Blog

August 22, 2022

What is a Personal Brand?

Our personal brand is what people see as our identity, who they see us as, and what qualities and things they associate with us. It reveals who we are, what we offer, and what we value. When we work in a company, our colleagues create a perception about us based on how we present ourselves to them. This can either be good or bad, depending on the image we present. It’s important to take care of our personal image because we always want others to think positively of us.

Personality, Skills, and Values

A personal brand can be broken down into three components: personality, skills, and values. These things are often expressed when we share our thoughts and opinions with others during a conversation. Working with our colleagues on a regular basis gives them the opportunity to learn about us, including how productive we are in the workplace.

In all your interactions with others, keep in mind your goal of creating a positive personal brand that others will admire and respect.

People need a complete set of hard skills to be a great professionals. When practicing personal branding, they must have the skills that will support their brand and help them attain it completely. Without this, their personal brand is weak. Such skills are influenced by other people’s preferences, perceptions, and reactions.

While personal branding is concerned with customer preferences and perceptions, it is primarily focused on improving an individual who is establishing their own brand.

Below is a list of skills you’ll need when practicing personal branding, along with insights on what you need to know about hard skills, aka the skills you use for your career.

Confident and Self Motivated Skill

Self-confidence, while hard to build, is a key component to any personal branding. In nearly any type of business, successful job search or a fulfilling career, when we are confident in our personal brands through a strong sense of self-worth, our capabilities are as limitless as our imagination.

Credibility

What message is your personal brand currently conveying?

Are you conveying expertise, trust, and credibility? Or are you non-existent in the minds of your potential customers?

Taking the time to develop a robust, accurate, and trustworthy personal brand helps you to become known for what you are good at, differentiates you from your peers, positioning you as an expert.

When others in your industry and your following see you as a convincing and reliable expert in your field, they begin to realize why you’re the best choice from all the other businesses out there.

While you can build credibility over time, you only get one opportunity to make a great first impression online.

Adaptability and Flexibility

You probably already have a reputation for what you know. Think about your personal resume, CV, or your LinkedIn profile, I bet it's full of “the what,” which are things like job titles, skills, knowledge, expertise, or the degree you earned. What’s missing is usually "the how,” and this is where your Strengths Finder talent themes live.

First of all, you could merely change your mind and not really like the direction your personal brand is taking. Life may not be turning out the way you expected and that’s OK. Embrace it, be flexible as well as Adaptable, and change your path.

You're a brand, as we’ve been saying, so you are allowed to evolve.

Every milestone event, like a divorce or career change, is a chance to repurpose your personal brand and update its course. Perhaps an opportunity comes along that you were not expecting, like a new job or potential partner. Be flexible with your personal plan to accept the challenge and recreate your brand.

The point here is to remain open, flexible, and adaptive throughout the entire process. Having a plan in place doesn’t mean you simply put your head down and plow ahead regardless of what happens. You may need to make a change.

Grow your brand at the same time as you grow as an individual. Change with the times and adapt as our culture evolves. Enhance your brand with opportunities that come your way and seize the chance to move in multiple directions.

Leadership

A leadership brand creates awareness about what you stand for as a leader and what makes you someone who can make a positive difference. As Norm Smallwood put it in the Harvard Business Review, "A leadership brand conveys your identity and distinctiveness as a leader. It communicates the value you offer."

Your leadership brand is made up of a complex dynamic, like how you behave, react and interact with different groups or individuals in diverse situations, and how you as a leader interact with others to produce outstanding results.

Creating a strong personal brand in order to stand out from the rest is courageous. It's critical for leaders to be aware that their presence matters in all aspects and will play a leading role in their quest to make an impact. A holistic personal branding system could be the answer to how you can build an influential personal leadership brand. This will not only help you get to the next level but also help your team as well. It must be a systematic approach and not ad-hoc.

Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking is a natural inclination – something I think you’re born with. In many business schools, you can learn principles of strategic thinking, but like learning to play the piano, you won’t be very good at it unless you have the innate talent to see things strategically. Are you a strategic thinker?

I spend most of my time consulting with marketers on brand strategy – helping them to see useful patterns across the competitive landscape where everyone else sees complexity. In my experience, most marketers and brand managers just want to know HOW to get to their goal as fast and efficiently as possible. That’s tactics, not a strategy.

Strategic thinking requires you to know WHY you are intent on pursuing any particular course of action. When you are clear about your why the how to get there seemingly takes care of itself. Like gravity I don’t know how this principle works, I just know it does.

Interestingly enough, those with the gift of strategic thinking hardly see it as such. Like all natural systems – like breathing – your gifts operate effortlessly mostly under your awareness. You may be a brilliant strategic thinker but because it’s so natural to you, you may not acknowledge it and self- apply it to your conscious behavior.

Strategic thinking involves making a series of decisions about what actions the company intends to take to become more successful. A company often goes through a strategic planning process once a year, creating a document that is, in essence, a guidebook for the management team to use in the upcoming year. Companies should strive to make strategic thinking an ongoing, year-round process. At the heart of strategic thinking is the ability to anticipate major shifts in the competitive marketplace and identify emerging opportunities.

Digital Marketing Skill

Branding is not a new concept; it has been around ever since production began. Products come in packaging, bearing specific seals and labels, this is called branding. Essentially, branding was a way for business owners to mark a product to become easily recognizable.

While branding has evolved through time, it grew into a rather complicated concept. It suddenly involved the tone of the communication materials, the design aesthetic, the website interface, and much more. It became more than just a stamp and a seal. Branding is now an overarching concept that relates to anything communicated to your audience.

As digital marketing takes center stage of marketing efforts, it dramatically affects how branding is complete. It is through digital marketing that companies can communicate their branding efforts. It is the primary platform for them to showcase their brand.

Whether through making viral content, or a curated Instagram feed, digital marketing has become an essential tool for communication

Dressing Up Skill

Improving your confidence in the way you dress can change everything you do. As well as helping you feel more confident, it can make all the difference to the way the world sees you and as a result, your prospects. Of course, your abilities and your personality are vital to your success, but dressing well makes getting your personal brand across to people much easier.

Being aware of fit is really important in getting the right message across. Importantly it shows people that you are self-aware, an important attribute in business. It also helps in flattering your figure, creating shape, and complimenting your body type. Too big trousers, long sleeves, or too short skirts can look and feel awkward, and you need to feel comfortable. Clothes mirror the way you feel, so dress well and you'll feel well too.

Networking

Networking is a process that consists of personal branding, preparation, taking action, and maintenance. The process constantly cycles and recycles as you go through the career development process. The first step of effective networking is creating a personal brand for yourself.

Having a successful career isn’t just about doing well in your job or knowing the market inside-out. In order to reach the next level, you have to build your brand, making yourself both visible and accessible.

One way to build your personal brand is through networking. Creating trusted interpersonal connections can help you gain traction and credibility thanks to the knowledge and opportunities presented by more established influencers.

Consistent Feedback

A leadership brand is created by the way people behave, react and interact. It helps leaders define their value proposition and maximize their impact and influence on the organization's culture.

You already have a leadership brand, you have a reputation based on your current leadership skills. Often, we only get to truly understand what our leadership brand is when we ask for feedback on our leadership skills and behaviors.

Observation feedback is from a respondent that has ‘seen you do it. This is typically a line manager or direct report group. This feedback is important as it helps you to evaluate and examine what behaviors you are displaying on a day-to-day basis (and those you aren’t).

Reputational or perception feedback is from a respondent that might say “I think you do that”. They are basing their answer on perception or what they have observed from a distance. If we link this back to the concept of leadership branding, the feedback from this group helps you to understand what leadership behaviors you are famous for.

The reputational feedback concept is one that has really taken off in the last few years. As Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon once said “your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room”. As with any other brand, your personal brand is based on people’s expectations of how you will behave or perform.

Ladder Up

Revisiting all we have learned together, and putting in place a range of challenges, follow-ups, and reminders to keep driving you forward.

Revisiting all we have learned together, and putting in place a range of challenges, follow-ups, and reminders to keep driving you forward.

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