Personal Branding

Here are seven ways to start building an awesome personal brand:

☛ Start thinking of yourself as a brand

☛ Audit your online presence

☛ Secure a personal website

☛ Find ways to produce value

☛ Be purposeful in what you share

☛ Associate with other strong brands

☛ Reinvent

Once you understand how you wish your brand to be perceived, you can start to be much more strategic about your personal brand. This does not mean you can not be human. A strong personal brand can yield tremendous ROI whether you are working with an organization or leading one.

A branding is a symbol, design, name, sound, reputation, emotion, employees, tone and much more that separates one thing from another.

Personal branding is the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands. While previous self-help management techniques were about self-improvement, the personal-branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging.

Create a complete description of the person. Marketers and business leaders do this all the time with their customers. They put comprehensive descriptions together of their target customers to create detailed, vivid images of the exact person their employees will think about when making every decision in the business. Now, you will do the same with your target audience.

These next steps will take you through the necessary process of refining your target audience to make your brand implementation more effective:

☛ Identify the person that determines if you can advance.

☛ Create a complete description.

☛ Identify the person's motivations.

☛ Identify your potential opportunities.

☛ Create a game plan.

Identify the person that is in charge in your career. It might be an investor. It might be a client. Or it could be the boss we just mentioned. It could be a specific person that you have in mind or it could be the vision of a person. Whatever it is, identify that person and move to the next step.

There are basically three people that fit into your personal brand's target audience:

☛ The Person That Will Pay You

☛ The Person That Influences The Person That Pays You

☛ Your Supporter

Open a document and start writing the description. Include things like:

☛ Name

☛ Age

☛ Gender

☛ Job Description

☛ Hobbies

Go into extreme detail. Talk about the daily tasks the person does at their job. Talk about they do on the weekends with their family and friends. The more details you can include the easier it will be for you to target this person as you implement your personal brand strategy. Go as far as including a photo of the person. If it is a real person, find their photo. If it is not a real person, find a photo online that fits your vision and include it in the profile.

Once you understand who the influencers are and where they are online you can put together your contact plan. This will be your way to connect with the influencer and help them with the things that motivate them.

You can not mold perception without first understanding the current status. In other words, yourself and setup alerts for your name on a regular basis. Have a fairly common name. Consider using your middle initial or middle name to differentiate. Cultivating a strong personal brand is just as much about being responsive to what is being said as it is about creating intellectual property.

Finally, we have to remember your support team. These are the people that support you in your effort to move through your professional plan to achieve your brand vision. Supporters can include family members, friends, colleagues, co-workers, mentors and anybody that can offer support as you work your way to your vision.

Businesses create vision and mission statements. Creating a personal brand begins much the same way by creating a personal vision.

Only you can determine how you want your life to unfold. You can not control every aspect of your life but you can create a long-term vision and develop steps to achieve that vision.

Your life's vision should include how you see yourself in 10, 20 and even 50 years. Consider the elements in life that would make you happy family, beach house or a challenging corporate job.

Once you have your vision, it is time to determine who your target audience is. Most professionals are selling something to someone. If you are looking for a job, you are selling yourself to a potential employer. If you want to start your own business, you are selling yourself to potential clients.

But your target audience goes beyond an employer and customer. You are looking to build a community of people, employers, peers, influencers, etc. who can all be assets in different ways.

A strong personal brand is dependent on a strong narrative. In other words, take a second to think of celebrities you know who have a strong personal brand. They are all have a very clear story and a consistent brand. If you have multiple passions or areas of interest, a narrative becomes even more crucial so there can be unified theme.

Your personal brand is strengthened or weakened by your connection to other brands. Find and leverage strong brands which can elevate your own personal brand. Start with the three C's, company, college, colleagues. Which school did you attend? Are there groups you can join? An alumni newsletter you can contribute to? What hidden opportunities are available within your company which you have yet to tap? Consider submitting a guest post to the company blog or look at other digital assets you can connect to your brand.

Every tweet you send, every status update you make, every picture you share, contributes to your personal brand. It is an amalgamation of multiple daily actions. Once you understand how you wish your brand to be perceived, you can start to be much more strategic about your personal brand.

Having a personal website for yourself is one of the best ways to rank for your name on the search engines. It does not need to be robust. It can be a simple two to three page site with your resume, link to your social platforms and a brief bio. You can always expand on the website with time.

We have all been there. Someone in your network posts something utterly mundane or ridiculous and you wonder what compelled them to do so? A medium is not a substitute for a message. Find ways to add value to your audience by creating or curating content that is in line with your brand.