Are you lost in the sea of experts around you? Are you able to position your expertise with clarity? When you embark on a personal branding exercise, you own your brand! Believe it or not, people are saying something about you, why not define the narrative that you would like to be defined by?
This week, I had the pleasure of joining Marie Zimenoff on her Career Confidante radio show to discuss the Power of Personal Branding and some of the mistakes we make when trying to establish our Personal Brands. Having worked on Corporate Brands for over 15 years, I believe the same principles that have been applied to growing Corporate Brands can also be applied to Personal Brands. This, when done right, will position you as an expert in your industry who is not only visible, but also credible and likeable to your audience.
To get started in this process, it is important to go back to the core of who you are and where you want to go. If you do not understand who you are, and the potential within, then it becomes difficult to define what value you have to offer others.
Do you have an idea what your vision and values are? Defining your vision and values is the foundation of your personal brand. By defining your vision, you are laying the foundation to your personal brand as it acts as the guiding light to your north star. Without a clear map of the future, you risk sailing to an undesired destination.
Can you imagine asking a holiday planner to plan a holiday for you without much details on what exactly you want to experience? Do they take you to Hawaii or to Iceland? Even with all the time and budget in the world, if they do not have a sense of where you want to go, the result could be a disaster. Same applies when defining your Personal Brand. Call yourself to a meeting, introspect on your goals, your values, and your passions as these give you focus on what matters in order to help meet your end goals. Don’t just sail through and leave your personal brand to chance!
Once you have figured out where you want to go, the next important step is to understand where you are currently. What are your strengths and weaknesses? Do you understand how the world perceives you to be? It is said that Perception is Reality and one of the best ways to get a hold of the perception that your personal brand holds is by seeing yourself through the eyes of your peers, friends, colleagues, and family members. This can easily be achieved through a tool called 360Reach, a Personal Brand reputation survey that allows you to get the real scoop on the brand called YOU!
When you have a deep understanding of who you are, it becomes easy to position yourself with clarity. Then and only then will you be able to craft your value positioning statement also known as the unique selling proposition. When you nail this, you will pitch yourself with ease; clear on what service /objective you are fulfilling in your customers lives, what outcome they can expect from you, what industry you seek to impact and most importantly, which areas you need to place emphasize on to develop yourself further.
With this in place, then we can get started on your visibility strategy, exploring ways to digitize your expertise to move you from being a resident expert to being an industry expert. Whether we like it or not, the world favors the visible and building an online presence is the 1st stage to being an industry expert. This is of course in addition to other offline initiatives such as participating in networking events, joining industry and community organizations – and so on.
Own your Personal Brand today and #Standout4Growth
