In like manner, t takes time and with the right strategy to build a personal brand. Be patient and give time a chance.
Again, do you know that having a child is a lifelong insurance and an investment to parents too? You invest in their educational pursuit and in good time they reciprocate it by taking care of their aged parents Then be ready to invest in your brand. You have got to invest time, efforts, money, be more consistent and be committed too.
Nurture it like it’s your only child and see it grow to a beautiful, respected adult. Of course, in the long run when the baby grows, you will enjoy. The returns you get on building a reputable personal brand is huge. You need all the patience, practice it it’s a virtue for your brand to stay and survive the taste of time and competition.
Be innovative and follow any trends that comes up. Even after you are done with nurturing your new born, seeing her grow up to become a respective adult, after she’s through with school, she needs to good job, good life as a compensation of all the sleepless nights in school and thus a very juicy one for that matter. Here, you need to be innovative minded, more strategies, go with trends, be happy and improve more on your brand often.
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