The personal brand has been for some years on the lips of all marketers. While there is no French translation fully adapted to this concept, the notion of personal branding is generally translated by personal brand. For business leaders, personal branding is an essential communication tool for conveying image, reputation, and brand identity.
Business creators are inseparable from their projects, they are the true spokespersons for their business. Thus, their online presence and their brand have a direct impact on the brand’s image. Your SBA Compta online accountant takes a look at this topic and presents 10 steps to follow to build your brand image.
Personal Brand Definition
“ Personal branding is a practice that involves an individual promoting his image and skills through the marketing and advertising techniques usually used to promote a brand. In this process, the individual aims to become a recognized brand himself ”. Marketing Definitions So you get it, personal branding is more than a trademark or a great logo, it’s how you present yourself online and offline to your potential customers. Your personal brand is all about you as an individual.
According to a Nielson consumer survey, only 33% of shoppers trust a brand’s posts, while 90% trust posts from an individual they know.
Step 1. Take stock of your personal brand image
- “Googize” to see what people can already learn about you. Knowing what your customers and prospects are finding when looking for you online is very important. Analyze your name and business on Google and rate the personal image you convey.
- Next, ask friends, colleagues, or clients who know you well enough to describe how you are currently perceived by others. This will help you identify and analyze your strengths and weaknesses.
This is your starting point for:
- see where you need to spend your time and energy
- define a marketing action plan to increase your web notoriety
Step 2. Define your vision and motivation
It has to be deeper than “I want to change the world” and much more than the return on investment you hope to see. This is the reason you keep getting up every morning to do what you are doing. This is the reason why, when you face a wave of criticism, you are able to persevere. And this is your basis for laying out the outline of your personal image strategy.
Ask yourself:
- What could motivate you in the event of difficulties?
- If you changed the world, what would that change look like?
No one can answer these questions for you. So take a moment to consider why you want to make the change and how your new litter will meet the needs of your current and potential customers.
Step 3. Determine your own vision of personal branding
Before embarking on concrete actions to improve your brand image, you should first ask yourself:
- What do you want your brand identity to look like?
- What type of image do you want to convey?
- Why is your personal vision? Include in your response: your abilities, your interests, your personality, your values, your goals, your skills/experience, and your background.
It sounds huge but in reality, you can sum up everything that is important to you in two or three paragraphs. Of course, the focus here is on your personal branding vision. So above all, we want to know how you want the outside world to see you.
Clearly define your professional goals
To convince, you have to be convinced yourself. Clarify your professional goal and do not hesitate to expose it to rally around you. Define your strategic objectives in accordance with the mission and vision of your company. This allows you to move in a specific, quantifiable, and measurable direction and gives you good cohesion in your branding strategy.
Align your personal branding with your core values
You can’t create a successful brand identity if it doesn’t align with your core values. Make sure you stay genuine and true to yourself. You develop core values throughout your life. They are deeply personal and form the heart of your personality. You may not realize it consciously, but these values influence most of your life decisions. If you haven’t yet discovered your core values, look into this now.
Step 4. Define your market and target audience
Just as a business needs to define its audience, so does a person who creates a personal brand. You must be wondering why you are doing this. Who do you want to stand out from? No need to try to be generic and impress everyone. Go back to your vision. If you want to achieve your vision, what goals should you set for yourself? What steps do you need to take to reach your goals and who do you need to reach to make them happen?
Ideally, you should focus on a niche market where you can demonstrate your skills. However, for this to be useful, there needs to be a clear target audience who are interested in the topic. The best way to know your target audience is to know them intimately. The better you know your target audience, the more effective your message will be. Laser focus on the target audience will help you develop a sharper and more effective brand identity.
Step 5. Determine your point of difference or unique value
After all, the personal branding strategy is built on your promise of unique value. No one will remember you if everything you represent is not different from everyone else. You need to determine how you will be different from everyone fighting for the top spot in your niche. So what’s your point of difference?
Being able to demonstrate uniqueness is the key to your success in a competitive market. Standing out from the competition by being the best and striving for excellence might be the most obvious point of difference.
There are several ways to showcase your talents as part of your Personal Branding strategy. Are you:
- Best experienced?
- Perfect creative?
- Most efficient?
Are you good at customer service?
A quality can even be something like: “I am doing more in less time than my peers”. If you can’t be the best in one way or another, becoming more specialized can make you unique.
When you align all the tangible and rational attributes that you have to offer, don’t forget the emotional attributes. These can be the key differentiators that you have to offer that your competition is lacking.
Step 6. Build your personal brand online
A characteristic common to virtually everyone who has a strong personal reputation is that they have a defined and consistent online presence.
The appearance of each brand identity reflects the tastes of its target audience that they regularly visit. That said, you need to apply these tips for a harmonious and distinguished online presence:
- Make sure you keep a consistent appearance wherever you have an online footprint.
- Replicate the same color scheme and the same fonts on your social media pages.
- Have an eye-catching logo to appear on every page of your website.
Logo
Don’t want to invest too much in a custom logo? It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it does have to represent you. In the short term, you can even create one on your own using a template in an app like Canva.
Pro photo
Your personal branding comes first and foremost through the image you convey. Your photo should reflect the values and professionalism of your business. So opt for a neutral but relaxed photo, which will make you appear more competent and qualified. Consider hiring a professional photographer, to inspire confidence with an impeccable digital profile.
Website and blog
You must have your own website. While social media, like a Facebook page, are important, they ultimately aren’t yours. All it takes is for Facebook to change its rules or close and your page will be gone forever.
One of the secrets of a successful brand identity is that it is recognized and appreciated by Google. To do this, you need your own website and a personal blog that you need to regularly enrich with relevant and good quality content and to interact frequently with your network. It is the basis for improving your digital presence and being well-referenced on Google.
However, if you want to achieve your personal branding goals, you need to make sure that your website/blog features the kind of topics that are likely to be of interest to your target audience.
Online visibility strategy
Make it easy for your business prospects and customers to find you. Use your real name and check all the settings so that we can come across your profile easily. An invisible business manager or one that cannot be found causes distrust of future customers. And to learn more about it, see our article on building a good online visibility strategy.
Guest blogging
Once you have created your own site and created quality content for everyone to see, then you can consider posting comments/articles on other relevant blogs. However, you need to be strategic when looking for guest blogging opportunities. There is no point in writing for a blog that doesn’t attract the same target audience as yours. You should only consider blogging on the blog that’s right for your audience.
The guest blog must give credit to its authors and allow a link in the author’s biography. You will not gain anything in terms of branding if it is not known that you wrote the post.
Social networks
To dominate search results with your name, you’ll have to think about running social media accounts. It is more important that you do it properly. Therefore, take the time to research your target audience. What social media sites do they spend their time on?
It is essential that you have a social media presence even if you intend to work with other influencers in your niche. Ultimately, you want people to see you as a reference in your niche. You will then become an influencer yourself.
Step 7. Define your content strategy and create your blog
The easiest way to build a positive personal brand is to combine regular blogging with an active social media presence. Indeed, writing and publishing quality content on blogs and sites already recognized in your field of activity will allow you to quickly gain visibility and credibility.
It’s easy to get discouraged when you start blogging when Google Analytics can make a depressing reading of your stats. However, online success comes down to two steps:
- Create high-quality content
- Promote your content as actively as possible.
If you constantly repeat these two steps, you will be successful in developing your online reputation as well as your brand identity. However, we must not forget that every audience is different. The type of content will therefore depend on your niche. Long, rich content works best in marketing, for example.
It is also essential that you test different types of content to match the tastes of your audience. This includes unwritten content, such as podcasts, videos, and slide-sharing presentations. Do not hesitate to practice, practice writing to be able to publish fluid, coherent posts, without spelling mistakes …
Step 8. Promote your personal brand on social media
To promote self-marketing, you need to deliver a consistent message across all social channels where your audience is while each channel has its own rules and practices, you should always make sure that your presence on each is as similar as possible, and make sure you never post anything that would seem inappropriate to your target audience.
Use the same professional profile photo on all social channels and preferably also on your website. If you really feel the need to create a Facebook or Instagram profile just for friends and family, set it to a different name than what you use for your public persona – and only accept requests on that account. friends from people you actually know.
You need to keep this consistent with the images you use on your social media. Use the same color scheme on each of these media, with the same types of images. Speak with the same “voice” on each of your social sites, using the same tone and forms of language.
Even though each of your social networks should follow the same tone, that doesn’t mean you should post identical content on all of them. There are clear differences between each of the social networks and you need to focus on their strengths.
Step 9. Build awareness of your personal brand
Your website and blog should be the center of your online personal branding. However, you will have to do more if you want to become a household name. You have to raise awareness. Outreach is all about providing value to influencers in your niche. The people who already have established audiences that you hope to ‘borrow’.
You should target both “Online” and “Offline”. Indeed, nothing like balancing your digital presence with your networking outings! Developing a good relational network is one of the good habits of successful entrepreneurs!
Remember the value of good old-fashioned networking. Along with your online resources, such as your website and social pages, you’ll still need to have a stack of business cards ready to share with people you meet. These should follow the same pattern as the rest of your assets. Colors, fonts, and images should match what you are using online.
Attend local events and chat with people in your niche. Hand out your business cards to anyone you think could make a valuable connection. Your speech should be short and persuasive, explaining to people what you are doing. To make a good impression and convey a positive professional image, see our article How to present yourself to be Unforgettable.
Try to become a member of your local chamber of commerce or its equivalent. Attend their meetings and events and talk to the people involved. Watch for relevant conferences related to your niche. They provide a great opportunity to meet people and engage them in a conversation.
You can also use social media for awareness. Facebook and LinkedIn offer groups based on niches that may be of interest to you.
Another effective way to promote your brand identity is to search in Quora for questions related to your field. If you think you can help, write an informative article. It will need to be of a high standard and useful, if you want people to take note of it, avoid making it sound like an advertisement.
Step 10. Find Personal Branding Mentors
Remember that you don’t have to go through this process alone. Everyone who succeeded had other help. It is much easier to test your ideas on someone else than to go ahead in a vacuum. A ” brand identity ” can suggest that it’s all about you. No, to be successful you will need to call on all the help you can get.
As you become more famous, you will start to have access to the best in your field. Many of these people will be happy to help and guide you. Find mentors to help you. Most successful people do. A mentor acts as a confidant who gives you direction and options. Of course, in the end, you make your own choice. Your mentor is not there to tell you what to do. However, he or she is there to guide you as you make your decision.
The importance of your personal brand
Personal Branding can be time and energy. You won’t be able to do it quickly. However, building a recognized Personal Marketing gives great returns on your investment. At the end of the day, the secret is to be yourself. Your personal reputation should be very genuine and true to your reality. You can’t craft a character and expect people to recognize you as the perfect fit.
You can draw inspiration from others, consider the ideas of your mentors, and note the problems of your followers. But at the end of the day. You have to be yourself. You must accept your differences and create a personal brand image that matches your personality.
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