In today’s fast-changing, highly-competitive, environment, it’s more important than ever for brands to know who they are, what they can offer and how to communicate their offering effectively and distinctively.
But have you considered the power of personal branding and how it can impact your company? Whether you are entry-level or a member of the C-suite, having a personal brand helps you build trust with your audience and potential customer base while positioning you as a thought leader in your industry and area of expertise.
At our agency, part of our marketing and PR strategy includes finding professional platforms that our team members are both experienced in and passionate about. From diversity and inclusion, women in business or mentorship, there are a plethora of topics and themes to consider when looking to grow your brand. Whether you dwell in the B2C or B2B space, efforts in personal brand-building has been shown to lead to increasing the number of prospects that you can funnel into your personal and professional customer pipeline.
One of the advantages of personal branding is the potential for increased sales. Leads generated by employees through social media activity have been shown to convert seven times more than a company’s social media activities. One of the members on our sales team continually generates client interest from her LinkedIn posts. By repurposing our agency’s proprietary content (blogs, case studies, whitepapers and industry news) she can showcase her knowledge and our agency’s people, abilities, and services. Her posts trend extremely high and have become a great lead generation tool for the team. In short, personal branding efforts such as consistent social media posting, allows people to promote themselves and their brand non-intrusively, which can help nurture leads.
When building your brand, it’s important to remember the following :
Unleash Your Expertise
Believe it or not, everyone’s an expert at something. It’s true. Whether it’s strategic planning, content marketing, sales, media relations, knowing how to create and sustain employee culture the list goes on. It’s important to identify what makes you unique and start to create engaging content on the topic. From blogs, infographics, 60-second videos, let the world of content creation become your oyster.
Remain Authentic
Determine what matters most to you, what you’re interested in and honor it. When you decide to be your most authentic self you inherit the power to motivate others to take action when they decide to make a decision. A strong authentic personal brand should be based on your personal expression, how your values contribute to the work you do and, most importantly, your purpose.
Choose The Right Platform(s)
This can vary in a myriad of ways. From Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium and even TikTok, it’s important to choose a platform that you feel comfortable with and most importantly where your tribe resides. It’s also important to consider that there may be two or more platforms that appeal to you, just make sure you focus intently on those desired channels to build followers and maximize interest.
Share Interesting Content…Always
Currently, there are more than 3.2 billion, yes, billion images shared every single day. This means 1) there is a lot of noise to cut through which 2) makes posting engaging and relevant content a “social mandate.” This is how you break through the billions of images being shared and stories being told each day. After you’ve identified your area of expertise find interesting ways to talk about topics that interest your audience while also providing contrarian views that differ from what’s already being shared. It will help set you apart and amplify awareness of your brand.
Stay Consistent
Taking action is probably the most important step in this effort. Full transparency, I unfollow those who don’t regularly post or tweet on the platforms I enjoy the most. Ignoring consistently when it comes to posting, sharing, liking and engaging with your followers makes it difficult to grow and sustain a true following.
The art of building your personal brand is no longer for celebrities and the c-suite. As a company’s brand grows so should the profiles of those who work for the organization. Regardless of title or tenure, creating a solid personal brand means you consistently share your insights on what you know and how you learned it. As your social voice begins to grow, the force of attraction becomes inevitable leading to more awareness of who you are, your brand or company and potentially an increase in your bottom line.
