Building a Strong Personal Brand

Summary: Your personal brand can make or break professional opportunities. This guide explains what personal branding is, why it matters and the steps you can take to build your own.

Whether you’re looking to earn more money or suppress a negative search result, a strong online personal brand is the foundation of meeting your goals. “Branding” is a term that’s often associated with larger companies and products. Nike, Apple, McDonald’s - these companies are royalty when it comes to brand recognition. With just one logo, a 3-word tag line, or a bright color palette, we instantly identify the company and have some sort of association with it. These reactions distinguish this brand from others.

Personal Branding Is For You

Branding and brand recognition aren’t just important for huge corporations. Everyone has a “personal brand”. The experiences, skills, interests and personality traits that make you unique and different from others - that’s your personal brand. When we refer to “personal branding” this means establishing and promoting what you stand for. Effective personal branding lets you stand out from other professionals in your field. stand_out_in_a_crowd

Personal Branding matters… here’s why:

As we’ve seen, online screening happens at every stage of your career. A positive personal brand not only suppresses unflattering content, but it gives searchers positive reinforcing factors. And proves that you are who you say you are. Career_Dev_Diagram_v2 Think of this as building an additional channel for growing your own successes.

Distinguish yourself from your competitors and take control of your personal brand with the following approach.

Build Your Personal Brand

The most effective process for building a personal brand “Personal branding” refers to the process of presenting yourself as a marketable brand. Think of it as an ongoing process that can be broken down into more digestible phases.

Personal branding can be broken down into 3 pillars:

  • Pillar 1: Building a basic brand
  • Pillar 2: Building credibility & an audience
  • Pillar 3: Targeting Opportunities

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Pillar 1: Build a basic brand: Looking the part

Build an online presence that reinforces your qualifications. When someone looks you up online, they need to see a strong presence with fresh content in your area of expertise. In order to look the part, you will need to:

  • Audit your search results: Google yourself so you know what others see when they look you up online
  • Clean up risky search results & social media posts: Delete any content that doesn’t fit your desired image
  • Define yourself and your personal brand: Identify the unique qualities that make you, you
  • Build an online presence that reflects your brand and expertise: Build, optimize and monitor a strong foundation for your brand
  • Follow a personal branding strategy and stick to timelines: Use resources like our DIY software to take control of how you look online and follow your Action Plan regularly

Pillar 2 : Building credibility by strategically building and audience

On building credibility

Use your personal brand to start getting credible placements in relevant third party publications and channels to get your content syndicated. You can achieve this by:

  • Writing strategic content in the right places
  • Building your personal brand through third party placement
  • Using data to keep track of the engagement that your content receives on different platforms.
  • Staying organized with social media management tools

Effective personal branding by strategically building an audience

Start building a relevant audience of “opportunity gatekeepers” on key social media platforms and publications.

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  • Determine the gatekeepers of your opportunities
  • Start with who you know
  • Connect with gatekeepers & influencers via social media & strategic publications

Pillar 3: Nurturing your audience for personal branding opportunities:

Make unique, high-quality content to stay top of mind with your audience and to win more professional opportunities.

  • By branding yourself as an active thought leader in your industry, you open the door to tons of possibilities.

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  • Cultivate your own brand with advanced audience building techniques

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Software Features That Matter: The Reputation Builder

Now that you have a basic understanding of what it takes to build a successful brand, get started with BrandYourself’s DIY software. Our reputation management software breaks down these personal branding concepts into easy-to-follow steps. laptop

While all aspects of the software are important for cultivating a successful personal brand, pay special attention to:

The Reputation Builder - Properties Page

Cultivating a personal brand takes time and effort, and we recommend that you follow the directives in BrandYourself’s DIY software.

While every section serves a distinct function in helping you build your brand, we’re highlighting the Properties page.

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This is where you connect or build optimized properties that our software recommends based on your industry. Connect or build the recommended properties, and submit links to any other properties that you control at the bottom of the page. This is how our software tracks your progress and makes recommendations for your Reputation Action Plan.

Additional Resources

And If you want to take things even further, let us do the work for you.

Give us a call at (646) 863-8226, or schedule a free consultation to discuss the best custom solution for you from our in-house managed services team.

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