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Building A Personal Brand In 2020!
- June 8, 2020
- 10:06 pm
Building a personal brand is becoming more essential each year and will continue to even more so in years to come. One reason for this is competition for jobs has spiked and is causing recruitment more difficult when there are over 1000 applicants to choose from.
So, how can an applicant stand out from the crowd? By having a strong personal brand. Growing one involves finding your uniqueness and building a reputation within your industry/field of work. For example, if you study business, you could start a blog writing about entrepreneurship and new marketing trends, as well as cross-promoting these articles with visual content that you upload to your social media accounts and YouTube channel. On seeing your personal brand, the employer is going to be more drawn to your application as you have shown interest and knowledge within the business profession.
Building a personal brand doesn’t have to be a portfolio of interest/work for a potential employee, it can be leveraged into a startup business for yourself.
But how does someone build their personal brand?
CIU recommends the following:
1. Create An Online Name
You might be thinking, why wouldn’t I just use my first and last name? Yes, of course, you can, and normally it is the best idea to do. However, it is likely that your name as a username has already been taken. For example, ‘JohnMickleson’ might already be taken. However, it is less likely that ‘MarketerMickleson’ is taken. Also, ‘MarketerMickleson’ is a lot more catchy and memorable for your audience. You can apply this naming scheme for your current industry, or create your own.
The screenshot above is from http://namechk.com/. It is a very useful free tool, which allows you to enter your desired username and the website will check all social media platforms and domain names to ensure that it is available for you before continuing.
It cannot always be the case, but it is best practice to maintain consistency of usernames across all platforms, to make it easier for your fanbase/audience to reach and find you.
Make sure you don’t forget to optimize your LinkedIn profile URL too. Click here and read more on how to do so.
2. Create A Marketing Strategy
Having a marketing strategy in place is the fundamental element of building a personal brand and a loyal following. By building a marketing strategy it is very easy to analyze what is working well and what isn’t, organize your posts and define a schedule uploading your content, as well as make your unique mark in your industry.
But how do you create a marketing strategy? Entrepreneur.com has created a 5 step plan – you can read it here.
3. Be Active and Current Across Social Media
It’s crucial that you keep up with the latest trends and topics in your field, or even be the first to reveal a new creation, product, or piece of information. You will build a name for yourself and likely be trending across the social networks. One way of creating and publishing trending and up-to-date content is by being active yourself. Engage with your audience and even collaborate with your others in your area, which will, in turn, improve your knowledge of the domain, increase your professional network/relationships, and boost your following.
4. Provide Real Valuable Content
Always look to push the boundaries and think outside of the box. If your audience can relate to you and you’re providing them with consistent valuable content, they will convert into a loyal fan. Instead of promoting your freelance work or side hustle, you can provide useful information and from that customers will reach out to you. An example is if you are a part-time SEO optimizing professional, you could share ‘5 reasons to improve your SEO in 2020’ along with a guide on how to optimize one item and then offer the customer a free consultation to discuss the rest. The consultation is where you would sell your services.
5. Be Authentic, Be You!
Don’t copy others. Present your story and show your personality. People buy into personality. There’s nothing more unique about you than yourself. If you pretend to be somebody else or put on an act, it can soon become very tiring, or even you forget about your ‘fake persona’ and then people discover your true self. Therefore, it is always better to start off and continue being truthful.
6. Don't Be Camera Shy
Showing your face and speaking to your audience is the best way to effectively communicate your brand, personality, and vision. It is a lot easier to gain trust and an emotional connection with somebody when you can actually see them, and hear their message and mannerisms. In business and entrepreneurship, famous personal brands regularly share video content across their platforms, for example, Neil Patel and Gary Vaynerchuk.
7. Cross Promote Yourself
It is very common for one social media or content platform to be more successful than the other. For example, written content is going to perform very well on blogs, but not so well on YouTube. For this reason, it is essential that you cross-promote your content and recreate the same information for a different media stream. For instance, a written article can be transformed into a video by taking each of the sub-headings and using them as talking points. You can then reference the blog post on the video and the video on the blog post in order to satisfy all consumer types.
8. Build A Personal Brand Community
By following the above tips, you will naturally build a community. Other ways you can really engage with your audience and entice more people are:
- Personal Facebook groups
- Live video sessions on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn (yes LinkedIn now offers live videos!)
- Paid advertising – Pay-per-click, Facebook/Instagram Ads
- Giveaways
- Email signup/newsletters
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