12 Dec Personal Branding Essentials 2022
Personal Branding Essentials 2022
Just when we felt that the internet is all saturated with content creators, influencers, celebrities, big personalities and so on, here we are yet at another phase of the development of Personal Branding as a concept.
Now, when the media is full of exaggerations, fabricated news, biased, distorted presentations of facts, and unrealistic expectations, as never before people are looking for authenticity, realness and simple truths. Add up Covid19 to this, which has created a need for physical isolation. Today, finding someone you trust, relate to and just want to see in your feed regularly, is not very easy.
Let’s pause for a moment. Who do you trust or relate to? Why?
That’s where we’re getting to the point. The answer is – personal branding.
What is a Personal Brand?
Personal Brand is the way one positions themselves. It is the process and/or result of building a reputation around the things you want to be known for. Be it a personality, skill, talent, experience or journey you take your audience with you on.
What captures attention is most importantly the unique combination of all those skills, talents and experiences. Which is the easy part because all of us are unique and interesting in our own ways. So if well thought of, there is no way you don’t know what your specific personal brand is. We all have a story, either we decide to tell it or not.
A lot of people we follow on social media platforms are the exact representation of what we want to see daily, what we like, what inspires or motivates us. So, if reverse engineered, those people we follow have built and targeted their personal brand around those values that impact specific groups of people in a specific way.
With this said, for many Personal Brand experience is just the connection with the audience, sharing their journey and the sense of community. But a lot of people also create content that is aimed to convey specific messaging and build monetisation around it.
What can a Personal Brand give you?
Well, first of all, whether you want it or not, you have your personal brand. If you didn’t do anything about it, it has been generated over time organically. All the things you can do well, all the things you like or you don’t, how you treat people around, what are your passions, your story. Eventually what people know you for – all this is your brand.
Now, let’s talk about why you would want a Personal Brand? The answer to this question is actually multilayered. Depending on your background and aspirations Personal Brand can help you experience a big variety of benefits.
Career
To recognize how Personal Brand matters in professional life, just look at the politics and elections. It doesn’t require a comment on how essential Personal Branding is when it comes to trust and believing one’s intentions.
Having a strong Personal Brand is also very important when it comes to corporate jobs, advancements, and selection of a company with a more charismatic leader when you are thinking of your dream job (like Tesla – Elon Musk)
What is really exciting here, though, is that you can build your career out of your Personal Brand. By being who you are and sharing what you know, you may create a community of people who are looking for answers to their questions from someone like you.
Currently, online learning is on its way to changing the traditional way of education and how people acquire knowledge and develop skills.
Think about it. What do you know, that you can share and build your career around your expertise. Maybe, it’s just a set of experiences yet, and how you dealt with them. But there are so many people who are looking for an authentic source to get insights from. You can be their go-to for specific topics.
Influence
Your Personal Brand can also give you a lot of influence. That can help you share your experiences and empower your community. We all know a lot of beauty gurus, travel enthusiasts, tech Jedis, or all those influencers that are promoting a luxury lifestyle, private jets, and designer bags. The rock-solid grounds those established influencers have may leave you thinking you don’t have what it takes to even think about it.
The truth is that the more the “Influencer industry” is growing the more authenticity it requires. People are not looking for extremely polished photos and videos anymore. We sure feel excited by the beautiful setting, gorgeous aesthetics, and, yes, some luxury items too, sometimes 🙂 But what we value most – is feeling relevant. Relevance is the new social media religion in this phase.
This means, what you are, your way of dealing with situations, solving problems, maybe your unique hobbies or your opinions about products has the power to bring attention to your Personal Brand and build your influence. Which you can just enjoy as it is or monetise with tons of available options currently (brand deals, affiliations, advertising accounts).
Impact
The third part is the most important. Having your strong Personal Brand and a big community around it will sure give you a voice. Which in fact has a downside to it, if not managed properly. Having your tribe trusting you or looking up to you is a big responsibility, so it is very important to always have that self-checking mechanism working if your motivation is not corrupt and you do not intentionally mislead your community. On the other hand, having your voice will provide you the platform to help, support, and empower people around you and make change happen.
What do you need to build your Personal Brand in 2022?
There are millions of articles and videos talking about this – checklists, cheat sheets, etc.
But, in fact, you don’t have to continue looking for the answers any longer. The answer is – you have all you need. There are just a few little questions you need to ask yourself, then be honest in answering them. There you go!
- What do you love?
- What are you known for?
- What do you want to be known for?
- What are your strengths?
- What are people usually asking you about?
- What do you know very well?
- What are your hobbies that you really enjoy?
- Where do you want to be in a year?
And just like that, with your answers to these questions, you are ready to start building or strengthening your personal brand and who do you want to position yourself as.
If you are ready to take it further, you can sit down and think of content you can share with your future audience. It can be a blog post if you enjoy writing, pictures, if you like to take photos or being photographed, videos if you have ideas to film, basically any type of material you can use to tell your story, and any platform that works best with your type of content to share it with others.
How can you make it work?
The best advice anyone can give is to just start. It won’t be easy, of course. But there are a few items that will navigate and support your journey, help you get organized, and enjoy what you do while building your Personal Brand, especially if you want to start sharing it online. Now let’s discuss all you need to remember!
Be genuine - be you
There is already the person online faking a lifestyle and trying to be what they are not and there is already a disappointed community because people nowadays can spot fake vibes immediately, thanks to our great experience scrolling for days during the pandemic.
The best way to attract an audience and build a community around the values you have is to be transparent.
There is always someone smarter, more skillful, prettier, or funnier. If it feels like a competition, you’re on a wrong track. There is a major need in a mindset shift to be extremely honest with yourself, accept who you are, and know that who you are right now is enough.
This feels intimidating, but that’s the best way to go. The only thing about you that is unique, that no other can be or do is you, and that’s the greatest resource when it comes to Personal Branding.
Be purposeful - remember your “why”s and your values
Ideas, in the beginning, are flowing and you have so much to share, but it is extremely important to, first of all, know your values and build your content around that and secondly, when out of ideas to remember why you started.
The values will navigate you to find like-minded people and build your community that will be a safe and happy place for everyone.
The “why”s will inspire you when you’re in a creative rut, will motivate you when you feel you’re squeezed like lemon and it’s not going as fast and great as you want it to go.
Be insightful - do your research
People won’t follow someone, they don’t gain something from. Luckily, the most demanded resources these days are knowledge and experience. Which can be related to any topic or sphere of life. What matters is, sharing something without at least a little bit of research may end up in low-quality content or even worse, a confused audience.
Of course, this is not applicable to your unique personal experiences, but knowing very well what you’re talking about is a great way to build authority around that particular topic, as well as generate trust in your responsibility of sharing verified information.
Doing research will also enhance your point of view and make your Personal Brand more insightful for your audience.
It doesn’t matter if you are a rocket scientist, makeup artist, or expert in technology, business, medicine, relationships, or anything else, you name it, to grow you need to invest in yourself. The best way to invest in your growth is to constantly learn something new and develop yourself.
Be strategic - know your next steps
Being strategic is extremely important if you consider monetizing your Personal Brand. This will help you to choose your platforms, tools, and most importantly the content more wisely.
Depending on your Personal Brand, values, and monetization scheme your strategy will differ, but having an outline, better if a solid structure of your goals, targets, efforts, resources, and milestones, will help you get there faster and overcome challenges in a more organized way.
Be consistent - make it regular
Big things don’t happen overnight. So your brand may not sky-rocket in a month. Consistency is the key to growth and development. That should become your mantra if you are embarking on this amazing journey of taking charge of your Personal Brand, that exists even if you don’t want to pay attention to it.
Implement disciplined ways of taking daily steps be it daily reading, writing, workout, filming, editing, creating, or whatever your “building block” is today. To make it easier, imagine yourself a puzzle and just take one piece at a time, without losing your vision of the whole final picture you are creating.
Be analytical - evaluate constantly
To be successful you will have to start shaking the analytical compartment of your brain. Doing the research is great, but pulling the insights from it is essential. Always be on the lookout for data and hints to enable you to make better decisions with your Personal Brand.
Evaluate the response from your audience and be ready to make changes to improve your strategy and get to your goals in a more effective way. Your core values and who you are won’t and should not be affected by this constant activity, only your techniques and “tools” you use.
Kind and open-minded - don’t worry so much
The moment there is a phenomenon is the exact moment people have opinions about it. Some may be praising and helping you grow and remain excited about what you do, and some will give you this feeling of being not enough, dragged down, and disappointed.
There is no recipe for this that will fit all situations. But there is an approach that will definitely help you in building your Personal Brand and worry less. Keeping your mind open will greatly contribute to focusing less on the negative and seeing all aspects of the challenges you’ll face and being kind will contribute to a more peaceful and happy day-to-day life.
If you are ready to start building your content around your Personal Brand, check this article about Content Marketing.