Personal Branding

- by T. Aswini Patro for Young Engine

Personal Branding is the process of branding and creating the influence of an individual by effectively positioning that person as a brand which can create value for other people in the business world and edge over its career as a successful individual. Personal branding helps the individual to stand out over other competitors and differentiate himself from the long list of competitors out in the market fixing for getting a client. The larger is your brand, the larger you make an impact on other people’s lives, and in their businesses.

Need of Personal Branding

With the presence of humans in the digital world of the 21st century, mostly referred to as the Internet Age the need for the personal brand has grown and rooted in the web server demanding for outstanding profiles of individuals. The intense use of the Internet due to the low tariff of data and deep penetration of smartphones and other electronic gadgets such as laptops, palmtops in tier-2, tier-3 cities as well as in remote villages have revolutionized the world. More specifically the rate of consumption of social media has affected the physical world in depth. This tensed the marketers and entrepreneurs as it now forced them to create their online identities and build their brands to communicate to a larger and vast audience and create a massive impact on their followers or subscribers.

Leaders v/s Followers

The amazing author of Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill in his signature book mentioned that there are two types of people on a broad aspect. One type is well known as leaders and other types referred to as followers. You decide to start something and your thought process relies on you to decide whether you want to become a leader or call yourself a follower. According to Hill, the difference in compensation between both types of people is vast. And he also adds it is no disgrace to be a follower and also it brings no credit to remain as a follower. To develop the skill of leadership, you must be an intelligent follower and always grab the opportunity to acquire knowledge from your leader. So Napoleon Hill credited as the first person to introduce the concept of Personal Branding way back in 1937 in his book Think and Grow Rich.

Anyone willing to create a personal brand must remember a simple principle to start his journey. By giving value regularly and being authentic i.e. being your true self will create influence on the audience and start your foundation towards building a personal brand. Entrepreneurs must put in their time, effort, and reach out to customers and convert them towards their space to build their identity. It will not happen overnight or in due course of time, it takes several years for some, and for people with more dedication, it takes several months to create their image in the thoughts of the public.

Hero Introduction

The first step to create your brand is to have a hero introduction. Whenever you as a personal brand trip somewhere or attend an event or meeting or have a long call with a client far away from you in another nook of the world, the people always wanted to know who you are and what can you do for them. So, you have to prepare such an effective introduction that can reach miles over the internet and spread your identity the smart way you have never imagined also. Your hero introduction should have your name, your skills which you are proud of, your family, your achievements, and also your vision. People love stories and sharing your crazy lifestyle with your hero introduction will help them to relate themselves with you and gets your faster a lead.

You should use this introduction everywhere in your life that includes your social media handles, websites. People will love it as it will be your signature dialogue and all we well know the significance of movie dialogue and the impressions they leave behind the scenes. It will help the client to be with you over some personal interest maybe you both have and you get a positive vibe from his side. Your hero introduction will help you to connect to a human being at all levels be that a freelancer, CEOs, top executives of companies, entrepreneurs and create authority.

Choosing your Niche

The second step you have to carry out is choosing your niche and targeting the right set of audience those who are a part of your selected niche. Many entrepreneurs often do one of the biggest mistakes of trying to influence everyone present on this globe. But this lays a strong error as everyone cannot be your right prospect. Trying to please every people will hold you back to become successful. You have to delete out the requests of people of your no interests and no similarities to avoid your time to be wasted on them in marketing for your service. Everyone will not like your thoughts or messages and that’s completely fine, don’t look after they focus on your niche.

The three steps to chose your niche and excel in your career are the objective, vehicle, and specific audience. The objective which signifies your broad niche is what are you helping your client to achieve? That could be anything that may be growth in their business, making a couple of bucks, establishing relationships, career enhancement, and growth, or being healthy and staying fit.

The next step is the vehicle to reach your objective. For growing someone’s business you will need the help of digital marketing and web development services so it becomes your vehicle. Better health can be expected through gym, yoga, and meditation. Relationships can be good when parenting is done in the right way and couples are enough counseled before their marriages. With soft skills, personality development, communication skills you can have good growth in your career. So, all these are your vehicles to reach your objective.

Now, the third step would be who would be sitting in your vehicle? For that, you have to go deeper into the selection of your specific set of audience and have to choose your micro-niche. If you confuse yourself with choosing the right micro-niche then you lose, if you clarify your thoughts then you win. Taking an example, if your objective is business growth then you select your vehicle as digital marketing than you have to go further selecting your micro-niche that for whom will you work as a digital marketer may be for doctors, hoteliers, entrepreneurs.

Build your Community

The third step is to build your community on various social media sites and add value regularly to engage the audience. The most common social media platforms where must have your presence are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat, Quora, Pinterest, and others. Day by day, the number of people signing up for using different social media sites increases, and the engagement also increase. There is a massive potential to reach a vast and engaged audience through these social media platforms. Some of the platforms will also help you to build up a rapport with the connections of your micro-niche and target them personally with your digital identity. Market yourself with full value and efforts so that you not miss a single high- profile client from being your customer. But you need to understand that more number of followers does not necessarily mean more income, therefore you need to create a community of followers that will convert into paying customers in your near future.

Gary Vee, Grant Cardone, Billy Gene, Patt Flynn, Russel Brunson, Dan Lok, Neil Patel, Peng Joon are some of the biggest influencers of this globe who are most impactful personal brands, never forget to follow them to become a leader as an intelligent follower always does that to not remain as a follower. Follow their checklist of being a personal brand and that includes a hero introduction, building your community, targeting a niche audience, participating in events worldwide, and collaborating as sponsors and with corporates.