Five quick tips for building your Personal Brand

I am following up last week’s blog titled ‘Building your personal brand to build your Business brand’, with five quick tips from a friend of mine to help you to build your Personal brand.

Communication and Brand Specialist, Marie ‘The PR Girl Berbick’ shares that Personal Branding is the way you package and market yourself, whether to clients, potential clients, employers/employees, family, friends and essentially all your stakeholders. 

As a startup entrepreneur, your stakeholder list would also include; investors, business partners, the community in which your business operates as well as the government.

In building your personal brand, Marie identifies three key elements that are important to the process.  “Firstly, there’s you… what is your area of expertise? What makes you unique as an entrepreneur?” she questions.  Then there’s your image; how you attire yourself, how you speak and what actions people associate you with?  And finally, your reputation; this is developed from your image, your target market’s experience with you (your brand) and whether you deliver the brand promise.

Before I jump into the tips Marie shared with me, just three quick questions to ask yourself when creating your personal brand statement:

-          Who are you serving?

-          What problems do you solve for your target market?

-          What makes you unique?

Image courtesy of Pinterest

So now that we’ve identified what goes into creating your personal brand, here are five practical tips that Marie suggests you use for your next steps;

1.       Build your personal brand below the radar before making a grand public entrance.

2.       Identify the places and channels through which you can best reach your target market and meet them there!

3.       Believe in your brand. Live your brand. You are your best salesman if you don’t believe in your brand, it’s harder for others to buy into what you are selling

4.       Be consistent. You cannot be an apple today and suddenly an orange tomorrow (unless you are rebranding!) Consistency helps you to gain the confidence of your target market.

5.       Once you’ve built your brand—OWN IT. Adopt all the necessary legal means to protect your brand from being exploited.

All the best!