What Is Personal Branding & 4 Reasons Why It’s Important

The con­cept of a busi­ness build­ing a brand for itself is a pret­ty com­mon idea today.

Most, if not all, busi­ness­es are brand­ed, and they make mon­ey by devel­op­ing those brands.

So why can’t peo­ple do the same thing?

A per­son­al brand isn’t that much dif­fer­ent from a busi­ness brand. Instead of mar­ket­ing a store or prod­uct, you’re mar­ket­ing yourself.

Build­ing up a per­son­al brand has a ton of ben­e­fits, both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, and it can help open many doors for you in the future.

In this arti­cle, we’ll delve into exact­ly what a per­son­al brand is as well as why it’s worth developing.

What Is Personal Branding?

If you Google your name, what comes up?

If the answer is “noth­ing”, you prob­a­bly haven’t spent much time devel­op­ing your per­son­al brand.

When I Google “Adam Heitz­man”, the entire first page of the Google SERPs is devot­ed to my online presence.

You’ll see my busi­ness pages, my social media pages, and var­i­ous web­sites where I’ve pub­lished arti­cles such as Entre­pre­neur Mag­a­zine and GoDaddy.

You don’t even have to click on any of the links to under­stand that my “brand” is relat­ed to online busi­ness marketing.

This is because I’ve tak­en the time to devel­op my brand through my online pres­ence. I’ve cre­at­ed social media pro­files on all the rel­e­vant sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter.

I’ve cre­at­ed a descrip­tive author bio on my employ­er web­site and I’ve spent time cre­at­ing blog posts and then look­ing for guest post­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties on oth­er web­sites where I can also cre­ate an author bio.

My voice and pho­to are con­sis­tent through­out all these sites so there’s no mis­tak­ing that it’s the same “Adam Heitz­man” regard­less of which link you click.

Some peo­ple choose to devel­op a logo and theme for their per­son­al brand (take Oprah, for exam­ple) and they’ll ensure that those logos and col­ors are also con­sis­tent with­in every page that includes their name.

Devel­op­ing a per­son­al brand takes work, and it’s not going to hap­pen overnight. But once you do it, the ben­e­fits are endless.

4 Reasons to Create a Personal Brand

1. It Helps You Stand out from the Crowd

A per­son­al brand is a great way to demon­strate your skills and knowl­edge about a par­tic­u­lar sub­ject or field.

You might be much more knowl­edge­able than John Doe next to you, but if some­one Googles your name and John Doe’s and John is the one with a per­son­al brand and pro­fes­sion­al online pres­ence, he’s going to look bet­ter than you.

Build­ing a brand is your chance to show your audi­ence what you know and why you know it, and it will help set you apart from oth­ers who might be vying for the same oppor­tu­ni­ties but who haven’t tak­en the time to build their own per­son­al brand.

2. It Leads to Opportunities

A strong per­son­al brand will lead to a mul­ti­tude of oppor­tu­ni­ties, including:

• Job inter­views.
• Intern­ships.
• Speak­ing engagements.
• Net­work­ing opportunities.
• Pro­mo­tions.
• Part­ner­ships.
• More.

A per­son­al brand is the build­ing blocks that will lead to suc­cess for your future. It can help you reach any num­ber of goals, both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al, and it can also lead to many oppor­tu­ni­ties for advance­ment in your career.

3. It Inspires Trust in Your Audience

Many peo­ple, espe­cial­ly those of the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion, don’t trust larg­er busi­ness­es that uti­lize tra­di­tion­al advertising.

That’s why there’s such a big push nowa­days to “shop small”, and why influ­encer adver­tis­ing is so successful.

Peo­ple are much more like­ly to buy from, and lis­ten to, some­one who looks, talks, and acts like them as opposed to a large corporation.

So if you build your brand like a busi­ness, but still main­tain a per­son­al front, you’re guar­an­teed to inspire trust amongst your audience.

4. Someone Is Always Going to Be Screening You Online

Whether you’re apply­ing for col­lege, for an entry-lev­el job, or for your future career, some­one is going to be Googling your name.

Some employ­ers will expect you to have an online pres­ence, where­as oth­ers just want to ensure you don’t have a poor rep­u­ta­tion online.

But regard­less, it’s bet­ter to con­trol the results that appear in the SERPs as opposed to leav­ing them up to chance.

Devel­op­ing a per­son­al brand is a great way to show poten­tial employ­ers that you’ve worked hard to build a pos­i­tive rep­u­ta­tion online.

How to Get Started Developing Your Brand

One good place to start is by clean­ing up your social media accounts. You can con­trol what your rep­u­ta­tion is online, and so you don’t want any­thing you post on social media to neg­a­tive­ly impact your presence.

Anoth­er pos­i­tive place to begin would be to cre­ate a per­son­al website.

Use your web­site not only to build your brand, but to add val­ue to your audi­ence. This is your plat­form to show­case your skills and expe­ri­ence, and also to share valu­able advice with your audience.

Cre­ate a logo and theme for your­self, and keep it con­sis­tent through­out all your social media profiles.

Next, define who your audi­ence is and devise a con­tent strat­e­gy with them in mind.

Pub­lish com­pelling con­tent that will draw in your audi­ence and keep them com­ing back for more because your con­tent adds val­ue to their lives.

Con­sid­er cre­at­ing spe­cial­ized, per­son­al con­tent that you can give your audi­ence in exchange for their email address; this is a great way to build your email list.

Summary

These are just a few tips to get you start­ed. Hope­ful­ly, you’re able to see the val­ue in devel­op­ing a per­son­al brand.

Have you brand­ed your­self yet? What went into cre­at­ing your brand?

Can you share any tips for our read­ers about the impor­tance of devel­op­ing their own brand?

SOURCE: Search Engine Journal