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Either you are an entrepreneur, business person, or a professional. You need to build your personal brand to get recognized. Just like you need to brand your product or service to sell in the market. It is equally important to build your entrepreneurial personal brand.
If you could think of the most famous brands like Toyota, H&M, Ford, and Samsung to name a few of them. Or, if you name the brands that are synonymous with their founders and leaders like Jeff Bezos for Amazon, Steve Jobs for Apple, and Ratan Tata for Tata Group.
They are big names but have you thought about what they have in common? They built their business around their name…. Or you can say that they gained success around their personal brand.
How do they build a successful personal brand?
Taking it simply, if you have gained success in your business you would want to share your success stories with others. Entrepreneurs would like to give their businesses a personal identity so that they can relate themselves to their success and help others to achieve such a level.
Such is the case with the above-renowned brands. They get into the public spotlight. They make the efforts, conscious efforts and sometimes randomly, to pour into the Persona which is based on credibility, commitment, zeal, authenticity, and leadership. They value their achievements and share it with the public.
Do you know what is their secret to success?
They give value to people.
They give the people what they want and work to the fullest to surpass their expectations. If you take the example of Steve Jobs, he wanted to create something big despite being a controversial figure. He bought the technology which changed the world. You can see that even after his death his brand carries his legacy.
That is the core of personal branding. Even in your absence, you are being talked about your work, milestones you achieved, and how you interacted with people. Steve believed in his product and the work he was doing. However, he faced failures initially but still, stuck to the technology on which he was working. He was the public face in the product release and in the press.
What is the importance of building a personal brand?
A personal brand is what people say about you in your absence. It is a perception of what people have in their mind about you and how the world sees who you are, your perspective of the world, and what you value.
As we are living in the digital world, it has the power to steer your identity and influence others what they think about you. A personal brand can open the gates of more opportunities, more networking, extended growth, new clients, and increased revenues.
If you establish yourself as the expert in your field or business niche, you can get the chance to become the intelligentsia of the industry and influence the happenings around you. That’s the benefit of becoming an influencer.
If you consciously build your personal brand and work hard to build authenticity and authority in your niche, you can become an influencer in the industry. People will reach out to you for getting recommendations, and suggestions and it will help you gain more business.
Now, coming towards how to build your personal build. Don’t worry… I have explained some tips to build your personal brand but it is really easy to implement.
Here are the 3 important ways to build your personal brand easily:
1. Define your personal brand:
It is the first and basic step, however, the most important element of building a personal brand, to define your personal brand. You need to find out who you are and to do this you should get a pen and a piece of paper to write down about yourself.
It might seem like a kindergarten assessment to write an essay about yourself. But believe me… It will help you a lot in building your brand.
Start with asking the basic questions about yourself, like:
- Who are you?
- What are your prior achievements?
- Where do you want to be?
- What are your unique traits?
- What is the vision for your personal brand?
- What are your goals?
- Which market/industry do you want to serve?
- Who is your target audience?
- How can you help your target audience?
- How could you be different from your competitors?
- How to build trust in your audience?
You can write answers to the above questions on a piece of paper. More points can be added as it suits you but the notion is to document your personal brand vision, goals, and how to achieve them.
It is more important to start thinking about your accomplishments and gather the evidence materials for those achievements. It will help you out in building brand authority.
2. Define your target audience:
Once you have defined what you want from your personal brand and what will be its vision, you are ready to determine your target audience. Every entrepreneur and professional is selling something to a group of people. If you are a shopkeeper you are selling the goods to the consumers, if you are a tech entrepreneur you are selling your tech product or software to the users.
If you talk about your target audience it goes beyond just your customers and users. It is about creating a community of people that includes influencers, peers, business persons, entrepreneurs, clientele, etc. They all are assets to you. However, in different terms.
It is difficult to reach out to everyone out there so you should need to define a bunch of people out of the whole population. As it will be easier for you to invest your resources and time in a bunch of people who are more likely to listen to your sales message and easier to convert.
In short, who can make you achieve your desired outcome…
Who includes your target audience?
1. Your paying customers
Your paying customers are like a “heart” for your business. Your business runs directly on them. If you have a huge bunch of customers and consistently add more paying customers to this bunch then your business environment is beneficial for you. But if it’s not, you might be thinking of liquidating your company or selling it off.
You need to define first who your customers would be. What are their paying habits? What are their likes and dislikes? What interests them?
Basically, you should create a Customer Profile or Customer Avatar. You need to think about the life, habits, and behaviors of your customers and document them. This will help you further in creating your marketing campaigns and sales message.
Most importantly, you will get to know who you are going to target for your offer.
2. Your influencers
The influencers are the people who convince others to pay for your offer or service. According to Influencer Marketing Hub:
“An influencer is an individual who has the power to affect purchase decisions of others because of his/her authority, knowledge, position or relationship with his/her audience.”
You have read it correctly. Yes, they can influence the purchase decisions of the people. They can help you get more traffic, more referrals, and more revenues.
You should think wisely about who to get onboard as an influencer. This needs to work with a proper plan. Don’t just randomly reach out to the people asking them to get a referral. I will come up with a detailed article about how to get influencers for your personal brand.
3. Develop your online and offline assets:
After getting to know what you want from your brand and who you would be targeting, you should now develop your resources or assets. These resources would grab the attention of your audience which help in strengthening your personal brand. These assets help to communicate your brand message to your target audience.
You should build these assets to start building your network. These assets could be both: offline and online assets.
How to develop your offline assets?
Your offline assets could be many, but it is only necessary if you have to meet clients or your network in person. Here are a few of the offline assets you should consider if you have to meet in person:
1. Print your business card:
Do you want the people you meet to remember you? People tend to forget things easily. A well-designed and intriguing business card will help people remember who you are and how to contact you. Include your personal and contact information on the card in a way that is easy to find.
2. Take care of your health and grooming:
Your appearance is the first impression you make on the people you meet. You should take care of yourself in terms of grooming, body shape, and managed movements.
3. Office:
Your office should show your intelligence level and should be classy. If you invite a business person or investor to your office, they should be overwhelmed. It will help you make better deals.
How to develop your online assets?
Building your online assets is the most important thing you will create for your personal brand. People usually search online before getting into a business deal, buying a product or service, or meeting a person. You should be everywhere and should target your keywords.
When people search for you online on search engines, they should get you on the top and avail all the information they require about you. Here are some of the online assets (I will explain them in detail in my next article) you should consider developing for your personal brand:
1. Build a professional website:
You can start off by buying a domain name for yourself and building a professional website showcasing all information regarding your professional life. Your website is like a black canvas on which you can create anything you want.
2. Show your presence on popular social media sites:
People check social profiles to gain trust and reliability. You should be active on social media and create your profiles on famous social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. The most important social media platform for entrepreneurs and business people is LinkedIn.
3. Do consistent blogging:
If you want to become a voice of your industry and want your target audience to judge you by your work, you should be writing about the industry or your niche. You can get more traction and will be considered an influencer in your industry if you publish blogs, articles, reports, etc.
Conclusion
As it turns out, building a personal brand is very important for entrepreneurs and business owners, the same as building your product. But the thing is….
You have created your own brand yourself… as you know yourself better than anyone. Though, you can learn tips from influencers and mentors in your niche you have to put in your efforts to build it.
