Whether you are a full-time office employee, a freelancer, or a budding entrepreneur, personal branding is the current need of the age for betterment in your career. What is personal branding? How to build your branding strategy? Simply put, it is an established perception that you create about yourself in front of other people, majorly online audiences.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the idol for many budding entrepreneurs, once said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.” That time was gone when only a handful of celebrities like sportspersons, actors, and prominent businessmen were known for their brands! It is the era of personal branding, which is a complete fundamental package of who you are!
Let’s know the practical reasons why personal branding is essential.
Why Personal Branding?
As the era focuses on individual capabilities more than anything else, it is high time to build and maintain an individual identity through a personal brand.
As per a CareerBuilder Survey performed in 2018, nearly 70% of the employers check the candidates’ social media activities and reputation during the hiring process. And approximately 43% of employers keep checking the social media profiles of the existing employees.
If you look around social media, you will see how personal brands are growing day by day. The best examples of effective personal brandings are Gary Vaynerchuk, aka Gary Vee, Marie Forleo, Oprah Winfrey, and so on. You may visit any professional branding agency in India, and it will guide you on how to develop the brand. Nonetheless, we will mention the general strategies and some practical tips to build your brand and boost its performance.
How to Build Your Brand: What a Professional Branding Agency Suggests
Before we delve into the quick tips to build your personal brand, let’s get a brief idea about what any brand consultant in India suggests to build a brand. The steps are as follows:
Figure out Your Niche
Have you gone through backlinco.com ever? It is an award-winning blog run by a famous SEO expert Brian Dean. With high traffic to his blog and millions of subscribers to his YouTube channel, he is called “SEO Genius by entrepreneur.com. “The Inc. Magazine called him a “brilliant entrepreneur.” So, how did he become so successful? Because he picked up a niche and focused on it.
Finding a niche is to figure out who you are and how you fit the most in the industry. Find out what are your strengths and weaknesses. Look around the market and see which niches are growing. And then link your strong points with any of the growing niches. Renowned brand management companies in India often help to find your niche.
Decide What Value You will Add to the Society
Value attracts the people. Think about any of your preferred brands! You would not have known LIC if it did not ensure to be the most trusted insurance partner. Adding value includes solving the problems of the people and engaging them to think about your brand. TATA group faced an unfavourable situation during their launch of the new car brand named Zica due to the spread of the Zika virus. They immediately went on running a contest that involves people voting for a suitable name for the car. Thus, the new name Tiago came.
So, if you want your brand to linger among people’s minds, add value to it.
Create and Design your Unique Site
Now, this is vital. Regardless of how profitable your niche is or how effectively you add value, without proper presentation, everything is useless. According to a study by Taylor & Francis Online, 94% of the time people’s first impression of the brand is based on the design, and it takes 50 milliseconds to decide on the brand.
Focus on developing a unique website and logo for your business. Remember that logo is the face of your business, and the website builds your online presence. So, spend time on them wisely to create an effective personal brand.
Leverage the Social Media Channels
In general, social media is a powerful platform holding a large audience base. As per a study by statista.com, approximately 17% of Facebook users come to the platform only to follow specific brands. So, if you plan to build your brand, leverage the social media channels accordingly. Are you wondering how to choose the proper social media channels for your brand? Find it here.
Put Effective and Suitable Content
When you are about to launch your personal brand, you must know what your audience seeks. Get your market research done with a professional branding agency in India or other places and know your audience. Then, put content on your site and social media channels accordingly. As per a research-based infographic from Demand Metric, nearly 80% of people prefer to learn about a brand through custom content. So, dig up more about the niche you choose and put effective content to showcase your brand well to your audience.
Take Professional Guidance
Even if you put everything on track, your personal brand may fail to get the desired success. It often happens due to a lack of insights and adequate market experience. Here emerges the need for professional guidance. You can take the help of a renowned branding agency in India or any other place. The experts will guide you with what we, ordinary people, may not know. They regularly research the market and develop new branding strategies based on the updated market conditions. Thus, they enable the brands to grow faster than ever.
Now, as you know how to build your brand, let’s get into some of the quick, useful tips to grow it.
How to Grow Your Personal Brand: 7 useful Tips
Be Specific: When it comes to choosing your niche, be specific about it. Focusing on a single factor leads to better reach to the audience. For example, you cannot be a digital marketer, a social media influencer, and a virtual assistant at the same time.
If you are building your brand, be specific about the services you will provide. State a clear and specific proposal of your services to your audience.
Be Consistent: Once you choose your niche, stick to it. Remember that success lies in not giving up. Your brand may take time to grow. You may fail to reach your target audience consistently. But what matters at the end of the day is your consistency.
Be Unique: Do you like to see the same tagline for both Pepsi and Coca-Cola? Certainly not! A brand must be unique. So, no matter which industry you are in, stay original. Create and spread your ideas.
Be Valuable: As we mentioned earlier, value attracts the audience. So, tell people how you can solve their problems. Showcase the efficacy of your brand for society.
Be Flexible: Stay consistent with your niche but be flexible with the strategies. If one plan fails, do not hesitate to go for another one.
Be Kind: Kindness is underrated often. However, it is a great way to connect with your audience. According to the expert branding agencies in India, you should show kindness to the people to grow and sustain a successful brand.
Be Informative: People prefer to stay updated with a sneak peek at the websites. Provide the information they want and find them hooked to your site.
The Bottom Line
So, we hope you have learned effective tips and strategies to build, grow, and sustain your brand online. If you are still confused about building personal brands, go for a professional branding company in India. The brand management experts will take care of everything from building your brand to managing it.