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Everyone has a personal brand — a well-known marketer, a stay-at-home mum, and even a child. A brand is an image that other people have about you: what they associate you with, your traits, your character and your products or services. In a sense, a brand is almost the same as a reputation, because it can evoke all sorts of emotions, such as respect, dislike or love.

Personal branding is the future of online marketing, which is why it is most certainly worth spending time understanding how to make yours stand out. This article will offer a plethora of practical advice on how to develop and maintain your personal brand. 

A personal brand needs to: 

• increase the target audience’s loyalty to your products, services, and offers;
• increase recognition among a broad or narrow target audience;
• help position you as an expert in any field, and thereby increase the value of your services or goods — an expert’s product is always more expensive.

Branding helps tell your story, creates a positive image, and helps you associate with high-quality products and services.  

The key difference between a personal brand and a corporate brand is that only you influence your image. The company’s brand is influenced by everything – from advertisements in poor taste (for example, the Burger King chicken breasts ad) to the behaviour of a single employee at an office. 

Therefore, the process of building a corporate brand is more time-consuming and involves constant quality-of-service monitoring. A corporate brand is easy to destroy. It’s easy to destroy a personal brand too, but your words and actions have a greater impact on your reputation. For example, in the case of slander, if you can easily prove that the detractor is wrong, there will be no critical damage to your reputation. 

A personal brand takes many forms, but it always makes a name or image recognizable and adds value to the brand owner’s offerings. Here are some examples: 

• Phillip Kotler is a recognized marketing guru, but is unknown to most people;
• Jack the Ripper is known to everyone, but his reputation is less than stellar;
• Nobel laureate, Briton Michael Houghton is respected within small circles, but is largely unknown to a wide audience;
• “Black Square” by Malevich is worth several million dollars, yet the same painting by an unknown artist is worth nothing.

Creating and building a brand
Why do you need a personal brand?
Your business strategy depends on your branding. If the goal is to increase recognition, you can solely focus on Social Media Marketing (SMM) without linking to products or services. If you want to increase the level of sales or the price of services or products through personal branding, it’s best to link your name to a particular service or product. This way, consumers will make the connection quickly and will choose your offer in the future, provided the branding and quality of the product is on point. Think about what meaning your personal brand will carry, what images it will conjure, and how it will affect the cost of services. Remember, the brand is an extension of you – it’s not just a pretty exterior. Your personal brand must match your lifestyle and don’t invent something that does not exist. 

Choosing a niche
Promoting your name without focusing on one specific niche is difficult and not very effective. For example, building a fashion brand catered to young mothers instead of covering the entire clothing design niche is far more likely to yield better results. Don’t spread yourself too thin, and don’t try to capture too many things at once. Determine what you want to remain as a hobby, and what you’d like to be integral to your income stream and business.  

Create an image
Think about what qualities you’d like your target audience to associate you with. Write a story about yourself — you can later use this on your social media or your website. Here’s a clear plan to help you do this:  

1. Identify your target audience. An image that will appeal to a stay-at-home middle-class mum won’t appeal to bikers and vice versa. Once you’ve identified your target audience, it’ll be much easier to narrow down what images you’d like to opt for for your branding.
2. Write about yourself. Use a storytelling format – readers have positive impressions of stories, especially when they are interesting. Mention your achievements, awards, and positive case studies — this will increase the level of expertise in the eyes of your audience. Use emotions, talk about the difficulties encountered on your way to success. Everyone enjoys honesty! Don’t forget to highlight your personal qualities, such as kindness, optimism, pragmatism etc.
3. Describe your mission. Each brand has its mission. Think about what you want to achieve with personal branding — create a new community, improve legal literacy, diminish social injustice? For example, Steve Jobs ‘ mission was to change the world for the better.
4. Create an image. Choose a unique style of clothing and feel for yourself that is truly yours. For example, find an original, uniquely your hairstyle or makeup, or wear clothes that hold a particular trademark. This will help you be better remembered.

Make a statement
There are many ways in which you can represent yourself to the greater public. For example, you can speak at a professional event, give an interview to a major media outlet, or start your own personal blog. The blog can be promoted in a search engine with certain queries to gain new customers, and the pages in social networks can be used to communicate with the target audience and further extend your coverage. 

Promotion and development 
Promoting your personal brand in social networks
Social media is great for personal branding, especially for those starting from scratch. This is because promoting yourself on social media does not require a lot of money and allows you to significantly expand your reach and make your name more recognizable with minimal effort. On social media, you can easily find your target audience who will be interested in your content. 

We recommend you register on different social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, to widen your reach. While their audiences sometimes overlap, you will still reach a wider audience if you sign up to multiple platforms. To avoid having to think through two different promotion strategies, you can duplicate your posts on several social media platforms. 

To promote your personal brand on social media, follow these simple guidelines: 

1. Make sure your personal page is well designed. Fill in your profile description and outline your main skills, achievements, and personal qualities. Tell your audience why you are building your brand and how you can be useful to them (services, products). Upload a photo – preferably one of you and a connection to the niche in which you are promoting yourself. An appealing option is a photo of yourself in professional attire in front of a white or pastel background.
2. Keep an eye on your wall. No one will read your page if your wall is full of reposts. If possible, create your own content: write case studies or short notes, recommendations and reflections, your thoughts on high-profile events or even a mini–report on your day. Add photos or images to draw people’s attention to what you’re posting. If you’re reposting useful information, add a comment or a paragraph explaining what it’s about; this way you will show that you have something helpful to say to your readers, which will make a huge difference. Also, consider the ever-changing news feed algorithms: for your posts to be visible, you need to have an engaged audience (saves, sends, etc. make a big difference). Ask your readers questions, post surveys, and touch on popular current topics to get comments and likes.
3. Communicate with your target audience. Sign up to thematic groups where your colleagues, consumers, or other members of your target audience communicate. Leave comments below the posts and engage meaningfully. If someone asks a question, answer it in detail: preferably with examples, facts, and an opinion. Your comments need to be genuine and beneficial to the readers. You can also simply express an opinion — the more comments you leave, the more coverage your personal brand will have. But do not overdo it: leave comments only where appropriate, and never ever spam.
4. Add friends. Subscribe to the pages your target audience follows. This will be necessary for the initial promotion of the page and will help bring it to at least 100-200 subscribers or friends. The more you communicate and the more useful information you offer, the more often you will be followed by others. If you don’t want to spend time manually sending out invitations, you can advertise your page or group by segmenting the target audience — this will work if you set up the campaign correctly.
5. Track your mentions. Use news search or special programs/scripts that will allow you to track all mentions of your personal brand. Keep track of the mention of the first and last name. If you are praised in the posts, always respond with a“thank you”. If you notice a negative comment, work it out. Do not resort to insults and empty accusations: leave a detailed comment with facts, arguments, and your own version of the situation. This will help to show that you adequately communicate with customers and that you can find a way out of a difficult situation.

Gradually, you will become recognizable in the groups in which you communicate. The number of subscribers will increase as will the personal messages from colleagues. Don’t ignore them, answer them in detail and to the point — this way you will build a positive reputation and further expand your personal branding reach.  

Other platforms 

In addition to social media, a personal brand can be developed and promoted on many other platforms. These include: 

• Your own website – create a blog and publish guides, reviews, interesting articles, videos, and other types of content that may be useful to your users.
• Thematic forums — once registered, communicate with appropriate topics, create your own, posts with valuable information.
• Thematic sites – offer collaborations: you give them the content/material and they will credit you below their article or with a direct link.
• Books – you can write your own book about the niche that you understand best: this will significantly increase the level of expertise in the eyes of the consumers.
• Offline and online events – attend conferences, exhibitions, meetings and try to speak at a few: offer the organizers an interesting topic and write the outline of the speech.
• Media – collaborate with bloggers, news sites, and print media: do not refuse interviews and offer up your own articles and features.
• Consultancy – not exactly a platform, but you will increase your level of expertise in the eyes of your target audience if you do consultancy work both online and offline.

There are many examples of highly successful personal brands. Some world-famous personalities come to mind: 

• Elon Musk is a famous entrepreneur and inventor. He is the CEO of two major companies, Tesla Motors and SpaceX. Both companies work with new technologies, so Elon positions himself as an adherent of new solutions. Elon drives a Tesla and plans to carry out a human flight to Mars in 2020-2025. His secret to success is continuous development.
• Quentin Tarantino is a film director. His films are, without exaggeration, known all over the world. He positions himself as a person who brought special humour to the cinema. The key to Quentin’s success is in himself.
• Queen Elizabeth II. Her personal brand began to be built immediately after the coronation, and she still successfully supports it. Every day, Elizabeth responds to the letters of ordinary citizens, and throughout the reign shows really decent royal manners and restraint.

There are other examples that are less well-known. These individuals are instead known in narrow circles:

• Mark Wheeler, the Art director of Microsoft, is a web design icon whose work is known to everyone in the field. He is specialized in user experience, interactions and user-friendly interfaces.
• Tadashi Yanai – President of Fast Retailing (Uniqlo). Son of the founder of the company, which, at the time of his entry into the business in 1984, was a men’s clothing store. He created the Uniqlo brand, which grew into a global company in 2005.
• Michael Fortin. Coming from a dysfunctional impoverished family, he managed to become the owner of a large consulting agency, one of the world’s most famous marketers, a university professor and a Doctor of Philosophy. In the advertising world, he is called the “Doctor of Success”.

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Books: What to read about personal branding 

Tom Peters: The Brand You 50

The author of the book is a real management guru and the head of an international consulting company whose clients include Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Starbucks and other major players in the international market. 

In his book, Tom Peters talks about why the era of “me-brands” is approaching, and how to effectively promote your own personal brand. He lists fifty ways to create a brand, each of them with a step-by-step guide, answers to questions and examples.

David D’Alessandro: Brand Warfare: 10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand

This book will be useful to anyone who wants to “stand out from the crowd” and build a successful brand on their name. It really has the ten basic rules of personal branding.  You will also learn how to remain yourself, work with your superiors, learn to recognize and neutralize your mistakes, and finally, how to deal with your competitors. 

The author of this book is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of John Hancock Financial Services. It was under his leadership that the insurance company made it to the list of the 100 best brands of the 20th century. 

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In conclusion, personal branding is a time-consuming and costly process. However, it gives excellent results: your opinion will be considered, you will be asked for advice, and the value of the goods and services you offer will increase significantly. 

We hope this article has brought you relevant knowledge on personal branding!