Every successful business needs a brand but do does every successful individual. Whether you’re an entrepreneur looking to make your fortune or a young professional looking to climb the corporate ladder, having a brand will help you stand out from the crowd, show people what you’re about and increase your chances of success.

 

Okay, but how exactly do you build a personal brand?

Work out who you are

 

Before you can start building a personal brand, you need to know who you are.  If you don’t know what you stand for, what your hopes are and how you want others to see you, then you can’t hope to create a brand that reflects you. 

 

Take a look at the linkedin.com/in/dan-mintz-dmg/. This doctor is able to very succinctly sum up who he is, what he is about and what people can expect from a professional relationship with him. If you can’t sum yourself up in a similarly succinct manner, you have some work to do, So sit down, take some time and work out who you really are.

 

Work out who your audience is

 

Branding is all about targeting the right people in the right way, so when you’re developing your personal brand, you really need to know who your audience is. If you’re an entrepreneur, for example, your audience may be well-off business investors who can help you achieve your business goals, or if you’re a young lawyer, your audience is likely to be established practice lawyers who may be able to give you a hand up the career ladder.

 

Once you know who your audience is, you can craft the story of you to better appeal to them. For example, if you’re looking for graphic design work, emphasising your creativity and telling your story in a creative way would be good, whereas if you’re an entrepreneur looking for investment, emphasizing your drive and innovation is often a good way to get self-made investors to stand up and take note.

 

Look for role models

 

If you want to get your personal brand right, it pays sense to take your lead from people who are already doing what you do. How do they present themselves? What do they talk about? Where do they post? Find out and outdo them and you will be on to a winner.

 

Act with integrity

 

It doesn’t matter how much work you pour into developing san excellent personal brand, if people aren’t buying it, it’s not going to work out for you. That first and foremost, means being authentic, and secondly means always acting with integrity. You should never lie about your abilities or act in a way that could make people think less of you. If you do that, your personal brand will be one of fake, phoney, fraud, bad guy… you get the idea. That’s exactly what you don’t want to happen!

 

Building s strong personal brand tasks time and effort, but it will be worth it when you have people clamouring to work with you.