In developing and managing your personal brand, the most basic marketing principles apply.
In today’s engagement oriented environment, the most successful business leaders are those who understand the value of marketing and apply to themselves those principles that companies have used for years to successfully sell their products.
Those principles are:
There are 3 key things to consider before you begin the personal branding journey:
Building a strong personal brand isn’t about telling people how great you are,
it’s about showing people how great you are, or better still, how easy it is for them to relate to you and respect you , as pertinent to your business building.
If you are a brand, then your clothing is your logo. What impression is your wardrobe giving to those around you?
Consider how you present yourself. Think about what impresses you when you meet people for the first time. Things such as Personal Style, Colour Choices, Hair and Make-up. How do the individual components represent your personality and the impression you wish to convey? Do you want to leave a lasting impression, or be instantly forgettable?
They say ‘first impressions count’ well, it is a well-documented fact that the way your present yourself creates an impression is the first 7 seconds!
There are numerous ways to initiate an approach when seeking to grow yourself and your business:
Which is the most important “personal distribution” channel?
Most experts agree that networking is crucial to a successful business growth strategy. Networking means developing a broad list of contacts – people you’ve met through various social and business functions – and using them to your advantage in your enterprise activities.
Today, no personal brand can be built without acknowledging and understanding how to utilize the online space that surrounds our every day lives.
One of the first things you can do is to create an online portfolio. Find out if your personal domain name is available. If it is, purchase it!
I recommend building and designing your online portfolio using a free content management system, such as WordPress.
On the homepage, include a welcome message to visitors which can be a similar, more generic version of your cover letter.
Then, include separate pages for your resume, portfolio, contact information and a link to your professional blog (if feel comfortable with this).
What are the biggest personal branding mistakes job seekers make?
I like to remind people that Google is not a search engine. It is a reputation management system.
Online your reputation is quantifiable, findable and totally unavoidable.
Linked in is a
Facebook advice:
Online is one of modern day’s networking tools. Never underestimate its power or its influence and the impression it leaves. It has become part of your “grooming”…as important as the clothes you wear.
If you follow these tips, and remember you are the brand, then you will find that over time you will do all these things as part of your second nature, and there is actually no major effort required, other than being conscious of how you continually reinforce “brand YOU”!
Revised for the Aust Businesswomen’s Network, Her Career Blog Post Oct 2013