Personal Branding 101
6 Steps to Creating a Personal Brand
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STEP 1: Define your overall aspirations. Be specific and clearly define your goals and objectives. Is it to become known as the expert in a certain industry? The top leader in your Network Marketing company? A wildly success author and public speaker? The Virtual Assistant that every business needs?
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STEP 2: Conduct research. How are those who have made it to where you want to be conducting their personal branding efforts? What can you learn from what others are doing, whether their efforts good or bad? Who are your biggest competitors and what are they doing to brand themselves?
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STEP 3: Determine your brand attributes. What do you want your personal brand to convey? What adjectives do you want people to associate with you (as the product) and why? In what niche of the market do you want to become known? ~ See questions above!
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STEP 4: Assess your current state. How do people currently perceive you? How large is the gap between the current you and the person you want others to perceive you to be? What needs to change and why?
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STEP 5: Create your game plan. Your game plan should include more than just branding yourself in social media – it needs to include all aspects of you, as a product. Defining your plan needs to include the tangible and intangible characteristics of personal branding including your story, be authentic. People want to get to know you!
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STEP 6: Manage your brand. Proactively manage all aspects of your brand, ensuring these aspects are in sync and that they continue to reinforce your brand attributes and market niche. The more authentic you are, the easier this will be. You will be in full alignment with your WHY and your actions will reflect that. Make sure all "touchpoints" (every interaction that people have with you brand) are consistent. For example, your LinkedIn picture should look similar to the in-person you, your social media posts should stay within your market niche and your in-person behavior should be representative of how you want others to perceive you. Don’t create a mismatched brand by conveying different or competing attributes in various social media outlets, such as posting negative opinions about gowns worn at the Oscars and posting comments on LinkedIn about your vacation when you’re trying to brand yourself as a savvy cross-functional project team leader. Doing so will create audience confusion about who you are and what you do.
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