6 Proven Strategies for Personal Branding

With the rise of influencer marketing and so many accessible social platforms, personal branding is all around us. From finding a better job or associating with potential clients to acquire some industry recognition, your reasons may vary. But the biggest reality is that building a strong personal brand can open more professional opportunities for you. That’s why it becomes more important for freelancers and entrepreneurs to work on this aspect and gain more visibility. In this article, I’ve outlined some proven strategies and practices that make you stand out of crowd through personal branding.

Optimize Social Media Profile

With the rapid increment in use of social networking sites, it is very necessary to make sure that your profile on various social media platforms are up to date and properly reflect who you are. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram should be the social networks of high priority. While many people have an account on these sites but their profile is often incomplete, making it essentially useless. You can easily optimize your headline, URL, summary, education and work history on these sites. Your headline and summary should be attention grabbing and remember to enrich it with your industry specific keywords.

In order to attract more potential connections and employers to your profile, you should share informative and relevant content. Use LinkedIn as a platform to brand yourself. It allows you to share text updates, pictures and video content too. This way you can prove the proficiency of your knowledge among the professionals and employers. By doing so, you are increasing your visibility on search results and thus grab attention of professionals from the field of your specialization.

Personal Experiences with Storytelling

There are so many incidents that happen in our daily life. We can share some valuable experiences out of those with a great story around it. Such stories make us related to the topic on an emotional level. It is very difficult to forget the stories that are somehow associated to real life experiences. That’s why the blogs and articles based on real experiences always grab a high level of engagement. This method of personal branding is very helpful to increase loyalty and personal bond with your audience.

Everyone likes to read a good and encouraging story, so feel free to talk about your journey as a student, professional or freelancer. Such information provides strength to your claims about your expertise in respective fields and thus builds credibility with the readers.

Define yourself and your Expertise

It sounds like a cake walk but it’s not so easy to define yourself both in a relevant and compelling manner. To establish a unique identity, you need to know what it takes to craft the right message. A compelling description should be adorned with your expertise, your passion and your long term vision. You can even start by explaining your expertise or a specific skill-set that also resonate your true passion. But your explanation should be memorable, and is true to what you stand for. Focus on one thing you’re genuinely great at and build your brand around that skillset.

Identifying & Networking

In today’s world, building a healthy network is very important for success. Colleagues, classmates, friends and alumni should be on the top of your priority list to connect online on various social platforms. Later, you can find other professionals from the industry and establish communication with them. Search for industry-relevant keywords like “digital marketer” in search bar, visit profiles to find relevant people and send them connection request.

Make sure to attend various networking events related to your industry. If you hang out where the industry folks hang out, it will take time, but you will eventually become part of that industry. Keep in mind to always engage with your connections’ posts and ask relevant queries politely and professionally.

Weapon of Influence

There are so many ways to influence people which may vary as per your knowledge, skills and accomplishments. You can influence people by optimizing your social media profile, defining your experience and expertise as mentioned above. Apart from this, you should also start your own blog or YouTube channel in order to enhance your credibility. This approach will also enable you to expand your community and reach by leveraging the power of digital media and search engines.

To do this may take no more than some correctly chosen words that engage a strong psychological principle exist within us. One of the most effective method is to provide some valuable information by crafting a superb content. Talk with people in the industry about what you know. Don’t hesitate to make people around you smarter. This will only establish you as a credible source.

Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is a special form of content marketing which consists of ideas that require attention, that offer guidance, and that needs to be educational and ideally provocative. Every community is driven by engagement and majority of it is driven by content; hence always try to craft a valuable content. No matter that you have a blog or YouTube channel, if there is something compelling to contribute, people will find it useful.

Think about the audience you’re speaking to, and tailor customized message as per their interest. Your approach can be comedic or heartwarming but the key for successful personal branding is to be yourself. That’s how you’ll separate yourself from the competition.

Consistency and patience is the key to grow your network and visibility. Be consistent with your actions, and be patient enough to wait for the results.

In today’s job market and entrepreneurial landscape, there is no room for being another face in the crowd. You have to be more appealing to your target audience and that’s what you can do through an effective strategy of personal branding.