Developing Your Personal Brand

The term personal brand is a phrase that is thrown around a lot recently but what is it exactly? A personal brand encompasses your set of standards (attitudes, choices & actions), passions, personality attributes, vision and strengths. Your personal brand is YOUR story. It’s how you promote yourself and your skills are your personal brand.

Perhaps you’re thinking to yourself, well why is this important for me? Because your personal brand showcases your passions, strengths, interests, skill & abilities, as well as your personality, education and work experience, you become a visual walking & talking resume.

Whether you work for yourself or for someone else, your personal brand is important. How you promote and showcase yourself can give you opportunities within your career field you never thought possible.

Let’s say you were attending a conference for example, and you were super active on social media interacting with others and the event prior to the event happening, you may grab the attention of someone who is also planning to attend, that sees something opportunistic with you moving forward.

How you promote yourself online is a key proponent of your personal branding strategy.

What components should I focus on with my personal brand?

• needs/requirements
• values
• passions/interests
• personal mission statement
• your vision
• strengths
• uniqueness
• personality
• education and work experience
• your goals
• who is your target audience

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• Needs/Requirements

Look at what you’re looking to get out of personal branding. What’s in it for you? Once you know what you need/want to get out of your personal branding, you know which attributes/skills to also focus on highlighting. I know for me, my personal branding is centred around my growth as an individual and as a freelancer.

• Personal Brand Values

What are your values and beliefs? List all of your values and rank them in order of importance. I tend to focus more on my top 3-5 values, but once you list them down and see what you have, maybe you’ll need more or less.

• Passions & Interests

How do you choose to spend your time? What really gets you excited day-to-day? For me? I took my top 5 – travel, food, running/fitness, marketing & events – and turn those into my blog pillars, and are a huge part of my overall brand story. Your passions and interests help you frame your authenticity as well.

• Personal Brand Mission Statement

What is a single phrase or small paragraph that expresses who you are and what you are all about? For myself on the business side, I want to use my skills in social media marketing to inspire others to increase their overall business revenue by incorporating social media into their digital marketing strategy. On the personal/blog side, I want to use my experiences in life to help inspire others whether it be to travel, try new food, or being more active in their lives.

1. What 3-4 words describe your essential qualities?
2. What is your essence? ex: I know I am in my element when I can talk social marketing and its benefits, without eyes glazing over. 
3. What knowledge do you hold & skills that you possess? ex: People recognize my expertise in social media. 
4. What is your standout feature? ex: People comment on my ability to show how social media and [traditional] marketing intertwine. 

• Your Personal Brand Vision

Now that you know your values, needs/requirements and passions, you can come up with a vision statement. You will need to be able to show people reading the statement exactly what you can do and what you specialize in. Try wording in a few different ways, and get feedback from those closest to you on how your statement reads to others and is interpreted, so you can adjust as needed.

• Strengths (and weaknesses)

What are your abilities? What are you strongest at/in? Make note of those things that you may not be as strong in and keep off to the side for now. This is also good practice for impending job interviews because we all know how not being prepared to the fullest, can set us up for failure. When you have a list of your strengths, align them with your skillset.

Those weak spots you have? No sweat! I am of the belief that we should always be learning and improving. Skillsets are changing and evolving, so just that fancy degree from college/university doesn’t do it anymore. Find online courses where you can brush up and turn those weaknesses into strengths.

• Uniqueness

What makes you uniquely you? Do you have a unique quality that makes you different and unusual? Find those traits of yours that are unique to others within the industry you are set it, and use them to make you stand out from the crowd.

• Personality

Let your personality shine through! Ask those around you some questions to help you get started. What am I like to be around? Do I sound like I have fun with what I do? Am I fun? How would you describe me to someone else? Once you get feedback from others, find those traits that are consistent and focus on those. You can’t fake authenticity – this isn’t a fake it until you make it type of situation.

Be unapologetically yourself, and let that authenticity shine through to anyone and everyone.

• Education/Work Experience

Remember how I said that your personal brand is like a walking-talking resume? Highlight your education and work experience and align those with the strengths that you highlighted above.

Don’t forget to add any courses/schooling that you do to better yourself in your career and how those align with your values, strengths, and passions. Someone that is constantly improving their skillset shows a stronger commitment to their career compared to someone who gets their degree and wipes their hands clean.

• Personal Brand Goals

Did you think we’d get through this without mentioning goals? We all have goals in life personally, and professionally. List out your goals and always refer back to them to add new goals, as you crush previous goals. Don’t forget that your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. Your goals should align with your values, passions, interests etc.

• Your Target Audience

The goal here is not to appeal to the mass public. Not everyone is going to like you! So what do you want? You want to find people/businesses that align with what your goals are. Your goals help drive you forward, which in turn helps others propel their businesses forward. How do you define this?

1. Who will buy this product/service?
2. Where do I want to sell this product/service?

I know, I know this all sounds business-based. But if you are trying to advance your career and move up the ladder if you will, the service you are selling is YOU. What can YOU bring organizations with your experience? There is always that person that is looking for someone just like you, which means you’re selling your personal brand.

Personal Brand Statement

Now that you have sat down and done a deep dive into your passions, experiences, goals, etc., you can start putting your personal brand statement together. Again, feel free to write more than one and have those closest to you analyze and review for clarity. You’re taking all the best parts of yourself when putting this statement together. Don’t let imposter syndrome get the best of you.

Identify your points of service: what distinctive benefits do you bring to your target audience? How do you stand out from the competition? State your promise: let your target audience know the net benefit to them/their organization.

Most importantly, when you’re working on building your personal brand, is to be consistent. Use the same photo across all social platforms so you’re easily recognizable and it should be preferably, a professional headshot/photo, not something when you were on vacation on a beach. Unless that 100% aligns with your brand, of course.

If you’re looking for a deeper dive into your personal brand, I would highly suggest heading over to Leanne Calderwood’s website. While her focus is on those within the events and hospitality industry, she does have a workbook that’ll take you through her framework for personal branding, as well as a personal branding quiz so you don’t have to be a part of that specific industry. Leanne also overs group and one-on-one training, and there is a digital course you can take as well.

Stay tuned for more related to personal branding – online and offline –  and taking these elements to build your personal brand.