Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon said that branding is what people say about you when you are not in the room. Everyone has a personal brand, whether you intentionally built it or not because there are times when people will talk about you.
Personal brand can help you to develop yourself while strengthening your position as a leader in your field and industry. Personal brand can also help you increase your career success and provide opportunities to achieve your goals.
In building your personal brand, you should not make up stories and build your personal brand based on the story that has been made up. The story that you display must be original. If you fake yourself, you won't be able to have a connection with your audience and your personal brand won't last long.
Here are some strategies you can take to build your personal brand.
Strategies for building your personal brand
Start by telling your story
There are many ways to build a personal brand, but this first step is a step that you cannot pass. Without a story, there is no brand. One brand that has a good brand story is Toms. The narrative of this shoe company is centered on improving the quality of life. Their tagline 'One for One' can also be found on their social media accounts.
In compiling your personal brand story, there are two questions you must answer.
- Who are you?
- What do you want to achieve and why do you want to achieve it?
With these two questions answered, you can create an interesting personal brand story. If you feel the above questions are too general, here are other questions you can ask yourself.
Who are you?
- What is your passion?
- What is your best personality that you want to highlight?
- What do you value the most?
- What do you want to achieve and why do you want to achieve it?
- What is your mission statement?
- What do you want to achieve?
- What relics do you want to leave?
- What words do you want to hear when your name is called?
The success or failure of your personal brand all depends on how honestly you answer the questions above.
Once you have your story, try to shorten your story into 2-3 elevator pitch sentences. Basically, an elevator pitch is a persuasive pitch that explains who you are and what you do in a nutshell.
In addition to words, visuals can also help convey your personal brand story. A study found that brands that use visual storytelling that focus on one of the characters of the brand have increased customer engagement on Facebook.
For personal branding, you are advised to have consistent branding elements. This includes websites, logos and blog headers, your social media content, your business card, and other matters related to your brand. This is to ensure that people will recognize your brand when they see your social media logo or website. A study found that 85 percent of companies that applied brand consistency experienced 10-20 percent growth in their business.
Build your profile
There are many platforms that you can use to build your profile. One of the most powerful platforms you should have is a website. Use your website as the main place for you to share information or ideas. Make sure that the name you will use for your profile has not been used by anyone else.
Then, you can use social media as a supplement to your website. Take advantage of social media as a way to communicate and interact directly with your audience.
You already know that there are many social media sites. The first thing you have to do is choose the right social media channel. It will be difficult for you if you force to use all social media and create content for each of these social media.
If you are more interested in using video as one of your marketing strategies, use YouTube. If you are more interested in writing your content, maybe you can create a blog. Your online marketing strategy will be very influential in this regard so it is important to develop these strategies before you begin. The content marketing strategy will also be discussed further below.
After you build your profile, you have to find where your audience is. What kind of blogs do they read? What social media do they often access and use? From there you can find and understand about your community. After that, you can also create content that is consistent with what your audience wants and needs.
After finding your audience, the next step is to keep your audience enjoying your content. Make sure that what you offer them makes them feel involved and helped. Think about what content they are most interested in and create it for them.
One thing to remember is that your website and social media will be the first place where people know you. Make sure that the message you want to convey is in accordance with the target audience you are targeting. Show that you care about your audience and your website is not just a place for you to showcase your skills.
Set content marketing strategies
Content is an important element in building your personal brand. In the online world, content is the most important thing. The content is not limited to only blog posts, but can also be in the form of videos, podcasts, or even posts on your social media account. The important thing here is that in each of your posts there must be a value for your audience.
To create good content, you must start with an objective. What do you want to convey to your audience? What do you want to take from your content? Your content must be able to offer something to your audience. The content that you offer doesn't always have to have an original topic. There is no harm in you creating content about a topic that has often been discussed, but convey it with your own voice and opinion. This step can help you to reach a new audience.
As mentioned earlier, besides the content itself, you also have to choose the distribution channel for that content. If you want to make a video, do you want to upload the video to Youtube or Dailymotion? What blog platform is more suitable for you; WordPress or Blogger? Choosing the right distribution channel for you will certainly make it easier for you to set the strategy and later to apply the content marketing strategy.
Establishing a connection
In any business, connection is an important element. Likewise to build your personal brand. Your website and social media accounts can indeed be a center for people to get to know you easily. But it will be difficult to build your brand just by relying on these two platforms.
To build your personal brand and achieve your professional goals, you need to find your target audience and get their attention. One strategy you can do is outreach. Outreach itself is an activity where you offer a value to people who already have an audience that is also your target audience. If you can offer something to these people and they like you, in exchange, you can get a chance to sell to the audience they have.
Then how do you meet these people?
First, meet these people through local events in your area. Indeed, for the time being social media can help you meet and get acquainted with people in your industry, but direct interaction certainly has a greater influence, especially in terms of building your professional life.
You can use Google and enter ‘business events in [your city]’ into the search field. Later on Google will definitely issue a lot of related events and you can choose which events you want to attend. There are various types of events that you can attend. There are more casual events where you can mingle with professionals. There are also events that use speakers and question and answer sessions. Choose events that are better suited to your niche and industry. You may also try visiting various kinds of events. Learn what others do to improve their professional lives.
Find a mentor
In life, surely you have someone who you think is a mentor. You might be wondering why having a mentor influences how you build your personal brand?
A mentor is someone who listens to you, gives you input, and encourages you if needed. This is important to help you avoid many mistakes that can hold you back. In building a personal brand, having a close relationship with someone who is influential will be very helpful.
The mentor referred to here does not have to be someone you know who is close and has a personal relationship. Someone you consider a mentor can be someone you think inspires. Read their content, listen to their speeches, and follow the advice that you think can help you and your career. Basically, mentors here are people who can help you to achieve your goals.
What kind of mentor should you look for?
- Having experience in your industry
- Willingness to share their knowledge without hesitation
- Not afraid to tell you the truth
- Success
- Influence in your industry
You may also have more than one mentor and your mentor does not have to be someone much older. A mentor is not someone who has answers about everything. Therefore, it is very possible for you to have several mentors who have advantages in different fields.
Get media coverage
Getting media coverage can help establish you to be an authority in your industry. If you are famous in your field, you will get more audience who might be able to work with you. It's not easy to get media coverage when you are alone, but there are ways you can start to build your personal brand through the media. One way you can do is contact local media. Contact a journalist and offer your expertise for them to cover.
Monitor your brand
Getting media coverage is important. But it's also worth remembering that bad coverage can affect your personal brand. People won't want to work with you if you have a bad image, so it's important to pay attention to what information is out there.
Here are some tools that can help you monitor your brand:
Google Alerts - Google Alerts gives you a notification every time your name is mentioned on the internet and found by Googlebot.
Radian6 - A monitoring software that helps you to track your name and other keywords on many websites and social media accounts.
Talkwalker - In addition to monitoring your name, you can also monitor relevant topics. In addition, you can also get updates about new news in your industry. This tool can also help you to see trends in your industry.
Hootsuite - Hootsuite is a tool for managing your social media. You can see trends and statistics related to your social media. Additionally you can send updates and responses to your account through this tool.
Looking at all the strategies above, it can be seen that building a personal brand does require time and effort but a personal brand can really help you to achieve your career goals. Personal brand will continue to be the quality sought. This can help to introduce you to people in the industry, showcase your expertise and show what makes you different from others.
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