5 Steps to Building a Successful Personal Brand

Your personal brand is largely dependent on how others view you, which is largely dependent on how you portray yourself, which should be a reflection on who you really are. Here are five straightforward steps that will help you build a successful personal brand.

(If you'd rather listen/watch instead, play the following YouTube video. Otherwise, keep reading below the video.)

1. Know Yourself

Conduct a personal raw materials assessment by examining your (a) current strengths, (b) potential strengths, (c) faults and bad habits, (d) interests, desires, and passions, (e) personality, and (f) core values. You can’t effectively build your brand if you don’t know what you’re starting with. Remember that it’s not just your opinion that you should solicit, but the opinions of others who know you so that you can get an overall perspective of who you are and who people think you are.

2. Know Your Target Audiences

In marketing, branding is approached with particular target audiences in mind. The same goes for your personal brand. Who are you trying to connect with or impress or do business with or employ, etc.? As you start to delineate who your audiences are, you need to understand what attributes, skills, values, etc. they find important or appealing. At that point you’re ready for the next step in the personal branding process.

3. Focus on Reality, Not Perception

Many people will tell you that “perception” is the most important factor in any type of branding (personal or organizational). They’ll tell you to “fake it until you make it” or to create an image that isn’t the real you. But there’s a significant danger in focusing on perception rather than reality: eventually, people will figure out that you really aren’t who you say you are. The better strategy is, first, determine how you want your brand to appear, and then, if your reality doesn’t match the preferred perception, change your reality so that there is indeed a match.

4. Create Your Story, and Tell It

The story you tell about yourself can greatly influence how people view your various skills, qualities, values, etc. The beautiful part of this is that your story is yours to develop. So take the time to tell the story in a way that emphasizes what’s important to you (and presumably, to your target audiences if their opinions matter to you). Then use digital resources and social marketing to tell your story in a way that attracts, intrigues, and motivates your audiences.

5. Continually Evaluate and Continually Improve

Good marketers continually assess how their brands are being perceived as well as how the reality of their products are living up to the brand perceptions that have been created. You need to continually evaluate how others view your personal brand, as well as how your skills and actions are matching with the brand that you’ve portrayed. Put into place an ongoing plan to continually improve your knowledge, skills, productivity, etc. Be flexible in understanding that your goals, your audiences, and even your brand, can change over time to reflect who you are and who you want to be.

Follow these five tips (or consider them as steps in a process) and you’ll see your personal or professional brand grow.

To build a strong personal brand, you need to (1) know yourself, (2) know your audiences, (3) focus on reality instead of perception, (4) create and communicate your story, and then (5) consistently evaluate and continually improve.

If you’d like to learn more about personal branding, professional branding, or marketing yourself, visit YouTube.com/AnthonyMiyazaki to peruse the videos there. Also, feel free to connect with me here on LinkedIn.

Have a great day!

Anthony