GUEST BLOG: Three steps to building a personal brand

By Gillian Horan, CEO and chief brand strategist, The Pudding

Your personal brand is your opportunity to differentiate yourself.

It’s your opportunity to articulate to the world who you are, what your strengths are, and what makes you different. It allows people to see why they should work with you. If you’re not branding yourself, you can be sure that others are. “Your brand is what people say when you’re not in the room,” Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, once said. This quote is not just for the big corporations of the world. It applies to you. There are three steps when building a personal brand:

STEP 1: DEFINE YOUR BRAND

So who are you? What are your personal goals? What core values are important to you? Think about your personality. How do your friends, family and colleagues describe you? What makes you different? What makes you so unique? Think about your skillset, your strengths, and your core competencies.

My first tip is to be you. It is much harder to build a personal brand around someone that doesn’t even exist. If you are authentic in your thinking, you will be authentic in your communication. This authenticity will be seen and heard, and this is what your colleagues, team members, managers, connections and followers will experience.

My second tip is to get feedback. Talk to your friends, family and colleagues. Ask them what your superstar quality is. Ask them to describe you in their own words. For work colleagues, ask them to describe your management style or equivalent. Then spend time asking the most important person: you. This is an opportunity to set those goals. So maybe it’s about who you are and where you want to go.

To give you an example, if you are an associate but you want to make partner, you should think about what you need to do to get there. What do you need to communicate to your team and management? Do they know you are ambitious and want to become a partner in the future? You need to think about your expertise and the voice you have within this area.

STEP 2: DESIGN YOUR BRAND

You have defined who you are and you have set a number of personal and professional goals. So what image are you giving out? To start with the basics, you should have a really good profile picture that you can use across your social media accounts. You may need a picture for your CV if you are moving jobs.

You will most certainly need a professional profile photo for speaking opportunities. Let’s take LinkedIn as an example–the worst thing you can do is have no profile picture. People want to connect with other people, not avatars. If you haven’t had the opportunity to get a professional shot, take a really good picture on a smartphone that has a great camera.

Creating a brand around you allows you to be recognisable. It speaks volumes about the importance you put on your own brand and again, this is completely applicable to corporate executives

If you have the opportunity to get a professional shot done, take it. Your profile picture is the start of someone getting a feel for who you are. If you are a happy person, then smile and let the photo be a true reflection. And remember, this is not a passport photo.

You should also think about the images you use on your social media accounts. Think of the cover page on your twitter profile or your LinkedIn profile. Anything you put out there is feeding in to someone’s understanding of who you are and what you are interested in. You may also use images in presentations, posts, blogs and soon. These all tell a story. The question is, are they the right images for your story?

If you want to step it up a notch, you could design a logo for your brand. A logo, which is a symbol that consistently represents you, is not just for businesses. Creating a brand around you allows you to be recognisable. It speaks volumes about the importance you put on your own brand and again, this is completely applicable to corporate executives. There is a growing trend for young, eager executives creating brands around themselves.

If you don’t have a logo but want to start creating and communicating a consistent look, then choose a colour that you would like to attach to your personal brand. Do some research on colour psychology and pick a colour that you feel works best for you. Use this colour in those blogs, posts, profile covers and so on.

STEP 3: COMMUNICATE YOUR BRAND

Gillian Horan

So you have defined who you are and you have developed a visual around you. Now you need to tell the world. “We are CEOs of our own companies. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called you,” said Tom Peters.

My tip is: content, content and content. What are you saying? What tone are you using?

You need to go out there and market ‘you’. You are your best selling tool and like any business, you need to know what you are marketing. This is why step one is so important.

What tools are you using? What social media platforms are you on? Brands are all about reputation. You get a reputation over time and you get one because of the interactions and experiences people have with your brand, with you. My question to you is: how do people experience you?

Think online – LinkedIn, Twitter, websites, Instagram, blogs, Facebook, Snapchat and all the others. Also, think offline – meetings, networking, daily office interactions and presentations.

My tip is: content, content and content. What are you saying? What tone are you using? If one of your professional goals is to become a leader within your industry, then you need to think about the content you’re publishing.

Be you, but be you online and offline. Live your brand

You need to question how often you post and analyse the reaction. Take LinkedIn as an example. If you post on LinkedIn, it will give you a report of how many people viewed your post, who liked it and shared it. It will also tell you what country is reading it most, what industry is reading it most, and what job title they have.

My second tip here is to plan. There are so many online tools we could all be on, but what tools are best for you and for the audience you want to communicate to? Think about writing, recording and speaking. You can publish online and offline. You can record videos that will allow you to really humanise your brand. And finally, take those offers of speaking at events – it’s a great way to communicate your brand and your expertise.

My last tip here is: be consistent. Don’t be one person online and another person offline. This comes back to step one and authenticity. Be you, but be you online and offline. Live your brand.