You may have heard talk about personal branding, easily one of the most discussed topics of the marketing universe. And yet, many business-owners and entrepreneurs aren’t aware what personal branding is, or how it could help advance and grow their business.
So, in this article, I am here to guide you through the basics of personal branding and tell you everything you need to know on the matter. I am the founder of The Brand Castle and also a fellow entrepreneur with a rich and varied experience in this domain, so you’re in good hands! I’ve been featured in some of the biggest publications around the world and am an Amazon best selling author for my book entitled “Why Won’t My Business Grow: Steps to Sustainable Business Growth.”
So, let’s start at the beginning… what is personal branding?
Your personal brand is, as the name suggests, what you’ve got to say for yourself. What recommends you for a certain job or project? Think of your personal brand as an all-encompassing CV (curriculum vitae). Basically, your personal brand needs to include why you’re the best at what you do. It also needs to span interests, skills, and relevant experience.
Let’s take John, for example. John is an up-and-coming entrepreneur, looking to expand his clientele. In order to do this, he’s opened his very first business, which is doing reasonably well, but not as good as John would like. This is a case in which personal branding may help John grow his business, by polishing and promoting himself, as an entrepreneur.
Why is personal branding so important?
While a lot of people understand what personal branding is, they still have trouble comprehending just why it works to propel your business forward. Well, here’s the thing. You need to put yourself in the shoes of your potential customer.
Most of us don’t want to interact with faceless companies, do we? We’d much rather be interacting with an individual, which is why businesses with a heavy focus on personality and individuality tend to fare better than those that function as a unit. Tesla is as well known because people know who Elon Musk is. Same could be said for Jeff Bezos and Amazon or Bill Gates and Microsoft. Whenever these people who have huge personal brands attach their names to a business its automatically catapulted because of the power of the personal brand.
Regardless of the field of work you’re in, personal branding helps your potential customers get to know you as a person. Sure, they only see some aspects of who you are, with a heavy focus on your professional life and skills. But still, through consistent personal branding, they get to know an individual, and not just a business. This is why, in the above situation, John would have more success if he used personal branding, as opposed to promoting his business. It will be much easier for his future customers to relate to him, as an individual, than to yet another company. I always say that people will fall in love with you as a person before they fall in love with your logo.
So how can you build your own personal brand?
We hope that by now we’ve established that everyone needs a strong personal brand, to function well professionally. But building one can be trickier and merits a blog entry in its own right. But a good first step to building your own personal brand is by making a resume for yourself.
What recommends you? Which aspect of yourself do you wish your customers knew, and why? Why are you the expert in your chosen field? What makes you different from the next person who does what you do? How can you add value to your customers? Write that down, and you’ve taken your first step on the road of personal branding!
