Who Needs Branding?
Hello readers! This week we will be
discussing personal branding, what it is and why it is important in today’s world. Personal branding can make or break your
reputation and possibly your career.
Then we will walk through a few tips on how to build your personal brand;
the first being fining your purpose behind your brand, secondly how you will
get that message across, and finally how to share your story in a way that people
or consumers will be left wanting more.
What is personal branding? Gary Vaynerchuk wrote in his article here, “Your
personal brand is your reputation, and your reputation in perpetuity is the
foundation of your career.” Coming from
the south, we are told at a very young age that a man’s reputation is all that
he has. It is of the upmost importance
to have a good reputation and be someone that others can depend on. I think this also applies to creating your
own personal brand, it is really all you have.
When you are being interviewed for a potential job or promotion at work
your reputation speaks volumes.
In the
same article listed above here Gary writes, “In a world with all these social
networks, everything is transparent. Everything you do is captured with
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok, etc. Every part of
your movement is on record and anything you do will be exposed and unraveled. For
this reason, you can’t have “multiple personalities” anymore. It’s no longer
realistic to have a different persona for business, family, and everything
else. In today’s world, you are who you are.”
In today’s age it is becoming more and more difficult to hide who you
are or even parts of who you are. The
message of “be yourself” is at an all-time high. People are looking for brands and influencers
to be as genuine as possible. Uniqueness
is being celebrated and rightly so, so when we are thinking of our personal brands,
we need to ensure that we are being our true self.
I have
read many articles on how to develop one’s personal brand. Most of them start with a similar step one, finding
your purpose or your intent. If you
think back to last week’s posting, we discussed the importance of “why.” People need to know why you are doing what
you are doing. Jill Avery and Rachel
Greenwald shared in their article here, “Ask yourself how and why you
have lived the life you have, and look for any consistent interests,
competencies, or character traits that could also lead you into the future.” Once you have answered these questions honestly
you can begin making your brand. For me
part of my personal brand is to live life simply, honestly, and a little
spontaneously. For example, my family
had recently taken a trip to Tokyo, we made little to no plans before arriving. We went to a mall for lunch not knowing that
on the roof of this mall there was an aquarium.
After some convincing I talked my wife into going in. Because of our spontaneous attitude in life,
we were able to take this photo:
Another step in building your personal brand
that was mentioned in Allaya Cooks-Campbell’s article here was personality. It is important when thinking about your
personal brand or the brand of your company that it has the right personality. Mike Kappel writes in his article here, “Your
business’s personality can make or break your success. It represents who you
are as a company and impacts the public’s perception of you.” This same train of thought could be applied
to our personal brand as well. When we
are discussing personality, we need to be thinking about the voice and tone
that we are using to communicate. Hopefully
as you continue to read these blogs, I am adequately portraying my personality
as a simple man who is down-to-earth. This
might not be the best approach for everyone, you may decide that you would like
to be a very aggressive food critique.
That is the fun part about creating your personality, you get to decide
how you come across to your readers/customers.
Another
step in creating your personal brand is to share the brand’s story. Luckily for us there are many platforms to utilize
when we are spreading our message.
Social media is a fantastic way to get your story out there. Personally, I appreciate it when it comes
from the brands ambassador in video format, to me it just makes it feel mor
personable. A great example of this is
Eric Whitacre’s TED talk here. He opens with
a very honest introduction of himself and then he talks about his “why.” He found
a new love for classical music and wanted to pursue a career as a composer and
conductor. His voice and tone come off
as humble and easygoing, which makes the listener comfortable and willing to
watch and hear the story. He talks about
how he created a virtual choir with 50 participants, and it went extremely
well. It was a huge success and people
were eager for more. Because of Eric’s personal
brand, personality, and ability to tell a story the next virtual choir had over
2,000 participants. This is just one of many
examples of how to use personal branding.
In
conclusion, this week we discussed what is a personal brand and why it is
important in today’s world. Your
personal brand is your reputation, it is a very delicate thing, and you must protect
it the best you can. With everything
going online, it is very important to be yourself always. We also talked about three tips on building
your brand. The first is finding your “why”
or your purpose. In my opinion this is
the most important step of the process.
Then we talked through personality and how that can make a difference
depending on how you want your message to come across. Finally, we talked about telling your story
or your brand’s story. I hope you
enjoyed this week’s blog! See you again
next week!
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