Challenge Day 25: Your Personal Branding in a Nutshell

With all the shifts happening in the world nowadays, we all need to understand the importance of personal branding. Despite the popularity of this term, there is still some misconceptions about the main objective behind it as it is often associated with being active on social media, or simply a mission on line.

I worked as a marketer and a strategist for more than ten years. I had to handle a variety of products and services and my mission was to find a clear positioning to each one of them and dig deep to find the added value for my scripts before making a great launch.

At the personal level I spent most of my career being modest about my achievements expecting others to recognize my efforts.

I understood later that I am the only person who is supposed to recognize my strengths and abilities. I am the only one capable to create the right connections and network to build my own positioning. I realized that we often create value and buzz for others to let them shine but we ignore to put the light on ourselves.

This is what encouraged me to start my journey on personal branding, which is neither about bragging nor about sharing the maximum of contents on social media. It is more about what you stand for, your values, your competencies, and talents; what you are passionate about and how you present yourself. It should tell your story and reflect who you are really. Authenticity is at the core of this subject.

Personal Branding is not about pleasing everyone neither as it is simply about you, and your ability to align your brand on line and off line. It should let others know about your skills and services and how you can help them.

Personal branding is not one shot action but a continuous process that needs a lot of patience and perseverance. Are you ready?

HISTORY OF PERSONAL BRANDING

Personal branding did not come with the digital revolution as many may think. It goes back to 1937 as it was first introduced in the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hills, and reappeared later in 1981 in the book “Positioning: the Battle of Your Mind”, by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

The idea of personal branding has become popular in 1997 in the article “The Brand Called You” of Tom Peter who thinks that:“We are CEOs of our own companies. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called you.”

The three books are complimentary in a sense that we cannot define a clear positioning of a personal brand without going through a personal audit as we need to know where we are now and where we would like to be.

WHY A PERSONAL BRAND?

You all know that today we are living in a very competitive environment, digital shifting world that is evolving on a continuous basis.

Personal branding will enable you to highlight your talents, expertise, skills and connect with others as you can no longer knock at the doors to find clients for your products.

It can help you communicate, share, or defend a great cause.

If you are a student, a corporate manager, an entrepreneur, a consultant, a doctor, or a minister, then you are all concerned.

FOUR STAGES TO BUILD YOUR BRAND

1.     Know yourself

Like in marketing, any revamp of a service or a revival of the self should involve a complete personal reflexion. You can not define a strategy and be clear about your positioning if you are not clear about what you would like to offer.

Personal growth and personal branding are positively correlated; one cannot go without the other as personal branding is simply the marketing plan to execute your personal strategy and positioning. This positioning should tell about the image you would like to create.

To achieve this, you need to know about your values, your strengths your passions and your goals. It should answer: who you are, what are your skills, your vision, your motivations, and what is the added value you are willing to offer.

What is unique about you that you would like to share with the world.

 The best way to do this exercise is to establish a personal SWOT analysis which will enable you to be specific about your objective behind your personal branding: is it for finding a new job, evolving in the present one, or is it about moving on into a new career? Is it about sharing your expertise or knowledge? Or is it about a social cause?

This SWOT should allow you to know who are you capable of becoming beyond what you are doing right now? What are the talents or the skills you are not exploring in your life and how you can turn them into an asset.

2.     Be focused

After this reflexion, you need to be precise about your positioning, also called your elevator pitch. Defining your ikigai will help you know why you would like to go for it. Writing your own positioning statement should answer this question “what would you like to be known for and why”

How will you present yourself in less than 2 minutes? A question that can help you further find your focus or the things you would like to highlight about your journey.

3.     Define your audience

Before starting your personal brand, your need to identify your audience or the people who are the most concerned about your content. To find the right people, you need to define the means of communication you will use.

If you are targeting headhunters, recruiters, or specific companies, then Linkdin is a great opportunity to explore. If you need to network and build new relations, then you need to search for events reflecting your needs.

4.     Create your Brand

Your brand is not only about your on line persona. It is also about who you are off line. There are traditional and non traditional ways of creating your personal Brand. The traditional means may include your professional portfolio, your connections, and references; and the non traditional may involve videos, articles, blog, or your own web site.

The key aspect about creating your brand is to ensure that all your content is consistent and coherent with who you are and how you want to represent yourself.

Find a great reason to go for your branding and not only for selling your services. Find something you can contribute with to the world. Give from your time, share your experience and skills, and don't focus only on selling.

Why fit in when you were born to STAND OUT?"

A lot of people don't dare to do what they want as they don't know what they want or they fear what others will think about them.

Believe me a lot of these people that you fear don't know even what they think about themselves.

If you DON'T DARE to do what you want, people will dare what you DON'T WANT.