How to Build a Great Personal Brand

Have you been considering how to build a personal brand for yourself? We have a guest writer today, Ashutosh, to example some amazing ways to get started!

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Author Bio

Ashutosh works as a Product Manager at Refrens.com – India’s most powerful platform for freelancer’s finances and growth. He has helped some renowned technology companies with their product. In this blog, Ashutosh shares some tips and tactics to generate blog ideas from Social Media. You can follow Refrens.com on Twitter, LinkedIn.

With the freelancing community increasing every day, it has become more and more important to build a personal brand in today’s time. Since so many people are choosing to become self-employed, the competition in the market is getting intense. The only way to differentiate from the crowd and sketch yourself a unique identity is by structuring a great personal brand.

As a freelancer, you are the face of your work, therefore building your personal brand makes perfect sense. All of the profitable businesses that strive to sustain in the long-run have a great personal brand that helps attract more customers and create a lasting impression in the mind of the viewers. Clients these days focus more on the people behind the work. Therefore, to increase the exposure of the business, the main part is getting an audience for the brand.

So what is a personal brand?

A personal brand is who you are, what you do, the values that you believe in, and the ways in which you represent those values. It is about communicating your story, that helps you grow further in your career. Building a brand has added benefits like:

• Establishing trust with your clients
• Becoming an influencer in your industry
• Building connections and networks easily
• Charging a premium price
• Getting more references and attracting clients
• Differentiating from competitors
• Highlighting your expertise and capabilities
• Constructing a sustainable business

Your personal brand is who you are as a person; an image that you illustrate to the world. Everyone has a personal brand, whether they want it or not. All of us are involved in many of the activities online which are a part of the brand building, including email sending, social media posting, blog writing, etc. It shapes the way people think about you, therefore putting efforts into building a strong personal brand is investment-worthy.

Read this article, to know the process of building a personal brand and to ensure that this helps you get more sales.

1. Know who you are

Your personal brand is about presenting your authentic self to the world. For this to be achieved, you first need to determine who you really are. Try to introspect and reflect on your personal and professional identity. Know about your strengths, weaknesses, skills, values, beliefs, interests, etc.

Ask some essential questions to yourself, like

• What motivates me?
• What are the characteristics that I possess?
• For unique offerings, what can I serve to my clients, etc.?

The answers to these questions can help shape the brand’s image in the best way. These different shades of your personality will help you figure out the most important thing to you and that can add value to your clients too.

2. Discover what you want to achieve

Your personal brand is about who you are today and is also a map that you sketch of your future goals. Think of what you want to achieve with it. Analyze and understand your strengths and weaknesses in accordance with the career and industry you want to grow in. In this way, you can be aware of what makes you distinct and what all you need to improve on.

Think of what you want to be known for in the future, or what your areas of interest or expertise are. Try and forecast your near future. By doing so, you will be able to plan the steps more accurately and efficiently convey a key message through your strong personal brand. Knowing what you want to accomplish complements what your personal brand will look like in the future.

3. Figure out your target audience

Finding your niche and focusing on them gives a direction to your business. You need to know the people whom you are trying to cater to. You need to tailor your story by keeping in mind the target audience.

Select a section of the society that you think will relate the most to you, your brand, and your offerings. Only if people will engage in your story, personal branding will get successful. Select the audience that you think will get benefited and can be served most efficiently by you. Think of your ideal client, because then only will you be able to build a relatable personal brand.

4. Define your Unique Value Proposition

Each brand has its own unique identity that helps differentiate from the competitors. Your Unique Service Proposition (USP) is what defines you in the most concise form. It is a solid, impressive statement that conveys what you offer to your clients. Your USP should not be too descriptive or include everything about your brand, it should be precise and should come from within you. Keeping it short will help it to be more memorable and stick in the audience’s mind for a long time.

Carefully write a USP that portrays your brand and gives the clarity of the same to your clients. It is necessary to state your USP in all your conversations including emails, social media posts, and blog posts. Re-emphasizing the message of your brand in everything that you do is essential to build a powerful and persuasive personal brand.

5. Build your online presence

One of the critical elements of personal branding is optimizing your online presence by making its aspects more engaging for the audience. Your website or different online mediums that you use should match what your brand stands for. Keep your story similar across all the platforms.

A website is mainly where people get to know the most about you and your offerings. Therefore, optimizing it to get more successful clients should be one of the top priorities. The visitors on your website are looking for a solution to their problem; you need to create a solid first impression with them. Have a formal and professional-looking design and layout; well-designed logo, professional photographs, use testimonials, a call-to-action, contact page, and an interesting ‘about’ section.

Leverage these platforms to convey brand-specific content. Each work of content should be about the brand and should help to build on your brand. Have a key content strategy to stay close to the brand message. You should present value to your client whenever they interact with your brand, therefore try to continually provide value through your content. Use all this to highlight your brand message to your target audience.

6. Build your network

An impressive personal brand is built by the support of strong community members. Grow your network by joining a Facebook group or a membership site or by doing live videos. Talk to people of your industry who can relate to your brand and promote it.

Build your brand’s presence offline also, by focusing on how you be at the home, office, and other places on a daily basis. Know that people want to associate with you on the basis of how you behave with them. Therefore, maintain a good reputation; bad impressions last for a long-time. Always remember that you define your personal brand everywhere.

Your focus on building a personal brand is directly connected with your visibility in the market. The more effort you put, the more visible you become. All the businesses keep evolving, hence, it is essential to reinvent your brand as you grow. A change can also be demanded to adjust to the needs of different people. However, one thing that should remain unchanged is that your personal brand must define who you are and reflect what you do.

Many thanks to Ashutosh for these helpful tips on how to build a great personal brand! You can learn more from him by following Refrens.com on Twitter, LinkedIn!

Now let’s hear from you!

Do you have a personal brand? What is yours about and what solutions do you offer? Feel free to share your brand and link in the comments below! Also, what challenges have you faced in establishing a steady brand for yourself?

And as always, remember to live life and learn from one story at a time.

Take care,

Kyndall Bennett from Kyrabe Stories

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