5 Benefits of Personal Branding and 3 Things to Avoid for 2022

5 Benefits of Personal Branding and 3 Things to Avoid for 2022

As we enter the second quarter of 2022, I want to discuss a critical topic for almost every successful business owner and CEO of every company…personal branding.

Regardless of what industry you find yourself in, building an authentic and powerful personal brand and online presence is the key to separating yourself from the crowd and impacting the lives of those around you.

Why Personal Branding?

There is nothing more fulfilling than using your life story, experiences, skills, and knowledge to help others on their journey.

Why would you want to stand out? 

Because in a world dominated by people flogging their wares on the internet, your voice has to shout the loudest or be the most unique or offer the most value to attract an audience and hopefully build loyalty leading to sales if that’s your goal.

Why impact lives? 

We are here to change the lives of those around us and those we meet. If we all reach, encourage, or help one person each day, the world will be better.

Where to start?

The best place to start your personal branding journey is to focus on creating authentic, sharable content. You can steadily nurture and curate your personal brand by investing time and effort to attract your target audience. However, when engaging in personal branding, you need to do certain things and other things you should actively avoid as they will hamper your success.

My goal is to keep things practical and share my knowledge on what I view as the main do’s and don’ts for effective personal branding to make your life easier.

Let’s kick things off with the five benefits of personal branding or why you should bother? 

First Benefit of Personal Branding: Attract and Hire Top Talent

People these days want to be more than employees; they want to feel led and inspired by those they work for and with. They want to buy into the vision and feel like they are a part of something great.

This is where you, CEO or business leader, come in. 

Creating content, and by content, I mean video, about how you live the vision, how you spend your day, who you just hired, new clients the business just won, new software or functionality that just dropped, this is what motivates and inspires staff to feel part of a dream.

All people want to feel a sense of belonging and that they are part of and contribute to something greater than themselves, and your personal brand can act as a beacon to achieve this.

Second Benefit of Personal Branding: Share The Vision

Once you have more than 200 staff, it becomes difficult to remember everyone’s names; you’re no longer involved in hiring them; you often smile benignly at everyone as you walk down the corridors or sit in on conference calls with people you don’t know.

How do you align everyone behind your vision? Bore them to death with ‘interview-style’ videos? 

You spent a fortune to attract talented staff who want to become part of your brand and join your business; now, you need to retain their interest to keep them around; the most effective way to retain staff is to use personal branding to share the vision you have for your business.

Your vision translates to video content where you share where you see your business in the future, your aspirations and goals.

You show your staff that you lead from the front and get involved by shooting video content that displays you going about your daily work life, going to meetings, seeing clients and more; this is far more inspiring than a leader who only leads from the back and expects their employees to do all the groundwork.

Third Benefit of Personal Branding: Inspire Your Staff 

Many companies spend a fortune on their public image but fail to gain the trust of their employees. 

Apart from sharing your vision with your staff, you need to constantly inspire them and keep them motivated to perform at their best; fortunately, you can use personal branding as the perfect vehicle for this.

By sharing your plan for your brand and the future of the business with your staff using authentic and original video content and showing them that you live by those values, you can inspire them to stay committed and on board for the whole journey.

Fourth Benefit of Personal Branding: Motivate & Inspire People Outside Your Organisation

People are struggling. 

Everyone needs motivation once in a while to keep them going.

That’s where you come in. 

Share your struggles; keep it real. Motivate people by the reality of your life and how you get through tough times. Wear your heart on your sleeve. 

Once you have dealt with affairs within your organisation, you can begin to look outward toward the rest of the world.

Many people worldwide face similar challenges to you, and you can use personal branding and the clout of your curated and developed personal brand content to motivate, help and inspire people outside of your organisation.

By sharing your story, experiences, insight and gathered knowledge, you can help them reach their own goals of building their personal brands and achieving self-actualisation, ultimately (and significantly) improving their overall quality of life and establishing healthy business relationships in the process and much more.

Fifth Benefit of Personal Branding: Attract Clients

People buy from people.

People follow people on social media more than on company pages; this is true, especially on LinkedIn.

People want to see what’s happening behind the scenes. 

Video content can help to showcase your values, personality and vision better than any other medium.

Keep the content authentic, not expensive over-produced productions. Even shooting on your phone while you talk, Gary V style, is enough to communicate who you are, what you stand for, and prospective customers will either be attracted to you or not.

You’re not for everyone, but personal branding widens your audience and reaches a lot.

Using your curated personal brand to motivate people outside of your organisation yields the potential for long-lasting and healthy business relationships; it is also the most effective way to attract prospective clients.

By “lifting the veil” and letting your audience know who you are and what values your brand and business stand for, you will begin to attract clients interested in doing business with you organically. 

The most important part of this process is to remain as authentic as possible; you can only attract genuine clients by being authentic and staying true to yourself; otherwise, you may draw the wrong type of people into your clientele base.

Here are three things to avoid when embarking on your personal branding journey.

First Personal Branding Mistake: You Are Not The Hero

One of the most critical mistakes you can make when engaging in personal branding is holding onto the belief that you are the hero of the content you are creating.

You are not the hero; you are the guide.

Your audience of followers is the hero, and you’re here to help them succeed in life.

Framing yourself as the hero often causes your posts to become entitled, fake and rather cringe, and you will begin to lose your audience’s attention over time. Once you accept and understand this principle, you can move towards successful personal branding that motivates, helps and inspires others.

When building your personal brand, you should always look to frame yourself as a guide who passes on their knowledge and expertise to those around them, much like Gandalf was for Frodo and Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings. 

Adopting this stance will help you create original content that effectively engages with your audience, allowing you to attract organic followers who want to gain the knowledge and insight present in your content. 

Second Personal Branding Mistake: Being Unclear on How you Help Your Following

When creating your personal brand, focus ranks high as one of the most important things and without focus present in your brand messaging and content, you will quickly lose your audience’s attention.

You must ensure that your brand messaging and content serve a clear purpose; how is your audience struggling? What keeps them up at night? How can you help them navigate this? What are their needs?

Their needs are your content.

Their niche is your niche.

So, if your niche is in digital marketing and you want to share those insights with your following, you must focus on that; or if your niche is SaaS technology and your goal is to sell a particular product or service to your following, make that abundantly clear to them. 

The more precise you are with your niche and communicating it to your audience, the more inclined they are to engage with you and become your followers; if you are unclear and frame your personal brand as too vague or broad, you will lose a significant portion of your potential following.

Third Personal Branding Mistake: Don’t Just Keep it Professional 

Another critical mistake that most people make when building their personal brand is the notion that they should keep all their posts professional. 

While professional posts have their place among good content, if you restrict yourself, you will lose the attention of many of your followers. The reason why is because your followers want to connect with you as a person and not just with your brand or business; they want to see pictures of you getting your hair done, taking your dog for a walk on the beach, or going out to eat at your favourite restaurant. 

Showing your followers other parts of you provides them with insight into who you are and allows them to relate more to you on a personal, human level; this makes them more inclined to become your followers and engage with your brand professionally.

Personal Branding is a Journey, Not a Destination

When it comes down to it, building your personal brand takes time; it is a journey rather than a destination, and it does not just happen overnight. You need to invest time and effort into nurturing and curating your personal brand to ensure that your audience will engage with it.

So don’t waste your time.

Hurry up and get started. 

If you need help, shout, this is what we do for a living for many CEOs and Business Leaders.

Good luck.

About Dylan Kohlstädt

Dylan Kohlstädt started Shift ONE digital in 2011 and now has a team of top subject matter experts working with her from Cape Town and Johannesburg offices and clients worldwide.

Shift ONE specialises in getting customers through authenticity: creating authentic content that builds communities and turns customers into fans. We create believable top-converting websites that rank on page one of Google SEO and next-level social media, online advertising, email marketing, graphic design, blogging, press and PR, lead generation, writing, video, animations, and more.

Dylan also founded the Digital Marketing Academy in 2013 to pass on what she knows, upskilling marketers and entrepreneurs in digital marketing skills in a fun, face-to-face or online environment.

Dylan Kohlstädt has worked in advertising, marketing, and online in South Africa, the UK, and Australia. She attended a Google for Entrepreneurs immersion program in Silicon Valley, where she learned about going from garage to global.

Dylan Kohlstädt, CEO and founder, is a subject matter expert on digital marketing and had her articles featured in entrepreneur and business magazines, TV and radio. Dylan has 20 years of marketing management experience, eight of which are digital marketing. She also has an MBA through UNISA.

Personal branding is integral to growing your business and becoming successful within your industry.

You can reach Dylan at:

Email: Dylan@shiftone.co.za 

Social media: @dylankohlstadt 

Website: www.shiftone.co.za