You and your Personal Brand
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We all have a personal brand. Personal branding is not just for celebrities. It is how we market ourselves, and the impression we give to others online and in real life. We may as well optimise the online real estate we have and use it to control what people find when the do look you up online. Learn how to create a more consistent and professional online presence.
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You and your Personal Brand
- 1. You and Your Personal Brand With Amanda Jeffs, Social Media Manager
- 26. Think of yourself as a brand Audit your online presence Build and optimise your profiles Understand your USP Find ways to share your value Grow your community Connect with your audience Be authentic, be yourself Lead with authenticity • Be DILIGENT • Be CONSISTENT • Be RELEVANT • Be INTERESTING • Be YOURSELF • Be AUTHENTIC
Editor's Notes
- Resources: https://www.marketing.org.nz/PersonalBranding https://www.forbes.com/sites/shamahyder/2014/08/18/7-things-you-can-do-to-build-an-awesome-personal-brand/#19335be73c3a https://www.forbes.com/sites/shelcyvjoseph/2018/04/30/5-ways-to-build-a-powerful-personal-brand/#34e36528549e https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2ogIM-VMOs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg2ygCywnd4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hczbMhsMDuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNFOEzm2QKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20oo4OiRT7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luIn1b7wW7o https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/5-unusual-personal-branding-tips/516381/ https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/2017-11-09-10-steps-to-building-your-personal-brand-on-social-media https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-personal-branding-important-21st-century-kyts-empowering-you/ https://www.producthunt.com/posts/how-to-build-your-personal-brand-in-the-21st-century http://tayorockson.com/blog/2017/5/4/why-your-personal-brand-matters-in-the-21st-century https://medium.com/thought-pills/the-ultimate-guide-to-building-your-personal-brand-in-the-21st-century-4af2dc7dc167 https://medium.com/thought-pills/how-to-build-your-personal-brand-in-the-21st-century-5df9d092b46e
- We all have a personal brand. Personal branding is not just for celebrities. It’s how we market ourselves to others. It’s you control what In seen and what goes out there. Something that seems to be coming up a lot is storytelling and it has become synonymous with branding and ubiquitous across communications. While we may read, share and maybe even create compelling brand stories for a living, the art of storytelling and branding isn’t exclusive to businesses or commercial brands. Personal branding is an essential aspect of ourselves, our career and beyond. It has to start with us; our perception of ourselves echoes through our demeanour and conduct, through spoken and unspoken words, it’s our style, how we approach people, it’s everything that makes you you. What I love about this picture is the fact that this outfit is obviously synonymous with Steve Jobs. This outfit is part of his brand. If you took off the head you’d still know who it is. When we woke up today we wanted to be perceived in a certain way. You might not thing this was orchestrated but we all made the choice to put on that shirt, to wear that dress or to arrange your hair in that way. Your tone of voice and opinion and even your online posts is part of it. Companies spend a lot of time thinking about their reputation, their storytelling, and how they want to be perceived; but we all have a brand so you should also be conscious of the picture you are painting and be thinking about what you post and how you are coming across to others. Everyone is a walking personal brand; the online you is an extension of the real life you; and that’s what we are going to explore today.
- We have reached the point where there is so much content, we can never get through it all. It’s noise, and mostly it’s just a sea of mediocrity. So we need to ‘break through the noise’. If you find your uniqueness and be yourself and be authentic you will shine, and you’ll stand out from the rest just by being you. In a world where everything has become homoginised and where everyone is going with the crowd, the power is in standing out, being your unique self and going your way and doing your thing. There are some great new examples out there of people being themselves and creating great content; the oatmeal, how to dad, and guy Kawasaki , gary veynerchuck, are all known for their particular type of content and unique voice, and the moment you see their you know who they are, what content they make, why you are following them. To stand out you need to be your real authentic self, show your uniqueness, we want to see you as an individual, you want to speak in your voice, and the more you can be the more authentic you will come across. But to get to this point, Some self-reflection and introspection is a fundamental step to understanding yourself and building a personal brand. It’s like the preliminary research that inspires a story and puts it into perspective. As an analogy, we are all pretty good at describing our job and our work and what we do. But knowing ourselves and telling our own story isn't always as easy. It’s the dreaded 'Tell me about yourself'. It's deceptively simple but hidden beneath the obvious is the intent to assess our self-perception and awareness. Putting ourselves in the spotlight and describing ourselves puts most of us at a loss for words or we waffle and we are not really clear on our personal elevator pitch, mission statement, and who we are and what we’re here for. So part of what we are doing today will be reflecting on how we define ourselves and what our position as a brand is, what our USP is and all that good stuff. As with any good story, our personal brand should be deliberately and thoughtfully crafted; clear, engaging and of course authentic and consistent. It can be lots of fun communicating our story once we've taken the time to unearth our unique attributes and identified the backbone of our personal brand. Our brand is the way people think about us and what they say about us when we're not around. The idea of personal branding makes some people uncomfortable. But, if you don’t take control of your personal brand online, then you are missing out on opportunities and letting others control your narrative. Creating a strong brand gives us more control over how we’re perceived. The best thing is to set clear expectations about what people will see when they follow you and WHY they should. What value are you providing and why should they keep coming back.
- I want to go over other really important aspects of personal branding. You don’t build a business or start with building a brand, you do what you love and what you enjoy and people come and connect with you. Don’t start with trying to grow a following or to ‘build a brand’; you do something you enjoy and that makes you feel good and you connect with likeminded people, and it grows organically then you find yourself growing a community around that. Also online, those claiming to be authentic are often the biggest pretenders. Instead just be yourself. Just be real. If you are being authentic you don’t have to say you are. Learn how to weave in your authenticity into your content. You do NOT need to look perfect or speak perfectly or write perfectly. Find and use your unique voice. You can be controversial. You can be opinionated. You can swear if that’s your style. If you are an opinionated person in real life then be opinionated online. Don’t water yourself down. Build connection with people by being relatable, and be vulnerable sometimes, but don’t overdo it! You don’t need to roll out your sob story all the time. The best approach is to share experiences you have and challenges, and what you learned from it and how you grew through it. Your not a walking sob story nor are you Mr always walking on clouds. We’re somewhere in the middle. Be relatable.
- Another really important thing I wanted to touch on before we dive deeper is what we are going to call the GIVE BACK ECONOMY. As brands or as humans, we need to give, give, give, give... People don’t give enough. We need to give without any sense of wanting anything in return. Too many people give with expectations, wanting something, or to sell something, but we need to be truly giving and selfless. What this looks like is that we provide value and advice and support and share things before we try and promote anything or sell anything. When we do that through stories, information, help, etc t Then we build trust (which takes time) with our audience. And when you have trust, it's then you can ask for something from someone. As an example, we all love to shop... but none of us love being sold to. For an example, imagine you are a car salesman at a party. Now you are having a conversation with someone who is in the market to buy a new car. Instead of approaching with trying to sell something to them first with ‘omg I sell cars, you could come down to the yard and I can help you out!’ That’s a bit hard sell. Instead you want to provide value first; share your expertise. Say ‘What sort of car are you looking for? What are your needs? When they tell you, you recommend a few suitable vehicle suggestions, you let them know about the safety ratings, the quality of the vehicles and so on. They say ’oh wow thanks’ you say ‘your welcome, I have a car yard. Here’s my card. Feel free to pop down to the yard or give me a call and I’ll be happy to help you find something’. As another example, when I was working in email marketing, there was a jeans company that instead of sending an email promoting jeans, they created a whole email that was about providing guides to help people find the right fitting jeans in the right style for them. It then linked them to pages where they could find said jeans. Give something first.
- Now I want to be pragmatic for a moment. People spend way too much time worrying about building a personal brand and not enough time thinking about whether it's really necessary in the first place. So ask yourself: "What have I done (or what am I doing) that is unique? What am I offering that warrants building a personal brand? What should people come to you for? Spend a few years, or many years building a company or a research portfolio or writing books, and only after you have done all that then get started with blogging and social media marketing. This approach gives you tons of interesting things to talk about - everything from marketing to entrepreneurship. Or whatever your area of speciality is. As an example some authors I know have spent years getting qualified in something, running a private practice, spending years of dealing with clients, before they write anything. The publisher Hay House and they said the best thing to do was to build your community first and to put your name all over everything. Build your blog following. Offer something real. Grow your audience. Then write your book and pitch it to a publisher and tell them how big your community is. Because now days the marketing effort is all on you. Gary VEE is a good example of someone who has been an entrepreneur for yonks, and is only now really capitalising on social and the content marketing space; he’s got huge experience and businesses behind him first. He’s spent years and years creating content, offering value, and is now one of the biggest social media personal brands you’d see in the world today. So all I’m saying here is most people are better off spending time doing something remarkable before building a personal brand - so don't build a personal brand if it isn't time.
- So if building a personal brand is something you are on board for, let’s go. A brand isn’t a logo – it’s a perception and an individual can have just as much presence online as a company. We all have the same amount of real estate so take advantage of that. Our online personas are now everywhere. While this may cause delight or some and fear in others there are advantages to developing a solid online presence. The idea of personal branding makes some people uncomfortable. But, if you don’t take control of your personal brand online, then you are missing out on opportunities and letting others control your narrative. So be consistent and memorable and think about how you look to others online. A personal brand can: Showcases your expertise Makes you stand out Demonstrates credibility, helps build trust, recognition, Helps you build your network of like minded people – your tribe It means you and your content are more likely to be discoverable "Over half of consumers have chosen to do business with a freelancer or company because of a strong, positive online presence.” The average person now switches jobs every 2-3 years and 40% of the workforce will freelance by 2020. This means that a strong personal brand is more important than ever before. In fact, the more successful you want to be, the more important personal branding becomes. Personal branding is 30% what people say about themselves and 70% what others say about them
- Define Yourself And Your Personal Brand Really start to think about the personal brand that you are trying to build. Create your own personal brand online by identifying the unique elements that make you you. What is your personal brand? What do you want to achieve by putting effort into how you look online? When figuring out how to start your own brand online, ask yourself questions like: How do we want to position ourselves? What are we good at? What are we not so good at? What are our differentiating factors? Who are we telling our story to? And what do we want them to remember about us? What makes you unique? What is your vision? What are your professional goals? Who is your audience? Who can you help? How can you help them? What makes you different? What’s your X Factor? What makes you reliable? Trustworthy? What do you love? What are you good at? What do you have that the world needs? What skill do you have that somebody would pay for? Create a one line statement based on these four questions that is a pitch for who you are. What industry do you work in? What is your ‘niche’? How could you be a thought leader? What makes you unique? What will you be known for? What do your online profiles say about you? (Not just your bio)
- One way to find the answers to these questions, is through the Japanese method of ikigai. It’s a concept that means ‘a reason for being’. Your ikigai lies at the center of those interconnecting circles. So I want you all to take a minute now to write down what you feel like that is right now. And thinking about the questions from the previous slide, what other insights can you share about yourself? So from what we have covered on the previous slides, it’s time to do a bit of work around this. Take out a pen or your device and write down these things.
- Here are some examples of people with fantastic personal brands. Hopefully these people need no introduction.
- https://www.buzzfeed.com/beatrizserranomolina/instasshole Fake people…. Try too hard. Don’t be a sob story. Don’t post your attention seeking posts online. People can see through it. Don’t be racist, don’t say stupid shit, it’s there forever. People can screenshot stuff, retweet stuff. Don’t be a narcissist. Don’t use a whole lot of irrelevant hashtags. You don’t need to always post photos about your perfect life and perfect food Don’t be so caught up in getting likes and followers that you don’t actually connect with people
- When it comes to CRAFTING YOUR ONLINE PRESCENCE you need to be Don, Anna and Mark. You need to be the Creative, the Editor and the Geek. It’s not enough to have a rudimentary profile with missing information; you need to be crafting and collating relevant good content, thinking about both the art of social and the analytics. Be critical about the quality of what you post and how you come across. Always be improving what you do online; present yourself well, be smart, be active and adopt new technology and new techniques.
- https://brandyourself.com/definitive-guide-to-personal-branding Pillar 1: Building a basic brand Pillar 2: Building credibility & an audience Pillar 3: Targeting Opportunities Pillar 1: Building a Basic Brand: Looking the part Build an online presence that reinforces your qualifications. When someone looks you up online, they need to see a strong presence with fresh content in your area of expertise. In order to look the part, you will want to Audit your search results Clean up any content that doesn’t fit your desired image Define yourself and your personal brand Build an online presence that reflects your brand and expertise
- Audit Your Search Results Before you start building a personal brand, you first need to know where you stand in search results. Google yourself so you know what others see when they look you up. Is an article from a high school play you were in 12 years ago your first result followed by your aunt’s travel blog from 2002? While these aren’t terrible results, they aren’t relevant, and could be hurting you. personally have used brandyourself.com to do this.
- Clean Up Risky Search Results & Social Media Posts Once you know what kinds of search results are closely attached to your name, you can take steps to remove them. Start with the easy wins. That means posts, images, videos, comments, etc. that you can simply unpublish or delete. Take some time going through your social media profiles and website(s). After tons of research, we found the following types of posts/pictures/comments, etc. to be the most damaging: Unprofessional Behaviour Unprofessional Communication Style Drinking or Drug Use Criminal Behaviour Polarizing Views - particularly when related to politics, religion, race and gender. Sexually Explicit Content Violence or Bullying Bigoted Behaviour
- As part of this exercise in searching for yourself, know that IF YOU DON’T SHOW UP ON GOOGLE YOU DON’T EXIST This isn’t meant to scare you but for you to realise that you have control of your online personal brand. Whether you like it or not people will Google you. It’s not just you that Facebook stalks – other people will check you out online. What you want to doing here is helping control what they find when they do look you up - so it pays to ensure you are easily searchable. When is the last time you googled yourself? What comes up? Why don’t you do it now.
- Now we are going to step back a bit and review WHERE on the internet you should even be. There are over 400 social media platforms probably more now. But it’s no point just being on every network just because. There’s no point throwing content into the wind without strategy and direction. Think about focussing on some key channels that matter the most to you and make yourself look good on those channels.
- When choosing which profiles to build out for your personal branding foundation, choose where your audience is and what it is you want to do and how you want to communicate with your audience. Do you want to run a podcast? Write a blog? Publish thought leadership on LinkedIn? Personal Website / Blog LinkedIn LinkedIn Pulse Twitter Facebook YouTube Vimeo Tumblr SlideShare Medium About.me Pinterest Quora Instagram
- Optimize the existing sites and social media profiles To optimize these properties for search engines: Use your full name on all profiles and domains (be consistent with the name you go by) Write in the third person when you can Fully fill out all profiles. Include your location when possible Include relevant keywords in meta-data Take advantage of h1 tags Here’s a checklist of things to do as homework: Fill out your bio – brief, succinct, consistent. Have a good profile picture – make it appropriate Be active – no tumbleweeds! Don’t half ass it – if you’re doing it make a go of it Post quality content, be relevant, timely and helpful
- So start putting out relevant, valuable, strategic content in the right places. As you get used to creating content (blog posts, images, infographics, videos, audio clips or a podcast, presentations, status updates, etc.), start to publish it in places where interested parties in your field will see it. Whether that means publishing on LinkedIn, Medium, or a super niche site devoted to a particular aspect of your field, do it! By finding your audience, you have the opportunity to create and share something directly with the people who will get the most out of it. And don’t be afraid to reach out to other well-regarded thought leaders in your industry to see if your work can appear on their sites and profiles as well. First identify what your goals are: Who is your target audience? Where are the best places to connect with these people? What kinds of content interests them? Once you identify this, you can then figure out who you need to get in touch with in order to get in front of that audience and accelerate your personal branding campaign. Make your own brand stand out by getting endorsements or even just mentions from respected leaders in your industry. Look to people in your industry who are highly successful and visible on social media. But also look for the best platforms to connect with your audience. Find inspirational influencers and mentors who are in line with what you’re trying to accomplish. You can also do a quick Google search for the top influencers within a given industry. There are plenty of lists online outlining the "top people to watch" or "top people to follow” Start off by focusing on people in your industry, but don’t be afraid to learn more about people from other disciplines who embody something about your personal brand. Whether you end up speaking directly with these influencers or not, you can learn a lot by watching how they (or their team) execute their own branding strategies. In addition to connecting with the people who are succeeding at goals similar to your own.
- By branding yourself as an active thought leader in your industry, you open the door to tons of possibilities. This includes (but isn’t limited to): Speaking gigs Jobs Partnerships Blog exchanges Interviews Mentorships Promotions It starts with personal branding, actively connecting, and building your audience actively sharing quality relevant valuable content consistnelty.
- Which Segway’s me nicely into an important point - you need to balance the online with the offline. Blogging and Social supports the good work you are doing – it’s not your whole job. So to preface this whole thing to say social can’t replace actual real life hustle –this is about how social can support and spread the word about the good work you are already doing. Personal branding is not very effective if no one knows who you are. Make appearances at industry conferences and fairs, and make sure you introduce yourself to all the right people.
- Yes this is all seeming like it’s pretty public…. And you may not all like that much publicity. So yes striking a balance between privacy and authenticity is an important consideration. People want to see enough they can make judgement call about you, see if you are like minded, see if they want to follow you and read your content. It does depend on the network but it will come down to a personal choice on how you want to interact. My advice is to tip the scales towards authenticity. As with life people like honest and genuine people online also. Remember this is social media – it’s about communicating with people, engaging, forming communities so it’s best to be yourself.
- Once you have been online a little while and you start thinking about monitoring and optimising your online presence. These are some of sites/tools you can use to do that.
- I just want to touch on blogging quickly for those of you in here who might be enterprising enough to want to run a blog. Who already has a blog? Who has thought about starting one? So why blog? Blogging enhances traffic Increase search visibility in Google Enhance thought leadership Position yourself as expert Create your own content that you own Puts you in the drivers seat Gives your passions a voice Publish on your own blog so you own the content Contribute to other blogs to increase audience & shares It’s a choice whether to host your content on your own site or post elsewhere Did you know more people read LinkedIn Pulse than any other magazine? It’s the #1 content platform now. With 296 million users worldwide, the reach potential is absolutely massive Blogs rank higher in search engines so more people will find you and this will lend to more traffic and increase in sharing your expertise over time.
- Here’s the essence of today’s takeaways There is no magic pill. Just self discovery and experimentation and test and refine. Share what interests you and think outside the box. Tell stories, paint a picture and be yourself.