The importance of personal branding
A personal brand is a unique
combination between your skills and experience, which expresses exactly who you
are. In simpler words, it is how you present yourself to the world. (Caroline
Castrillon, 2019)
According to PersonalBrand.com
(n.d.), a personal brand is the objective, and the personal branding is the
process to achieve this objective.
There are certain actions that
must be taken in order to fulfil the process: find your uniqueness, build a reputation on
the things you want to be known for, and then allow yourself to be known for
them. All these actions have a single goal, and this would be to create
something that conveys a message and can be monetized. (Michael Stelzner, 2019)
How to use social media for
personal branding
When it comes to build a personal
brand, fist thing to be done is to define the message you want to communicate. Then,
you should define the media and modalities to deliver your personal brand. (Michael
Stelzner, 2019)
There are many modalities to develop
a strong personal brand on social media.
Keeping the image consistent is
one of them. It is important to maintain a certain consistency across all your
social profiles. This will help you to control audiences’ perception of your
personal brand.
If you wish your personal brand
to be successful, search for relevant articles or topics and engage with the
community established already around your field. People will get to associate
you with a certain topic once you start to post regularly about it. (Jenn Chen,
2017)
Another method is diversifying
your content by including images, videos, articles and even questions. This
will prevent you from sharing the same type of content, which might annoy your
audience. (Sujan Patel, 2016) If you have a blog, it would also be a good idea
to post links back to it, demonstrating your expertise in a certain industry. Asking
question is a great way to improve your personal brand and increase the
engagement on your posts.
Good examples of using social media for personal branding.
Lewis Howes managed to develop an
outstanding personal brand after he quit football. He started a new career from
scratch, becoming a bestseller author and running his own podcast.
Neil Patel, a well-known digital marketing expert, built his great personal brand in time. He was co-founder for many companies, but since 2014 when he created his personal blog, his personal brand took off. In his blog posts, he gets more than 200 comments, and he replies to almost all of them. (Neil Patel, 2018)
Reference list
1. Caroline
Castrillon (2019) Why Personal Branding Is More Important Than Ever [online].
Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2019/02/12/why-personal-branding-is-more-important-than-ever/?sh=76f5d6732408b[Accessed
20 April 2021)
2. PersonalBrand.com
(n.d.), Definition of a Personal Brand vs. Personal Branding [online]. Available
at: https://personalbrand.com/definition/
[Accessed 20 April 2021];
3. Michael
Stelzner (2019), Personal Branding: How to Successfully Build Your Brand
[online]. Available at: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/personal-branding-how-to-successfully-build-brand-rory-vaden/
[Accessed 21 April 2021];
4. Jenn
Chen (2017), The Ultimate Guide to Personal Branding [online]. Available at:
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/personal-branding/
[Accessed 21 April 2021];
5. Sujan
Patel (2016), 9 Ways to Use Social Media to Build Your Personal Brand [online].
Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sujanpatel/2016/11/12/9-ways-to-use-social-media-to-build-your-personal-brand/?sh=424b98c03520
[Accessed 21 April 2021]
6. (Neil
Patel, 2018), I Wish I Never Built a Personal Brand [online]. Available
at: https://neilpatel.com/blog/build-personal-brand/
[Accessed 21 April 2021]
