Fast-Track Your Career With Personal Branding

These days, it is important to take your personal brand just as seriously as you would want others to take you. Try out these tips for understanding the importance of personal branding, defining your own personal brand, and marketing your brand for greater career success.

Understanding the Importance of Personal Branding

Your personal brand helps you to:

1. Prosper as a free agent. Your personal brand is your reputation.  The way others perceive you is important in one’s image. Most people switch jobs and employers on a regular basis. Personal brands are an asset that can be taken wherever you go.

2. Chart your own direction. Your brand will help you to set goals, priorities, and action plans. Even while taking care of daily obligations, you will have a bigger picture in mind.

3. Serve others. Self-promotion can go too far, so it is easy to think that branding is somehow vain or self-serving. The reality of personal brand shows the positive impact one can have on other individuals and the world around you.

     

 

Defining Your Own Personal Brand

These tips will help you create an outstanding personal brand:

1. Take an inventory. Self-evaluation, take a good look at yourself. Write out your strengths and weaknesses. Recognize your desires and passions, think of what it is you really want, execute it to the fullness.

2. Distinguish yourself from your colleagues. There are plenty of talented and dependable people in every field. Knowing oneself as an individual and recognizing what makes you unique can increase interest in your brand.

3. Talk about benefits. Let your target audience know what you can do for them. Explain how you can improve revenue by increasing sales or saving money.

4. Summarize your mission in 10 seconds or less. Be prepared to capture people’s attention quickly. By knowing your audience, and what it is that you can do for them in 15 words or less. You can tell you are on the right track when they ask for more details.

5. Ask for feedback. Survey your family, friends, customers, and colleagues to find out what they think of you and your abilities. Show your appreciation for constructive criticism so they will keep sharing it with you.

6. Stay updated. Review your personal mission statement every six months. Make new action plans so you are always getting closer to your objectives.

Marketing Your Personal Brand

Use these strategies to expand your reach:

1. Increase your visibility. Post fresh content on your website or blog regularly. Stay active on social media. Look for opportunities to teach classes, give presentations, or write articles in your field.

2. Build buzz. Collect samples of positive feedback you get in the workplace. Assemble testimonials from satisfied clients and motivate them to make referrals. Word of mouth is often more effective and certainly cheaper than paid advertising.

3. Tell your success stories. Craft brief anecdotes about your achievements that showcase your skills and make you proud. Rehearse telling them so you sound natural.

4. Monetize your contribution. Numbers sound convincing. Try to quantify the value you can deliver. For example, if you are pitching your IT services to a small business owner, discuss how much money they can save by signing up with you for monthly maintenance visits that reduce the risk of expensive repairs and downtime.

5. Put together a dream team. It is difficult to go it alone. Cultivate your network. Help others to market their brand and they are more likely to do the same for you. Team up with complementary partners. Exchange services like cooking meals for a friend who cuts your hair.

 

 

Branding used to be for cattle and big corporations, but now everyone is in on the act. Take charge of your personal brand to achieve more career success and guide your life in a direction that is meaningful for you.