Personal Branding and Self-Marketing
Making Yourself Memorable in a Crowded World
In an era when everything is available at our fingertips through the Internet, your resume is no longer the only thing your potential clients, future employers, and hiring managers will see about you. Rather, the differentiator will be in how people “experience” you as a brand. For entrepreneurs, aspiring creatives, and career professionals, you in person and in writing (the form of your documents) will have astounding positive potential.
People are more likely to trust individuals who demonstrate that they know their identity and value propositions.This is largely where personal branding and self-marketing come into effect.
Personal branding is all about controlling other people’s perspectives of you derived from what you value, your skills, and who you are. Whereas self-marketing highlights the work you put into creating a person identity, one, people can relate to. Overall, when the two are healthy, you create associations for people to remember and lead into your next opportunity or connections.
A Case Study: From Invisible Talent to Visible
ExpertLina, a UX designer, had been a “behind-the-scenes” contributor for a couple of years at a tech firm. Her work had been talked about actually as impressive from their clients, but there was never any validation or promotion for her desired position. One day, Lina decided she would start uploading her case studies and useful design tips to her LinkedIn page. In none of her posts did she embellish or brag, she was simply sharing approachable guidance and captions of her process.
As needed, her posts started garnering sunlight and visibility, eventually leading others to recognize her as a thought leader within her peer community. She was being asked to attend to speak at virtual events and eventually attracted freelancers through even recognized startups. Lina’s shift was not due to any brand new or prominent skills, however; she was all about visibility, in that she needed to promote her work in order for it to emerge. Her story is an example that you do not have to be the loudest person in a room, however the clarity and consistency of your voice will go a long way.
Understanding Personal Branding
Personal branding is a deliberate action to verbally and visually present your personality, talents, values and mission publicly. It is not pretending to be something or someone else, it is simply showing how you uniquely represent yourself publicly to allow others to know you, understand you, and remember you.
Basically, your brand is your current reputation.You uniquely represent your brand by the way you communicate, share your content, handle the good and the bad, and interact with others. Consider that you are building a brand over time, which gives you an opportunity to become valued and recognized within a community of practice. Personal branding is good because you will start to become self-aware and self-reflective about your personal and professional decisions in your career and development.
The Purpose of This is You as a Brand
Self-marketing is consciously representing you as your brand strategically/authentic you will continually expect familiarity with your audience and show your value proposition consistently. You are going to be putting your name, your work, in front of people to show what you do. You will not have to sell yourself every day. You will be showcasing your message and POV only in spaces you believe your ideal audience is present, and only moving only if and when it is resonating.
The end game of solid self-marketing is to know that in their minds you exist when your expertise is needed. Self-marketing can take the form of a piece of content for your perspective audience, a conversation with on the spot, providing testimonials, and/or mentoring. By consistently providing your experience or point of view to others you respectably are providing credibility and others that are genuinely interested to your thoughts, belief or aspirations will begin to listen.
THE WHY FOR BRADING AND MARKETING YOUR SELF TODAY
In a competitive landscape many times visibility outweighs work or skill. If an individual searches for your name online and sees ten other people, shouldn’t your brand describe in words the talents and interests you share (all the while recognizing you have become a brand and have an online reputation to manage).
Let’s be real – people do business with people they trust, and often familiarity builds trust. In a noisy and disconnected world consistency and clarity in personal branding builds familiarity and trust. In some instances, this will create some level trust over another person and other cases will enable you to even be considered vs. not even considered.
How to Create a Resilient Personal Brand
Let’s start at the beginning— your personal attributes (e.g. attributes, values, skills, passions).
- What matters to you?
- What problems do you want to focus on?
After you have firmly shaped your brand you will have a one sentence statement that captures you and all that you do. After you have built your brand it is critical that you show consistently what that means in as many places and ways as possible—from all your online profiles and accounts, to your conversations and things you do.
Use the same language, look and feel that conveys you. The more consistently you present yourself across platforms the more people can relate to it, and you. Your brand is a function of who you are as a human, so you should not have a problem being certain across experiences that people may encounter you.
Authentically Branding Yourself
Self-branding is not self-serving communication – self-branding -in itself – is just being. You are likely self-branding by just sharing a tip, using a process, or sharing a learning.
All of these actions show others not only what you are doing but how you think and why you care. Consistency matters. Whether you have a blog (that you are updating regularly each week) and consistent networking, or a consistent but engaged professional community, work at having that consistency of self, represented in value-adding interactions. You will notice that when the audience sees enough value then they just start seeing your name as something of value.
In conclusion, Be Seen, Be Known, Be Trusted
Your personal brand is a promise you make to the world who you are and what you do -you are doing this for you to exist authentically in the world and to market yourself so your personal brand is known to the world; it now becomes your responsibility to spend your time being immersed in your tribes of people who are on a similar journey and how that may be relevant to them -it will take work and certainly patience, or may be an accumulation of little things that accumulate into bigger things down the road.
If you want to be seen, it is no longer productive to wait to be seen -waiting is gambling for wishful thought. And so, the more active you are in building your brand by intentionally sharing your message, the better chance you give yourself to grow, lead, and create a legacy. Let me know if you want it to be a blog for you, a PDF download, that you want me to convert into a presentation for a PPT or video script! – I can also get you personal brand checklist!
