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Designing and developing a compelling plan for the personal brand is a step up in the right direction to unlock your real potential. The ultimate goal of personal branding is to increase your credibility and position yourself as an authority in the field while unveiling your unique qualities that will boost your career & influence public perception. 

Can you build an iconic personal brand strong enough to catapult your image in the competitive domain? Scroll down to embark on your personal branding journey to promote “brand you”!

Steps To Pave The Path To Professional Prosperity

We live in the age of the branding, from clothes we wear to the car we drive, our choices are driven by brand values sometimes consciously and many a times unconsciously. Such is the influence of strong branding,. We are witnessing the concept of branding connecting people across the globe. Constructing your personal brand can be a challenging task. If you don’t know where to start, follow these proven steps to get started with your personal branding.

Find Your Fuel

If you want to create a compelling personal brand, you need to decide what you want to do and how you want to be remembered and recognized. Whatever your niche or area of expertise is, know and embrace the aspects that make you unique and valuable to your clients and those who will network with you. This is your fuel. 

Along with the fuel you need a goal which in turn will help you decide the strategy you need to adopt and implement to improve your visibility among the right target audience. By forecasting what you want to be in the next five or ten years in your career and hence what can help you reach there will help you uncover skills and traits and determine the steps to implement to get there.

Define Your Distinctive Self

Defining your unique characteristics is key to creating a great digital marketing plan for your personal brand. It is what makes you stand out in the crowd, what are your strengths. Once you identify your own ket attributes you have to ensure you convey these to the world out there so they know both as an indivoisual and a professional. You might want to answer some generic questions like,  

• Are you innovative and like challenging experiences?
• Are you Conscientiousness?
• What makes you better than others in your area of specialisation 
• Who inspires you ? 
• How ca you inspire others? 

Analyze Your Audience

Like you there are millions of individuals who have their own likes and dislikes. It is not possible to appease everyone, hence focusing on those who you can help and, in turn the possibility that that may be helpful is the way forward. 

How to analyse your audience for personal branding? 

Make sure to determine whom you are trying to reach – is it the leaders of a specific industry? Or some potential recruiter? If you are new to this, its a wise idea to take the help of a digital marketing agency to help you with identifying and analyzing your audience. Once you have created some personas, it will be easier to develop a compelling story that will captivate their attention. Your target audience is typically the people you want to know about you, such business leaders in your industry, potential employers, groups you belong to, or your current organisation and your clients too.

Just be yourself

Creating engaged followers and communities doesn’t happen overnight. People want to witness a brand’s ‘real’ side and digest the story before establishing a connection. Hence while building your personal brand, be honest and authentic with your audience. Be you! Don’t try to create a different personality, become who you want to be in the process, upskill and reskill to move up the visibility ladder.  

Along with your professional successes and failures, learnings, feel free to share the stories behind the screen that shows your unfiltered side. It will help build rapport and trust and drive tangible results.

Start a blog – content is the kingdom

If you have clearly understood the purpose of branding, blogging is an easy yet effective tool on the journey to build an everlasting personal brand. Writing blogs will help you to share your thoughts, and connect with other influencers online while bringing about engaging conversations with your target audience. For instance, Rachel Parcell a fashion blogger, posts about fashion, beauty and lifestyle, and has created a unique space in the fashion industry as an influencer.  Here are some tips to follow before you begin your blogging,

• Write regularly. Consistency is the key to a brilliant blog. You need to engage your readers every day on the way to building your personal brand.
• Adopt a unique brand voice for your readers.
• Don’t just stick to academic-type content, talk about your experiences, views, trends, future outlook etc

If you don’t have time on your side, you can always take the help of content writers to do the job for you.

Set Up A Sustainable Social Media Spirit

In addition to posting high-quality content on blogs, posting and interacting on social media platforms is the most successful strategy in personal branding. Understand and incorporate successful digital marketing strategies to grow your social media presence, and develop a strong relationship with your audience. And remember, it’s a two-way street; you have to respond to people too; it’s not just about posting on social platforms. 

With various social media platforms, tools and social media marketing services available today, your online presence depends on the podium you choose. For instance,

• LinkedIn – Linked, the world’s largest professional networking platform, is among the key platforms to start your personal branding journey. It’s the epicentre for meeting professionals, sharing content to engage and grow your network and building new business relationships. One of the tips to be successful on linked is to know that the audience here seeks information or advice to help grow their professional lives. It’s the ideal platform to post about your learnings, and views on recent trends and developments, participate in discussions on posts and groups and have a unique opportunity to write articles on LinkedIn too. Here is an example of a professional LinkedIn article.
   
• Twitter – Twitter is another powerful platform where you can leverage your industry expertise. Create a striking bio, post content your audience will find relevant (don’t forget the hashtags specific to your niche), follow leaders in your field and engage by replying or retweeting top-relevant stories.

The Bottom Line: Make Your Mark with Finesse

Personal Branding is a unique way of portraying yourself with clear objectives and goals, making sure people know who you are, what you stand for, and what you do, and distinguishing yourself from others in your space. If you haven’t started already, it’s time to invest in your digital presence. 

Carve a promising personal brand, accomplish your professional and personal goals and live a life you deserve to lead!

All the Best!