Personal branding is something most people overlook in college and early on in their career. Possessing a powerful personal brand is extremely important and almost crucial for your career.
Whether you are a college student, a recent college graduate, or already well-off into your career, a personal brand is essential for you.
What is a personal brand?
A personal brand is the persona you create for yourself as an individual or business. It is as simple as that.
What do you love? What are your interests? What is you passion? What makes you happy?
These questions should be running through your head constantly as your start your personal brand journey.
You need to figure out who you really are and what your purpose is in this world.
By doing this, it will allow you to embrace your brand story or what you really want to be known for.
By building a personal brand, it will give you the opportunity to show others what you stand for and let people see a glimpse of who you really are.
Why is a personal brand important?
What pops up when you look up your name? Well whatever it is, that is people’s first impression of who you are. Whether you’re on a date, about to go into a sales call, or any situation in life someone is searching your name in hopes to learn more about you.
If someone is looking you up what will they see? Is it good or bad? Technology has made it imperative for us to have our own personal brand.
The internet and social media has become such a critical tool for everyone in our world today and has quite literally become a part of people’s lives. People are addicted to the their phones and the internet.
With so many people being online, it is essential for people to have a personal brand.
All it takes is one click of a button for someone to know everything about you.
That is why it is important for you have an online presence and brand yourself accordingly.
According to ****[Bart Turczynski](https://zety.com/blog/hr-statistics#:~:text=87%25 of recruiters use LinkedIn to check candidates.), “87% of recruiters use LinkedIn to check candidates.” If you are a college student or recent graduate this is the time for you to start your personal brand. LinkedIn has become a common tool for recruiters to search for exceptional applicants.
You want to impress future employers or other entrepreneurs?
Start a personal brand!
Here are 9 tips to growing the personal brand you’ve always needed for your career.
1. Who are you?
According to Northeastern University, “In order to build a personal brand that accurately reflects your personal and professional identity, you first need to know who you are.”
You need to really dig deep down and get to know yourself. What are you about? What makes you the happiest? What are you good at?
Figure out what you want to brand yourself about. What do you want to be known for? Get specific on what you want to become and go all in.
2. Who is your audience?
Now that you know what you want to be known for, you need to do some planning for who you are trying to target.
Who is your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)? [Shane Wiley from HubSpot](https://blog.hubspot.com/customers/ideal-customer-profiles-and-buyer-personas-are-they-different#:~:text=An ideal customer profile (ICP,for the solutions you provide.) “defines the perfect customer for what your organization solves for.” Who do you want to sell your personal brand to? Who is going to look you up?
The reason you need to identify your target audience is so you do not waste your time targeting people who have no interest in you. You need to target to people who want to see your brand.
Once you figure out your target audience you are ready for the next tip.
3. Pick a swim lane
You need to pick a swim lane, jump in, and join the race. Swimmers also don’t zig zag. In other words, you need to find out what your passion is or what you want your personal brand to be about.
It is better to have a personal brand that is focused on a smaller niche rather than a bigger one. Once you choose a smaller niche, that essentially allows you to target more people from your audience. Having a more broad niche makes it harder to target prospects and your audience.
So, pick a niche that is small enough to target an appropriate audience. Stay in that lane, put your head down, and work. You will see results I promise.
4. Get your name online
Technology has become an integral part of everyday life, so it is important to have a presence online. You need to make sure you choose the right platform that will fit your line of business. If you want to start something like blog, podcast, newsletter, etc, start it and don’t wait. Waiting on building your brand will put you behind ,in fact, you need to constantly refresh your personal brand.
LinkedIn is one social media platform that is perfect for displaying and showing off who you really are and what you have accomplished.
What do you want employers, co-workers, and other industry professionals to see when they click your account?
5. Present yourself to the world
There are many ways you can put yourself out there to the world. Technology has made it so easy for all of us to build and promote our personal brand. Here are some platforms you can use to build your personal brand…
- Personal Website
- Blog
- Podcast
- Youtube
- Any social media outlet
You can use these platforms to display what your skills, passions, and interests are. Choose a platform to post content for your personal brand and go all in.
6. Create your brand
Once you have figured out what you want to be known for and what you want your brand to be about, you need to start creating content for your audience.
Posting content on a blog, podcast, or any social media platforms will help your personal brand grow. In fact, posting all of this content on all these different platforms allows you to target the right audience.
Social media has become a crucial tool in helping people grow their personal brands. You can post and create content about what ever you are passionate about.
According to [Gary Henderson](https://www.digitalmarketing.org/blog/the-importance-of-social-media-marketing#:~:text=Social media networks are open,strategy to attract such customers.), “Social media networks are open to all, giving businesses a chance to follow their consumer’s activities or potential buyers.”
Gary could not be more right. You should be posting content, promoting your personal brand on different social media platforms. This will allow consumers to get a more personalized look at who you are.
7. Be your authentic self
Nobody likes someone who is fake and tries to put on a show. One way to stand out is to be you.
What do you want to be known for? What do you stand for? Do you mean what you say?
It is more personal when you are just being yourself. More people want to see that.
8. Hustle
In everything you do, you need to have a good work ethic in order to be good at anything. Unless you’re just naturally gifted. You need to be a leader that is disciplined and determined to be the best.
It is important you are working harder than your competition by promoting your content faster. One piece of content per day, per week, or even per month is better than nothing.
The most important thing to remember when creating content is the consistency of your work. Create a content schedule and be consistent when you post. The results will come.
9. Be an all star
To have an all star personal brand you need to make sure every platform you are promoting on is fully optimized for success. Make sure it looks good, is providing value, and is relevant for your audience.
Strive every day to provide as much value as you possibly can. It could be anything. Overtime you will get better at creating content, building your personal brand, and just improving your skills. You will become an all star. It just takes time sometimes.
That’s It!
I hope you guys got something out of this blog post! Go create a killer personal brand, it will bring you plenty of opportunities and amazing people.
Let me know what you guys want learn about next! Also, it would be cool if you could subscribe to the newsletter. I’m not going to make you, but it would be cool.
Win the day. Go creating a personal brand. And kill it.
Cheers!