What if you could attract unimaginable opportunities just by building your personal brand? Creating a personal brand can be a daunting task, but it is one that can have incredible benefits. If you can create a strong and recognizable identity for yourself, opportunities will gravitate towards you. By understanding the steps that are necessary to build a personal brand, you can begin to see the benefits that come with it. Instead of chasing promotions and climbing the corporate ladder, have the elevator doors open for you.
Building a personal brand will mean different things for everyone. Some use their personal brand to influence others while others use it for their cause. Either way, a personal brand attracts unimaginable opportunities that will help you achieve your career goals. By creating a strong personal brand, you will be more likely to land the job that you want and be recognized for your accomplishments. But if you’re not careful, you might even create a business of your own! Here are my suggested steps but feel free to tackle things in any order that helps you start. The ultimate goal is to start your journey and adjust the course along the way.
Step 1: Define Your Personal Brand
There are a few things you need to do in order to start building your personal brand. The first is to define what it is that you stand for. What are your core values and how do they reflect in your everyday life and work? Once you have a good understanding of who you are as a person and what you believe in, it’s time to start promoting those qualities to the world. For example, I value meaningful work and creating things that help people. The first part of my career was spent using technology to help the education sector. I became known as the guy who knew technology in the education space at my company. Later in my career, I started an educational YouTube channel about IT Consulting and Technology. I enjoy learning new things and sharing my experiences along the way. So ask yourself, in a world full of noise, what value will you add to people’s lives?
You can add value in many ways, but one of the simplest is to create a brand website and start blogging about the things that are important to you. You can also leverage free blogging sites if you don’t want to pay for your own website. You can also start a social media account and share your thoughts and experiences with the world. Technical careers that require development work can also go one step further by sharing their project through GitHub. Many tech YouTubers have a video and a blog for tutorials for teaching others. Others showcase software that they’ve built. My favorite projects to watch are usually around AI and automation. These videos can give the viewers a chance to build the project alongside or visualize the functionality of their software. There are so many ways to showcase your work so try out different ways that fit your needs. After you throw enough paint colors on the canvas and apply some meticulous techniques, a picture will start to emerge – your personal brand.
Step 2: Identify Your Target Audience
In order to build a personal brand, it is important to identify your target audience. Since you’ve already identified what you stand for in the previous step, you can now move on to figure out who the message is for. There are two categories you can break this down to: The producers and the consumers.
1. The people who have the same mission as you as producers and service providers:
There are many people out there who have the same mission as you as producers and service providers. These people are constantly looking for new opportunities to grow their businesses and serve their clients. If you have a mission that aligns with theirs, then you’re in luck. The key to attracting these opportunities is to stand out from the crowd. You can do this by creating a unique brand, developing a strong social media presence, and staying up to date with industry trends. By following these tips, you’ll be on your way to building a personal brand that will take your brand to new heights. You may be asking, how does this translate to the corporate world? Well recently, my college professor from undergrad found one of my YouTube videos and had his class watch it. Shortly after, my LinkedIn profile started to get increased traffic. I was also contacted by a data bootcamp company to teach at a prestigious university. I categorize these people as producers who share a common goal and want to partner with you.
2. The people who are the consumers of your content:
People who consume your content are usually people who are looking for information that is specific to them. They are the people who will be the most interested in what you have to say, and they will be the ones who can help you reach your goals. You need to focus on creating content that is relevant to these people, and that is useful to them by solving their problems or answering their questions. You’ll start to build relationships with your audience by creating content that is valuable and interesting to them. An effective way you can understand your audience’s needs is by creating personas or avatars. For each persona, you’ll want to put yourself in their shoes and think about how this person views the world and what important information would be valuable to them. For instance, the majority of my YouTube viewers are between 18-35 years of age. This is a pretty wide range and I can create a few personas from this information. Here are a few personas that would fall under that age group: College students, graduates seeking a first-time job, and young professionals growing their careers. Each of my audience personas has a different need so my content should be relevant to them. An important part of understanding your audience’s needs is to test your hypothesis. The best way to get more data about your audience is to produce more for them. Therefore, it is best to not spend too much time analyzing and planning if it is preventing you from starting.
Step 3: Know Your Values
Values are at the heart of a personal brand. They are the guiding principles that we live by and the things that we stand for. They are what make us unique and attractive to others. To build a strong personal brand, it is essential to know your values. What is important to you? What do you stand for? What makes you happy? Once you know these things, you can start to promote them and use them as a guide for your actions and decisions. My personal values have guided my career decisions from the beginning. I never want to work for companies dealing with alcohol and tobacco. No matter the compensation, my values always mean more to me than the money. By knowing your values, you can create a strong foundation for your personal brand. Not only will this help you attract opportunities and achieve success in your career, it will also help you sleep better at night.
Step 4: Find Your Motivation
Your motivation should come from within you, not from external factors. It should be something that you are passionate about and want to share with others. If you can find your motivation, you will be able to stay focused and stay motivated throughout your branding journey. When I worked at IBM, one of my mentors suggested we partner up to write a book about consulting. She explained the benefits and how it would help me in my career and personal brand. Writing a book was the last thing I would have wanted to do at the time. I had zero motivation to work on something after work. Especially related to writing. Yuck!
A few years later I started to make YouTube videos to help answer the tech career questions my younger friends were asking. Little did I know I would need to write out my scripts and craft a message to sound cohesive. Recording without a written script led to countless hours wasted in video editing. I tried writing scripts word-for-word and also tried writing the main bullet points. The motivation came from an internal desire to be better and help others through my journey. So you have to find your own “Why” to fuel the fire that propels your desire.
Step 5: Create
There are a lot of people who are afraid to take the first step in building their personal brand. They may be afraid of what others might think of them. The biggest barrier I see from people is themselves. They are afraid to put themselves out there and be themselves. They are afraid of what others might think or say about them. Another thing that holds people back is being afraid what they make will not be good enough. This is valid and 100% accurate in my case. My first YouTube video is my worst video but it is also the most viewed with the most comments. Thousands of people have gotten value out of it and I can measure how far I’ve come. So just go do it. Take the first step in starting your personal brand. The rest will come as you grow.
Step 6: Build A Strategy to Grow Your Personal Brand
Now that you have a strong personal brand, it’s important to build a strategy to grow it. There are a few things you can do to help your brand grow. Once you have started sailing in the general direction, it’s best to occasionally do a course adjustment. Our goals and priorities change throughout our lives and throughout our careers so let yourself steer towards the destination that brings you contentment. There will be obstacles and distractions along the way. Some of those could also be gateways to new adventures. Figure out what your main goals are and that will help you identify distractions from adventures.
Conclusion: When it comes to personal branding, don’t be afraid to try new things. Tackle challenges that help you on your journey and have fun along the way. I wish you a happy and successful journey. Keep on being awesome!