To brand yourself, known too as personal branding, is to create opportunities to make your presence more visible to the world, explain more about yourself, share about your overall values and value and to differentiate yourself as an individual.
The first hurdle is getting comfortable with the idea of personal branding. And why wouldn’t you want to brand yourself?…
You are unique, fascinating and fantastic in so many ways. You are genuinely concerned about the wants, needs and feelings of others and you bring so much good to people and society in general.
Why You Should Brand Yourself
Yes, we’re each distinct individuals, but we all have a lot in common too. We people are inherently social beings and want to know more about each other, especially when we encounter someone who is interesting and, even more, when that certain person (you) has things to share that educates, entertains and inspires us.
Some examples:
- If you’re in business, branding yourself delivers advantages to your career and your company’s brand as a means of helping the business’ reputation for the long term. Branding yourself will help you make instant connections, begin developing rapport, generate good feelings and can help you to share your endearing qualities with new, ideal prospective clients. We should always want to know about theirs too.
- If you share expertise and other information (blogger, internet marketer, etc.), your personal branding will help you to reach niche markets and demonstrate who you are, what you are like, what you have to share and why they would want to get to know you better.
- If you’re an artist, entertainer, your audience wants to know more about you personally, your story about how you rose to become such a wonderful performer and what your visions and plans for the future are. Many of us wish we had started earlier and done more with the arts when younger. Sometimes a little inspiration goes a long way.
We rise higher when we inspire others because that causes us to believe in ourselves even more.
Brand Yourself Strategy
As you start planning and developing your personal brand strategy, it’s important to approach telling your story with great pride and confidence while remaining modest and humble. The world needs to see all sides to you.
Tell your story from an empathetic and compassionate place that will resonate well with people from their perspective. Never boast nor sell yourself short; especially in your own mind. If told well, your story will be quite relatable.
Though you are branding yourself, it’s more about why people getting to know you better will be a great experience for them, and how you can help them with certain aspects of their lives.
If the idea of such a fine balance ever seems overly nuanced, especially in the beginning, know that you will get “there” before long with some personal reflection, thought and practice.
Your Personal Brand Website
Branding yourself is similar to company, product and services branding in many ways. Like product branding, the objective of personal branding is to differentiate yourself (the product) in the world (market) and help the people you’re planning to reach attain their objectives and yours too.
At some point, you will want to have your own personal brand website. If there is any possibility to still acquire a domain name for your website (JohnDoe.com), please do that as soon as possible.
Part of the branding yourself website includes expressing your ideas, your values, other elements of your authentic self (what makes you => you?), positioning yourself in a way that will differentiate you from competitors while keeping all references to your personal brand updated.
Social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., are good but don’t differentiate, i.e., everybody already has that.
Brand Yourself Summary
Branding yourself is also a way of ensuring that you leave a personal legacy. People will remember you through your essence and what you project, your expertise and the emotional connections you make with people.
Your value to the world is greater than you may give yourself credit for. This is a perfect time to acknowledge and concentrate on what that is, so others can get to know and appreciate you too.
Be proud of your personal contributions to society, collaborate those with your company, business or other profession and demonstrate how you can help and inspire individuals to achieve their goals and objectives with you on their side…
Our brand is who we are and how we do things. People are anxious to meet you and would like to know more about what you can do to help them too.
Your success is my job!
Best regards,
Jim Campbell
Email: Jim@In-The-Flow.com
Phone: 310-487-4306
Website: In-The-Flow.com
P.S. While you are working on your personal branding, I have something else that should help. To assist with your branding, be sure to download a copy of our free 40-page Ebook, “How To Turn More Consumers Into Brand New Customers For Your Company.” Many of the principles I use for The 30-Day Marketing Makeover and much of everything else I do for clients are included in this Ebook. I believe it will help you more than you might imagine.
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